Hattie Big Sky -- Kirby Larson, 2006 (read June 16, 2007)

A quick and compelling read, obviously. Hattie Big Sky gets off to a bit of a slow start -- too much backstory all at once, I think. The ending comes so abruptly that it doesn't quite make sense; Hattie's attitude and plans seem to change so swiftly and so completely. On the other hand, maybe that's not so surprising; Hattie is independent and adventurous enough to strike out for Montana alone at sixteen, so why shouldn't she be ready for another adventure?

I liked most of the characters Hattie meets, even some of the ones who do evil things, and I liked hearing about all of them. This book sheds a wonderful light on Montana frontier life, and on the kinds of relationships that made life possible on the frontier.

It's lovely mental exercise to compare and contrast Hattie Big Sky with Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Both are fictionalized versions of real pioneers' lives. Their main characters have different family situations and live at least a generation apart. They face different political challenges, but the challenges of the prairie, and the ties of friendship and kinship that make it liveable, are strikingly similar. Hattie Big Sky gives us a small, richly detailed slice of one woman's life, where the Little House books (and their sequels) give us a drawn-out saga. The lives of the Little House protagonists are no less intensely lived than Hattie's, but there is more room to spread historical detail out over many books, so they are a bit gentler to read. I wish we could have a whole series about Hattie's life!

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation (Volume 1: The Pox Party) -- M.T. Anderson, 2006 (read 11-15 June 2007)

I can't say too much about this book on this blog, because Adam is just about to start reading it. It's an entertaining and horrifying book. The style is reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, although it's less deliberately creaky and less self-conscious. It's also, therefore, less full of in-jokes with the reader -- creaky and self-conscious can be well used.

At first, Octavian Nothing's action is also reminiscent of Quicksilver; Anderson and Stephenson are toying with some of the same elements of early modern society, including scientific societies. It soon becomes clear, however, that while Octavian Nothing may indeed be "Neal Stephenson for young adults," it's not "Quicksilver for young adults"; its themes (liberty, slavery, betrayal) and its plot (no spoilers!) are all its own.

An Abundance of Katherines -- John Green, 2006 (read 10-11 June 2007)

Adam grabbed this one at the library this weekend because it was on the young-adult New Arrivals shelf, and he remembered that his mother, who teaches children's literature at a state college, had recommended it. He got first dibs on reading it, so I waited around most of the weekend while he read and read and laughed and laughed and laughed. I don't usually hear him laughing out loud so often at a book.

It is very funny, and the main character is so like him; it's no wonder my boyfriend liked it. I liked it too -- perhaps a little less than he did, but it's not the book's fault. It's just that I've read quite a few books about child prodigies, and quite a few books with funny, acerbic footnotes, and after a while they start to get a little blurred together. Which is a function of my weird tastes -- it's not exactly an old, tired genre.

I also didn't love the way Green worked mathematics into the book. It's such a valiant, passionate attempt to show how cool Real Math and Theorems and Science can be, how much fun it is to figure out how to generalize and explain things -- but somehow it didn't quite work for me. Since I'm a mathematician, that's hard for me to say! I hope, actually, that that's the problem, and that this subplot will work just fine for readers just a little less picky than I am.

So much complaining! These are small flaws in an intelligent, witty, unnervingly lifelike, and sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny novel. Do read it!

The Westing Game -- Ellen Raskin, 1979 (read 5-9 June 2007)

This is one of the first books Adam's recommended to me that I've actually read.

I remember coming across this book in elementary school and thinking it looked horribly boring. I was wrong. It's lots of fun! Raskin's writing is engaging and clever; we don't have much time to get to know the many, many characters, but each one stands out as a distinguishable individual.

Clues, red herrings, and surprises come at you fast. I kept thinking I was clever for figuring something out, only to get knocked down a peg for totally misinterpreting something else -- just the way the characters do. Thanks to my omniscient readerly perspective, I got the main point of the mystery much faster than the characters did, but I missed a crucial piece that was obvious to them. (It was available to me, if I had read a little more carefully.)

I didn't find the ending quite satisfying -- there were still too many loose ends I was curious about -- but I've heard there's a sequel.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- J. K. Rowling, 2005 (re-read 31 May-4 June 2007)

I've just finished re-reading the Harry Potter series in anticipation of Book 7. I re-read them pretty frequently -- probably at least once a year, and definitely when there's a new one coming out. They bear re-reading well; there are always details I forgot or didn't notice, and it's fun to read them all in a row, to watch the whole story unfold. This time, of course, I was looking for clues about all the mysteries Book 6 sets up: Is Snape good or evil? What's going to happen to Harry? Can I guess any of the things he's going to find on his quest?

The Rope Trick -- Lloyd Alexander, 2002 (read 3-4 June 2007)

Another quite satisfying ending. It leaves a number of loose ends, but they're not irritating omissions; rather, they seem like exciting mysteries, which fits the magical and mysterious feel of the whole book.

I'm noticing a certain similarity between The Rope Trick and The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha (also by Alexander, published in 1978). Both are set in thinly fictionalized versions of real countries several centuries ago, but that's true of nearly all of Alexander's children's books. I'm more struck by the subtle sameness of the magic in these two books. Magic plays completely different roles in the two plots, but the rules about magic are something like this: People who try to do magic are mostly conjurers doing tricks; but sometimes, sometimes they really can do magic.

I've been reading a lot of Alexander since I learned that he died this May -- I read the Prydain and Westmark books when I was younger, and The Arkadians, but I missed all the others. I'm glad to find that Alexander's writing (both his use of language and the stories he has to tell) is still as compelling as it used to be. I'm particularly enjoying the way he writes about family love, romantic love, and friendship; it's such fun to watch clever characters learn to understand and take care of each other, and their love (of whatever kind) seems so genuine.

The Perilous Gard -- Elizabeth Marie Pope, 1974 (read ~31 May-3 June 2007)

A wonderful book! Not entirely surprising, since it's a Newbery Honor book. It's based on the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin, and I enjoyed it much more than Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, which is based on the same legend. This is saying a lot, since I'm quite a Jones fan.

Kate, the heroine, is an interesting person, someone I can identify with. All the characters seem like people I'd enjoy talking to. A good book, of course, may or may not have characters like this, but it definitely was pleasant.

I did keep noticing two flaws in the book:

• Pope used Tudor period details well, displaying the results of what must have been plenty of research without including a single historical detail that didn't seem necessary at the time. Even Kate's thoughts were backed up with details about her upbringing in and around Tudor royal courts, and her personal exposure to a few of the great thinkers of the period. Still, her thought processes often seemed too modern, even post-modern. In particular, her conclusions about the clash between Christian and pagan lifestyles felt too much like Marion Zimmer Bradley to be believable in a Tudor lady-in-waiting. They were very nicely disguised as period-appropriate thoughts, though.
  
• In a few places, I found it too easy to predict what was about to happen -- particularly just before the very end.
  

These problems were far outweighed, however, by my favorite thing about this book: It has an ending that's exactly right. It's so unusual for an ending to be satisfying! Usually the book stops before it really seems done; less often, there's a real denouement, but it doesn't happen at all the way I wanted it to. This book is one of perhaps five or ten I've read with truly satisfying endings.

Welcome!

Welcome to yet another Libby's Blog.

I'm thinking of joining the Adult Summer Reading Program at the local library. To participate, whenever I finish a (library) book, I'll submit a card with my personal information, the book's title and author, and a short review. I'll be posting my reviews here.

I've been meaning to keep up a reading journal for at least a year now. I'm hoping that keeping this book-review blog will help me build up momentum.