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Ebenezer
Mar. 1, 2008
Books of late (ish)
I've read a lot of tweener stuff in the last six months, partly to preview for my kids, partly to preread homeschooling books, and partly because I saw a lot of interesting titles at Pooh's Corner when I was Christmas shopping. Among them are:
* Dune Boy, by Edwin Teale : I don't know if this falls into the YA category or not. It's a memoir, written some 50 or 60 years ago already, of someone who spent summers with his grandparents near the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan a little after the turn of the 20th century. While it has some of the expected emotional coming-of-age content you expect from a memoir, the book mostly describes his tooling around the farmstead and shore.
* A Long Way From Chicago, Richard Peck. Also by Peck, A Year Down Yonder. I decided I wouldn't yet let my kids read these, not because they have objectionable content but because they're more sophisticated than Peck's Soup books. Just as funny, though.
*Tarshis, Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out Of a Tree. My husband thinks the main character in this book is just really smart and kind of socially inept as a result of her intellectual difference. I thought maybe the implication was that she was on the autistic spectrum. Anyone else have an opinion? I liked this book better than the one everyone else seems to like this year, which is Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect, though that one had its moments. The entire premise of taking lessons for the electric organ in 2007 and having to turn contemporary songs into Muzak is funny. Have I mentioned before that about a year ago I heard a cabaret version of Van Halen's Jump in a restaurant? It was as bad as you're imagining.
Other 'grownup' books I've read include:
* Haven Kimmel's A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch. I loved these memoirs of Kimmel's childhood in small-town Indiana because I found it amazing that she could accurately get inside her own head of 30 years ago without filtering it through her retrospective knowledge. She'll be at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing this year. One of these times when I don't have to worry about childcare or a job I'm going to go to that. Seriously, check it out at www.calvin.edu/festival -- Yann Martel? Katherine Paterson? Kathleen Norris? Luci Shaw? What more can a reader want?
* Duncan, Brothers K. A reread for book club. As I did the first time, I found it really funny until about halfway through, when it got a little preachy and difficult, but then the resolution was fantastic. Favorite character: the very sincere Sunday school girl with the harelip.
*Tom Bodett, Norman Tuttle on the Last Frontier: I don't remember why I got this book out, except that maybe I thought I'd check out Bodett after hearing him on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me a few times. I'm glad I did, though -- this is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time, and I'll have to reread it when my son gets to be 14 or 15 and can't decide whether to be a man or a bonehead.
* I've read many of the Anne of Green Gables books in the last few months. I've never read past the first book before. As with any series, I find it's better to space them out or the mannerisms and such become exhausting instead of charming, but I do enjoy them.
* Speaking of which, I just finished Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon. I like the Mitford series. I didn't like this book nearly as much. I think it's due to a couple of different things: First, we're being introduced to a ton of new characters that likely won't be developed any further in future books, so we're not as invested in them. Second, and conversely, we see only Father Tim from Mitford, plus Cynthia and Dooley only briefly, so we aren't let out of Mitford slowly. Reflective of Father Tim's disoriented feelings during the book? Yes. Make for a good read? Not so much. Third, the book deals with much darker things than the Mitford series.
*Brooks, March. I really liked Year of Wonders and I found this book, about what Mr. March of Little Women did while he was away in the Civil War, to be interesting too, especially the parts about John Brown and the anti-slavery movement. Definitely not to be read by younger Alcott fans, though.
* Proulx, The Shipping News. Tried to read many years ago. Annoyed by writing like this. This time I got past it. Had to for book club. But I found it a good read anyway after the first few chapters, which .. are not so nice. Don't read this book if you are prone to bouts of despair, though I appreciate the redemptive arc and the fact that maybe things don't always get redeemed the way you imagine them to.
* A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All. I loved the first one. I was worried that it would be disrespectful -- Jacobs' career has been at pop culture bastions like Esquire and Entertainment Weekly, in which sarcasm is de rigeur -- but Jacobs manages to poke fun at appropriate things and still get value from the exercise. He was an agnostic Jew when he started; at the end he at least thinks he might give some parts of religion a chance. Read it for the stoning passages alone.
The second of the books I just finished for book club. This time I was annoyed with Jacobs. Maybe that's what he intended, considering the title and all. But it wasn't his habit of imparting useless information at inappropriate times that annoyed me. It was the overall tone of self-centeredness that existed before his project of reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. His Biblically book came after this one and I think that process helped him look beyond the end of his nose some.
* Kullberg, Finding God Beyond Harvard. In grad school I was involved with Intervarsity's Graduate Christian Fellowship. I've been thinking for a few years now that campus ministry might be in my future. This book made me want to do it even more. I have no idea how or when that will work, though.
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Posted by Anonymous 
Mar. 8, 2008 - Untitled Comment