Looking for Your Next Book

  Like thousands of other readers, I thought that this seemed an appropriate year (2020) to read Daniel Defoe's classic, A Journal of the Plague Year . This is an unusual book as it's part fiction, part historical reflection.  In today's parlance we might call this "historical fiction" but many scholars today still can't agree on how to classify this book. It is 1665 and we follow one man, "H.F.," as he explores the devastating bubonic plague, also know as the Black Death, and its effects on families and communities throughout London. Defoe does a remarkable job at making this personal and bringing the reader right to the door of plague victims and neighbors of victims - those living in fear of catching the plague. We meet a wide arrange of people, giving us a snapshot of all the different fears and reactions during this dark experience. Defoe wrote the book in 1722, likely based on actual journal accounts, such as that of Samuel Pepys, but his narra...

  Boston in the 1800's. Sisters Tabby and Alice are on the run as they've just escaped their cruel, abusive aunt and uncle. They choose to split up so that they can reduce the likelihood of being found and Alice leaves Tabby to hide out in a cemetery for awhile.  There, Tabby meets Eli, an old caretaker at the cemetery. The two develop a respectful bond and Eli comes to think of Tabby as a daughter and likewise, Tabby thinks of Eli as the father she didn't have and she helps him with his caretaking and grave-digging work. Tabby meets Caleb who is at the cemetery to bury his father. He finds her beautiful but he's engaged and Tabby doesn't want to encourage him despite her own feelings. They remain good friends and they will need one another's help  when each is in danger. Tabby discovers that she can communicate with the dead - an ability that may prove useful as a secret organization is currently robbing graves in order to experiment on the bodies. But her abil...

  How do you write a Christmas story for children that isn't really a Christmas story? Write about reindeer, a little girl, and a country that we often think of as being in a perpetual Christmas look - Norway. Lotta is a little girl who is traveling to Norway to spend time with her grandparents and her great-grandmother. Lotta makes a special connection with her great-grandmother (her Oldemor) and loves to hear the stories of Oldemor when she was younger and a reindeer herder. Through dreams and desire, Lotta finds herself in one of Oldemor's stories when Lotta and a cousin are responsible for a mother reindeer (Flower) and her calf (Karl). When the reindeer get separated from the herd, Lotta must find them, protect them from all sorts of danger, including wolves, and get them safely back to the herd. This is a sweet story and it has just the right amount of excitement and danger to be exciting to a young reader/listener. Author Holly Webb brings in some magic by weaving  in s...

  I almost missed reading books by Gary Paulsen. His books came out well after I would have been interested in reading his kind of adventure stories, and my children had interests in other themes and genres. Fortunately there was a teacher or two who required my children (and their classmates) to read Hatchet - and I often tried to read what they were reading (if I wasn't already familiar with the book) so that we could talk about.  I enjoyed it and quickly read many of his other books. Which of course brings me now to this, Paulsen's narrative autobiography. This is one of the most unusual biographies I've ever read.  It does not read like a biography. It does not read like a memoir.  This reads exactly like one of Paulsen's adventure tales.  This means a couple of different things. First, this means that the book will be easily read and devoured and enjoyed by the same audience that reads Paulsen's novels This younger audience is already familiar with how he ...

  Liobhan is an eighteen-year-old singer and whistle player.  She is highly skilled and such skill runs in the family as her brother, Brocc, has a meltingly beautiful singing voice and unusually adept skills on the harp. But Liobhan wants more than the life of a performing artist. She wants to be a warrior. She and Brocc train on Swan Island with an elite band of warriors and there they receive a special assignment that is suited specifically to their talents.   A rare harp has gone missing.  It is a symbol of ancient kingship and if it is not played during the coronation ceremony for the new king, the people will not accept his rule as legitimate. Liobhan and Brocc will go undercover as musicians to perform at the ceremony while they try to find what happened to the harp.  They will find more than they bargained for and Liobhan will find that 'good' and 'bad' aren't as cut and dry as she thought and she will have to make some hard decisions in order to fol...

  Padawan Reath Silas has a lot to learn, and he'd really prefer to stay at the Jedi temple on Coruscant to keep studying, but as a padawan, he's at the mercy of the Jedi and they've determined that he has to visit an un-(or under-)developed area farther out. But the trip goes awry when a galactic-wide disaster knocks the ship out of hyperdrive and Reath and his his traveling companions seek refuge on an abandoned space station but soon find themselves in the center of some serious action. The High Republic is a glorious era, but a new enemy threatens the peace. This middle-grade reader is an exciting foray into the 'new' world of the High Republic.  The book works quite well on a couple of different levels. First, it is a really nice introduction to this High Republic era. Disney is doing well to keep the franchise alive and staying current to attract new readers. But I think this is even more successful purely as an adventure story.  Author Claudia Gray has captur...

  Let's be honest.  If you are thinking of buying this book, it's because you are already a big Star Trek fan (or at least a Picard/Next Gen fan).  You are probably interested in buying it because you are a Trek/Picard fan, or you're thinking of it as a gift for a Trek fan. In any case, a review is not likely to sway you one way or the other. This book is filled with quotes, spoken by Captain Jean-Luc Picard in any of his television or film appearances.  Well ... not filled with quotes exactly. More like - there is a smattering of quotes within.  Sometimes there may be two quotes on a page.  But that almost makes up for the pages of photos rather than quotes. At best this is a coffee-table type of book.  It's something you leave out so that guests know you're a Star Trek fan and that they can thumb through while you're getting drinks or chips. At less than best, it's a bathroom reader.  Something that you won't get too involved in and that yo...

  Calvin loves words.  Really loves words. So much so, that Calvin, a young elementary school student, carries an encyclopedia around with him wherever he goes. Calvin wants the right word for things. He can find that right word in his dictionary ... for most things.  But he can't quite figure out the right word for his rascally brother who makes him snort milk out his nose and maybe picks on him at times.  But at home at night. with the two of them laughing over a prank Calvin manages to pull on his brother, the right word comes to him. The book definitely has a cute theme and ends on the appropriately touching note, but for the most part, I really didn't find this very enjoyable. The familial relationship between the brothers is definitely honest and true.  I really like how this captures a child's life with siblings. But the book is also teaching the reader/listener new words.  These words are bold and in color, so we know these are the words to learn w...

  I jumped into this series three books in, and I think that was a mistake! Sometimes you can pick up a book in the middle of a series and still get everything you need to know about the characters and relationships and the world in which it is set.  And sometimes each book relies so heavily on the previous books that you might easily become lost if you haven't read the previous installments.  This books leans toward the latter. Lizbeth Rose is a woman on a mission.  She is traveling from Texas to California to rescue Prince Eli, her partner.  Except that they aren't "Texas" and "California" anymore.  They are Texoma and the Holy Russian Empire. Looking at the map provided in the book, Canada has expanded its territory and has taken over some the former United States' northern states.  Mexico's boarder with the U.S. has changed a bit, and the United States has been divided into five countries: Britannia, Dixie, Texoma, New America, and Holy Russian E...

 Bruce Coville has a new book?!  This is big news!  Why haven't I seen this on CNN or Bloomberg TV (I'm pretty sure I know why it wasn't on Fox)? Hurricane is a twelve-year-old boy who got his name because he was born during a hurricane. Perhaps it was that birth, but beyond the name, Hurricane has always felt a special connection with the wind. A global catastrophe strikes and it affects Hurricane deep in his core. The wind has stopped and as a result, temperatures have risen and it is harder to breathe which has people flooding into hospitals.  Hurricane's mother is among them. But what can a twelve-year-old boy do when all the adults have struggled to find an answer? When your name is Hurricane, quite a lot.  He will visit new worlds, make unusual and unique friends, while on a quest to recover a magic horn that might solve the problems. It's hard to describe how excited I am to read a new Bruce Coville book.  I don't think anyone writes for middle-schoo...

  Twenty-three-year-old Marion Lane lives a rather ordinary, quiet life in 1958 London.  The toughest part of her day is living with her mother. Marion works as an Inquirer-in-Training ... a sort of detective intern at Miss Brickett’s Investigations & Inquiries.   When a filing clerk, Michelle White, receives a note that something terrible is about to happen and she goes off to investigate.  She finds an empty room, but at the stroke of the hour when the note said something would occur, she is struck dead.  All signs point to the murderer being someone familiar with Miss Brickett's ... most likely an employee.  But when Marion Lane's mentor is accused, she knows she has to investigate. I was attracted to the book by the hype that this mystery is solved using cunning and gadgets by a highly secretive, underground detective group. Ummm.  Maybe.  There is a highly secretive, underground (both literally and figuratively) group, but they ...

A father wakes his child late at night and together they get dressed to go outside, walk through frosty fields with the child watching quietly, wondering where they might be going, until the father stops and they quietly share the wonder of looking at an owl   the beautiful aurora borealis. For those of us who've read a few children's books, this story is almost page-by-page similar to the modern classic, Owl Moon. Comparisons are going to be made. But what matters isn't so much what we adults, who are familiar with a few more books, might think.  What matters is how much our children and grandchildren will enjoy having the book read to them. And children will enjoy this. Most adults I know still get excited to see the aurora borealis.  There is a majesty about these glowing green and pink lights in a night sky that has us stop and stare or even seek them out if we know conditions are 'right' for them.  So imagine the sense of awe for a child. Nothing can beat seei...

  Jin and her sister, Mei Yee, were taken and sold and then sent to the lawless Walled City to serve as prostitutes or slaves to anyone willing to pay. Jin managed to escape her captivity, but not the Walled City and she now lurks about, disguised as a boy and is trying to track down the brothel where her sister is still captive. Jin will work odd delivery jobs to earn a small bit of money and hopefully have a legitimate means of coming in contact with her sister's captors.  This is how she meets up with Dai, a mysterious boy who has somehow managed to avoid running with any of the gangs in the city but he seems to have his own unusual connections, which Jon could desperately use if she has any hope of finding Mei Yee. But Dai has his own desperate needs.  The story is told from the different perspectives of each character and we do bounce around quite a bit as the chapters are generally short. This never bothered me, which is slightly unusual as often I find this techni...

  Syd Homes.  Former cop, now possibly a felon, and definitely a very bitter stand-up comic. Carl Dixon. An up and coming comic ready to do whatever it takes to become a comic superstar, and known among the other comics for stealing jokes. So it isn't a surprise when another comic asks Syd, off-handedly, how much it would cost to have Carl Dixon killed.  After the set, Syd is out back having a cigarette with Dixon and takes offense at the fact the Dixon stole some of Syd's jokes. "I wrote three months for fifteen minutes of good material. I wrote it for me, not you ...," says Syd and then proceeds to beat the crap out of him and leaves Dixon puking in the street.   But the next morning, Dixon is found dead where Syd beat him, and now Syd is the prime suspect. Syd will need to call up his former police skills to find the real killer to clear his name.  Possible suspects?  Only every comedian in the country. I had just finished author Joe Hill's graphic ...

Teddy Chaudry is a tech genius on a scale so high that he doesn't fit in even with other tech geniuses. Ben Boyce is Teddy's best friend, who has rescued him periodically and helped pave the way Teddy to navigate the tech world (including helping him get a job with an industry giant). When Chaudry tells Ben that he's developed software that allows a user to access information one year in the future. Knowing that Teddy is not one for hyperbole, Ben forms a company, begins fund-raising for the device, and convinces Teddy to quit his job at a tech giant to focus on what Teddy is calling a Time Machine.  And as with any tech, Teddy begins work on the next upgrade before they are even live with the one-year-in-the-future tech. Peeking two years in the future seems possible, and Teddy even hints that it might be possible to use the same process to actually send a person forward in time, but that's got a lot more research to look into. It all seems pretty golden, but there are...

  Neythan is a young assassin who has been summoned to Súnam. He assumes that he will be asked to help find an enemy but he winds up confronting his past. An ancient scroll that he's long carried with him is somehow quite important to what is about to come. The Five Lands have been at peace for some time but a new, nameless enemy is at the borders and they appear to have supernatural powers. These "Lost Gods" threaten the peace and Neythan may be the only one who holds the key to stopping them, but he has to learn about the powers he holds and there may not be time. As with the first book in the series, I really like the African tone to the story and the use of a mythology that I'm otherwise unfamiliar with. For this alone I give good marks because I like being challenged with new ideas and concepts and mythologies. But also like the first book, I felt that this moved too slowly for me. A story with powerful lost gods and an assassin with a heretofore lost ability sho...