Posted by Adrienne on April 3, 2011 under Books | 
It’s fun to see the award winners and honor books at this time of year. These next few are Newbery Honor Books:
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Turtle is realistic about life. She knows that times are tough right now, and that it makes sense for her to go and stay with relatives in Florida while her mother works as a housekeeper in New Jersey. She also knows that the funny pages are the best part of the newspaper, that Shirley Temple is incredibly annoying and that kids are, in general, just as rotten as adults. What she doesn’t know is that she will find a lot to like about Key West: the Diaper Gang, cut-ups, sponge fishing, hunting for pirate treasure and a grandma she never knew she had. As Turtle settles into life in Key West, there’s just one thing missing: her mother. Will they ever get to be together again?
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Posted by Adrienne on March 20, 2011 under Books |
Two sci-fi novels by Orson Scott Card bring the Book Count up to 5:
Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sometimes when I read a book, I wonder about the characters; what they are thinking and feeling, why they act the way they do. Not the narrator – the reader sees that character’s thoughts and feelings clearly – but other characters, secondary characters. Every once in awhile I wish that I could get in those other characters’ heads, but that usually doesn’t happen. The author chooses the narrator and sticks with that character and the reader never sees into the heads of the other characters.
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Posted by Adrienne on March 14, 2011 under Baseball, Books |
Baseball is coming! What better time to read a book about the greatest player of them all?
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
As a fan of the San Francisco Giants, I knew all about Willie Mays. He played center field, had a great arm and hit lots of home runs. His nickname was the “Say Hey Kid” and he made an amazing catch in the 1954 World Series (I have a copy of the famous photograph on the wall of my office at work). So, yeah, I knew everything about Willie Mays.
At least, I thought I knew plenty about Mays, but after reading James Hirsch’s entertaining biography, I realized that there was a lot that I didn’t know before. Like how when Mays was growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, he played baseball, football and basketball (many people thought football was his best sport, but since there weren’t black quarterbacks in college or pro football, Willie focused on baseball). He played for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues and was one of the last Major League stars to start his career playing in the Negro Leagues; after Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, the Negro Leagues went into a decline. Mays loved sports cars, and bought big flashy ones with his major league paycheck. He hardly ever took a day off, usually playing all but one or two of the games each season. If asked to visit a school, kid’s club or children’s hospital, Mays would do his very best to get there, because he always enjoyed interacting with kids.
Hirsch’s biography is chock-full of interesting facts and anecdotes like the ones above. Hirsch turns in a balanced report of Mays, not glossing over his relationship or money troubles, and talking frankly about both the racial insults Mays endured, and the criticisms he took from other black Americans for not speaking out about segregation and racism. But the Willie Mays that comes through the book is a genuine and very likeable human being, the kind of person that is easy to root for, not just because of his stellar play on the field, but also because of his positive attitude and actions off it. It makes me wish I could have seen him play.
Posted by Adrienne on March 4, 2011 under Books |
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The war between the Clankers and the Darwinists rages on. The living airship Leviathan makes its way across the skies of the Mediterranean to Istanbul, capitol of the still-neutral Ottoman Empire, on a mission to gain the trust of the Ottomans and to get them to ally themselves to Britain and the Darwinists. But the city is filled with German Clankers who are building a powerful new weapon. Meanwhile, Prince Alek has fallen in with a rebel group intent on overthrowing the sultan and building a new country. Can Alek and Deryn Sharpe, Midshipman, save the Leviathan from a terrible fate?
Behemoth is an excellent sequel to Westerfeld’s WWI alternate history Leviathan. I enjoyed the characters and the new technologies, and I was impressed with the rendering of Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire. Sadly, this volume also has a cliffhanger ending, so I’m stuck waiting for book 3.
Posted by Adrienne on February 3, 2011 under Books |
After my mad dash to reach my goal of 100 books in 2010 at the end of December, I needed a bit of a break before starting a new Book Count in 2011.
Now that February is here, though, I’ve been wanting to do some more reading, so it’s time to start the 2011 Book Count! I’ll be counting and reviewing only new books this year, like I did back in 2008, and I am going to try and read a broader range of books in 2011 rather than gorging on fantasy and science fiction.
My first book for 2011 is a historical fiction, so it fits my criteria nicely. Here we go!
New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed Rutherfurd’s previous historical epic novels (Sarum, London, etc.) and New York was more of the same. Rutherfurd does an excellent job of weaving his fictional characters in with real people and events, and his method of following a particular family or two down through the generations works as well in the New World setting as it did in his previous Old World settings. I particularly enjoyed the way that different landmarks in New York kept showing up, especially ones that I have visited on my three trips to the Big Apple. Fraunces Tavern, Coney Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, the Empire State Building and Ellis Island all make their appearances in the novel, and my memories of those places helped me to visualize the story that much better.
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