Outside of a Dog

February was a rough month in many ways. We, here in northeastern Ohio, experience the snowiest February on record, well it was if you count the snow fall on the 29th, the last snowiest February only had 28 days. We ended with 6 calamity days (one was for a power outage) off school, one over the state max. We will be making up a day in June I guess.

I managed to contract one of the raging flu viruses and was down for three days. I slept for two and one half days and I still do not feel up to par. I wish I could say I made good use of my sick days reading but I slept for most of them, waking only to find my medication then back to sleep.

As March begins I hope we are finished with snow, I am looking forward to beginning to work in my gardens. I pull out bunches of day-lilies last fall and would like to replant that area with a butterfly and hummingbird garden. I am also thinking of developing a runoff or rain garden. Rather than sending all of the water that runs off the house and driveway out into the storm sewers, a runoff garden holds the water (run off) in a low spot until it percolates down into the earth. This results in less pollution in streams. We have a boggy area that is the result of water from the drive that should work well when I take out the grass. You can read more about this type of garden here.

I have done some reading over the past two weeks and ticked off a few of my 888 books. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan is the story of a newly wedded couple on the first night of their honeymoon. Innocent they both harbor fears of what the night will bring. Using flashbacks and insights into human emotions McEwan’s story builds to an unexpected and tragic end.

I buzzed through two YA novels. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan and The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga. Loved them both. Nick and Norah live in New Jersey but make the club scene in NYC. Nick plays in a band, Norah is the daughter of a music executive both are on the rebound from a broken heart. Thrown together on a fateful night the question is will they really connect or just bounce off each other. Lots of new metro teen talk here, at least to me. Fan Boy is miserable, currently a sophomore at the head of his class he has only one friend, his mother is remarried to the step-fascist and pregnant, his only refuge is his love of graphic novels and his determination to become the next great graphic novel writer. When along comes Kyra, Goth Girl. Kyra is wild and unpredictable and loves comics as much as he does. She lures him in and when he shares his graphic novel and desire to publish she pushes him to work harder. Both Fan Boy and Goth Girl live in their individual world of secrets and are in danger. An engaging story that will not let you down.

The last book I finish was The Tenth Muse My Life in Food by Judith Jones. Growing up in New York in the first half of the 1900′s Jones’ family ate in the English tradition. Most food was bland with few if any spices added and garlic and onion were banned. Despite this Jones developed and interest in cooking and loved to eat. After college she persuaded her parents (this was in 1948) to allow her to take a trip to France with friend. The friend returned, Jones stayed in Paris until 1951. It was in France that she found both of the loves of her life. Her husband Evan Jones and cooking. Back in the states she is appalled at the state of American cooking, every thing was aimed at fast and easy with no thought to taste. Hired by Knopf to edit French translations she had no thought of editing cookbooks until 1959 when the manuscript from Mesdames Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle arrived on her desk. The rest of the story is history. With the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking she began her career editing and publishing cookbooks and in the process improving the state of cooking in the US. Her story is an exciting, funny and fascination mixture of the process of developing a new cookbook, her personal philosophy about food and cooking and her life with her husband and family. A throughly enjoyable book.

Today is our 5th snow day. I guess someone has been do the snow dance just a little to frequently. Well whoever you are it is time to stop. We don’t want to be going to school in June do we?

I don’t know about you but snow days make we want to hibernate. I usually do two things. Sleep and read. Well sometimes eat but I have tried to avoid that. As of 6:00 AM this morning I have read all of the backup books in my house. I must make a run to the public library this morning no matter what the roads are like.

So you ask what did I read? Well first three of the books from my 888 challenge books. Markus Zusak’s I am the Messenger (loved it, more later), Bone Rattler by Eliot Pattison, and the Black Stallion by Walter Farley. Yesterday I began Sherman Alexie’s Flight (and finished at 6:00 AM this morning, I was up to check the school closings) plus a nondescript paperback mystery or two I found on a bookshelf.

Zusak the author of the Book Thief (if you haven’t read it, do so soon) is a fabulous author. His stories are simply not what you expect. I am the Messenger is an excerpt from the life of nondescript Joe average Ed Kennedy. Ed, age 20, drives a cab, hangs out with his three best friends and his dog, the Doorman, playing cards, drinking beer and not much else. None of them appear to have any ambition at all. Then they witness a bank robbery and Ed becomes a hero stopping the robber’s escape. His name is in the paper and he has his 15 minutes of fame. He thinks it is over when he receives the Ace of Diamonds in his mailbox. The card has three addresses and times on it. What is he supposed to do? It is for Ed to figure out but he knows it is a message he must deliver. The Ace of Diamonds is followed by the Ace of Clubs then the Ace of Spades until he finally reaches the Ace of Hearts. Each card carries a message that Ed must figure out and then act upon. None are easy but they do change Ed’s life. Read it and find out how.

With Bone Rattler I again (like Guns Along the Mohawk) was in the western New York region only it is at the time of the French and Indian War. Duncan McCallum is on a convict ship full of Highland Scots bound for New York Colony where they will be indenture servants for seven years. Duncan is the son of a family nearly wiped out by the English after the Battle of Culloden. Only he and his brother are left. The brother is an officer in the Black Watch regiment of the English army also in the colonies. During the voyage there are several mysterious deaths and other odd events on the ship. Duncan, because of his experience as a medical student, is ordered to solve the mystery. Written by Eliot Pattison (his previous title The Skull Mantra won the Edgar) this is a very unusual mystery. There is a large cast of characters including Lord Ramsey, the owner of a large frontier estate, his stern Anglican minister, Reverend Arnold, Mr Lister a secret Scot and member of the crew, the beautiful mystery lady Duncan saves from drowning, a supporting cast of Iroquois, Moravian missionaries, white Indian captives, members of the Black Watch regiment and others. The story is complex and engrossing.

The last challenge book I read was The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. This was the first of a series of books written by Farley about race horses. Like many little girls back in the 50′s, I dreamed of owning a horse. In the Black Stallion Alec Ramsey (why do boys always have all the fun) is marooned on an island with a huge wild black horse. As the days pass he manages to keep them alive and to tame the horse. I loved it in the 1950′s and I loved it again.

The last book I read this week was Flight by Sherman Alexie. The anti-hero of Flight is Zits a 15 year old orphan half Indian boy who is lost in the foster care system. Zits is very angry, his father left before he was born, his mother died when he was only six leaving him to the mercy of the foster care system. Shuffled from home to home abused and neglected he is an angry possibly violent young man. While in jail after an altercation with his last foster parents he meets Justice a white boy who trains him to seek revenge. Justice teaches Zits to use a gun and sends him to a bank to shoot as many people as possible. Zits begins to fire at the the people and is shot in the head. He then begins an odyssey through history. Flight is an adult book despite having a 15 year old main character, some of the language and situations may be offensive to younger readers.

I have begun to read the books from my 888 Challenge under the books that I loved as a child category (see What are you reading). My first title is Drums along the Mohawk by Walter D Edmonds. Edmonds, the author of the 1942 Newbery Winner The Matchlock Gun, (another of my favorites) published Drums in 1936. It is the story of the German (Palatine) setters in the Mohawk Valley of New York and their struggle against the British, Indians and Tories during the American Revolutionary War. Sir William Johnson was an early settler in the Mohawk Valley, a friend of the Iroquois he kept them on the English side during the French and Indian war. At the on set of the Revolution Johnson ‘s son Sir John Johnson and other loyalists were driven out of the valley to Canada. These Tories retained the loyalty of some of the Iroquois tribe (Mohawks, Seneca, Onondaga, Cayuga and some Tuscarora) while the Oneida joined the Americans. From 1777 thought 1788 the British and their Tory and Indian allies waged a relentless war against their former neighbors.

Drums along the Mohawk is the story of this struggle as seen from the eye of Gil and Lana Martin a young couple just beginning their lives together. The story is beautifully written just as I had remember. Edmonds’ prose flows as I once again became intimate with his characters. With each attack of the “destructive,” as they were called, the people of the valley were forced to move to the forts for protection and watch as their homes and farms were burned and families and neighbors killed. Without sufficient support from the government they were unable to launch effective campaigns until late in the war. But in the end they do survive.

The reader will be somewhat surprise by the non-PC terms used for ethnic groups but must remember this was written in 1936 and the story takes place in the 1780′s. The characters would not have had our 21st century values and ideas. Historically Edmonds’ novel is very accurate. For more information on the history of the valley in the Revolution visit Drums Along the Mohawk.

The Palatine were a group of people from the Palatinate of section of Germany that was devastated by the 30 Years War. Most were Lutheran and appealed to Queen Anne of England for aid. Thousands escaped through Holland to England and then to the English Colonies of North America. They were an industrious people with prosperous farms, and mills. They worked hard to freely hold their land. The earlier settlers in this area (English and Dutch) considered them to be ignorant because they were slow to adopt the English language and tended to settle together. To find out more about the Palatines visit Who were the Palatines?

I just finished reading my first book for the 888 Challenge, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the 2007 National Book Award winner for Young Adults. It was hilariously funny, extremely sad and totally captivating. I read it all in one day and could not put it down. Based closely on the life of the author the story follows a year in the life of Junior Spirit a 14-year-old Spokane Indian living on the Reservation. Junior is a geek; he reads too much, is too smart, draws cartoons and is generally picked on and bullied by the other students at the “res” school. He does have a best friend Rowdy also an outcast. Junior decides after finding his mother’s name in a textbook as a previous user and breaking his math teacher’s nose to leave the “res” school and go to the all white school in Reardan “where the only other Indian is the school mascot.” Junior believes he will be an outcast at his new school also but soon finds himself with friends in many of the school groups, geeks, popular kids, jocks; he even makes the basketball team. But his life on the res is still a difficult, his best friend has now rejected him for going to the town school, his grandmother is killed by a drunk driver and his sister leaves home to find herself and is killed in a fire. Despite all of the pain he suffers Junior continues to strive to improve himself and in the end proves his strength and character.

Alexie has written several other books including Flight (2007) an adult book about a time traveling mass murderer and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1994) a book of short stories. He is also know for his poetry and the movie Smoke Signals a Sundance winner based on his short stories. Video’s of his acceptance speech for the National Book Award and clips from Smoke Signals can be found on Youtube.com.

One of the most interesting things I have found recently found in the blogosphere are book challenges. Now in the old days a book challenge meant that someone was trying to have book taken off the shelves of a library. Today the term has taken on a new meaning: it is a challenge to read a specified number of books over a limited period of time. They can also include restrictions such as a certain genre, or author. Some of the challenges I have seen in the past year are the Notable Book Challenge to read 20 books from the NY Times Notable book list; the 48 hours Challenge to read and blog about your reading for 48 hours straight; The Young Adult 2008 challenge to read 12 YA novels during 2008; and the Expanding Horizons Challenge to read books by authors of other ethnicities. The challenge I decided to take up is the 888 Challenge. This challenge required the reader to read 8 books from each of 8 categories (the readers choice) during 2008. This will be a total of 64 books but the reader may have up to 8 books in more than one category for a total of 56 books. I chose this challenge because it will require me to stretch beyond my usual reading habits. Choosing my categories was difficult, I wanted to expand beyond my usual mysteries and historical novels but I still want to enjoy all of the books. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to reread some books from my past and to read some books I would not usually choose. After I determined the categories, I had to find books I thought I would like in each of them. Here is my list as it stands today. I still need to add a few titles to three lists and some others may change later.

Favorites from my youth

• The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
• The Matchlock gun by Walter D. Edmonds
• The guns of Bull Run by Joseph A. Altsheler
• The catcher in the rye by J. D. Salinger
• Betsy Zane by Zane Gray
• Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare
• Little women by Louisa May Alcott
• Drums along the Mohawk by Walter D. Edmonds

Global Reading

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
• Certainty: A Novel by Madeleine Thien
• Autonauts of the Cosmoroute: A Timeless Voyage from Paris to Marseille, by Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop
• Wash This Blood from My Hands by Fred Vargas
• The kitchen god’s wife by Amy Tan
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Cold War Thrillers

• Manchurian candidate by Richard Condon
• The spy who came in from the cold by John Le Carre
• Year of the tiger by Jack Higgins
• Saving the queen by William F. Buckley
• The Tristan betrayal by Robert Ludlum
• The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy
• Eye of the needle by Ken Follett
• The Honorable Schoolboy by John Le Carre

NPR Books

• Autonauts of the Cosmoroute: A Timeless Voyage from Paris to Marseille, by Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop
• The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman
• Tenth Muse by Judith Jones
• This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust
• Wash This Blood from My Hands by Fred Vargas
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan’s
• Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska by Lou Ureneck
• Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’nan

Historical Mysteries

• The Janissary Tree: A Novel (Edgar) by Jason Goodwin
• A murder on the Appian Way by Steven Saylor
• Dragon’s Lair by Sharon Kay Penman
• Bone Rattler by Eliot Pattison

Young Adult

• The Absolutely True diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• The White Darkness (Printz) by Geraldine McCaughrean
• I am the messenger by Markus Zusak
• The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga
• Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
• Born to rock by Korman, Gordon

2007 Award Books

• The Absolutely True diary of a part-time Indian (National Book Award) by Sherman Alexie
• The Gathering (Man Booker Prize) by Anne Enright
• Certainty: A Novel (Canada First Novel Award) by Madeleine Thien
• The Janissary Tree: A Novel (Edgar) by Jason Goodwin
• The Road (Pulitzer) by Cormac McCarthy
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Caldecott) by Brian Selznick
• The White Darkness (Printz) by Geraldine McCaughrean
• Sacred Games (National Book Critics Circle) by Vikram Chandra

Non-fiction

• This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust
• Three Cups of Tea Mortenson
• Tenth Muse by Judith Jones
• Autonauts of the Cosmoroute: A Timeless Voyage from Paris to Marseille, by Julio Cortazar and Carol Dunlop
• The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman
• The Worst Hard Times by Timothy Egan

Strike through indicates books I have finished.

If you would like to join the challenge go to 888 Challenge to read the complete rules and submit you list.

Like many book lovers, I love to hear what others have in their personal libraries. I also like to organize my own reading, keep track of what I have read and share books with others. I recently found the perfect Internet resource to help me accomplish all of these. LibraryThing. LibraryThing allows members to create records of their books, including tags and reviews, link to others who have read the same books as you, join groups with similar interests, read others opinions, and add friends. It is like a giant book club where I can share my reading experience with other bibliophiles.

Looking through the Zeitgeist I found there are 22,489,977 books cataloged on LibraryThing, by 340,466 members, the most review book is Harry Potter and the deathly hallows (553 reviews), the top book is Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone (26,523), in fact the top six books by number of entries are all Harry Potter, needless to say the top author by number of books is J.K. Rowling (168,095). The top rated book is The complete Calvin and Hobbes with a 4.88 out of five stars. The top favorite authors are Neil Gaiman (616), followed by J.R.R. Tolkien (597), Jane Austen (584) and J.K. Rowling (558).

LibraryThing supports two blogs. The LibraryThing Blog covers new features, plans and announcements like the recently completed Holiday Book Pile Photo contest. The Thing-ology Blog is for those interested in the methods and philosophy of LibraryThing.

LibraryThing has many other features that I will look at later. Right now it is providing me with hours of fun looking through others’ libraries and reading their comments.

With our long Christmas break I had time to get my new year’s reading off to a good start. I found two great books on World War II each presenting a different view. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak is the story of Liesel Meminger narrated by “Death”. Liesel is nine years old and illiterate when the story begins, she has lost her family and is living with foster parents in a small town near Munich Germany. “Death” takes an interest in Liesel and even though he is extremely busy during the war years, what with all of the battles, bombings and concentration camps, he takes time to stop and see how she is doing. As the war progresses Liesel learns to read and begins to steal books. The first from her brothers grave in an unknown town, the second from a Nazi book burning. Her story is tragic and inspiring. A unique view of the war and its’ aftermath.

I also read Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosany. Sarah’s Key is the story of two families, Julia Jarmond an American lives in Paris in 2002 with her French husband and their daughter. Sarah is a 10 year Jewish girl living in Paris in 1942. As Julia, a reporter, investigates the round up of 14000 of Paris’s Jew by the French Police, the story flashes back to that night in July, 1942 when they came for Sarah’s family. Thinking they would only be gone a short time, Sarah locks her little brother Michel in a secret closet. Moving between the two stories, Julia’s mounting horror at the events, her family’s involvement in them and Sarah’s desperate attempt to rescue her brother, the novel builds to a horrific conclusion. After beginning this book I could not stop until I had finished. It is a disturbing picture of human behavior. To read more about this novel go the the Sarah’s Key blog.