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.

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?