Inseparable and Equal

Friendship For Today by Patricia C. McKissack

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Must stop sitting at Children's Room desk crying over books! Went to pieces totally upon discovery that the part about the cat was true.

Rosemary's got a lot going on in her life. Her best friend has polio, now she has to start in an integrated school without him and be the only black child in the class, her parents' marriage is crumbling, and the cat is dying! Can she survive?

McKissick's portrayal of a 6th grader is pretty authentic. She wants to lash back when she's harassed. She thinks unkind thoughts. She makes friends with some white children, but she recognizes that they're just "a friendship for today." There are no miraculous transformations, which as an adult I appreciate. People might grudgingly accept each other, tolerate them, but no one really changes totally from the inside out. And no fairy descends to hit people with the wand and make everything perfect again. [Blows nose.]

These people struggled with integration about 5 years before I started school. I had to have "negro" explained to me when I went to kindergarten (and there weren't any in my class) and didn't actually meet any personally until the third grade, when I sat next to Wesley and in front of Valerie and Carmelita, effectively surrounding me. They were in my ballet class (I simply must find that photo!) but not my church. And they were never actually my friends ... just friends for today. I played with my nearest neighbors, who were white, out of convenience, although I can't say they were actually nice to me, so I guess it was just as well we didn't stay in that neighborhood long.

I have known people who survived some of the most painful integration experiences ... in Boston. Some are still sickened by the demonstration of unbridled hatred and for some, their education was derailed with lasting consequences.

I was lucky to have been brought up in a family where racism was only tacit. My mother grew up having Italians denigrated (they were smelly ... something about garlic and permanent underwear). My father's mother was straight from Germany so her prejudices had been limited to Jews and dumme Polacken. If my father modeled his jokes on Archie Bunker, he also included Germans in his ridicule, so at least he gave everyone the needle. My mother's prejudice was more subtle and I took my cue from her. I don't want to hear anyone say they are not prejudiced. We are all still a long way from that. The very least we can do is own up to it and try to do better.


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All's Fair ...

Fair Weather by Richard Peck

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Richard Peck keeps writing the book that I want to write. While this is not my favorite of his books, it still reminds me that I have a book I want to write - unfortunately, Peck wrote it first.

A farm family goes to the Chicago Columbian Exhibition of 1893 at the invitation of the aunt who lives in the city. One is being sent to get her away from a boyfriend her mother doesn't approve of. Their grandfather slips into the group so that he can see Buffalo Bill Cody's show, which was not permitted to be in the fair, so he set up his show right next to it.

Aunt Euterpe, the widow of a wealthy man, is bullied by her help and shunned by Chicago Society for being a young second wife. The actions of her nieces, nephew, and father (who actually calls her "Terpie" in public) only make her life worse ... at first.

The exhibition is taken in by the Fullers and no one dies (pity!). It's a nice introduction for children to the great fair and the innovations of the time period. There is only a slight amount of name dropping requiring suspension of disbelief and some interesting photos are included, disguised as postcards. Kids will also get a glimpse of farm life at the turn of the century ... and what my dad's early life was like. Grr!


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"I'm Not Dead Yet!"

The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Like most cozy reads, this one pulls up short from any graphic violence. The Thin Woman, belying the titular character in Hammett's book who actually was thin, has to lose over 60 lbs. in 6 months, among other things, to inherit "Uncle" Merlin's estate. Now, I don't mind telling you I get touchy about stories like this. I'd have an hourglass shape myself if I had a live-in Cordon Bleu chef (kinda like Oprah!) and the run-down house of an estate to put in order ...
Wait a minute ... Strike those last bits.
Anyway, if this book were actually about dieting, it would have been insufferable, but it's not. The mystery is also not in who killed whom, but in the past (or, in this case, the repast). Ellie and Ben must uncover the secret of Merlin's Court, having no idea where to start. And Ben must write a book both clean and fit for publishing. Falling down on any one of the three conditions will cost them the inheritance. There is enough cross-communication and auto-footshooting to satisfy readers fond of sexual tension, although that bit gets tiresome after a while and you start yelling at "Elizabeth" and "Mr. Darcy" to Just get it on for petessake! Despite increasingly goofy attempts, no one is killed, most people aren't even dead, and before Ellie and Ben can get too disgustingly lovey, they're pushed off a cliff. It's a light, entertaining read and I don't believe for 5 seconds that Ben would have liked her fat. So there.


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How to Murder Your Parents - the Passive-Aggressive Way

The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Oh, what hath Lemony Snicket wrought? True, authors are leaping on the bandwagon trying to capitalize on his popularity, but sometimes they come up with something good, some anti-treacle, a refreshing burst of acid for those tired of the usual children's fare.
This book, "nefariously written & ignominiously illustrated" by Lois Lowry is a very good story that disguises a vocabulary lesson. Like A Clockwork Orange the glossary is at the end and isn't discovered until too late when the reader has had to winkle out the meanings from context (at least that's what happened to me 30 years ago - I was quite annoyed to finish the book and then find the glossary after struggling through the first 5 pages). This makes it different from the Lemony Snicket books which define the more colorful words within the story.
The narrative runs counter to the usual derivative glurge written for children, but happily lists the classic originals at the end for further reading and comparison: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Anne of Green Gables, The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May, A Christmas Carol, Heidi, James and the Giant Peach, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Mary Poppins, Pollyanna, Ragged Dick, The Secret Garden and Toby Tyler.
In this book, parents and children conspire to get rid of each other. The Willoughby kids actually want to be orphaned. They hope their parents will be eaten by crocodiles - and in chunks, because we know what happens when crocodiles don't chew their food. They rescue a baby left on the doorstep by dropping it at the door of a reclusive millionaire, which leaves her much better off than if she'd remained with the Willoughby's egocentric and hostile parents. The impossible happens, thanks to the Odious Nanny and Lowry's pen, and the deserving live happily ever after.


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All Tied Up

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
OMG! Cosmological constants MIGHT NOT BE CONSTANT AFTER ALL!



Okay, this took me over a year to read and it was in, appearances to the contrary, English. I got stuck on the string theory part and more or less kept the book next to the bed for its soporific effects. Eventually the string theory went away and Smolin moved on to his loops (no better, is it?) and finally to his point, which is not that string theory is wrong (unlike that other book I bought at the same time, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit - in case you're marveling at my intellect, I bought both of these for my husband), but that its proponents have a stranglehold on professional advancement to the point where if you don't work on string theory, you are lucky to be working at all.

This is not confined, Smolin says, to physics or science in general, but is endemic to academia. Important research is not being done if it doesn't reflect the status quo in the field. Applicants are not hired. Young academics are not advanced. Colleagues are sneered at. And when freedom is stifled in this way, good science is no longer done and no advancement is made. He points out that nothing new has come down the pike since the first exciting string "revelations."

Smolin makes a very good case that academia should take some lessons from the business world when it come to evaluating applicants. Professors are not trained to do this, he certainly wasn't, and ungodly amounts of his time are spent in evaluating applicants and preparing letters of recommendation for applicants.

Well, at least I could understand that part, having listened to a friend whose time is taken up with applicants for teaching positions and administrative positions in higher education.

This book is not meant as an indictment against string theory, and I think the title makes it plain. It's about how physics got stuck in a stalemate and why.


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The Architect and the Archvillain

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a Kindle version - found one typo.

Larson has used the Simon Winchester trick of starting with the very end of the story and then suddenly starting over. Okay, maybe other people use that, I just associate it with Winchester. Larson chooses to tell two stories, one of the creation of the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and the serial-killer-next-door (inevitably bringing to mind The Professor and the Madman). Both narratives, I suppose, could be called stories of obsession. The building of the White City is tacitly compared with the building of the serial killer's dreamhouse-of-death, also making the comparison between Burnham and Holmes.

Both stories are engrossing and I've rated this pretty highly considering how much I complained about it. Holmes's story reads more like fiction. I have, consequently, more notes on the notes themselves than for the narrative. How can we know what Holmes was thinking? And if he wrote a memoir or confession (which of course he did), how can we trust the word of a psychopath? How can we know the details of how one of his victims died and his reaction? I take issue with this. Oh, it's evocative and thrilling and all, but can it be called non-fiction?

In the notes, Larson gives his excuses, which I still find thin. He makes speculations based on other people's speculations or "improves" on other people's speculations. I would also complain about the ghoulishness of writing about this, but I can't because I read Caleb Carr ... and then scoff that characters like that don't exist in real life. Guess I can't do that anymore.

To round things out on this topic, I'm going to re-read the fictional materials: The White City by Alec Michod as well as Fair Weather by Richard Peck (just to get the taste out of my mouth).




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And Some People Are Just Too Noble

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was read in the Kindle edition.

I was totally unaware of the German occupation of the Channel Islands during WWII, so this served as a small and very interesting history lesson. Other than that, the story was not very original (most aren't) but it was told in an original and entertaining way. The romance part of the story is as predictable as Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy (and, come to think of it, I can make a case for parallels), you just wonder when they're going to get around to it.

Bits of it went beyond credulity - how can you paint a portrait of someone to make it look like an ancestor in such a short period of time? Have you any idea how long it takes oils to dry?! And then to age it? Anything inside a month would smell like new paint. And don't you love it how coincidence operates; that a couple might be on the point of a kiss and Exactly The Wrong Person shows up at that critical moment?

I know some people don't care for the epistolary style, but I enjoy it and I thought that was well done. It also enabled the story to be told in something other than chronological order and to kill off a main character in the middle of the book yet have that character remain a force throughout the rest of the book. You have to admit that that is a clever piece of work. So maybe I should give this two and a half stars.


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Fortunately, His Writing Got Better ... I Think

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Whatta potboiler this was! And as lame his use of mystery conventions (I was fairly groaning at the creakiness of it all) was, the heavy-handed manipulations had my heart rate up and drove me on to the end of it.

As for the characters, the main ones weren't very round or realistic (the young Cytherea was as wet a crustacean that ever got herself stuck in a pot and transferred to boiling water), but that was probably indicative of the time it was written. The heroine, assigned to do some research to help her case threw up her hands after one session of looking through newspapers and went palpitatin' to a chair, leaving her brother and lover to do all the legwork.

Who really believes that you can actually catch your death of cold out at night following a miscreant or that you can take to your bed, have what sounds like a stroke at bad news, be told you will recover, but because you've had them before know for certain that you won't?! What sense does that make?!

Read it for the laughable situations (keep that table between you and the Bad Man!) and dramatic hyperbole which have to be seen to believed, but there are some nice descriptions and amusing rude mechanicals. Oh, and a punchline at the end!


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