Finished A WIND IN THE DOOR

Charles Wallace is ill and Meg and Calvin must help with the cure.  An inventive science fiction tale ensues leading to the broadening of everyone involved minds, mostly the reader...  I am considering suggesting the first book in this trilogy--A Wrinkle in Time--as one book for Gabe's summer reading next year.

I have now started The Devil in the White City Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson.  This non-fiction documents the building of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the serial murderer who stalked it.  I have only just begun and the initial chapter reminds me of Follett's The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End in that they all make historical inventive architecture fascinating.

Finished PEOPLE OF THE NIGHTLAND

I swear, every one of these books I read gets better than the last.  Sudden global warming 13,000 years ago results in a huge and sudden flood wiping out an entire way of life.  Forces of power prepare for the change...or do they?  The struggle for power puts the world out of balance, and only a few will survive.



I have now started reading A Wind in the Door, a sequel to A Wrinkle in Time.  Charles Wallace is seeing dragons and may be very ill, and now Megan is seeing thing she can't believe as well.  As usual, father is away and mother is very busy with her research....

Finished WEST SIDE STORY

In comparison to Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story seems really raw.  This is probably because of the lack of beautiful music and dancing, the rawness of the language which was not in the movie of the same name (though it may have appeared on stage), and the update putting it in the middle of a gang war...  That, and the language, is much more immediate to us than the family feud of the original.  There are also some skips in the action which are disconcerting, caused by bad editing.  The child will need some preparation...though maybe not as much as I think.  We will see.  Overall the books we are reading this year will make for a really depressing summer--maybe not quite as depressing as if we were reading 1984, but still...

I have now started People of the Nightland by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear.  It is #14 and that, I am fairly sure, is the number of these books that I have read.  All it takes to get me interested in these books is to look at the timeline and map (this is set 10,000 years ago in the Great Lakes region.)  Then the Forward gives a fascinating account of what was happening climatically at the time--rapid global warming after a very rapid ice age--rapid enough to cause huge changes over ten years, let alone people's lifetimes.  The Prologue shows present archaeologists in a dig in which they are finding human bones of the period scattered helter skelter across a large area and obviously broken perimortum coming to the conclusion that they were killed by a huge and sudden flood!  Wow!

Finished MOBBED

Great plots, Good resolution.  All is well.  Love books by this author.



The kid, his mom, and I finished Out of the Dust yesterday (I think both of them learned some things about our history and was pleased with Gabe's progress in drawing conclusions) and started Holes.  I asked what he thought Stanley symbolized and he answered "innocence" right away.  His symbolism will evolve by the end of the book, but Gabe was right on for now and I am very happy.

The fourth book I'll be tutoring this summer is West Side Story.  I was rather surprised that it is the novelization of the musical rather than the libretto, but it serves his teacher's purposes.  She simply wanted him to have some experience with the Romeo and Juliet story before they read it in school this year.  It is a little raw for this sheltered child, but his mom will be reading it with us, so problems he has with it can be addressed by both of us.

Finished DEAD EVER AFTER

As usual with the Sookie Stackhouse books, I loved this story, enjoyed the action and LOVE who Sookie ended up with.  It even looks like she may have some peace in her life.  The next book seems to be just be some interesting side information--fun to read, but not like the books actually in the series.  I feel a sense of loss that there will be no more books of Sookie's adventures.  Hopefully I will enjoy the Aurora Teagarden books by the same author.

With Gabe, we will finish Out of the Dust tomorrow and begin Holes.  Less than four days on the first book, not bad, but it is the shortest book we have planned for the summer.  He did fairly well.  Sometimes he didn't remember enough information from earlier in the book to answer conclusions requiring info from several places in the book and sometimes he seemed to have trouble drawing from his own experiences to figure out a character's feelings, but he did do better than he was doing last year, so I'm pretty happy.  Holes will be harder though.



I have now started Mobbed by Carol Higgins Clark.  Several plots have begun:  a house being sold against the wishes of both of the seller's children, an actress who has newly found fame being stalked, the seller of the house having a garage sale and selling items that are not hers to sell, a man courting two women has just become engaged to one but continues to attempt to court the other.  Love these multiple plot mystery/thrillers.

Finished THE BOY ON THE BOX

About 10 when German soldiers rolled into his town in Poland, Leon went through unimaginable horrors by the time he was 15 when Oskar Schindler claimed as many of his family as possible to work in his factory.  A moving story of the holocaust told through the eyes of a child.  The book is riveting, tragic, and hopeful.  It should come home to Gabe who will be 13 this summer.  I do wonder about the books that his school reads during the school year...for a Catholic school the books seem unduly depressing.

I have now started Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris which is the 13th and says the last in the Sookie Stackhouse series.  However, two other "dead" books are listed on the "List of books by this author" page.  We shall see.  The book starts with the men in Sookie's life being troubled, upset, moody, and looks to head down from here.