A Momentary Taste of Being

Our intrepid 11 year old protagonist, Samuel Johnson and his faithful dog Boswell are our guides for this spooky-funny trip to the End of the World as we know it. Using the energy of the High-Energy Hadron Collider at CERN, some not so nice denizens of another world break through and begin to prepare to make Earth quite literally Hell on Earth.   Samuel Johnson (who brings in the Angels dancing on the head of a pin for show-and-tell), his dog, his mother, some of the feistier denizens of his village, and a few other friends are all that stands in the way of the plans of the Great Malevolence. A fun, light-hearted, amusing (in a Dennis Adams sort of way) romp through our childhood fears and some very real evils. *****

The Phantom Tollbooth : An Appreciation by Michael Chabon

A consideration of the Christian elements of Harry Potter. Not to put too fine a point on it--both the supporters and the detractors, it strikes me, are grievously misled.  To say that there are Christian elements in the book is about as astounding as saying that there are Christian elements out and about in Great Britain.  To contend that these are a retelling of the Gospel story is about as meaningful as saying that they are a retelling of the Isis and Osiris tale. When you get down to it--Rowling spun a fine tale over a span of seven books.  Much could be said about the need for improvement in several elements of the writing--but I know that I waited for each new book and I enjoyed each, whether Christian or otherwise.  And I think we should not spend too much time worrying those elements.  As with Tolkien, one can read and enjoy the works whether or not there is anything deliberate about the Christianity in them.

Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and Coretta Scott King

The review promised from yesterday's very brief exploration of this intriguing book.  There are so many things to say and so few of them can be said without revealing key points of the book.  Suffice to say that our heroine, Daisy, is shippped from ritzy New York to her relatives in England just prior to the outbreak of a strange sort of war that ends up isolating Great Britain amongst others.  The novel is a chronicle of Daisy and her relatives as they struggle to survive in war time conditions. The experience starts as sort of a lark--a family of underage minors is left in a rambling old house when the mother/aunt is called off to Oslo to help in the peace talks.  They behave much as minors without supervision might, up to and including the sexual encounters that, while not detailed, caused me to look a little askance at the YA designation.  Soon enough the lark turns into the reality of war as the house is made a headquarters for the "good guys" and the ...

Interesting what one may find on lists.  I went to the library armed with a list of the best books of the decade.  I don't remember whose list--perhaps Time Magazine.  Whatever it was, I went through the library looking for these books. Now, I should say that any such list that includes such linguistice teratological extremes as Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows , must be one in which the term best has a special, specific and applied meaning--a meaning that would elude most of us who would define best as "those books that exceed in quality all of the other books available."  The definition of best in this case seems more like "those books whose sales exceed in quantity all of the other books available."  A reasonable definition of best, if one hopes to make one's living selling books. That said, upon this list was a book by Meg Rosoff--a writer unfamiliar to me.  It was indicated as a book for Yo...

Last night I was talking with my wife about The Kindly Ones , saying basically that I needed to buy it because it was going to be a long haul and I wouldn't get through it all.  As I was saying something about it I heard fromt he back seat of the car, my son, say, "That's a name for the Furies." I was astonished.  I had forgotten that it was such until I read some of the reviews and was reminded, but here is my eleven year-old telling me that the Furies and the Kindly Ones were one in the same. "Words have power, so while they were the Furies, they were called the kindly ones so they would be nicer." And how did he come by this treasure-trove of understanding?  A YA/Children's series (the first of which is destined for the silver screen soon) called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. It shows the power of myth even in today's world--it was wonderful and refreshing.

Just in time for Christmas: here .