Books Completed Since August 1

Much of this month is devoted to a perennial grade school favorite, Lois Lenski! Found a bunch of her books, including ones I had never read, on archive.org and Kindle Unlimited.

 Journey Into Childhood, Lois Lenski
This is Lenski's autobiography (much of which she fictionalized in her first two books, Skipping Village and A Little Girl of Nineteen Hundred), which includes the backgrounds of how she wrote some of her books (the Davy books, for instance, were inspired by a small boy named Davy, and the Mr. Small books were written for her son). I wish she had talked about how she researched all of them. She did reveal that A'Going to the Westward was inspired by the true experiences of her German ancestors, and that there really was a little girl left behind like Betsy Bartlett!

The first part of the book is rather fun, where she talks about growing up in Ohio, her loving but stern minister father, and the rest of her family. She goes off to study art, and then suddenly she is marrying Arthur Covey, a fellow artist (a muralist) and a widower with two children. This portion of the text seems rather stilted and dry; she uses the old-fashioned reference of referring to her husband as "Mr.Covey" and while I can see that as an older woman not into "kiss and tell" she would not get deeply into her relationship with him, the descriptions of their relationship seems rather loveless. She seems much more taken with her stepchildren Margaret and Laird, and with their child together, Stephen.

 The Outermost House, Henry Beston
This is a nature classic, published originally in 1928. Beston, the owner of a small cottage called the Foc'sle near Easton on Cape Cod, visits the cottage one August, and, instead of leaving after two weeks, he decides to stay the winter. Laying in supplies and wood, Beston settles in for a serene autumn, a wild winter, and the beauty of spring, observing the birds and animals of the shoreline, the fierce nor'easters, the spreading beauty of the night sky, the call of the gulls, the yearly migration of birds, the running of the alewife, the dying of the year and then the birth of the following one. Of wonderful interest is his chronicling of the courageous work of the coast guardsmen who patrolled the beach nightly, and went out to shipwrecks in roiling waves and blinding lightning to remove survivors from the ships.

Beston's beautiful prose is poetic and evocative, bringing to mind the crash of the surf, the mewling of the gulls, the endless swish of the grasses in the ocean breeze. You can smell the salt air and the fish, the tang of his wood fire, the scent of his coffee percolating on the stove. For anyone who wants  to know what it's like to live in close harmony with the sea.

(Alas, the little "outermost house," which survived the frightening storms Beston described, the whirlwind that was the Hurricane of 1938 and many hurricanes thereafter, was felled by the deadly winds and tides of the Blizzard of 1978. It lives on in this book.)

 Underland, Robert MacFarlane
"Underground." It's always been a mysterious word in the English language. Underground can mean a root cellar, but it also calls up visions of caves, of tunnels, of hasty escapes, of the unknown and of mystery.

MacFarlane investigates all these aspects of "underland," from Bronze Age graves in Somerset, England, to an observatory for Dark Matter deep underground (where particles from Dark Matter are best distinguishable) to funghi on the forest floor. He also visits the underground labyrinth of sewers and rooms below Paris, where explorers find new levels all the time and tours exist, the underground Timavo River, caves in Slovenia in which hundreds of victims of the Nazis were interred, a dangerous journey into Norwegian caves to see prehistoric cave paintings, another Norwegian sojourn visiting a traditional fisherman and his wife, a visit to a glacier and a dangerous moulin (a vertical shaft within a glacier) in Greenland, and finally a radioactive materials' burial site in Finland.

I love reading MacFarlane's books. His words in Underland fit the mood he is trying to create: dark, mysterious, primal, evocative of the mood that deep darkness engenders. He makes you chill in the narrow moulin, feel the squeeze of a particularly tight passage in a cave, gape with wonder in the rooms under Paris. I was so sorry when the book was finished.

 The Happy Hollisters at Sea Gull Beach, Jerry West
The Hollister children's Uncle Russ begins their next adventure by writing to them from a place called Sea Gull Beach. He's there making sketches for his cartoon work, but lets the Hollisters know there will be a kite-flying contest there soon and tells them about a pirate ship, the Mystery, supposedly lost in the sands. Then a lighthouse lamp Uncle Russ sends them is accidentally broken, and an emerald falls out!

This is only the beginning of the Hollisters' adventures as the family travels to Sea Gull Beach, where they make a new friend in a girl named Rachel who happens to be the granddaughter of the woman who made the lighthouse. A troublesome boy, Homer, who's like the Hollisters' neighborhood bully Joey Brill, also causes excitement, and the family befriends an old beachcomber named Scowbanger, who's also looking for the Mystery.

As always, the kids go from one breathless adventure to another, finding and then losing clues, competing with Homer, and having enough adventures in one week to last all summer. These books are so much fun to read and the author, Andrew Swenson, a.k.a. Jerry West, kept the usual 1950s sexist boys and girls stuff to a minimum, so the books are still very readable today, although today's kids used to organized activities and helicopter parents may gape at the freedom the Hollister kids have. They may end up wishing they were back in the 1950s!

 We Live in the North, Lois Lenski
Lenski was most known for her regional book series, but she also did a series for younger children, Roundabout America, most of which are comprised of three short stories with a common theme. This volume takes place in Michigan, the first tale about a family of Polish-Americans whose father works in an auto plant in Detroit, the second relates the tale of a widowed woman of Finnish extraction who tries to make extra money as a cherry picker in Traverse City, and the final story is about a Christmas tree farm in Muskegon Heights. Wondering what today's kids would make of the hobby of the kids in the Detroit story: they have founded an animal cemetery where they hold funerals for both wild animals and pets. A subplot concerns the kids' Uncle Eddie, who won't settle down to a job and who's considering changing his name to sound more American. The Johnson kids in the cherry story have various adventures as their mom and their aunt pick cherries that reminds one of Judy's Journey. The last tale is just a year in the life of a Christmas tree farm family, and one of the daughters saving up the money she earns to buy a horse. Cute for the younger kids, but lacks the meat of the regionals.

 Corn-Farm Boy, Lois Lenski
Well, I always wanted to read these when I was at school, so I might as well now that they're online. This is the story of Dick Hoffman, who lives on an Iowa farm where his father grows corn and they raise some cattle but more hogs. Dick is good with animals and is always either raising a runt farm animal or nursing a wild one who is hurt, and he hates when neighbor boy Elmer kills for fun, but what he wants most is to drive the new tractor his Uncle (who is half-partners in the farm with his father) Henry has bought; however, he's still sickly due to a bout with rheumatic fever. The story follows the spring and summer activities of the family, including wearying-sounding chores like getting cockleburrs out of the cornfields and de-tasseling corn (which is what Dick's older sister does during the summer to earn money for clothes). It chronicles all the fun—raising animals, summer picnics, playing with friends—and the trials—a farm injury, Dick's health problems, a little sister lost while playing hide'n'seek—of living on a farm. Not Lenski's most interesting, but definitely all true teaching children what hard labor goes into raising their breakfast foods.

 Coal Camp Girl, Lois Lenski
Of all the Lenski books I have read, this has come the closest to touching me personally.

Christina Wilson and her family live in West Virginia, where her father is a coal miner. The children manage to have fun despite the ugliness of their landscape: the hills of discarded slate everywhere, the dirty air (the kids have to pull Mom's laundry off the clothesline every time a train comes by), Dad coming home black with coal and having to take a bath before he can even eat dinner. Tina would just like to have one of the pit ponies as her own, but her brother constantly gets in trouble trying to sneak into abandoned mines with his friends. They quarrel with one contentious neighbor kid, but otherwise manage to have fun—at least when their daddy is working and they have enough food.

My mom would have been born in and lived her early years in a place like this, only in Ohio. When my maternal grandparents came over from Italy with their young son Tommaso, my grandfather found work as a coal miner, and my uncle Tommy worked in the mine once he was old enough. Mom talked about her father having to wash up in a shed before he could come in the house, since he didn't want to dirty the inside with coal dust. They would have burned coal in their stoves, used scrip at the company store, and mom and her older brothers would have gone barefoot in summer and had to wash their feet before coming inside. What would Mom's life had been like if Grandma had not come down with "coal dust lungs"? Would she have also grown up to marry a coal miner and had her heart in her throat every time the whistle from the mine blared in a long, steady wail, signifying trouble?

Needless to say, among the other troubles the Wilsons endure in the book, there is a mine cave in. I cried at the outcome, thinking of Mom and of Grandpa.

 Flood Friday, Lois Lenski
I grew up on the stories of the granddaddy of all New England hurricanes, the one in 1938, and its destructive 1954 successor, Hurricane Carol, but I had never heard of the horrifying flooding that occurred in Connecticut in August 1955 after not one, but two hurricanes within a week, Connie and Diane, caused rivers to overflow. Sally Graham lives in Farmington, Connecticut, with her family, and when the ground becomes saturated, her neighborhood, then her home, begins to flood. Sally and her friends and neighbors head to a school which is on high ground, and for days they must camp out on the floor, eat communal meals, and hear terrifying stories of homes swept away. Eventually they grow restless and wonder if they'll ever make it back to their homes.

Lenski paints a very realistic view of a natural disaster from a child's point of view, from seeing your home engulfed by water to living for days at close quarters with hundreds of people to returning home to find it filthy with mud. This is an unusual Regional as it deals with an event rather than a way of life.

 Mama Hattie's Girl, Lois Lenski
This is probably the rarest of Lenski's regionals and one I didn't know existed for many years. Lula Bell is an African-American girl living in the south with her mother Imogene, a talented seamstress, and her grandmother, known to everyone in the Hibiscus Street neighborhood as "Mama Hattie." Imogene is tired of living in a small town where everyone knows her business, and longs to be up north with her husband. She's also frustrated with her mother falling for every slick salesman who comes around and buying yet something else "on time," and not taking care of her health (she has high blood pressure and insists on eating fattening foods with lots of salt).

To everyone on Hibiscus Street, "up north" is a wonderful place where good jobs are to be had and people have lots of fine clothes and furniture. So when Imogene finally gets fed up after a neighbor poisons Mama Hattie's plum tree and the local grocer won't give them any more credit, Lula Bell is torn: she wants to go "up north" where living is golden, but is going to miss her grandmother. She soon finds out "up north" is no prize either: the city streets are crowded and full of garbage, the kids in her new neighborhood bully her, and the landlord won't let her family stay with her aunt and uncle.

Lenski states in her introduction that she researched this book among children in both Northern and Southern schools, so I am guessing that the portrait she paints of both African-American experiences are authentic. However, the main problem with this book is that Lula Bell isn't really all that likeable. She brags to her friends on Hibiscus Street about going north, but misses them when she actually goes there. Once she finally finds friends in New Jersey, she's happy—but then when she goes back to Mama Hattie's home for a visit she is critical of everything: her grandma taking in boarders to make ends meet, the shabby old house she grew up in, and even her friends whom she formerly loved, and she snubs a little girl named Myrtle, forgetting how badly she was treated up north. It takes a series of disasters to make her realize how she's been acting. Lenski's leading girl characters are usually strong and speak for themselves, especially the pugnacious Judy Drummond, sometimes to the point of being occasionally rude, but Lula Bell is continually grumpy when things don't go her way. Maybe she was so contentious in order to learn a lesson about getting along with others, or a point is being made that she's not being set a good example by her mother, but it certainly doesn't endear anyone to her.

Really, the hero of this book is Mama Hattie, despite her personal weaknesses (and Imogene's perceived weaknesses of her mother). She's doing her best to keep a household together and provide a loving upbringing for her granddaughter.

 The Holyday Book, Francis X. Weiser
Having procured Weiser's other two holiday books about Christmas and Easter, I thought I might complete the trifecta. The Holyday Book covers all those Christian holidays not covered by the Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany season and by Lent and Eastertide: Sundays themselves, then the church calendar beginning at Pentecost. He also covers (though not a Christian holy day) Thanksgiving, and the holydays of Corpus Christi, Candlemas, All Saints and All Souls, the "Mary holidays" like the Annunciation and Assumption, and also various saints' days by season. Traditional customs all over the world are chronicled, including processions on certain saints' days, fasting, and feasting, and there are also profiles of saints such as St. John,  St. Catherine, St. Andrew, etc. For anyone looking for Catholic celebrations and traditions.

 Joy of Nature, Reader's Digest Books
This is a big oversized volume from Reader's Digest books about enjoying nature. There are a few pages about animals, but most of it involves the earth itself: its climates, land areas (woodlands, deserts, rain forests, etc.), plants, topography, weather. There are chapters about trees, plants, mountains, deserts, tundra, geology, climate change, volcanoes and earthquakes, clouds, bird watching, butterfly study, and more, with multiple colorful photographs, maps, charts, and tables illustrating anything you need to know about the natural world. Each chapter is only two facing pages (crammed with small print), so this is perfect as a coffee table or bathroom book.

 Memory of Water, Brian Eastman/Rebecca Tope
This is the final novelization of one of the stories from Eastman's Rosemary and Thyme mystery television series starring Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris. Rosemary Boxer and Laura Thyme have been hired to restore an Elizabethan garden at an old country estate. The estate belongs to the Frazer family, but, because of the family setup, while Martin Frazer and his family live there in relative wealth, Martin's estranged cousin Jim lives in a old cottage in a corner of the estate. Rosemary is overlooking the river one morning when, to her horror, she sees Jim Frazer commit suicide by drowning himself. The body is later found, Jim identified and buried—then Rosemary sees the man she thought was Jim in the next town! Is Jim dead or not? And who was the man she saw fall in the river? Does Jim's death have anything to do with one of the convicts who are providing labor to restore the garden?

A humorous subplot has Laura trying to save money by having them camp in a tent on the estate. Rosemary is horrified at first, but comes to like it, while Laura, who was so enthusiastic, begins to hate it.

Tope adds many little details to what we saw on television: Rosemary making an enemy of Martin's boss, a disdainful QC, more scenes with the Frazer sons Toby and Timmy, and more scenes with Martin and his ever-patient wife Suzanne. If you enjoyed the series, you'll probably enjoy the books based upon the episodes.

 Little Sioux Girl, Lois Lenski
This is another entry in Lenski's Roundabout America series for younger readers. Instead of being divided into smaller short stories as in We Live in the North, the entire book is a year in the life of Eva White Bird, a Dakota Sioux girl living at the Standing Rock Reservation with her family. Eva's winter home is in the hills, but during the summer the whole family moves to a small house they own near the river with the rest of the tribe, where the families fish and enjoy the foods of the fields. Eva enjoys being in school during the winter, but looks forward to the summer when she can run wild after completing her chores. However, rising waters cause a flood in the area and the family barely gets out ahead of the water, with many of their possessions missing. Once Christmas rolls around, there are new surprises for Eva and her family.

Again, not as compelling as the regionals, but a good portrait of Native American life in the 1940s.

 St. Nicholas, Scribners (January - December 1880 (September missing)
Alas, I didn't notice years ago when I bought this that September was missing. Good thing there is a scan of it somewhere on Google. Otherwise this collection of "St. Nicholas" marks the first appearance in print of Louisa May Alcott's Jack and Jill. The usual collection of fascinating articles about child-life in 19th century America, with projects for children (usually boys) that would take the breath away from adults today, involving knives, saws, etc. But children in those days were brought up to be self-reliant. The 19th century travel articles are the most fascinating, seeing cultures that are untouched by American merchandising (foreign businesspeople often in American or British dress, but the average Joe in that country still in traditional garb living in traditional homes, alas, with snobbish opinions attached). Humorous but a bit sad to see them still decrying children who are "overscheduled" back then, enticed by societal influences like "big city lights" and alcohol, wondrous to read about great tracts of wilderness unspoilt by civilization.

 Boom Town Boy, Lois Lenski
This has to be the saddest Lenski book I ever read.

The Robinsons live in Oklahoma on a farm that was part of the original Cherokee Strip. Work on the farm is hard, and a drought isn't making it any easier. It's the early 1920s, and oil has been discovered near their property. Grandpa Robinson is sure there is oil on their land as well and options the land to an oil company. Meanwhile, people begin to move into the area to work on the nearby oil wells. A shanty town explodes overnight, then even a town.

The story is told from the point of view of 11-year-old "Orvie" (Orville), and through his eyes we see the placid family farm which his older brother really loves working on and the creek bed where Orvie and his little sister play, sometimes alone and sometimes with their Native American friends on the nearby Reservation. As the oil men and workers move in, the wells despoil the countryside and the peripatetic oil workers strew trash, steal, and bring alcohol into the formerly "dry" countryside, and Orvie even learns the meaning of murder. Around the Robinsons, some of their neighbors "strike it rich," and the new "boom town" of Whizzbang seem exciting to Orvie. But he has hard truths to learn, and so do the members of his family, as the oil boom continues.

The Robinsons live a hard life without electricity or indoor plumbing, but the whole oil boom coming to town is like a trainwreck. Well-meaning wildcatters ruin the peaceful countryside and turn previously happy neighbors into rivals. Thankfully there's a ray of hope at the end.

 My Love Affair With England, Susan Allen Toth
This is the first of three books Toth wrote about traveling in England. She became an Anglophile at an early age, and has retained a love of the country that continues into the present, despite the protestations of her daughter, who doesn't understand what Mom sees in the country. (Of course, as you read, you'll discover Jenny had a very different first experience in England, living as a student with a very odd family.) This is not a tourguide or a biography, but just a series of essays by Toth talking about various memorable visits to "old Blighty," including her first trip in the 1970s with a post airline flight complete with a hot meal, daytripping with the old London A-Z guide, and going to the theatre; a trip where she visited supposedly haunted homes; showing her husband the English countryside she loved for the first time; attending a real sheepdog trial (not watching it on the telly); the story of how she took students to England one year, beset by one problem after the other; walking the myriad walking paths through the countryside, and more. It's her love letter to England, and I truly loved it myself.

 Re-read: The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
I went to put this Tasha-Tudor-illustrated hardback downstairs, and after reading the Toth book couldn't resist re-reading it first. Willows was another one of those children's classics that I never read as a child, since I preferred books about real animals (Call of the Wild, the Silver Chief books, Big Red and sequels, etc.) even if the animals talked among themselves as in Black Beauty and Beautiful Joe. Of course I'd seen Disney's Ichabod and Mr. Toad, but Toad always got on my nerves.

Well, Toad still gets on my nerves. I'm sure the naughty Toad is someone small children can identify with, but I find him very annoying, and think Rat, Mole, and Badger are very patient in trying to reform him. The only Toad adventure I find tolerable is the first one with the gypsy caravan (until Toad spoils it). My favorite chapters are about Rat and Mole's friendship and adventures, such as when the Water Rat follows the imprudent Mole into the Wild Wood, the lovely "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" story, the temptation of poor Rat by the seafaring rat (O I understand that call of travel!), and my favorite of all, "Dulce Domum," about Rat and Mole's Christmas. The little mouse carolers get me every time.

Best of all are Grahame's lovely descriptions of the countryside, and the darling little English cottage fixings in the animals' burrows. When I read these things I want to grab all my money and go find one, which is ridiculous because they're not owned by poor people anymore and I wouldn't have a tenth of the money I need. But they're sure pretty to read about, and Willows has lyrical, dreamy descriptions of animals, seasons, and nature that make you feel as if you are there. 

 Dead Blow, Lisa Preston
Second in the "horseshoer mystery" story series, featuring Rainy Dale, the daughter of a rancher and a narcissistic actress who has worked through personal problems to become a skilled farrier, and who now lives and works in Oregon, where she's engaged to chef and foodie Guy. In Dead Blow, Rainy is hoping to get a new account at the ranch of Donna Chevigny, who has just become a widow; her husband Cameron (who had a roving eye) died recently after his tractor tilted and then rolled over him, an event originally considered an accident. As she helps Donna get her horses shod, Rainy finds an odd aluminum shoe on the land where Cameron died, and then Donna's goofy dog turns up a riding glove with a human hand in it. Soon a police officer named Melinda Kellan is sniffing outside Rainy and Guy's door, wondering if Rainy was one of Cameron Chevigny's conquests, and if she had anything to do with Cam's death. And then there's the crazy bull, Dragoon, who's on rangeland bordering the ranch. If Cam's death wasn't an accident, how did someone get past the bull?

I still like Rainy and her unorthodox narration and ways, but I have to admit this was not as compelling as the first book, where her history is peeled back little by little to show you why she is as she is. So while I still enjoyed the mystery, there was a little less meat to the characterization. In fact, she seems to have become more "country" since the original book. The mystery is reasonably perplexing, and you get a lot of the feel for ranching people rather than the urban Oregon denizens you usually see in the media, and of course there's Rainy's wry, often amusing commentary, which is a big plus to the narrative.

 About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who, 2008-2009, Series 4, the 2009 Specials, Tat Wood and Dorothy Ail
This covers the rest of David Tennant's tenure as Doctor #10 including the three "gap year" extended episodes, his appearance on the BBC "proms" concert, and even his guest appearance on The Sarah Jane Adventures, from "Partners in Crime" wherein the Doctor is reunited with runaway bride Donna Noble, to "The End of Time." As always, Wood and Ail supply a summary, a cast list and where you've seen the guest performers, the ratings, notes upon filming, and then long, long notes about episode events, inconsistencies, questions, etc. It's the most thorough dissection of Who ever, and each chapter also contains an essay about questions raised by the series and by individual episodes, like "What Constitutes a Fixed Point [in Time]?", "What Happened to UNIT?", "Why Can't Anyone Just Die?",  "What Were the Strangest Online Theories?", and the question that's been on every classic Doctor Who fan's mind for years: "Where's Susan?"

For the devoted Doctor Who fan, perhaps not always, but you definitely have to be interested in the series and know its past and its stories to truly appreciate these books.

 The Secret Life of Movies, Simon Brew
A chill-out summer-read of a book about Easter eggs and other trivia about movie scenes. Was the big shocker in the Star Wars franchise hiding in plain sight? Sure was. In The Winter Soldier, what events did Steve Rogers miss while he was out of circulation? Depends on what country you watched the film in. What films were pioneers in CGI? The results may surprise you. What's the clue to the theme of Inside Out? Watch the physical features of the emotional characters!

There are interesting (and sometimes not so interesting) tidbits like that for films that range from the silent era all the way to Bohemian Rhapsody. Along the way you'll discover the story of a piece of rare artwork that turned up as a set decoration in a family film, what films surreptitiously photographed at places they weren't supposed to, the rather extensive changes a Disney animated film incurred before release, how a popular crime film features a Christ figure, how a spectacular action shot in the early war film Hell's Angels was filmed, and more.

Most of the info is taken from websites, so if you're a movie geek and particularly read many sites that feature this type of info, you'll probably know all these. Otherwise, it's a relaxing way to kill an afternoon.

Note to the publisher: Enjoyed the colorful look of the pages! But the ones with black type on dark purple backgrounds? Uh...no.

 One Giant Leap, Charles Fishman
I missed reading this one in July because James bought it and had to finish it first, so it was at the tail-end of my other reading and I wondered what it might have to say that the other seven nonfiction books about the space program that I read last month didn't.

Surprisingly, I didn't find it all that repetitive. One chapter, for instance, delves into the "fourth crew member" of the Apollo missions, the spacecraft computer. There was nothing like it at that time: other computers were no smaller than refrigerators and took punch cards to program them. The Apollo computer was a new small design about the size of a big suitcase, and it took commands through keys punched and buttons that told the computer whether the operation was a "noun" or a "verb." He devotes another chapter to Bill Tindall, the man who thought of everything that could go wrong and then challenged the software and hardware people to make certain the astronauts could recover from all of those errors, in big long memos known to NASA as "Tindallgrams." Yet another chapter addresses the long debate about how to get to the moon and the final decision to use lunar orbit rendezvous, and a fourth talks about the decision to put the American flag on the moon (an idea very contested back then). But most of all Fishman talks about the "cost" of the space program, and how, based on what was budgeted for other things, it really cost very little and brought some startling developments to technology that we still benefit from today. If you use a cell phone, get satellite television, use a personal computer, depend on GPS, and many other technologies, you are using devices that were born from all the research put in and the technology developed for the moon landing.

Very much worth reading "yet another moon book."

 Where the Lost Dogs Go, Susannah Charleson
In Scent of the Missing, Charleson told us of working with search and rescue dogs, including the training of her own dog Puzzle, a Golden retriever, and in The Possibility Dogs, we learned about her mission to turn shelter rescues into therapy dogs for anxiety sufferers. In this newest book, urged on by her father, Charleson adopts a sick, bedraggled Maltese dog before he's euthanized, and in trying to find little Ace's original owner, she delves into the world of lost pets: how your totally predictable dog may become unpredictable once thrust into unfamiliar situations, strategies for finding lost dogs, and her own stories of searching for, and mostly finding, missing animals.

Along the way, Charleson also tells us the story of her childhood with two parents who were loving of her and raised her to respect and love animals and abused or lost children, but who were both emotionally unstable. They moved house often to get away from debts, her mother suffered from panic attacks, her father was chronically insecure. She parallels her stories of growing up with her search for Ace's past, for it is obvious after a week that he was once a well-loved pet, probably owned by an elderly person, and her present-day dealings with both her parents, now divorced but still fiercely devoted to the saving of stray animals.

There's a nice balance of animal stories, biography, and "how to" in this book that I really enjoyed. A few other reviews said they wished there had not been so much of her past personal stuff and more about lost animals, but I enjoyed understanding what gives Charleson her drive to find the missing, whether human or animal, and see the past events that brought her to her present. Warning: there are many times you will tear up during this book. Have tissues handy.

 Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place Names, Derek Nelson
I picked up this slim volume at the library book sale because I've always loved maps and dreamed about being a cartographer (among other things) when I was a kid. Place names are fascinating. Some are just plain: Johnstown or Johnston, of course, was founded by someone named John; some are named by where they are (Avonlea = a "lea" is a meadown, so Avonlea is the meadow by the river Avon), and some get very descriptive. Take Dublin, Ireland: its full name is Baile Atha Cliath Dubh Lind or "town on the ford of hurdles on the black water"—the hurdles were wooden boards put in the river to help cattle cross. Some names are even insults! Inuits prefer being called that instead of "Eskimos" because the latter is an Algonquin pejorative for the tribe. The Sioux tribe prefers their own name, "Dakotah," because rival tribes called them "Nadowessioux": "little snakes"! The Mohawks called the Adirondak tribes "Hatirontaks," or "they eat trees," an insult that meant they were terrible hunters.

Nelson relays these facts and more, about explorers giving one place a name which already has another name (or places like the Falkland Islands, which is known as that by the British, but another by the Spanish) and the naming of places yet to be explored. An interesting little volume if you have a hankering for geography or names.

 Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay, Julie Zickefoose
This book made me cry.

Zickefoose, a licensed bird rehabilitator and artist, had always wanted to raise a baby blue jay. When one was found, dehydrated and near death, under a tree, Zickefoose and her family (husband Bill, daughter Phoebe, and son Liam) pitch in to save the little mite, who has an infection contracted in the egg. Once little Jemima begins getting well, she becomes a part of the family. The Zickefooses allows Jemima to see birds like herself every day, but pretty much raise her like a tame bird rather than trying to deliberately avoid having her tainted by human contact: she interacts with the kids, teases the family dog, flies around rooms and perches on furniture. In return the family learns how really intelligent a blue jay is. But they always raise her with the intention of freeing her to the wild once she learns how to survive outside.

Life isn't always kind to Jemima: she contracts a second illness about the time she's being prepped for going into the wild, and Zickefoose must figure out how to medicate her without throwing off her timeline. One day she turns up bald! But the days are coming closer when Jemima must migrate or prepare to endure a long Ohio winter.

This is a book filled with love without being sloppily sentimental. The Zickefooses obviously adore Jemima, but want her to live a wild life. They all endure trials before their avian charge is free, including the breaking up of Julie and Bill's marriage. On their journey you will learn much about blue jays (and other birds) and their habits, and how one rehabilitates a wild creature. The book is liberally illustrated with photographs as well as Julie's lovely pieces of artwork that begin each chapter. Recommended for any animal lover, but warning that there are bird deaths/having to put sick birds down in the volume.

 To Be a Logger, Lois Lenski
As the book opens, Little Joe wants, as he always had, "calk boots" like his logger dad; as he grows to be twelve and called "Joel," he still wants to be a logger more than anything. His dad begins taking him on the job in the forests of Oregon, where he and his companions work in a National Forest, but are often at odds with the forest rangers—the loggers think they know the forests better than the college-educated men running the tree harvests. The book chronicles Joel's (and his little sister Jinx's) adventures in the Oregon woods, where various experiences make Joel question his plans for the future. And then a disaster happens to his family.

Lenski has always done her best to describe in her books the occupations of the parents of the children who are her protagonists, but I find she almost does too much description in this, the next-to-last of her regional volumes. Some pages are nothing but chronicling how "Big Joe" Bartlett and his fellow workers operate construction equipment. It gets a bit tiresome. Better are the passages where Joel wrestles with his love of nature vs. his love of machinery, and his reaction when a fearsome thing happens to him. Jinx, his mischievous sister, also adds some levity to the story: she runs away from a chore, and does other funny things that liven up the text. The next-to-last chapter is a big commercial for the Forest Service, just like a mid-1960s Lassie episode.

Books Completed Since June 1

 The Perfectionists, Simon Winchester
Not so far in the past as history goes, tools and instruments were hand made, one at a time. So long as they worked properly, there was no need for them to be extremely precise. Then came the age of exploration and the age of invention. Such inventions, especially, were required to be precise if they were to work properly: to measure time and/or distance accurately to make scientific measurements, or for machinery (like steam engines) to work properly without the danger of leakage, or, worse, explosions. This is Winchester's history of the art of precision, from medieval navigational equipment to John Harrison's stunning chronometer to the boring of cannon in a manner that the barrels would not explode, all the way through steam engines, tools, screwmaking machines, clocks, interchangeable parts on everything from firearms to washing machines, locks, jets, GPS, atomic clocks, and more.

I know little about engineering, but this book was fascinating. Winchester traces his own interest in the subject to his father's engineering job, and also explains the difference between "precision" and "accuracy" (it's a significant one). Each of the chapters "ups" the precision of the instrument in the previous chapter, until we reach a tolerance of 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 01. I've really enjoyed all of Winchester's other books, especially Atlantic, and this one does not disappoint. Page turning from front to back.

 A Death of No Importance, Mariah Fredericks
This is the first in the Jane Prescott mystery series (I reviewed the second book, Death of a New American, previously). Jane, an orphan raised by her uncle (who works to save prostitutes from their lives on the street) previously worked for the late Mrs. Armslow, and, as the book opens, has worked for the nouveau riche Benchley family for a year as ladies' maid to Miss Charlotte Benchley. She and her shy sister Louise are just Out in society, and Charlotte has shocked everyone by becoming engaged to fast living Norrie Newsome, who supposedly had an understanding with Beatrice Tyler. But at the party to announce their engagement, Norrie is found with his face bashed in, and Charlotte is implicated in the death, even though the real suspect is considered to be an anarchist who has been threatening the Newsome family since a horrendous accident in a coal mine that they owned.

I enjoyed this book just as much as its sequel, and admire Fredericks for writing a historical novel where the protagonist is not a 21st century women dressed up in long frocks. While Jane, with her unconventional uncle and friend Anna who is an activist for worker's rights, has a more liberal view of the world than some women would have had back then, she is still bound by the conventions of her time. She's not a suffragette or an activist, but she is learning, as other women are in her time, that there may be other choices for her rather than traditional roles. The mystery itself is good, the historical underpinnings sound, and once again we discover that the veneer of the wealthy often had sordid underpinnings. Can't wait for more of this series.

 Brief Cases, Jim Butcher
This is a second collection of short stories set in the Harry Dresden universe. I saw several complaints and bad reviews about this collection since it collected all of the Dresden stories about his encounters with a Bigfoot named River Shoulders and his half-human son Irwin, which were previously collected in a Bigfoot story collection, and some of the stories had been in other collections. I think that's an unfair criticism; some of us do not purchase every single volume of urban fantasy short stories just for one Dresden story, so for me this was a welcome collection of stories I hadn't read, except for the very first story with Irwin. No fair knocking down a book's score for that!

Besides the three Bigfoot stories, we have a tale where warden Anastasia Luccio and a demonic nacken (horselike animal) go to Tombstone, Arizona, to arrest an errant warlock, and help Wyatt Earp defeat the warlocks protecting him; a fun story where Harry takes on the curse of the Chicago Cubs; a story featuring John Marcone; another with Molly Carpenter's anguish after a traumatic event; a Waldo Butters story (Butters was supposed to be a one-off character); and even a nifty three-part Rashomon-like narrative about Harry taking his daughter to the zoo, as told by Harry, daughter Maggie, and Harry's temple dog, the enigmatic and fey Mouse. The story taking place in Alaska was also a page-turner. Dresden fans should enjoy these additions to the Dresden-'verse.

 Bite Club, Laurien Berenson
I've read this series from the beginning, and there are some times when I love Aunt Peg and some times when I want to swat her. The latter is my reaction in this book, where Aunt Peg bodily takes over the small mystery-novel reading group that our protagonist Melanie Travis, special needs teacher, mom, and poodle handler, has formed and invites a half dozen more people to participate, all dog show people, of course. One of the guests asks to bring along her new neighbor, Evan Major, who seems to not have any friends. Evan asks if Melanie will help him train a bulldog puppy he purchased, but on her first training day, Evan doesn't answer the door, and when Melanie looks in his window, she sees him lying injured or dead in his home. The police are called, but the neighborhood busybody tells the detectives that Melanie went inside the house, and now she's a suspect in his murder.

In an unusual subplot, Melanie's dog-show friend Terry Denunzio suspects his older partner Crawford may be becoming attached to a younger man who has been assisting them at the shows. As Melanie owes him a favor, Terry asks if Melanie can scope out what's going on with the younger guy and Crawford. I usually like Terry, but this was very unfair of him.

Despite the behaviors of Aunt Peg and Terry, I enjoyed this installment as always. The mystery was convoluted enough, and we got to revisit some old friends like Alice Brickman, and also got to see Melanie's teen son Davey mature more in his dog-show efforts. Melanie's husband Sam as usual is good as gold and endlessly patient; I hope sometime Berenson is going to let us see him get frustrated and lose his temper, but this is not the installment. I twigged to the possible murderer the moment Melanie interviewed that person, but it was late enough in the book for that not to matter. Enjoyable as always!

 The Illustrated Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Thankfully, I never had this as required reading, so it wasn't ruined by well-meaning teachers who made you hate what might have been a good book. This copy had nifty illustrations (impressionist paintings, vintage and new woodcuts, pen-and-ink artwork, and bordered pages) to prettily mount Thoreau's most famous publication, so I figured I'd go for it.

I enjoyed this as long as he chronicled his life in his little cabin, talked about the natural world around him, and waxed philosophical. I could have done without the continual lectures about how everyone should live like he did, with minimal possessions and eating vegetarian. Snore. He does this for sixty pages at the beginning of the book, and then dotted throughout the text thereafter. Then there's the lecture about the uselessness of reading popular fiction instead of reading the classics. Sure, Henry, encourage everyone to march to a different drummer, but then call what people choose to do wrong. You sound just like the Puritans.

 Throw Out Fifty Things, Gail Blanke
In searching for Marie Kondo, I found this book on the shelves as well. Blanke walks the reader through tossing out unneeded things in your life: old completed work projects, used up makeup containers and spice bottles, tattered books and even more tattered furniture, broken items, clothes you never wear, and more. The gimmick to this is that once you discard the obligatory fifty items (or more), Blanke encourages you to do the same with emotional items: toss out old grudges, bad feelings, negative emotions, toxic relationships, etc. An okay reference to getting rid of not just things, but emotions that hold you back, but I'm glad I read it as a library copy.

 The Forgotten Arts & Crafts, John Seymour
This is a combination of two books, one about vintage building methods and crafts, and one about household items that used to be common (like churns and hand-dashes for washing clothes). The author talks with affection about hedging, thatching, plowing behind horses, logging, and all sorts of hand work that used to be done in the 19th century, and all the old skills that are being lost, and does the same for household items like dashes, churns, sadirons, hand sewing, cooking over a woodstove, etc. (apparently he's never asked women about this, because, while I like to look at these items as a curiosity, I sure as hell don't want to use them!). A great look at the effort our ancestors required to survive.

 The Fifth Heart, Dan Simmons
In 1885, Marian "Clover" Adams, wife of Henry Adams (grandson of John Quincy Adams, great-grandson of John Adams), committed suicide by drinking developing fluid. Clover, a quick-minded woman with an interest in photography, was known to suffer from "melancholy," yet in 1893 her brother Edward asks Sherlock Holmes to investigate what he suspects was murder—Holmes is about to leave for the US when he stops noted writer Henry James from committing suicide, taking a reluctant James with him on his investigation. James provides Holmes with an introduction to the Five of Hearts, a small club formed by the Adamses, John and Clara Hay, and an archaeologist named Clarence King.

Thus begins a long, long adventure that mixes Holmes, James, the Five of Hearts "club," and such other luminaries as Samuel Clemens, vice president Adlai Stevenson, and Theodore Roosevelt, and mixing in Holmes' thwarting of a Washington, DC, drug ring (but only after obtaining a new drug to help wean himself off cocaine, a promising new "heroic" drug called heroin) and his attempts to stop the assassination of the President at the Chicago Exposition.

Wow. What can I say about this book? It is crammed full of historical detail, from the slums of DC to the splendors of the "White City" in Chicago, from Clover Adams' extraordinary monument to Clemens' ill-fated investment into the Paige typesetting machine. I found it fascinating, except that if you took all these details out, you would be left with about half the book. Holmes' effort to stop the assassination is interesting, but it's buried under such minute details that most people won't find it worth the effort. Plus, frankly Henry James, who fills the Watson role, is a bore. He moans about his clever brother William, the psychologist; is jealous of his late sister's partner in a Boston marriage; fears being found out when Holmes first introduces himself to his friends as a Norwegian explorer; and complains endlessly that no one in the US appreciates his books. God, what a kvetch. If I keep it, it's just for the historical details.

 Clark Howard's Living Large for the Long Haul, Clark Howard
Another one of savings guru Howard's books about people who have either managed to turn around bad credit/bad spending habits or who have started on the right foot by saving money early. Featured are a couple who paid off $40K of debt in two years, another couple who now ride bicycles exclusively (sorry, guys, would not do this in Atlanta; I want to remain alive), a 32-year-old woman who's already saved $200K, a married pair who run their cars on used cooking grease, a man who traveled to India to save money on a surgical procedure, and more inspirational financial stories. Some good tips here, but I'm not sure I'd go to a foreign country for surgery or burn oil in my car.

 WHOology, Cavan Scott & Mark Wright
This is a chubby book of Doctor Who facts and trivia that I thought was a little too expensive for what it provided, since I have so many books about Doctor Who that contain similar facts. So only when I found a nice discount copy did I pick one up. Of interest: a timeline of significant events in the series' history, times the Doctor had a double, adventures mentioned but never seen, what's known about the Time Lords, the Doctor's family tree, and lots more bits and pieces about Daleks, Time Lords, and even about the Doctor's vintage car "Bessie." Enjoyable for fans.

 Lonely Planet's Best of Great Britain, Damian Harper, etc.
I confess, I ordered this for reasons you might think odd. We have no money to travel, let alone overseas, and husband has no vacation time after a company reorganization and several years of medical problems. But it has always been my dream to travel Great Britain, and I love listening to the Lonely Planet reporters come on Rick Steves' radio series and talk in enticing words about the glories of  historic buildings, beautiful landscapes, and wonderful food. I'd never read a Lonely Planet guidebook.

I was actually a little disappointed. This didn't seem much different than any other guidebook I've purchased, including Rick Steves' himself. I guess from the way the Lonely Planet people talked on the radio show, I thought it would be more nicely written. My bad, not Lonely Planet's, I guess. If you want to read a beautifully written travel guide (but not to Britain), try Journey to New England: a Traveler's Guide. I guess I was hoping it would be more like that.

 How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Chris Taylor
I've seen all the films in the SW "saga" and enjoyed them (even the prequels, even though the Anakin/Padme stuff made me gag), but I've never been a SW junkie. I don't go looking for SW fanfic, or cosplay; I read a few of the early tie-in novels, but, like most of the Star Trek books, usually find them dull. Really, it was the amazing interplay of the main characters in the original trilogy that made Star Wars for me. Plus I followed all the Star Wars "making of" stories in "Starlog" magazine, so normally a making-of book would not be something I would have considered.

However, looking through this book, I discovered that it wasn't just the story of skinny George Lucas, the imaginative kid from Modesto, CA, and his complicated voyage that culminated in creating space-opera for a new generation, and the evolution of the first film and then its sequels and prequels, but contained stories about how Star Wars changed the lives of some of its fans. The introduction is the fascinating story of the first time the original film was shown to a Navajo audience with the dialog in the Navajo language. Chapter three talks about the founding of the Stormtrooper group "the 501st," created by an amputee and SW fan who wanted a costume that would not show his disability. Other chapters cover fans who have studied Jedi philosophy, action figure collectors, the Joseph Campbell mythology books, and people who build their own working R2-D2 robots. The Expanded Universe books and animated series get their due, and there's even a chapter about Star Wars spoofs.

I enjoyed the entire kit and kaboodle here, and did learn lots of things about the creation of the films that "Starlog" had never covered.

 Rough Magic, Lara Prior-Palmer
The description of this book sounded wonderful: 18-year-old girl enters a wild Mongolian horse race, despite the fact her father hates horses and at first forbids her to go; turns out her aunt is a famous British equestrian rider. She has always been a restless soul, flitting from one thing to another.

The reality is somewhat less. I was hoping for an introspective book, in which lonely riding on the Asian steppes brought her to a different consciousness, or learning through her ride about the Mongolian countryside and the people. Very little is learned, and although she chronicles her thoughts and some very bizarre nightmares, it all seems very superficial. She doesn't even seem to prepare for the trip in even a minor way (even to forgetting to pack sanitary napkins, which kind of grossed me out when she talked about her blue jeans turning purple), and seems to resent the people who did prepare, including a highly regarded rider from Texas, who comes with all sorts of equipment. This rider seems to be hated just because she is from Texas, even though at the end it is also noted that she has pushed her horse too hard. (The race strictly regulates how hard the horses can be ridden, how far, and they are vetted at each stop, the rider penalized if the horse is slow to recover.) This seems to make the Texas rider sound callous, but it's apparently okay for Lara to whip her "lazy" horse when he doesn't want to go fast, or to stimulate him by scaring him with a motorcycle. In fact, Lara states at the beginning of the race she will be happy if she finishes and experiences the race, and that she isn't all that competitive. By the end all she wants to do is beat the more prepared riders, especially the Texas girl.

This, combined with some of her other actions, make her sound willful and spoiled. (At one point she relates that, as a child, she threw someone's dog into a pool because she was angry.) Ultimately I admire her for completing the race, despite its hardships, but I came away not liking her very much.

 The Woman in the Water, Charles Finch
This is the first of three prequels to the Charles Lenox mysteries (the first book which was A Beautiful Blue Death) that takes us back to the days when Lenox first lived in London with his former college scout Graham and was a neophyte trying to become a private investigator. He has solved two minor mysteries, and while he and Graham daily take newspaper cuttings about suspected crimes, nothing has come his way yet, and the police think he's something of a joke. And then one morning a clipping takes their eye: a letter to the newspaper states that its author has committed the perfect crime, so perfect that no one has noticed it, and the author is disappointed in the police force. Both men are alarmed because the letter's author says he will be committing another crime soon. Can they prevent someone from being killed?

As in the second of the prequels, which I read first, I enjoyed this volume better than the more recent of Lenox's adventures, in which he has formed a detective agency. His partnership with Graham, and his unrequited love for his best friend Elizabeth (later to be known as Lady Jane) is very appealing, as are his solo efforts. There is also a touching subplot involving a member of Lenox's family and the scenes with them are a joy. The mystery is reasonably convoluted and takes Lenox and Graham from society venues to the mudlarks who hunt up discards to sell. But the real draw here is the family and the personal drama.

 Mary Russell's War and Other Stories of Suspense, Laurie R. King
This is a volume of short stories based on King's series of books about Mary Russell, an intelligent young woman of mixed British and American ancestry who comes to live in rural Sussex during World War I and encounters a retired Sherlock Holmes, who takes her on as his apprentice in the first book of the series, The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Later, after she attends Oxford, she and Holmes are married. I couldn't get into the series the first time I read the initial book, then came back a few years ago and found I enjoyed it more, so naturally I picked this up at a book sale recently. One of the stories, "Beekeeping for Beginners," I had read online, but all others are new to me, including the titular "Mary Russell's War," which is Mary's diary from the time war breaks out in Europe until she returns to Sussex after the death of her family and meets Holmes. This is probably my favorite of the stories, liberally illustrated by "newspaper" news clippings and other illos. There are also two Christmas stories, one from Mary's childhood, and a very amusing two part tale of an elderly Russell and Holmes on the run from Sherlock-crazy American tourists. Plus there's "Mrs. Hudson's Case," in which that august lady puts one over on Holmes (but not necessarily on Russell).

If you are a fan of the Russell stories, these are a good addition to the canon.

 A Double Life, Alan Shayne and Norman Sunshine
I confess, I bought this because Alan Shayne produced and Norman Sunshine did the commercial-break cutouts for the Addie Mills specials (Shayne also created and produced The Snoop Sisters, but he didn't have much to do with the series itself) and there was a whole chapter about the creation of The House Without a Christmas Tree. At the time I read the preview of the book, it was the first time I knew Shayne and Sunshine had been a couple. This interested me more.

Shayne and Sunshine take turns telling their stories, starting with their first meeting, then going back to their youth of trying to reconcile their attraction to men in a society where this was not only considered repugnant, but in most cases illegal. Shayne originally wished to be an actor and later became a casting director and then producer (he went to acting school with Marlon Brando, who sounded like a self-absorbed twit); Sunshine was always an artist, one who went from designing advertising copy to a full-time artist with gallery showings (Sunshine once worked for Jane Trahey, who wrote Life With Mother Superior, made into the film The Trouble With Angels). As their careers progress, and occasionally rise and fall, so also does their relationship.

This is my first time reading a book with a real-life narrative of a same-sex relationship. Surprise for those of you who may not like them because you think they are "unnatural": it's just like an opposite sex relationship: the same love, the same feelings, the same misunderstandings, the same up-and-down career choices that affect a relationship. I enjoyed the relationship story and also both career stories (although how Shayne didn't go berserk at his job at Warner Brothers I'll never know). Really enjoyed seeing Sunshine's work in one of the photo inserts (I like the earlier work better than the abstract work, but that's me), especially the country-themed ones, and the ones depicting the anonymity of city living. We get celebrity stories both positive (after their house burned down, Shayne and Sunshine lived at Rock Hudson's home at his invitation, even though they were not close friends) and negative (Lee Radziwell appearing in a TV-adaptation of Laura with a Truman Capote script), some very sad (the Bette Davis tale, and also the final story about Alan's ex-wife Jacqueline), and some very positive, like the Addie Mills collaboration. And I cried when they finally were able to be married.

  Murder in the British Museum, Jim Eldridge
This is the third (or maybe second) book in a series about former police officer Daniel Wilson (he worked on the Jack the Ripper case and is now a private investigator) and Abigail Fenton (archaeologist and explorer, and now investigator). Everyone else whose reviews I've read seems to have enjoyed this book, but I'm afraid I'm going to be the dissenting vote here. I found it terribly difficult to get into and to finish reading, the characters one-dimensional, the romance tepid, even the feud between the male protagonist and one of the police officers was dull. Even worse, the moment one particular character was introduced, I guessed immediately this was the murderer of Professor Pickering, and I usually don't pick up on these things.

Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton have to be two of the dullest Victorian lovers ever. Every time they're at home and she's cooking for him I wanted to fall asleep. I don't get any sense of them as living, breathing human beings. Plus Abigail, already unconventional for being an archaeologist, is really bucking convention by living with a man out of wedlock. While they don't go around broadcasting this fact, a lot of people either seem to know or have guessed, so I would expect a lot more negative acceptance of Abigail because they believed or suspected she was "living in sin." Even worse, Americanisms and modern sayings—at one point Abigail talks about someone "hanging around" someone else (while "hang out" goes back to the 19th century, I believe "hanging around" is a 20th century term)—infiltrate every chapter. I'd no sooner gotten into what sounded like authentic British Victorian dialog when up would come one of those anachronisms to toss me out of the story.

There are so many better male/female Victorian crimefighting teams: the Pitts, the Monks, and especially Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson. I eat up their adventures; this was just tedious.

 True Stories of Heroic Dogs, George Watson Little
This is a vintage volume from Grosset & Dunlap's "Famous Dog Stories" collection, and I probably would have killed for any or every one of the books in it as a kid: Jim Kjelgaard, Jack O'Brien, James Oliver Curwood, and more, a great collection of authors who wrote slam-bang canine-oriented adventures. It's a set of true stories, written for a younger audience, of real-life heroic dogs, including a collie who saves her toddler charge from drowning, an early 20th century tale of a mongrel dog who helped the police, a Great Dane who was a true friend of poor slum boys, a hunting dog who saved his owner from a raging river, and more.

I was amused by the acknowledgments page when the editor thanks "Mrs. Julie Campbell Tatham" for her help. Julie Campbell was the original author of the first few Trixie Belden mystery books, and the tale "Pal" appears to have been almost certainly written by Tatham: it takes place in Trixie's old stomping grounds, the Hudson Valley; the mother's name is Julie; and one of the kids says "Gleeps!" just like in the Belden stories. It's very possible Tatham adapted the stories within.

Dog lovers should enjoy this collection, even though it's very old fashioned.

 Moonbound: Apollo 11 and the Dream of Spaceflight, Jonathan Fetter-Vorm
This is a nifty graphic-novel story of the Apollo program, which begins with the astronauts arriving at the moon, then alternating with the story of man's relationship with the moon, from beliefs about it from ancient civilizations to theories about what kind of life might exist there, and then with the first scientific discoveries by men like Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, to the present, where it intersects with the mission. The text is unsparing: you learn about the concentration-camp workers of Mittelwerk who put together those rockets Wernher von Braun and his team created; how Sergei Korolov was treated before Stalin realized he needed him; how women were originally trained as astronauts and even beat the physical records set by men, but who were never seriously considered based on the recommendations of many men (including John Glenn); the story of Margaret Hamilton, who programmed all the computers but got no credit because software wasn't considered important. Scientific principles are also illustrated to make them more easily understood (for instance, why you can't "speed up" in orbit to overtake another spacecraft).

I'm not always happy with the art in graphic novels, but this works pretty well, portraying the "present" in full color while the historical flashbacks are done in three-color combinations, which easily delineate the eras. Some of the art, in fact, is pretty cool, especially the final panel on page 37, a symbolic illustration of Johannes Kepler's breakthrough.

Extremely enjoyable, and probably a great way to introduce a scientifically inclined youngster to the history of the moon landings.

Books Completed Since October 1

 The Complete Days, H.L. Mencken
My original review of the abridged version of this volume:

This amusing and nostalgic book is a collection of essays from three of journalist/"American Mercury" editor Mencken's autobiographical volumes, Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days. The first is a wry and often funny chronicle of his childhood, while the middle volume covers the obvious, and the final volume covers his adventures in the political world, music, and an incredible visit to Cuba during a revolution. Even in his childhood narrative the knife-edge Mencken wit manages to draw blood as he skewers schoolmasters and sentimental fiction (before discovering his favorite novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). Frankly, I enjoyed the heck out of it, and now want to find the omnibus edition that contains all three books in their entirety. For Mencken fans or those who want a non-sympathetic portrait of the sometimes not-so-"good-old-days."

(Warning: Mencken came from a different era. You may be uncomfortable at some of his offhand racism, but it's better to see how it existed than try to pretend it wasn't rampant in his society.)

This Library of America version not only contains the complete contents of all three books, but all his notes to the three different volumes, with photographs of his childhood home, friends, some of the personalities he talks about, etc. I particularly loved his chapters in Newspaper Days about how they got the newspaper published after a lethal fire roared through the city of Baltimore.


 Theater Shoes, Noel Streatfeild
This is a companion piece to Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, in which three orphans, after the disappearance of their father during the war and the death of their guardian grandfather, are sent to live with their mother's mother, a renown actress, who enrolls them in the same school that the Fossil sisters attended. None of the children are especially keen to go, as Mark has always planned to go into the Navy like his father and was looking forward to going to military school. The eldest, Sorrel, finds she has a talent for acting and the youngest, Holly, for dancing, just like her heroine, Posy Fossil, and Mark's talent for singing seems to point at a stage career for him as well.

It's a bit of a re-do of Ballet Shoes, with an imperious old woman instead of friendly Garnie, but BS fans will be happy to know that the Fossil sisters make guest appearances in letter form as inspiration for the three siblings. Pleasant, but nothing special like Ballet Shoes.

 From Birdwomen to Skygirls: American Girls' Aviation Stories, Fred Erisman
This is a fascinating niche publication which talks about the early series novels for girls that involved them with aviation. As the series books of the early 20th centry usually stuck girls in conventional roles, even when they ventured afield as in The Motor Girls, books like The Flying Girl from the turn of the century (inspired by women aviators like Harriet Quimby), The Sky Girl and the Ruth Darrow books of the 1930s (inspired by Amelia Earhardt), and the Linda Carlton books of the 1940s all showed young women embracing the aviation challenge and making their mark on it despite male domination. Sadly, even after the actions of the WASPS and similar groups in World War II, girls' books went from women being pilots to women being stewardesses, a "more glamorous job" appealing to "young ladies" that thrust them again in a subservient position.

You can read many of these old aviation stories online and it's really sad to realize that role models for young women actually deteriorated as the century progressed rather than improved. If you are interesting in this history of children's literature, or the role of young women in children's literature, this is an enjoyable overview of those few series' books that did not have young women with their eyes on their "Mrs. degree."

 Thoughts on The Thin Man, edited by Danny Reid
Okay, I admit it. I bought this book because someone I know online had an essay in it (it's the one about the Thin Man television series, which I got to watch in the early 1980s and I wish had been written more about, since I barely now remember it, except for the stars Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk and the fact that Jack Albertson was in it). After being disappointed at the two "new" Dashiell Hammett "novellas" that turned out to be script outlines, this published foray turned out to be much more pleasurable, even if six of the articles are recaps of the six films. There are two nice essays about stars William Powell and Myrna Loy, plus one about the director of the original film, a cracking good one about Nick and Nora as the ideal couple, a couple of drinking games to be played with the movies, essays about the music, Nick Jr, the other films Powell and Loy did together, and more. One of the most intriguing is a piece about the "Mrs. Asta" subplot in the sequel; since Nick and Nora were now about to be parents, the indiscriminate drinking and carousing in the first film would need to be toned down. So now the sexual jokes passed on to, of all things, the Charles' little terrier!

Probably for Thin Man film fans only.

 The Golden Thread: The Story of Writing, Ewan Clayton
I have to admit, it took me a while to get through this book although I was fascinated by the idea of a history of writing. However, while this book briefly touches on Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Greek contributions to the alphabet, the bulk of the narrative is about the Latin alphabet and European writing. The author spends many pages talking about the minute changes to the Latin alphabet over the years, the creation of "small letters," the changeover from handwritten manuscripts in legible letters to the advent of print and the creation of different fonts. I'm a font nerd and after a while some of the detail made my eyes glaze over, but then some new concept would emerge and I would forge on. There's some fascinating discussion about inks, pen points and the angle of holding the point, the creation of fonts (it's a lot more than just drawing some letters), quills vs. steel pens, etc., but be advised this is a scholarly work, and pretty much Eurocentric. If you're looking for something on Sanskrit, the Arabic and Cyrillic alphabets, and Japanese and Chinese brush writing you'll have to look elsewhere.

 Darkwalker, E.L. Tettensor
While Darkwalker's society resembles early 19th century England, the story is set in a completely different universe where our protagonist, Nicolas Lenoir, once a noted police investigator, has taken refuge in the small metropolitan area of Kennian, giving the minimum effort he can at his investigative job and ignoring the efforts of his not-yet-jaded subordinate. Some years earlier, Lenoir escaped the Darkwalker, a spirit who takes revenge on those who defile the dead, and the experience has permanently embittered him, so when several children are ripped from their graves, Lenoir knows he will have to confront the Darkwalker once more. But it may cost him his life and that of his faithful assistant Kody.

There are several parallels in Lenoir's society to our own, including the Adali, a group of foreigners to Lenoir's land who resemble gypsies. Indeed, the story sometimes seems as if it wants to be set on Earth, and then veers away when it gets too close. Lenoir is your typical tormented 21st century hero; his only close—and that's describing the relationship charitably!—friends appear to be his teenage snitch, Zach, who gets more than he bargains for when he helps Lenoir, and the languid, sexy Lady Zara, who conducts salons with the most desirable men and women in town. I enjoyed reading the book and solving the mystery of the missing children's bodies, but I didn't find anything particularly unique about the Lenoir character.

 Two Hundred and Twenty Two Baker Streets, edited by David Thomas Moore
Collections of short stories commonly end up being middle-of-the-road, with some good stories, some bad ones, and some which are just okay. This collection, which offers up Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in alternate personas throughout history and around the globe, is like that. You have him (in other guises) as a carny, a gentleman in the 1600s, an investigator living in South Africa, even in a land of fiction. One of my favorite stories has Holmes conjured up by a wizard to solve the disappearance of one of his fellow wizards in an Asian-flavored universe. Another story that I found amusing concerned a teenage girl who writes Sherlock/John fanfiction. On the other hand, the story of Sherlock and John living in the drug world of 1970s New York City left me cold. Some of the stories were just okay. Take a dip, but I'd do it at bargain book prices.

 Re-Read: But Daddy!, Tom Buck
This was one of my favorite books in the Hugh B. Bain Junior High School library, one of the volumes I withdrew every summer when we were allowed to take ten books home. Books about large families or unique families seemed to be in abundance during the 1960s, and this was just one of them, about the hijinks of the Buck family: father Tom, a magazine editor, mother Pat, and ten children as the book starts (Adrian is born about halfway through the narrative). They're Irish Catholics who live in a small rural area in New Jersey, and as an Italian Catholic only child, I so enjoyed reading about the funny things that happened in a multi-child family, like little Ferry being forgotten on the potty chair or the bedlam that ensued when taking the kids shopping en masse, or getting them ready for Christmas Eve service, or even Tom's painful experience during the "Pop-O-Rama Jamboree." Plus I could relate to Sunday Mass, priests who didn't understand the realities of families, and other quirks of Catholicism.

Rinker Buck mentions this book in his own story, Flight of Passage, saying that it enjoyed quite a bit of popularity in its day. It's a bit of a jolt having thought of the family as so wonderful in my youth and then realizing that Kern, Rinker, and Nick had later issues with their father's insistence on perfectionism. But to me it's still as endearing and funny as ever, especially when I remember Ferry wailing "I'm ready!"

 Flight of Passage, Rinker Buck
Having read Buck's Oregon Trail, I had to go back and find this highly-acclaimed earlier book in which he describes the adventure he had with his oldest brother, Kernahan. In 1966, he and Kern bought a Piper Cub, restored it during the winter, and then, with their father's permission, the two flew the plane alone from their New Jersey home to a relative's home in California.

At the time Kern was seventeen and Rinker was fifteen.

This is a big adventure about two boys on their own for the first time, completing a journey that most adults would be wary to accomplish, taking their cue from their father, a larger-than-life flyer and writer. Certainly it was nothing I would ever tackle, even now. As they skipped from airfield to airfield, adults came to rib them, but they made fast friends as well.

Like Buck's previous book, there is a lot of salty language in this story, and it may offend people more due to the age of the protagonists. Plus there's a chapter where they talk about "doping" the airplane (coating the wings with a protective coating made of highly volatile chemicals that made them high) and how their sister would come help them just because she enjoyed getting high. I've also read a couple of reviews that claim the aviation details are made up. But it's a grand adventure, if a bit sobering after reading Tom Buck's rollicking memoir and realizing these troubled kids are the same funny youngsters. I did enjoy it, though.

 The Trouble With May Amelia, Jennifer Holm
In the sequel to Holm's Newbery Honor Book Our Only May Amelia, the feisty sole girl in the Jackson family faces new challenges. It's 1900, and the family is still struggling to support themselves farming on the Nasel River in Washington State. May Amelia is somehow always in trouble, whether she burns the breakfast or washes out the sourdough starter jar, and she's continually thwarted by her seven brothers, who do nothing but tease her. But then a man arrives in the community saying that the railroad will be coming through the Jackson farm. May Amelia translates for her father that this is a great opportunity and he decides to risk mortgaging the farm to buy shares in the new railroad.

The engaging May Amelia still struggles with her family and her place in the world as her story continues. While several incidents are funny and engaging, like the childrens' effort to keep their teacher from being married, the book is also full of sad incidents including the arrival of two cousins from Finland, the injury of an uncle, and other sobering facts of pioneer life. It is to May Amelia's credit that she can keep her chin up even through disaster and the scorn of her own family.

I loved seeing May Amelia again, but there were times I wanted to thwack her father and several of her brothers down the Nasel River.

 New England Notebook, Ted Reinstein
One of WCVB Boston's longest-running local television shows is Chronicle, a slice-of-life delight in which host Reinstein visits unique places and speaks with unique persons in the six New England states. There's the story of Polly's Pancakes in New Hampshire, Paul Revere's expense sheet for his famous ride, the United States' smallest state capital Montpelier (where you can stick your head in the mayor's office and find him making photocopies), clam chowder and that most New England of restaurants, the diner, Boston's newest attraction, the Greenway, and more tales from the nooks and crannies of the stony Northeast. For New England fans and travel junkies, with lovely color photographs and a different slant from most travel books.

 Trick or Deceit, Shelley Freydont
It's Hallowe'en time at Celebration Bay, a small community that has rebuilt its moribund economy by becoming a town of seasonal festivals. A haunted house contest is in progress, and part of the proceeds will fund a badly-needed community center. Town festival runner Liv Montgomery is also hoping that she can get a grant for the center from a philanthropic acquaintance she knew in New York City. But then the winner of the haunted house contest has his display trashed, and in the mess found scattered in the vacant lot next door, the body of one of the judges is found. Next thing she knows, Liv, her assistant Ted, the infuriating editor of the local newspaper Chaz, and the local sheriff are all involved in another murder case.

The big trouble with this one is that, despite misdirection, you'll spot the murderer early on, otherwise there's a lot of Hallowe'eny goodness going on in Celebration Bay: a witch and her coven have taken over one of the stores on the square, a religious extremist is protesting the celebration, the haunted house finalists are at each other's throats, and, as always, Chaz is being his annoying self. I'm still waiting for Freydont to reveal the mysteries of Ted, who puts on a startling performance at a town council meeting. Plus there's a whiff of romantic interest for Liv. Red herrings don't save the mystery, but it's still a fun Fright Night in a series I really enjoy.