Books Completed Since June 1

 The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson
I don't think I've read an Eric Larson book I didn't like, even if Devil in the White City was supremely creepy and I don't believe I'll be reading it again. This is one of those books I dived into and didn't come up until I was finished. It begins in May 1940, when King George VI requested Winston Churchill to start a new government and ends with the United States' entry into World War II, since Churchill realized early that Great Britain could not stand against the juggernaut German war machine and if the Nazis decided to invade, they would indeed "fight them on the beachheads, etc." but in the end would lose.

It's also a splendid portrait of Winston Churchill, warts and all, at his most resolute, and his family (including his disappointingly drunken and dissolute son Randolph, who was even disliked by his mother), and of a Britain mobilized into its now-classic "Keep Calm and Carry On" response. We're taken into 10 Downing Street, Chartwell (Churchill's "weekend home" in Aylesbury that became a second planning center), the bombed London streets, the crowded and dirty Tube shelters, Lord Beaverbrook's fruitless attempts to resign, and even into the plans of Rudolf Hess involving a trip over the English Channel.

As always Larson intertwines events, personalities, and places with absorbing ease. Loved this book—can't you tell? (This would be a good book to read along with the new Agents of Influence, about William Stephenson and the pro-British propaganda movement in the 1930s United States.)

 The National Review Treasury of Classic Children's Literature, Volume 2, selected by William F. Buckley
This is the second of two volumes where the short stories were chiefly taken from "St. Nicholas" Magazine, and, seeing that I have this "St. Nicholas" fixation, it had to become part of the household. (Three stories exactly are from other magazines, including Ellis Parker Butler's hilarious "Pigs is Pigs," and the complete Tom Sawyer, Detective, which, unlike Tom Sawyer Abroad, at least as a beginning, a middle, and an end.)

Like in the first volume, Buckley seems a bit too fond of the fairy tales (sorry, not a fan of Burnett's "Queen Crosspatch"), but there's a fine assortment of other tales, including two selections from The Jungle Book/The Second Jungle Book, "Another Chance" about a girl given a chance to go to a toney school who almost ruins herself by getting in with a wealthy crowd, the medieval adventure The Boy and the Baron, Jack London's "Cruise of the Dazzler," and, probably my favorite in the volume, L. Frank Baum's "Aunt Phroney's Boy," about a wealthy young man whose automobile is stranded outside a country farm where an elderly woman waits for her husband to come home from the local fair (her thrifty husband explaining to her that it's "too expensive" for her to go). It's heartwarming and funny all at once. 

 Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding, Rhys Bowen
It's finally going to happen: Lady Georgiana Rannoch now has no obstacles in her way to marry dashing spy Darcy O'Mara, but as always with Georgie, there are problems to overcome. Her wedding's been turned into a larger affair, she's having problems communicating her ideas for a wedding dress to her best friend Belinda, and, worst of all, when Georgie and Darcy go residence-hunting, their meager incomes mean they'll be living in one-room walkups with insect infestations and mold. Plus Georgie's worried that her mother's intended German spouse is getting too pally with the Nazis.

Luckily Georgie's godfather (and first stepfather) Sir Hubert Anstruther comes to the rescue. Since Anstruther, an avid explorer, uses his estate Eynsleigh so little, he's willed it to Georgie, and wants her to set up housekeeping there; he only asks she leave him a few rooms in one wing to live in when he occasionally visits home. Georgie is delighted and heads to Eynsleigh to start prepping the house for her married life, only to discover the familiar butler and old staff are gone, to be replaced by a lazy, sullen butler, a chef who can't cook, a snooty maid, and two lazy gardeners. Plus, Plunkett the butler tells her Sir Hubert's elderly mother lives in one of the wings and is quite mad. Not able to contact with her godfather, who's on one of his exploring treks, Georgie tries her best to cope with the lazy servants, and soon realizes something is "really wrong in the state of Denmark."

Enjoyable as always, although Georgie seemed slightly naive about the servants. Would love to see Sir Hubert in another book, and glad Georgie's mother has taken a new tack.

 Re-read: The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...okay, not that far. It's 1971. There's a new film at Garden City Cinema for Memorial Day: a scientific thriller called The Andromeda Strain. My best friend and I see this together. And boy, do we fall. Hard. We go see it again, although both our practical fathers are aghast at the idea of paying to see a film for a second time! A month or so later, I manage to see it a third time when I inveigle my parents with "But you haven't seen it!" When it played on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies some years later, I audiotaped it. And, of course, the moment we got out of the theatre the first time, I bought the book.

In The Andromeda Strain, a space satellite lands in an obscure corner of Arizona and kills all but two people in a tiny town: an elderly man and a small baby. These two survivors are brought to an underground lab in Nevada where scientists prepared for a biological crisis try not only to categorize and explain this new, deadly germ, but try to figure out what it was about the man and the baby that kept them alive.

Crichton fooled many a reader by almost making them think this (or a version of this) had really happened by citing scientific papers, referring to sober-sounding Government projects and teams, using known or realistic technology in the diagnosis—in short, making this like a memoir instead of like a standard thriller. There's no real fancy technology, explosions, or gore, just a realistic narrative about the relentless repetition of tests enable scientists to solve the mystery of a deadly disease. Action fans will certainly find it dull; I still find it absorbing and utterly realistic, if not terrifying. Still one of Crichton's best, despite the dating, since it's firmly grounded in its era and "could have happened."

 The Andromeda Evolution, Daniel N. Wilson
One of the differences between The Andromeda Strain the film and Andromeda Strain the book was in the film they actually kill the virus at the end; in the book it mutates into a non-infectious form and they let it be. That decision comes back to bite them in the butt in this recent sequel to the classic novel: something dark and sinister is starting to grow in the midst of the Amazon rain forest. And nothing seems to stop its progress. Luckily Project Eternal Vigilance has never forgotten Andromeda, and when word comes, a new Project Wildfire team is assembled to investigate the Amazon growth: an Indian doctor, an African scientist, a Chinese pathologist, an American astronaut/scientist monitoring the situation from the International Space Station, and a last minute replacement, the son of one of the original Project Wildfire scientists, James Stone, son of Jeremy Stone.

The original novel was a taut, quiet thriller taking place in a laboratory. This story is what happens when you take the original story and graft on a half-dozen other Crichton ideas, including Sphere and Jurassic Park, add duplicitous military men, an Amazon native tribe, a "space elevator," and a woman who has a genius mind but whose physical problems really should have a deterrent to her being assigned to the Space Station in the first place. Elements of horror films creep in everywhere, whether in the jungle, in the installation in the midst of said jungle, and up on the space station. People get swallowed up, native Amazonians get massacred, and the space station sequences have elements of Alien and Doctor Who's "The Ark in Space." The result is a mess, and the only reason I kept reading was because I wanted to see what happened to James Stone. The most interesting thing in the story is the one other link it has to the original novel, which made did make me smile.

 Game of Dog Bones, Laurien Berenson
Margaret Turnbull, Melanie Travis' renown and often annoying aunt, had been awarded the dog world's ultimate accolade: she's been chosen as a group judge at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. Melanie accompanies Aunt Peg to New York City as assistant and companion, and must literally fend off an old "frenemy" of Peg's on the way to the hotel: Victor Durbin, whose questionable breeding methods and involvement in a dog café venue for adoptions have made him persona non grata with many people, but especially Aunt Peg, so when he turns up murdered Peg is the prime suspect. Naturally, Melanie throws herself into the investigation.

The mystery itself involves something in the news a lot these days and is suitably complicated for a cozy. The real strength with this book, the 25th in a series, is in the details: behind the scenes at august Westminster, Melanie's teaming with her sister-in-law Bertie, and the approaching wedding of flamboyant Terry and conservative Crawford (something happens at the wedding that made me cry). Davey continues with showing his poodle Augie, and of course there's kindergartener Kevin for comic relief.

By the way, I agree with another reviewer that we'd love to see Sam involved in a mystery!

 A Question of Betrayal, Anne Perry
This is the second in Perry's newest series set in pre-World War II England and Germany, featuring Elena Standish, talented photographer and daughter of a former ambassador to Germany. In the first volume of the series, Elena discovered her beloved grandfather was the former head of MI.6, Great Britain's international spy network, and she had successfully completed an errand that sent her to Berlin and put her in great danger. In this outing, Elena has an even more difficult mission: extricate her former love Aiden Strother, a man who revealed himself as a traitor to the country and got her fired from her job at the British Embassy, from Italy, since it turns out he was a double agent all along. The man who customarily passed Aiden's reports to England has not been heard from in weeks and it may be that Strother, too, is in danger. Can Elena get him out of Italy while putting aside her personal feelings?

In a subplot, Elena's older sister Margot goes to Berlin to attend the wedding of a dear childhood friend, who she realizes is marrying a heartless member of the Gestapo. Margot wonders: is her friend just too besotted with love to understand the hate within the man, or is there something more sinister going on?

I probably would have been better off reading the previous book first so I would know the particulars about her grandfather and how losing her job affected her and her family, but this can be read pretty much stand-alone if you don't mind being missing some background information. There's the distinct Perry touch of two capable women surviving in hostile environments, detailed descriptions of the ladies' fashions at the time, and welcome detail to 1930s life, and there's a tense plot right until the very end. The buried sinister machinations under German bonhomie is especially well done, making for uneasiness in many chapters. However, I don't find I like Elena or Margot as well as her two other leads, Charlotte Ellison Pitt and Hester Latterly Monk; the sisters don't seem to have the depth that either of Perry's Victorian protagonists have.

 How Did It Begin?: The Origins of Our Curious Customs and Superstitions, Dr. R. & L. Brasch
This is an Australian-published (since much of it is Anglo-Australian in focus) book of trivia that I picked up ages ago on a remainder table and have read in a desultory fashion for literally years now. Interesting facts about customs surrounding death, birth, courtship, drinking customs, homes, sports and other pastimes, religion, time, etc..Basically this is what I call "a bathroom book," something kept in the john to read during, as Frank Gilbreth called it, "unavoidable delay." Not true how much of these facts are true, as some of the word etymologies are iffy, but some trivia for your entertainment.

 Tunnel in the Sky, Robert A. Heinlein
This is a Heinlein juvenile I had never read, and when a friend said she was reading it, I decided to try it as well. I have heard it described as Lord of the Flies-like, but it really isn't.

Rod Walker lives on a future Earth threatened with overpopulation and starvation. Luckily a scientist has invented a device that can teleport humans—the titular "tunnel in the sky"—to other planets to colonize. Rod dreams of being one of these colonists, and, in his final year of high school, he takes an elective "survival course," the final exam which is being teleported to an uninhabited planet to survive for a week before being retrieved; the choice of survival equipment taken is the student's. His older sister Helen gives him good advice on what to take, and he is able to survive the anticipated test period, even after most of his gear is stolen. But retrieval back to Earth doesn't come, and Rod finally partners with a friend from school and another student from a different school. When they become resigned to the fact that retrieval may never come, Rod and his friends find other students, both good and bad, and start building their own civilization.

It's a fascinating portrait of how villages begin and how teamwork provides survival, and also how the lazy or callous can erode the group's safety. The story works because Rod isn't a model teen—he doesn't want to play politics, but leaves that to another young man, only to find that costs and causes problems—and that things can go wrong simply from underestimating the local flora and fauna. It is very anti-Lord of the Flies because, despite problems from a few students who refuse to cooperate, the students do manage to found a thriving community instead of descending into barbarity.

When Heinlein wrote this book, he refused to use stereotypes to delineate his characters, and intended that his protagonist be a person of color. Although other POC are featured in the story, most notably Caroline, who is of Zulu heritage, his publishers in the 1950s were extremely reluctant to have a lead character who was black. Since then publishers have portrayed Rod as white (and even blond) on covers over the years. However, this book is notable for a 1950s book in that its lead character is black, and refreshingly non-stereotyped compared to most 1950s efforts. Old-fashioned (the colonists usually go to new planets in covered wagons drawn by horses or oxen, or riding horses), but food for thought.

 The Happy Hollisters at Lizard Cove, Jerry West
A shipment of pineapples and the tiny iguana that stows away in it send the Hollister kids (12-year-old Pete; 10-year-old Pam; Ricky, age 7; Holly, age 6; and 4-year-old Sue) and their parents on not only a wonderful vacation but an interesting mystery in this entry in the series. Mrs. Hollister discovers the sender of the pineapples is an old school chum who married a doctor in Puerto Rico, and that she is in town with her two children, Carlos and Maya. The Villamils persuade the Hollisters to spend the week at their home at Lizard Cove, where the kids return "Lucky" the iguana to his native land, play in the surf, and explore. They discover an old stone with carving on it, and discover it may lead to a stolen Spanish relic. In the course of the story, they also help a boy named Manuel, who attends the local school for the blind, recover his stolen guitar, a memento from his grandfather. Would you be surprised to know that the stolen guitar and the two men trying to steal the stone the kids find are connected? Probably not, because this is a Happy Hollisters mystery after all.

This is part mystery and part travelogue, as the kids learn some Spanish and visit historical sites, plus learn what an infanta is (it's the 1950s, so Columbus is still treated in a positive way—time for a learning moment). Joey Brill, of course, mutters about "foreigners" when Carlos and Maya visit the Hollister kids' school, and gets set straight about them being Americans by one of their classmates, so apparently 1950s kids knew what a lot of modern adults don't understand. Contains a few 1950s gender-role stereotypes, but, again, all the kids go on the hunt for the thieves, not just the boys, and the girls are just as clever as the boys at picking up on clues.

 Mousse and Murder, Elizabeth Logan
I tend to pick up my cozies by location—I admit, I favor New England-set ones, and ones not in warm places—and when I saw this was set in Alaska, I thought I might get a softer, gentler Sue Henry-like mystery story. Alas, not to be. Our heroine is Charlie (short for Charlotte) Cooke, who switched from law school to culinary school in San Francisco, and has been running the town diner The Bear Claw, since Mom retired to travel with her father, who teaches international seminars. So, protagonist now back in small town (Elkview, Alaska, near Denali National Park) after fiancee ran off with co-worker. Check. How about the rest of the stock cozy conventions? Cute pet? Check, an orange tabby cat named Eggs Benedict, Benny for short. Romance with cute guy? Check, newspaper reporter. (At least the romance is not with the town police officer, as in so many of these.) Best friend who runs local business? Check, Annie, who runs local, family-founded inn. Things that designate the location? Lots of snow, cold weather gear, tourists, and moose, alive and in the stew and meatloaf served at the diner.

Anyway, Bear Claw head chef, temperamental Oliver Whitestone, has an argument with Charlie over trying something new on the menu, and walks out in a tiff. Next thing they know, he's dead, and it's murder. In a little bit of a twist, since Elkview has a tiny police presence (one state trooper, his wife, and his deputy), newspaperman Chris and Charlie are actually deputized to help with the murder investigation (usually the characters investigate on their own). No dangerous stuff, just research and interviewing some family and friends. What time Charlie doesn't spend running the diner and going off sleuthing with Chris (who loves her car with the heated steering wheel), she spends using the "Bennycam" she has in her house to interact with the cat. (If all the Bennycam stuff was deleted, the book would be about twenty pages shorter.)

There's an iffy character from day one, once a clue shows up about halfway through the book you know who the bad guy is, Chris and Charlie actually go in Oliver's house and remove stuff without a warrant figuring it's okay because they're deputies, everyone else in the diner loves working there and will take over at a moment's notice when Charlie goes off sleuthing, and, goodness, she's obsessed with that cat. As far as I can tell, no Native Alaskans live in Elkview or go to Charlie's diner (unless assistant chef Victor and his sister are natives; they are described as dark haired).

 Re-read: Life is a Banquet, Rosalind Russell, with Chris Chase
My mom picked this out of the book club back when it was published; at that point I had only seen Rosalind Russell in The Trouble With Angels, and knew only that she was a classic film star. But the first pages of the book looked so interesting I was drawn into it. Now it's one of my comfort reads; after you watch a few Russell films (for me, I cannot resist stopping and watching Auntie Mame any time I see it running, and love His Girl Friday and The Women) you can hear "Roz" talking to you as you read this book, starting with her active life with her siblings and parents in Waterbury, Connecticut, and the wonderful adventures she had with her Mame-like sister nicknamed "the Duchess." It is the greatest charm of the book, that it feels like she is sitting there telling you her life story. She covers her career and her personal life in a delightful, honest style, admitting when she made downright boners like acting snooty about parts or turning down lucrative ones, and she downplays a lot of her own personal tragedies, like having a nervous breakdown and the illnesses she contracted later in life (she became a spokesperson for people with arthritis and pretty much ruined the rest of her career because no one wanted to hire a women with arthritis). She talks about meeting the famous, but also wonderful stories about people she thought were courageous, like Colonel Hans Adamson and Sister Kenny (Russell played this Australian nurse who challenged the standard treatment of polio patients in a film). She talks so lovingly about her husband (they were married for thirty-five years) and her only son that I wish I could have met all of them, and you get some different views of celebrities like Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.

 The Annotated Black Beauty, Anna Sewell, introductions/annotations by Ellen B. Wells and Anne Grimshaw
I love annotated books. Some friends of mine were thinning out their library on New Year's Eve (boy, if I known then what I know now...) and this is the book I found to take home with me. I have loved it since I was young and had the Whitman edition.

Though thousands think of this as "a children's book," it was definitely not written for children, but as a tract by the Quaker Anna Sewell, who loved all animals, but horses most of all; lame most of her life, she depended on them to get around to have any sort of life outside the home, and was cruelly grieved when she saw them mistreated. So she wrote the story of Black Beauty, the finely-bred colt brought up on a gentle farm and at first owned by the kind Gordon family, where he makes friends with the other horses, including the formerly mistreated Ginger and the pony Merrylegs. Alas, Mrs. Gordon takes ill, and there Black Beauty's perfect life goes astray, as the mistress of his new household believes in the cruel "bearing rein." As his fortunes ebb and flow, going from high-stepping carriage horse to livery horse to cab horse, Sewell talks about the sometimes brutal life horses lead.

The annotated edition adds so much information to the story; besides explaining now archaic terms and horse-care facts that would have been normal back then, the book is full of illustrations from just some of the numerous editions of the book, and indeed the illustrations of the terrible "bearing rein" (here in the U.S. called a "checkrein") make it horrifyingly obvious what horses rigged out in this cruel item suffered.

 A Christmas Resolution, Anne Perry
Celia Darwin, who lost her cousin Kate to murder in the William Monk mystery Dark Tide, has married John Hooper, Monk's current assistant at the Thames River Police. Celia is looking forward to their first Christmas together until she finds out her closest friend Clementine Appleby is marrying Seth Marlowe, a new member of her church and the Reverend Arthur Roberson's former brother-in-law. Roberson is a shy, retiring man who preaches forgiveness while his brother-in-law is an unyielding, judgmental being who still has not forgiven Celia for perjuring herself at the murder trial, even though the court gave her clemency for her decision, and forbids Celia to speak to Clementine except for "matters of housekeeping and motherhood." Clementine believes her gentle love will change him, but Celia finds out Marlowe's wife, "a strumpet," he called her, committed suicide and his daughter ran away from home. Was it true? Were Marlowe's wife and child so deceitful that it's understandable that he's bitter? Or must further investigation be done so that Clementine does not suffer the same fate?

A thoughtful story and within the theme of Christmas about forgiveness—but about how with forgiveness must come acceptance that truths must be faced and corrected. This isn't my favorite of the Christmas mysteries—that's A Christmas Promise with Gracie Phipps—but Celia and John are fine characters I'd love to know and I appreciate the love Celia has for her friend that she dares Marlowe's wrath to assure Clementine is happy.

 Tea & Treachery, Vicki Delany
Another advanced reader copy here, from NetGalley, the first in Delaney's Tea by the Sea mysteries set on Cape Cod. Lily Roberts is happy working in her new tea shop set on the shores of the Cape, in a converted gatehouse next to the Victorian bed and breakfast run by her grandmother Rose, a transplanted Englishwoman with an independent streak a mile wide. Lily helps make breakfasts at grandma's B&B in the mornings and then runs the tea shop in the afternoon, a stretch of kitchen work that makes me faint just to think about it. Next to Rose's property is another Victorian seaside home and property, this one crumbling and overgrown, and a local land developer wants to buy the property to set up a humongous hotel/golf course/resort that will, of course, destroy the tranquility of both the tea shop and the B&B.

And then the land developer meets his death falling off the sea wall near Rose's property. And of course the stupid chief of police suspects that this feisty, but 80+ year-old woman is the main suspect, although his new assistant from Boston doesn't.

I admit, I picked this to read because takes place "just up the road apiece" from my old home town. And yep, this one hits all the cozy cliches: talented protagonist who moved back home from the big city because her boyfriend was a louse; her quirky best friend Bernadette (call her "Bernie") who's a writer in search of a subject (and cute guys), a tea shop and a B&B with cute names, the standard stupid police officer who couldn't find a black cat on a snow field, a cute pet with a cute name (this one's a labradoodle named "Eclair"), the by-now requisite cute guy (the gardener, who—amazing!—also has baking experience so he can help Lily). And then there's Grandma Rose. I liked her the first few chapters and then finished the book being totally annoyed by her selfish, self-serving ways. It's not bad enough Lily works like a dog cooking breakfast and then making teas—Rose is "do this, check out that, make sure of this..." How annoying can you get?

The mystery was adequate, but Grandma Rose got on my nerves.

 Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America, Jared Cohen
Eight men stepped from Vice President of the United States to the office of Presidency upon the death of their predecessor: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. These are their succession stories.

This is a dense book, but the author does well in keeping the pace going even if the political machinations do get a bit deep at times. We discover that when John Tyler took over after William Henry Harrison's brief one-month tenure, there was not even a vehicle in place should the President be unable to serve. Much of Congress, who hated Tyler, thought the succession should go to the Speaker of the House or to someone in the Cabinet. Andrew Johnson, who was a Southerner who did not believe in slavery, changed his tune completely under power and completely sealed his fate. "Silent Cal" was so silent he was a "sea change" from Warren Harding; Theodore Roosevelt was, alternatively, so well known for being a maverick that Congress viewed with horror "that cowboy" becoming President. Chester Arthur was a product of machine politics, the complete opposite from the almost saintly James Garfield. Harry Truman was at the time of his succession so obscure no one knew what to expect, and he turned out to be a powerhouse. Lyndon Johnson, crude and bombastic, spent his presidency juggling the Vietnam war and the leftover remnants of the Kennedy White House. He lost such prestige over Vietnam that he really did not get to further work on what should have been the standout of his career: the Civil Rights Act. And really, how many books actually talk about Millard Fillmore? (Really, there should be a book out about "the unremembered Presidents" like Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Martin Van Buren, and Rutherford Hayes.)

The final chapter talks about Gerald Ford and things that didn't come to pass, either because the miscreant was caught (an attempt on George W. Bush) or because modern medicine saved the day, i.e. Ronald Reagan.

I enjoyed this volume about a little-known subject.

 Life Among the Savages/Raising Demons, Shirley Jackson
One of the short stories I remember from my school readers over the years was the tale of "Charles," the story of a small boy named Laurie who goes to kindergarten and comes home with hair-raising stories about a schoolmate named Charles who does everything against the rules. This story is taken from Jackson's wry domestic columns in "Women's Day" and other magazines about raising four children in a rambling old house in Vermont while carrying on with her writing (including the disturbing The Haunting of Hill House and the startling short story "The Lottery," which "The New Yorker" reports was the feature that garnered the venerable magazine the most letters). Childish obsessions, frozen car radiators, missing boots, overflowing books, and the antics of Laurie, Jannie, Sally, and Barry fill the pages with eye-rolling exasperation and shaken-head laughter as Jackson juggles kids, home, professor husband, and her own errands against rain, snow, and neighbors who are either helpful or think them strange. (Jackson once said "The Lottery" was written as a small revenge at certain narrow-minded townspeople.) In the second book baby Barry comes into his own and they move to another home with a crooked gatepost, which obsesses almost everyone.

Amusing commentary on keeping house, working as a writer, and raising a high-energy brood in the 1950s.

 The Happy Hollisters and the Scarecrow Mystery, Jerry West
In this fourteenth book in the series, when John Hollister's store "The Trading Post" is robbed, he's afraid the thieves have made off with his new creation, a lightweight collapsible canoe, but axes and geiger counters were stolen instead. When another businessman wishes to invest in the canoe, he suggests Mr. Hollister test out the canoe at Fox Lake, and camp on his lakeside property. In fact, Fox Lake has been in the news because there are rumors that uranium has been found there.

You've got this now, right? Yep, John and Elaine Hollister and the kids, 12-year-old Pete; 10-year-old Pam; Ricky, age 7; Holly, age 6; and 4-year-old Sue, plus Zip the collie dog, are off to camp, swim, and canoe—and are warned off the moment they arrive by a tricked-up "talking" scarecrow. Nevertheless, they persevere, and good thing they brought along Zip, because they are further threatened with notes, have their tires and camping gear and supplies stolen, and even approached by a frightened boy who pleads with them to get out of there. Plus there's wildlife, swimming, and lots of lessons in hiking survival, like blazing trails. (At one point Pam gets praised for not doing something that will later help corral a bad guy.) Does it surprise you that geiger counters are involved? Not me.

Ah, well, in this one the guys are the ones to test out the canoe in the rapids (although Pete and Pam do it together on the lake first) while all the girls do is do a clambake with beans, taught to them by the untidy older man who asks them to call him "Scarecrow." However, Pam does get the first few outings in the canoe, adorable Sue does discover two clues to the mystery, and Holly, already an expert swimmer at six, discovers where the bad guys have hidden the Hollister tires.

There's never a dull moment in this one!

Books Completed Since May 1

 Star Trek FAQ 2.0: Everything Left to Know About the Next Generation, the Movies and Beyond, Mark Clark
For the Star Trek fan in all of us: Clark, author of Star Trek FAQ, is back with this volume covering the six classic Trek films and the concurrent Star Trek: the Next Generation, and also the Next Generation films, chronicling the development of the films and the then parallel development of the new series—the very idea of which the original series fans appeared to hate—along with the casting of a new crew who would carry on the ideals of Star Trek without its characters being carbon-copies of the original Enterprise crew. TNG eventually surprised everyone, especially the die-hard fans of the original series, despite the bumps of the first season, in becoming a new fan favorite, with the quiet, cerebral Captain Picard garnering a big fan following along with the android Data, who had been originally scoffed at.

Clark also investigates "Treks not taken," like the "Starfleet Academy" idea, and also how Gene Roddenberry, who began suggesting plotlines that others knew were unworkable or repetitious, was gently eased out of the series he created. Chapters cover each season of Next Generation, plus there are offerings on Star Trek foods, guest stars, crossovers, Data's most memorable episodes, notable episodes, Worf and the conversion of Klingons into allies, new enemies like the Ferengi and the Cardassians, amateur Trek productions, Next Generation novels, and even profiles of series producers and directors. A big treat for classic series/Next Gen fans. One wishes for a book like this about the other Star Trek series, especially Deep Space 9.

 The Doggie in the Window, Rory Kress
After seeing a Wheaten terrier for the first time, Rory Kress knew she wanted one of her own. Not wanting to support puppy mills, she did copious research and then adopted a puppy from a store which had papers stating "Izzie" was born at the home of a reputable breeder who was certified by the USDA. Of course as a puppy Izzie had quirks, but they were just that, Rory thought, quirks, like people have, like being afraid of loud noises. But some years later Rory decided to investigate just what a USDA certification entailed—and it let her on a shocking trail.

I thought this book was a bit repetitive once the point was made, which is that a USDA certification doesn't mean squat. Of course they have rules about how animals have to be homed, fed, watered, and enriched, and basically they are bare minimum. Factory farms, where cows and pigs are kept in manure-caked pens all their lives and chickens are crowded into living spaces so small they have to have their beaks clipped so they don't peck each other to death, are also USDA certified. On her journey Rory visits pet shops and laboratories that work with animals; talks to puppy mill investigators, supposed "hoarders" giving up animals who are really puppy mill breeders in disguise, dog psychologists, and even actual responsible breeders; and, finally finds the place where Izzie came from: not the worst of puppy mills, but one nonetheless, despite that "USDA certification."

To be read by anyone who wants to buy a purebred or even one of these silly "designer breeds" (did you know the man who originally bred the "goldendoodle" now regrets doing it, because so many of the dogs are being bred irresponsibly?) to understand the conditions so many of these dogs are produced under.

 Another Man's Moccasins, Craig Johnson
In Absaroka County, Wyoming, Walt Longmire is called in when the body of a dead Vietnamese girl is found. Even more curiously, she has Walt's name among her effects. While investigating the site, Walt turns up Virgil White Buffalo, a member of the Crow nation who has just been released from prison and is living in a cave nearby. Walt soon doesn't believe Virgil has anything to do with the crime, but wants to help him as he works on the puzzle of the young woman, who triggers flashbacks of his time in Vietnam as a Marine investigator, and his friendship with a young prostitute at a run-down bar and gambling joint. Once a Vietnamese man shows up in Absaroka County, searching for a lost granddaughter that he states is the dead woman, it seems part of the mystery might be solved...or does it just make the story more complicated?

Fascinating, but very tough, entry in this already excellent series, touching on past crimes and well as present, and filling in more of Walt Longmire's past. His Vietnam flashbacks are very real: the smells, the heat, the clamor, the squalor, the fear, the innocence destroyed. I grew up during the Vietnam era and watched dead and wounded men nightly on news reports, but Walt's up-front and personal experience have brought that even further to life. The story of Virgil White Buffalo is also well done and a little sad. 

 America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, Gail Collins
Even though today we are hearing more about the contributions of women to world history, we still seem to hear about the same women: the famous (or the kept-from-being-famous, like Caroline Herschel and Dorothy Wordsworth) and the wealthy. In this overflowing summary, Collins tackles 400 years of the lives of mostly ordinary women: indentured servants, slaves, widows who inherited their husbands' businesses, pioneer wives, colonial midwives, Civil War women forced to manage after a husband or brother's death, the first pioneering "working women," war workers from both world wars, and the Milltown-slugging 50s housewives, starting with Eleanor Dare, who gave birth to the historic Virginia before both disappeared from history, to the teen girls of the late 1990s, fixated on their bodies.

I just loved this book, although in 400 pages to cover 400 years naturally nothing really gets studied in depth. You just can't do it. What this book is is a springboard: to finding a period of history or a career type that most interests you and then doing even more reading: women spies in the Revolutionary era? women of color becoming entrepreneurs? pioneer women coping with loneliness and overwork? 1920s flappers? wives of Tories? women of the 1890s hospitalized for nervous complaints? Whatever interested you in this book is out there in more detail, so enjoy the text and then hunt up whatever intrigued you most!

 St. Nicholas, Volume XXV, May - October 1898, Century Publishing Company
This poor volume. It's in the worst shape of all my bound issues, the back completely falling apart. Had I the money, I'd get it rebound, or at least resewn. I ended up reading about half of it via digital copy on Google Books.

The serials are mostly a disappointment: we have "Two Biddicut Boys," begun in a previous volume, about two Connecticut lads duped into paying ten dollars for a trick dog that has one further trick: going back to its owner. They determine to make chase to get the dog or their ten dollars back, but it's a plodding narrative. "The Lakerim Athletic Club" (also joined in progress) is the seemingly endless saga of a dozen sports-obsessed boys who want to build a clubhouse. In the process each of the boys makes good at one sport, detailed in that particular entry, including, in the last part, a very funny entry where the club bookworm bests a professional golf player. The one cute serial (well, tolerable if you like tales about little girls and their ponies) is "Denise and Ned Toodles," the latter who is a clever Welsh pony. A nonfiction serial about pirates is also included.

"In Old Florence," little Japanese children, and weathervanes in Nantucket are covered in just some of the travel articles. "The Bumble Bee," "Tim: a Parrot Story," "Birds of Paradise," and modern diving methods highlight nature and science entries. Benjamin Franklin, Viking ships, the escape of privateer Miguel Pedro, photography landmarks, the at-the-time new queen of Holland, Wilhemina, and the amazing first-person "A Boy's Recollection of the Great Chicago Fire" are just some of the notable historical profiles.

"The Kingdom of Yvetot" tells a unique story about a family in France who have a tiny kingdom bequeathed to them due to an event in 1066. In "A Stamp-Collector's Experience," a man who finds a set of rare stamps and compares them with another set is promptly accused of theft. An etymological article traces the history of flower names, another language offering lists words that came from odd sources. "On Deck," from Carolyn Wells, contains the names of over 90 Shakespeare characters. "Uncle Sam's 'Farm' in Canada" talks about the tiny portion of the U.S. that thrusts up past the Canadian border at "Lake of the Woods." Since this was the time of the Spanish-American war, the July, August, and September issues have numerous articles about the ocean, from seafaring adventures to photos of the latest of US Navy ships to explanations of how storms form on the water. And "O-U-G-H, or the Cross Farmer" notes that the spelling and pronunciation of English words isn't just a modern conundrum!

 The Wonderful Year, Nancy Barnes
The Martin family is moving to an orchard in Colorado!

The doctor says Mr. Martin, an attorney, has overworked himself, and must go do something else out in fresh air for a year or two. So the whole family—Dad, adventurous mother Jo, 12-year-old Ellen, the family horse Billy, the family terrier Bobby, the canaries and the goldfish, and all their furniture—hop a train to Mesa, Colorado, to try their hand at raising fruit for a couple of years. It's the early part of the 20th century (it's after 1912 because Ellen learns to play two currently popular songs on the piano: "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" and "Melancholy Baby") and Ellen eventually overcomes her reluctance to leave home and friends, especially after she befriends fifteen-year-old Ronnie Ferrington on the next farm, for to her surprise he treats her like an equal and doesn't tease like the boys she used to know. When her parents finally buy her a bicycle, Ellen's happiness is complete.

There are some scary adventures when Ellen encounters a snake and gets lost exploring the countryside on her own, but otherwise it's a year of happy discovery, and, as hinted at in the final few chapters, also a year of approaching adulthood.

Very ambling, sweet, slow-moving story about growing up, with a very unconventional mother character and an adventurous girl who's not invulnerable to crushes but who is definitely her own person and not tied to gender expectations of the pre-First World War years. Also, illustrated by Kate Seredy in the sketchy style in which she was known for then.


  Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Patti Callahan
I knew of Joy Davidman Lewis from the film Shadowlands and from the books The Narnian and C.S. Lewis and Narnia for Dummies along with online bios of C.S. "Jack" Lewis, so I was interested in reading this novel of her friendship and then love for Lewis. I mostly enjoyed it, as it clearly illustrated how the pair intellectually stimulated each other through their letters and later through their personal relationship. You really got a feeling for Joy's increasing dismay into her disintegrating marriage (her husband, Bill Gresham, was an alcoholic and adulterer), her love of her two sons, and her admiration, first intellectually and then emotionally, for Lewis. Her descriptions of Oxford make me want to pull up stakes and move there. And the sad discovery of her real cause of chronic illness and its terrible repercussions are all too vivid.

However, it pretty much asks us to admire Joy as an independent woman who chose to make a change in her life when we would have criticized a man for exhibiting the same behavior. She pretty much walks out on her husband and kids, leaving them with her (as described by Joy) much more attractive cousin (and then seems surprised of nowhere that hubby and cousin get cozy together!) while she's enjoying herself in England with Jack Lewis, his brother Warnie, and Jack's friends. Then she does reclaim her sons and brings them to England, but the book glosses over the fact that while the younger, Douglas, loved Jack Lewis, England, and the whole arrangement, the older boy David disliked Lewis and the whole situation, and even today refuses to speak about it. Lewis, despite his eccentricities, seems almost too idealized as well.

 The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, Jacopo Della Quergia
This has to be the strangest alternative history/steampunk fantasy I've ever read. A couple of times I considered giving up on it, because some of the characters were just so strange, but on the other hand I wanted to know how it came out. Oddly enough, I'm not sure how it did!

Following real historic events, which are footnoted, the story follows President William Howard Taft, his opinionated and intelligent wife Nellie, his Secret Service guard Willkie, his personal friend and assistant Archibald Butt, and Robert Todd Lincoln (plus a supporting cast both historical and fictional) try to solve the riddle of an impossibly-manufactured pocket watch Robert inherited from his father (and which inadvertently may have caused his assassination), mysterious lights from an equally hush-hush mine in Alaska, and an attempt on the life of Nikola Tesla—and that's just for starters.

The book starts out with a crazy bang with the President in London participating in a wrestling match against five opponents, and winning. Then he has to race home because the automaton (a maligned unit created by Thomas Edison) that impersonates him when he's secretly off on Airship One, his state-of-the-art zeppelin, is malfunctioning and wrecking the White House. All this goes on before the mystery of the pocket watch ever starts, and then comes a mysterious Russian, a standoff at a secret lab at Yale, and finally the maiden voyage of the Titanic (with all this other stuff going on, you had to figure Titanic came into it somehow).

I like alternative history stories and historical stories, but this one was just too weird for me

 The Joy of Being Disorganized, Pam Young
I'm disappointed.

So long ago, in the 1990s when one of those temporary overstock book sales lasted for over a year in an old clothing store near my office, I found the first of the organizing books by "the Sidetracked Sisters" Pam Young and Peggy Jones. Pam and Peggy were two untidy sisters, who, to the dismay of their clean-as-a-pin mother, were as kids and grew up to be slobs whose husbands were always late to work (despite working like crazy to help clean up the mess), their kids late to school, and they were late to everything and missed appointments and meetings because they never learned to corral their stuff properly and take charge of their time—until they formed an easily-followed index card-driven system to bring order and calm to their lives.

The two organizing books, a cookbook, and, my favorite, The Sidetracked Sisters' Happiness File (which anticipated Gretchen Rubin by thirty years) written by Pam and Peggy in a lively style were all great. This, written only by Pam (Peggy having retired due to bad health) is...not good. Basically it's a big long pep talk with a motherly narration, tedious folksy stories, and a big dollop of Christianity. The book itself looks self-published and distressingly cheap, with big fat type, wide margins, and widely spaced paragraphs. It's, frankly, dull, and I'm really glad I bought a cheap used copy instead of ordering a new one off Amazon.

 Drop Dead Healthy, A.J. Jacobs
Have I mentioned lately that Julie Jacobs is a saint? (Not to mention their two patient sons!)

Yes, husband and dad A.J.'s on a new quest: to be as perfectly healthy as he can. And he's going to do it from top to toe. He begins with healthy eating, but covers everything from eyes and ears to hands and feet to glands and organs. Of course along the way he hits every health fad, from cleanses to vegetarianism to acupuncture to alternative medicines to that oldie-but-goodie, thoroughly chewing your food, and talks to some very sensible doctors, scientists, and other knowledgeable folks and a few really weird ones.

As I started this book I mused that this might not be as good as the first two books, but A.J. was sneaky: he paralleled his quest for good health with the failing health of his grandfather, a humorous, loveable guy whose deterioration with age as the narrative continues is painful to read. So this entry in A.J.'s experimental adventures is a bittersweet one, and, considering the conflicting health advice he gets from experts, an intriguing tale as well.

 Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders, Jean Lorrah
This was one of the first (#20) of the Pocket Books line of Star Trek novels, and written by Jean Lorrah, a beloved member of the original Trek fan community, author of one of the most well-known of the early fanzines, "Night of the Twin Moons," the first to concentrate on the relationship of Spock's parents. Lorrah later went on to write non-Trek fiction. I picked it up for a dime at a book sale. I think I was overcharged.

Saying that, I didn't find it as terrible as some reviewers did. I did appreciate the effort Lorrah made to further extrapolate the lives of Vulcans and the geography of the planet, not to mention discussing the non-Vulcans who lived and worked on the planet, including physician Daniel Corrigan and instructor Elenya Miller, who have to interact with the stoic (not emotionless) Vulcans every day.

Unfortunately, the book's mystery isn't very mysterious. The assailant is introduced early on, and there are blatant (at least to me) clues that led me to think "This person could be the killer" and then reject the very idea because this person, by their attitude, was absolutely too obvious and just couldn't be the one. Wrong. Then Captain Kirk basically deputizes himself to find the murderer. Jim Kirk is one hell of a captain. He's a terrible detective. He makes lists of suspects. Then lets his suspects see them. Seriously?

I'm also unsure if Lorrah herself put in all the breathless moments and the exclamation points. I've read other Lorrah; she never seemed this ...emotional. The text is sprinkled with !!!!!!!s everywhere. I'm thinking some "helpful" editorial assistant added them later to "add excitement," and all it does is make the story look like Amateur Hour.

Readable as a curiosity. Just don't pay too much!

 St. Nicholas, Volume LVII, May through October 1930, Century Publishing Company, Scholastic Publishing Company
Well, this was it. With the May issue, "St. Nicholas" stepped out of one publishing company (The Century Company was killed by the Depression) and into another. The format of the magazine continued for two more issues, and then the boom really struck: only one serial, fewer stories, "The Watch Tower" and "Keeping Up With Science" halved in pages.

The stories about "boys and girls" were mostly about older teens, and mostly sporting older teens: tales had to do with golf, tennis, football, even a girl training a hound for foxhunting; there was also a teen sister cooking dinner for an uncle, another teen girl entering an art contest. Tommy Dane, the American boy living and working in Mexico, had a couple of outings, one with frantic gunplay; Felix, an older teen working at his first factory job, endures jibes for being slow, but he also has something an quicker employee does not; Hsiao Fu, a teen boy in China, has a return engagement in which he shows that helping others is not bad luck; and the serial is an interesting entry from Hildegarde Hawthorne (a frequent "Nick" contributor who was the granddaughter of Nathaniel), "The Navajo Cañon [note spelling!] Mystery" in which the Native characters are treated with relative respect, for all that they speak in some sort of weird patois where they mix up their "L" and "R" pronunciations, the protagonists two older teens who have driven a jalopy of their own construction across country. There's also "Kin to the Woods: A Story of the Tennessee Cumberlands," whose ecological theme is still current today. The Great War is still a subject in "How Shorty Got the Iron Cross" as well as in "Keewah," the story of a range horse who finds himself on the battlefield.

The nonfiction devotes a good deal of time to aircraft and flying, at least one article in each issue, including one in which both boys and girls are encouraged to get into piloting gliders (oh, I can see helicopter parents blanching about this now; one of the girls they feature is only thirteen!). Another article talks about the fun both sexes can have with a small outboard motor. Several of the nonfiction pieces are nature stories about an animal told from their point of view, including one about a trout named Flash. Richard Byrd is still being lauded for his flight over Antarctica.

Sadly, an excellent article about training your hunting dog is marred at the beginning with a joke about lazy dogs told by "two darkies." Not to mention there's a "Rastus" joke in the "Just for Fun" column in the October issue, showing that "St. Nicholas" unfortunately was not free of the adult bigotry that ran rampant at that time. It's always jarring when these instances come up, because the magazine is otherwise written at such a high level of intelligence.

 World War II Rhode Island, Christian McBurney, Brian L. Wallis, Patrick T. Conley, John W. Kennedy
This is a slim but dense volume of different essays about World War II in the Ocean State (or "Little Rhody," as it was nicknamed back then). Opening and closing pieces address how the citizens of the state received the news of Pearl Harbor and of VJ Day, but the rest talk about war events specific to the state. Most obviously, there is the story of the Naval Air Station at Quonset Point that later gave its name to the utilitarian metal building known in the US as a "Quonset hut," plus the torpedo station and Naval college in Newport. Davisville, near Quonset, was the home of the "Seabees," the Naval engineers. There are also articles on women war workers, plus the daycare workers who watched over their children, and the Liberty Ship shipyards, but the most intriguing pieces are about the prisoner-of-war camps in the state, one which was just a POW camp, the other which was an indoctrination camp which prepared Germans for postwar life: teaching them that Hitler was wrong in his bigotry against Jews, that countries other than Germany were not "decadent" and barbaric (this was particularly necessary for the young soldiers who were brainwashed early as part of the Hitler Youth). Interesting reading for all Rhode Islanders!

 The National Review Treasury of Children's Literature, edited by William F. Buckley
I first came upon this, and its companion volume via a reference to "St. Nicholas." And indeed, all but two of the stories in this volume are from that magazine. So, since I have all these magazines, why would I order the same stories in these volumes?

Alas, because I am a "St. Nicholas" purist, it  had to be. Luckily I found excellent secondhand copies at low prices. And once again I was seduced by the content: two of Alcott's "Spinning Wheel" stories, one with a plucky girl heroine Tabby Turnbull; two Jack London offerings; several of Palmer Cox's Brownie poems and adorable illustrations (also Carolyn Wells' "Happychaps," which appear to be little insects); a good collection of fairy stories, including a selection from Lewis Carroll's Sylvia and Bruno; two Native American legends; fables like "Noll and Antoonje"; two stories from The Jungle Book (which Rudyard Kipling was encouraged to write by the editors of "St. Nicholas"); even novella-length treats like Tom Sawyer Abroad (which still reads to me like Mark Twain got bored after ten chapters and just abruptly ended it) and Sir Marrok, about Arthurian-era Sherwood Forest.

The one real curiosity here is Buckley's attempt to write a "St. Nicholas"-like story about a boy who learns a lesson, "The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey." It's set modern-day with computers, but has young Wilfred (the son of an impoverished writer nevertheless determined Wilfred get a good education) going to boarding school and, finding he has no funds to treat his fellow wealthy classmates, beginning to steal from them. Then he finds gold: one of the teachers appears to have a computer that grants wishes! One reads it wondering just what Buckley was trying to get at.

 Re-read: Have His Carcase, Dorothy L. Sayers
Two years after her trial for murder, Harriet Vane is still unsettled by what happened to her and stuck with a fine case of writer's block. To relax she takes a walking tour of the southwest coast of England, only to find a man with his throat cut by a straight razor on a rock near the surf. By the time she reaches the nearest town, Wilvercombe, the body has been washed away by the tide, but Harriet dutifully reports the crime to the police. The news makes the papers and Lord Peter Wimsey arrives to see if he can be of help solving the crime, something Harriet is both interested and repelled at doing, especially after sad, fortyish widow Mrs. Weldon, staying at the same posh hotel the murdered man worked at, confesses to the mystery writer that the dead man was her young Russian fiance who had escaped the Soviet Union and she feels his death was caused by Bolsheviks.

Lord Peter and Harriet's sleuthing (ably aided by Wimsey's manservant and best friend Mervyn Bunter, the local Inspector Umpelty, Peter's old friend reporter Salcombe Hardy, and even London Inspector Charles Parker) is delightful, with them sharing a repartee along the lines of Nick and Nora Charles, save that Harriet is still firm about refusing Peter's marriage proposals. The evidence is complicated by a hiker, a camper driving a three-wheeled Morris, a woman in a red motorcar with a funny license plate, a drunken itinerant hairdresser (we would call him a barber), a couple of seagoing locals who are acting mysteriously, the other dancers at the hotel, Mrs. Weldon's exasperated farmer son, and even an escaped horse. Tide tables and a secret code make this a suitably complex murder mystery, even if it doesn't advance Lord Peter's "case" much.

 Lord Darcy: Murder and Magic, Too Many Magicians, Lord Darcy Investigates, Randall Garrett
A friend has been recommending these to me for years, so when this omnibus copy showed up for a buck at the book sale, why not? It's the mid-1960s on an alternate Earth where (a) magic works and science is viewed with skeptical amusement and (b) Richard the Lionheart never died from the wound sustained in the Crusades, so England and France never parted ways and a Plantagenet still sits on the combined throne of the Anglo-French Empire. Lord Darcy (his first name unknown) is an investigator for Prince Richard, the brother of John IV, the King. Darcy, who vaguely resembles Sherlock Holmes (and perhaps Heathcliff), partners with an overweight red-haired master magician, Sean O Lochlainn, to investigate crimes. The volume presents eight of the ten Lord Darcy short stories (more like novellas) and the one Darcy novel.

I love the world-building in these stories up to a point. The result of the Plantagenet line continuation through Prince Arthur seems very real. Also the "magic" having definite rules rather than just appearing (forgive the pun) "like magic" makes the situation much more believable. The mysteries themselves are excellent; Garrett loves locked room tales and it shows in his complicated plots (although one seems borrowed from Dorothy Sayers and another from Agatha Christie—but with a twist in the latter).

Darcy is...interesting, but I never get a sense of him as a real person. To me he compares less favorably to someone like Lord Peter Wimsey, who became more fully rounded as each novel was released. Darcy seems more an idealized (handsome, athletic, intelligent yet intuitive) character, very two-dimensional. Master Sean, who operates as his forensic assistant rather than a "Watson," is more interesting, but if Garrett had called him "the tubby Irish sorcerer" one more time I was going to scream. I preferred the short stories to Too Many Magicians, which I felt was overlong, although it does introduce Mary, Dowager Duchess of Cumberland, who seems rather sweet on Darcy and who I enjoyed. Magicians, unfortunately, also introduces a fascinating character, Lord John Quetzal, who's a magician from this universe's version of Mexico, and who disappears halfway through the book, as if Garrett had changed the end and not made accommodation for him. (Also, if the Marquis of London and Lord Bontriumphe are based on Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, I'll guarantee you I'll never read a Wolfe novel. Two more annoying characters I've never read.)

Something else bothered me: I understand that the magic of the Darcy world has basically retarded the development of technology, but they developed some technology—steam trains, a version of the telephone, telegraphs, even a primitive magic-battery-powered flashlight—and then quit. Somehow I can't see 1966 still having horses, carriages, gaslight, etc. Seems odd to reach a level of technology and then just quit

Still, recommended if you like fantasy elements in your mysteries.

 The Happy Hollisters at Pony Hill Farm, Jerry West
A wooden horse leads to a real one in this complicated (well, for a kids' book) entry in the Hollister series. The kids—12-year-old Pete, 10-year-old Pam, Ricky (age 7), Holly (age 6), and 4-year-old Sue—wish to buy an Appaloosa (not capitalized in the story) rocking horse at an auction of a recently-deceased Shoreham resident. At the auction they meet Chuck, the dead man's nephew, who never knew his uncle and was hoping to find out something more about him. The kids later find a clue in the rocking horse of a possible inheritance for Chuck, but by then the boy has left town. Soon they're preoccupied with an invitation to visit a place called Pony Hill Farm—where, presto, a lost Appaloosa filly shows up. Could she have something to do with the rocking horse the kids bought?

If you say "no," you haven't read enough Happy Hollisters books!

How you react to this one depends on your tolerances for one whopping coincidence. It's nonstop action (and Joey Brill gets his at least once, praise the Lord!) in which the girls shine, especially Holly, who handles a big quarter horse and some trick riding with ease. If you've read a couple of the few stories where only the boys go on ahead to track the bad guys and the girls stay back where it's "safe," this one has a great rib-tickling high-five of a denouement!

Books Completed Since April 1

 Re-read: Lord Peter, Dorothy L. Sayers
I started reading The Moor on April first, but realized as the news reports continued that I needed a comfort read. Since I'd finished the second book of Sayers' letters last month, it was natural for me to pick this up. It brings back all sorts of old, happy memories: I started reading the Wimsey books after Murder Must Advertise showed up on Masterpiece Theatre in 1974, while I was attending Rhode Island College. I'd take the bus downtown and use my college textbook money to buy the novels two at the time ($2.50 total at the Paperback Books store on Weybosset Street). I paused at buying this one because it was...gasp!...$3.95! I bought it nevertheless...

This is a collection of Lord Peter Wimsey short stories previously published in other books, plus, at the time of the publication, a previously unpublished and neat little short story called merely "Talboys" that was written in 1942, and involved Peter solving a mystery that could involve his eldest son Bredon, then aged six. The mysteries within do not all involve murders; some of the tales involve missing wills, purloined (or soon-to-be-purloined) jewels, a misshapen human being held prisoner, and even a missing street address. Two of the adventures allude to the time where Lord Peter was working undercover for the government, and another takes place upon the birth of his and Harriet's first child. One involves a giant cross-word puzzle and a friend of his sister Mary, in another he has the assistance of his young nephew Jerry. There's also a wonderful novella-length story that involves the appearance of a "death coach," a demure mare named "Polly Flinders," and two rival brothers.

I can't decide if any of these is my favorite, but they're all delightfully Wimsey and therein lies their charm.

 Anonymous Is a Woman: A Global Chronicle of Gender Inequality, Nina Ansary
Ansary is an Iranian who wrote a groundbreaking book on women in Iran called Jewels of Allah, about how women were devalued in that society. This is a very beautifully presented volume about how women from all societies have been devalued over the centuries, the title coming from Virginia Woolf's cynical remark after observing that there were no women of Shakespeare's era who wrote anything extraordinary when every man seemed capable of it:  "Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them was often a woman."

The bulk of the book is fifty short portraits of women who were pretty much marginalized in their time (like Lillian Gilbreth, Bessie Coleman, and Maria Mitchell) to women who pretty much have vanished from history, such as En Hedu-Anna, astronomer, and Tapputi-Belatekallim, Babylonian chemist from the BC era, to a nineteenth century French marine biologist and the first female diplomat, Armenian Dian Agabeg Apcar. All these entries are accompanied by lovely pen-and-wash drawings in greys, tans, blues and greens of each woman.

 The Moor, William Atkins
In English literature, what can be so menacing as the mention of the moors? The bleak landscape of Wuthering Heights and The Hound of the Baskervilles always brings to mind mystery and murder and a sense of the uncanny. Even before she discovers the wildlife-strewn moors to be a good place from her friend Dickon, The Secret Garden's Mary Lennox looks upon the wild moors surrounding Misselthwaite Manor as something disagreeable and moody.

Atkins takes us to the moors in all their seasons, from south (Bodmin Moor) to north (the Otterburn military facility), to discover their wildlife and their peculiar makeup (peated soil unsuited for the growing of crops). But this isn't merely a nature book: Atkins also tells us about the history contained on each of the moors: the murder of Charlotte Dymond, servant girl, on Bodmin Moor; the real story behind the tale of Lorna Doone; the black dog who prompted "the Hound," the landscape of Tarka the otter; attempts to farm the moor, which were disastrous due to the acidic soil; the tragedy that happened in "Bronte Country" in Haworth (and what Bronte tourism has done to the area); the raising of grouse for the pleasure of wealthy men and the hunts performed with beaters; the use of "useless land" by the military.

Beautifully described by Atkins as he hikes each moor and weaves each region's folklore into the rugged landscape.

 St. Nicholas, Volume LVII, November 1929-April 1930
Because there's nothing like a "St. Nicholas" for comfort reading. This, at the time I write it, is the last one in my collection, and the final six issues published by the Century Company (I believe they went out of business during the Depression). Some interesting reading here, including the serial "At the Sign of the Wild Horse," the story of Veronica, who goes to visit her eccentric uncle and aunt at an artist's colony in NY, where she's at first attracted to handsome, indolent cousin Brad over younger brother George, who's industrious, competent, and socially awkward. The other stories I particularly liked was a series about Iglaome, an Inuit boy, son of a tribal chief, and his adventures. Some of these old texts devalue minorities, but the stories about Iglaome and his way of life are just plain adventure tales with no annoying commentary about a "primitive" way of life. (Also enjoyable were a trio of stories about a young man named Hsaio Fu living a traditional life in China.)

Still popular in the volume are short stories about army life during what was then known as "the Great War," including an amusing one where the camp mutt persuades a man to re-enlist, and two stories about "Shorty" and "Red," who serve in the tank corps. Other stories I liked were "The Chucklehead" about a sheepherder asked to give up his great lumbering old English sheepdog in favor of a collie (and how the collie comes out second best); "In the Storm Country" about two quarreling children at Christmastime at a deserted ranch; another in the "Tommy Dane" series about a young man and his partner, an expatriot Brooklynite, who work on a Mexican ranch, this one about a clueless "tenderfoot" visitor; and "The Sky Test" in which a teenage boy working on an airfield has to keep a undisciplined wealthy man from wrecking the airplane he so cavalierly flies.

The regular columns "Keeping Up With Science" and "The Watch Tower" (which was begun after the US entrance into WWI) are also of interest. "Science" celebrates both Admiral Byrd's successful flight over the South Pole and also the physical discovery of the planet [yes, planet; I'm old school!] Pluto. Some of the stories are remarkably current, such as articles about the gross waste of coal-powered plants and the pollution it causes as well as the necessity of reforestation. "Watch Tower" chronicles the negotiations between the US and the European countries to reduce submarines (France is the lone hold-out!) Two issues featured only international correspondence in "The Letter Box," with the correspondents detailing how life was lived in New Zealand, Argentina, China, Japan, etc. in 1930.

 The Happy Hollisters and the Cowboy Mystery, Jerry West
Number twenty in this series is a fast-moving story that starts out with a Nevada father and his two children rescuing Pam and Ricky after the Hollisters' burro Domingo gets into into his head to wander out in the road. Mr. Blair, son Bunky and daughter Gina are returning from New York where they were trying to sell their ranch, but the buyer backed out because his timid daughter saw flashing lights in the distant hills; plus someone is making off with baby pronghorns on their property. If that wasn't bad enough, someone seems to have been following them!

Next thing you know Elaine Hollister and the kids are on the way to Nevada, where 12-year-old Pete, 10-year-old Pam, Ricky (age 7), Holly (age 6), and 4-year-old Sue are eager to solve another mystery. On the way there, someone steals Mrs. Hollister's wallet and she's accused of causing a car accident, and when they get there the kids see someone at the sheriff's office they're sure is a bad guy, but he turns out to be the Tumbling K's (the Kirby ranch) new cowhand. The kids are still convinced he's the culprit, but what's with those flashing lights, vanishing pronghorn fawns, not to mention mysterious figures flitting in the woods?

Really, there's something going every minute in this story, and the girls rarely sit anything out because of their sex: Pam and Holly even go along with Gina and ranch employee Cindy when they go hunting for the bad guys following a hunch Pete has after doing research in the local library. In this one, though, Ricky gets the last word!

 The Journal of Beatrix Potter, From 1881 to 1897, translated by Leslie Linder

In the 1950s, a motley pile of papers was found on one of Beatrix Potter's properties that she had left to the National Trust. They were in a strange shorthand code that no one had seen before, and some were in the tiniest print on small note sheets of paper. Leslie Linder, intrigued, brought some of these sheets home and tried to decipher them. It took months, but Linder finally worked out a key, and this volume is the painstaking work of years.

Beatrix's journal, written from when she was fourteen to when she was thirty, with some gaps for illness, were written in code in a desperate attempt to have at least a little privacy from two parents who pretty much controlled her life, her mother considering that Beatrix's life should be taking care of the Potter household and relieving her (Mrs. Potter) of the responsibility. Meanwhile, Beatrix took drawing lessons, studied animals and plants, and went to art exhibitions to learn techniques.

If you are looking for some giddy schoolgirl's hidden thoughts about sex or boys, you won't find that here. Beatrix worked her opinionated wit on art galleries (Michaelangelo, she thought, was overrated), the strange people encountered in the Potters' travels to Scotland and the Lake district, and even the behavior of her own pets. Some of her commentary is her blunt talk about politics—she hated Prime Minister Gladstone (whom her father photographed professionally) and his role in the death of General "Chinese" Gordon, and angrily hoped that his government would be voted down.

How much you enjoy this is dependent on your interest in Beatrix Potter. Note that you won't discover anything about her "little books" like Peter Rabbit which made her famous, or about her art techniques, although you will see frustrated commentary about art supplies and techniques that she dislikes, and the fact that some of her art classes did not teach her what she wanted to know. Near the end of the journal she does talk about her uncle talking her into submitting her mushroom and other fungi drawings to a learned journal; they were favorably received until the scientists found out they were drawn by a woman. The journal ends before she had any of her books published, so you won't read about her effort to privately publish Peter Rabbit, and then her partnership with Frederick Warne & Co. There are black and white and color plates of Beatrix's art, sketches, and paintings, photos of the original diary pages, and photos of Beatrix and photos taken by her father Rupert Potter.

 Re-read: The Librarians and the Pot of Gold, Greg Cox
Of course I had to have a hard copy; e-books are sadly still unsatisfying. This is the third and last of Cox's original novels based on the TNT fantasy series The Librarians. In 441 AD, the Librarians' deadliest enemies, the Serpent Brotherhood, led by the sinister Lady Sibella, tried to wrest a pot of gold from a reluctant leprechaun and sacrifice an innocent infant to their malevolent cause. With the help of a Librarian, his Guardian, and the man who would later become Saint Patrick, Sibella was destroyed and the plot thwarted. Now a new leader, Max Lambton, a amoral Englishman who has taken over the Serpent Brotherhood with Coral Marsh, his partner who can create magical objects, wishes to finish the job Sibella began. It's up to Eve Baird, Guardian; Librarians Jacob Stone, Cassandra Cillian, and Ezekiel Jones; plus the caretaker of the Library Annex, Jenkins (Flynn Carsen is missing in action in this outing), to stop him.

With the action revolving around St. Patrick's Day, the plot moves swiftly from Ireland to Paris (where the Librarians face off against the Phantom of the Opera) to Oregon to Chicago and even to an colony of leprechauns near the Annex. The plot, however, isn't quite as tight as the previous two. There is one character who appears whom you almost immediately guess who the person is. I was also quite disappointed that there was seemingly no way to save another character, who seemed promising and might prove an interesting project for Jenkins. However, the entire book is worthy of  a Librarians episode as Cox works his own magic on the familiar characters. Once again Cox does a great job making each character sound just like his or her television counterpart; you can hear John Larroquette speak when you read Jenkins' lines.

BTW, when Jenkins mentioned one of the items in the library was Prufrock's Peach, I nearly spit out my drink. Not only media asides, but literary ones as well! Good one, Greg! 

 My Sherlock Holmes: Untold Stories of the Great Detective, edited by Michael Kurland
I quite enjoyed this collection of Sherlock Holmes tales not told from the point of view of John Watson. As in all these collections, some are better than others. Probably my favorite story in this volume is "The Dollmaker of Marigold Walk" in which Mary Morstan, the first Mrs. Watson, solves a mystery that begins when a settlement-house regular is robbed, although the tale of the second wife, Juliet, is almost as entertaining. Two members of the Baker Street Irregulars have their own stories, but I preferred the one in which Wiggins is instructed in crime investigation by Holmes himself by helping a Professor Charles Dodgson (yes, "Lewis Carroll") find some missing journals to Billy's adventure with a Hungarian woman. The Mrs. Hudson story is told in the form of an interview in which she tells the story of Holmes helping her husband Harry. In another tale, Irene Adler's daughter, Neige receives her late mother's bequest—and a long-hidden secret.

Poe's "M. Dupin" has his own story, as does James Phillimore (he who vanished after bringing his umbrella home), Professor Moriarty, Colonel Moran, and Reginald Musgrave (who recounts how he first met Holmes). At the end are amusing little short pieces by an aggrieved Inspector Lestrade, Watson's dresser Stamford, and other characters.

 Coming to Grips with Huckleberry Finn: Essays on a Book, a Boy, and a Man, Tom Quirk
This is a fairly interesting set of essays about Mark Twain himself and about Huckleberry Finn in particular, and is especially absorbing when the writing of the novel itself is talked about. Twain did not write the book all in one sitting, and indeed it ends up being a combination of river adventure, lampoons of Southern customs and hypocracy, and then the strange, often objectionable final part with Tom Sawyer engineering a "romantic" escape for Jim. Quirk also compares Twain's writing for Finn against his nonfiction narratives A Tramp Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, and various short essays. He also discusses the racism charge against the Huckleberry Finn, and how Jim was championed by no less than Ralph Ellison and other African-American activists.

 The Narnian, Alan Jacobs
While this follows the life of C.S. Lewis from his birth to death, it is not a traditional biography. Instead Jacobs follows Lewis through his creative output, from the fantasy world "Boxen" he made up with his older brother "Warnie" as escape from their distant, alcoholic father, through his journey to Christianity from a long period as an atheist and his science-fiction trilogy and Christian writings, and finally to the Narnia books, and then his final writings. His friendship with the Inklings, including J.R.R. Tolkien (who Lewis called "Tollers"), his strange pact with a friend during the first World War that left him promising care to his friend's mother and sister throughout the former's lifetime (even though she became a burden to him), and his final relationship (initially friendship and finally love) with his American correspondent Joy Davidman is also chronicled.

This is the first bio of Lewis that I've read, so I don't know if Jacobs has omitted vital facts or not, but it was absorbing reading that brought Lewis and his friends to life. I could almost see "Jack" Lewis wandering about in his rumpled clothes and bellowing a greeting to his university students.

 St. Nicholas, Volume XIX, Part II: May to October 1892, the Century Company
So I went running back for the first of the five unread volumes of "St. Nicholas" I had. And I should have checked it after I bought it, because it's missing the month of August (I was missing a month out of my 1880 volume as well). Luckily this volume is digitized on Google Books, because I was following the adventures of both "Two Girls and a Boy," about Mildred, a girl living in "Washington City" with her parents, her father having been injured in the Civil War and still suffering the effects of a bullet that was not removed, and her friends, a brother and sister whose father is an Army officer, and "Tom Paulding," about a fatherless boy who is attempting to find a hidden hoard of gold in a part of New York City that was once countryside to help his mother pay the mortgage on their home.

The 1890s were the heyday of Tudor Jenks, who provided absurd fairy tale-like stories for the magazine, and several are included here. Several articles are about hunting, which were considered fit thrillers for boys of the day, but now strike readers as pointless. Why on earth would you want to kill a tapir? Three stories are about a sagacious horse named Rangoon (although the final story is a disappointment) and left me wanting more. A rather sad little story had to do with ten little Native American girls at an "Indian school" who raise money so a little "colored girl" can also go to school, knowing what I know now about how bad the "Indian schools" were for the pupils they were supposedly trying to help. There's also a rather pathetic little story about Napoleon's only son (Americans quite lionized Napoleon, judging by the articles about him) who had to give up being "the little king" to a mere duke in the Austrian army (his mother Marie-Louise was Austrian).

The missing volume was full of sea stories, including that of a cat who went to sea, how ships signal each other, a young man who goes out on a long-term fishing trip, and more. It was quite salt-sodden! 

One of the more interesting serials was a memoir of Laura E. Richards, a popular writer in her day, and the daughter of Julia Ward Howe (who wrote "Battle Hymn of the Republic") and Samuel Gridley Howe, head of the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, and an example of child life in a middle-class home of the day. Another nonfiction serial was "Strange Corners of Our Country" which talk about the natural wonders out West, like the National Bridge in Arizona and El Morro. And I found another article that related to my family: "Volcanoes and Earthquakes" once again talked about the earthquake that hit the island of Ischia (off the coast of Naples, Italy) in July 1883. From the article:

"It was nearly ten o'clock on a Saturday night. The week's work was done. The fishermen had drawn up their boats on the beach, and were in their homes. Hundreds of picturesque hotels and cottages nestled peacefully amid the tropical foliage. The hotels were thronged with visitors, and the theater was crowded.

"Suddenly a tremendous shock was felt, and a sound heard like the thundering of a train over a bridge. Two more shocks followed, and all was over. In the space of fifteen seconds three towns had been destroyed and thousands of people had lost their lives."

It was in this earthquake that my mother's father lost his own mother (and sadly gained the stepmother from Hell).

 The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller, Cleo Coyle
Penelope Thornton-McClure recommends a spicy new potboiler to a woman who walked into her aunt's small bookshop, only to have the women see a photo of the author and claim it's a photo of her! She then runs out of the shop, with the book unpaid for, furious. And when Pen ferrets out who she is and where she lives, and visits to get her money or the book back, she finds the woman dead after falling off a balcony. The bonehead chief of police thinks it's a suicide; Jack Shepard, the 1940s-era ghost who haunts Aunt Sadie's shop thinks it's murder. And then things get really strange: can Pen's old classmate, bookish J. Brainerd Parker, have anything to do with the racy bestseller? And what is she to do about the girl her eleven-year-old son ran away from school with so the grieving child could attend her father's funeral?

I have a love-hate relationship with this series of books, originally written under the pen name "Alice Kimberly." Although it takes place in Rhode Island, my home state, the author doesn't seem to know a damn thing about RI, and populates her fictional Quindicott village with a bunch of eccentric Yankees straight out of Cabot Cove on TV, when RI is primarily made up of people of Italian, Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Hispanic heritage. Nobody in Quindicott goes to Dunkin Donuts, eats clam cakes at Aunt Carrie's, buys doughboys at Oakland Beach, attends Catholic church feasts in the summer, and mourns the loss of traditional stores like Benny's and the Outlet Company. Instead they patronize the various quaint little shops with goofy pun names that populate every single cozy mystery small town. I was frankly astonished that in this book they actually use a specific "only in RI item" as a clue and actually included a person with the surname "Silva." Wow. Maybe this is progress?

The last one of this series was written in 2009, and, besides the usual gaffs mentioned above, I'm wondering what in holy hell happened with the characters in the past eleven years. Except for the murder angle, the story seems written more as a comedy than a mystery. Seymour Tarnish the postman babbles on with his supposedly fannish dialog and old media references, more annoying than ever. After seeing the mysterious woman's dead body, Penelope starts brooding about the suicide of her husband and wondering if she failed him, when in the previous books he was a creepy spoiled scion of a wealthy family who pretty much killed himself to spite her, and his equally creepy family kept trying to take her son Spencer away from her and bring him up as "an Aryan from Darien," to quote Auntie Mame. Police chief Ciders, who reminds me of the police detective on Father Brown (who couldn't find a white cat in a coal bin), seems to have gotten stupider in the interim. And what the dickens is with Jack? In the previous books he was impatient but also wise, and even sort of romantic, a cynic with a heart of gold and a soft spot for Penelope, both emotionally and sexually. In this book he just nags and nags and nags with his 1940s slang growing deeper and deeper with every page. You would think being a ghost in the 21st century he would modernize his vocabulary a little (I mean, in one part of the book he even plays and masters one of Spencer's video games, so he can learn)! If he nagged me as much as he nagged Penelope in this book, I would take the nickel that links Jack's ghost to the store and go toss it out in the ocean at Brenton Point!

Books Completed Since March 1

 Meg & Jo, Virginia Kantra
How much you enjoy this book is relative to how you react to modern-day retellings of classic stories. I didn't mind the updating so much as Kantra's portrayal of Jo.

So, predictably, this is a modern-day retelling of Little Women. Mr. March is an army chaplain who is too absorbed with his military flock to spend time with his wife and daughters. Mrs. March is back living on the family farm in Bunyan (a tip of the hat to Pilgrim's Progress referenced in the original book), North Carolina, raising goats and selling goats' milk products. Meg, who also lives in Bunyan, is a former attorney now married to John Brooke (a car salesman), and they have twins, DJ and Daisy, who Meg gave up her job to raise at home, but she feels guilty because John has to work so many hours to support them on one salary. Jo lives in a tiny apartment in New York City; having lost her journalist job, she's become a sous chef under the watchful eye of Eric Bhaer, a celebrated chef with his own restaurant. (Beth and Amy will be covered in a second book coming out at Christmas 2020; Amy's still an artist, studying design in Paris. Beth's a musician who has written a song that has come to the attention of a famous country star. They have cameo appearances here. Laurie's modern alter ego, Trey, also has pretty much of a bit part. Very dull.) Then, an accident. Marmee is hurt and Meg must help her; she discovers that the family farm is in debt.

Some people took this updating very badly. I thought Kantra translated it pretty well. Her day-to-day portrayal of Meg's days as a stay-at-home mom was realistic but almost becomes too much; got very tired of reading how often Meg had to strip off DJ's dirty diapers or how often the kids got messy. We get it: SAHM's don't spend all day sitting on the sofa eating chocolate and watching television. The troubles Mr. and Mrs. March have with their marriage hark very much back to the real-life troubles of Abba and Bronson Alcott, where the latter pretty much forwent his family obligations, leaving Abba to do all the work of feeding and clothing the kids, while Bronson discussed philosophy with his fellow Transcendentalists. It was also a hard look at how service men and women often are distanced from their families by military obligations. Also thought Sallie Moffat made the transition from past to present very well, although I frowned when two of Sallie's snooty friends turn out to be Rose Campbell and Phebe Moore from Alcott's Eight Cousins. Note: Rose was never snobby, nor was Phebe. I found it insulting to the original characters.)

(Also, what in the dickens is the matter with DJ? In this female-centric book I can see why they made Daisy the articulate one, but what's with DJ? He hardly says anything, barely does anything, and has no character at all. Even as domestically boring as the original "motherly" Daisy was, she at least had a character. DJ is like a toddler lump of clay.)

Oh, Jo. What can I say about Jo? First is a petty complaint of mine. Why, oh, why, did Bhaer have to be a chef? There are so many of these dippy celebrity chefs on television, why did we need yet another one? Couldn't he have been something interesting? A scientist, an astronaut, an artist, another writer, even a famed college professor? But a chef? Ugh!! And of course Jo [spoiler spoiler spoiler] has to get pregnant after using an aged condom? Good grief. Good God.

I was interested in the modern spin enough to think about getting Beth & Amy when it's released, and to see if Kantra works on the Mr. and Mrs. March plot more. But I am bitterly disappointed in Jo's modern update.

 Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers, Valerie Lawson
Having seen the Disney version of Mary Poppins when it first came out, I was quite familiar with the contentious relationship between Ms. Travers and Disney, who, she said, sweetened and prettied up her non-nonsense, vain, plain nanny and turned her story into a sugary confection of singing and dancing animals, with a preposterous subplot about suffragettes. Having also read Mary Poppins and been rather ho-hum about it except for the chapter about the starling and John and Barbara (of course who are not in the movie), I did have to admit Travers made a good point, even though I enjoyed the film more.

Frankly, reading this book made me like Travers—born Helen Lyndon Goff, and known as Lyndon in her youth—as an adult a lot less. She had a hard bringing-up: her father, Travers Goff, was a bank clerk who made up stories about himself and drank too much. Her mother, Margaret, was orphaned and was raised by her "Aunt Ellie." Lyndon lived with Aunt Ellie for a time as well. Like her father, she never thought of herself as Australian, but as a UK expatriot. As an adult she lived in England, raised an adopted son there (he later became an alcoholic), "taught" at various American universities where she was lionized but never really taught anything, just spoke extemporaneously and expected the students to idolize her. Plus she became involved with a spiritual guru named Gurdjieff, who was a fraud and a sadist to his followers, requesting they do absurd and sometimes hurtful things to prove themselves worthy. I suppose the author wanted me to see Travers as an independent woman ahead of her time and erratic creator of a cultural icon, but frankly by the time I was done I disliked the woman intensely and it was a slog to get through the last half of the book.

 Wonton Terror, Vivien Chien
In this fourth "Noodle Shop" mystery, Lana Lee, now officially the manager of the Ho-Lee Noodle House in Cleveland, Ohio's Asia Village shopping center, is overseeing a new venture: having a food truck at Cleveland's new Asian Night Market. Their "next door" neighbors at the Night Market are fellow food-truck vendors Sandra and Ronnie Chow, proprietors of Wonton on Wheels, and old friends of both Lana's parents and Ruby, a jewelry vendor at the Night Market. As the night ends, Lana and Ho-Lee's chef Peter spot flames coming out of the Wonton on Wheels truck—and then there's an explosion. When the smoke and the debris clears, the truck is no more, and Ronnie's body is still inside. When Lana's boyfriend Adam Trudeau of the detective squad looks into the crime, he discovers Sandra had been an abused wife and she is the immediate suspect. Lana, on the other hand, suspects Sandra's brother Gene, a disheveled often-drunken man resentful of his sister's abuse.

Between Adam telling her to bow out of the sleuthing this time, and Lana's over-eager best friend and roommate Megan egging her on, how can Lana not ask a couple of questions? Or talk to some people associated with the Chows? After all, Ronnie was abusive and Sandra deserves some justice...

Another reasonably interesting adventure from Chien, in which the Lee family dynamics are as interesting as the story.

 Timekeepers: How The World Became Obsessed With Time, Simon Garfield
This was the one non-Women's History Month item I read because of yet another change to Daylight Effing Saving Time; it's a collection of essays about various aspects having to do with peoples' interest in time, from the role of trains in establishing standard time around the world, the establishment of our calendar, an interesting essay about the tempo at which older music should be played (the classic composers apparently played their own compositions at a tempo that philharmonics that will not use today), horology a.k.a. watchmaking (and the story of how the Swiss watch came down in the world), working smarter at your job, a crazy movie called The Clock that is just twenty-four hours of movie clips involving clocks, and the slow food movement and other attempts to "go back in time" like the Prince Charles-designed village of Poundbury (which I realized the moment I read about it that it's the village being lampooned as "Plinkbury" in the hilarious young adult book Christine Kringle). Enjoyable for anyone interested in the history of timekeeping.

 Where the Past Begins, Amy Tan
I have never read any of Amy Tan's books, but this one looked so tempting: about her history and how that history affected her writing. I enjoyed her stories—if "enjoyed" can be used considering the sadness of much of the text—of her past: of her mother who made a forbidden match after being in an arranged marriage (she abandoned her daughters from her first marriage to come to the US), and of her mother's bouts of depression and threats of suicide, of her go-getter father, of how she and her brother Peter (who was an advanced student for his age) were pushed and bullied in their education and how she never felt good enough compared to him (he later died of a brain tumor), of how she thought of herself as "the fat little girl," of how she loved drawing as a child (some of the drawings are included in the text), some of these memories very painful and distressing to read. The rest of the book—about how she doesn't know how she writes, and how sometimes she has to force herself to do it—is actually kind of blah. She talks about learning music and how she made up stories in her head to go along with the music she was learning to play, and this leads to the most excruciating bit of the entire book, eight pages of a pointless story about a woman named Anna that was inspired by Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3. I am sorry Tan's childhood was so bleak, but it made absorbing reading—the rest: eh.

  Final Exam, Carol J. Perry
Lee Barrett, now settled into her job as field reporter for WICH-TV in Salem, Massachusetts, is happily helping her Aunt Isobel ("Ibby" to her friends) prepare for her 45th class reunion, and meets other members of the reunion committee at the house she and Ibby share, including Steve Overton, class Golden Boy, who's running for Congress; Penelope Driscoll, an avid scrapbooker; and Bobby Ross, former hockey prodigy with a drinking problem. But there's a fly in the ointment of this school reunion: earlier in the day Lee and her camerawoman Francine witnessed a vintage Ford Mustang being pulled out of the water at the old granite quarry: a car that belonged to Aunt Ibby's high-school sweetheart Ted Thorne, who vanished the night of the prom and was assumed to have run away from an unhappy home life in that very car.

A human skeleton is found in the car. And you can guess who it belongs to. And at the same time, Lee, who's a "scryer" who's seen visions of future and past evens in shiny objects since she was a kid, begins having them again: about the class reunion, about Aunt Ibby and her mother Carrie, and other more ominous things.

Once I got over the shock that Lee's "elderly" Aunt Ibby was in the same year graduating class as I was (Class of 1974), I enjoyed this one because you got some glimpses into Ibby's younger life and her relationship with Lee's mother. I pegged "whodunit" about 2/3 of the way through, and the person behind that person (read: the real bad influence is exactly who you think it is), but still enjoyed Perry's storytelling, as well as Pete's further acceptance of Lee's otherworldly talent and its uses in revealing the truth. Not a lot of one of my favorite characters (River North, the witch and television host) in this story, but maybe another time. 

 Holiday Symbols (2nd Edition), Sue Ellen Thompson
This is a neat Omnigraphics reference volume described by the publisher as "describ[ing] more than 900 symbols associated with 224 popular holiday and celebrations in the United States and around the world." This is done in an alphabetic order with standard sections: an opening summary that tells what type of holiday it is (religious, national, cultural, etc.), date of observance, where in the world it's celebrated, what symbols represent it, what colors may represent it, and what holidays are related. Then the full entry talks about the origins of the holiday, the symbols and their history, and a bibliography for further reading. Along with the usual standard holidays (Christmas, the solstices, various cultural groups' new year celebrations, etc.), there are Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Laotian, Greek, Russian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and more holidays. Great for research about celebrations around the world and just plain browsing.

 The Olive Farm, Carol Drinkwater
Most Americans probably remember Carol Drinkwater for playing Helen Alderson Herriot in the BBC's beloved All Creatures Great and Small television series for the first three years. (If her romance with "James" looked very realistic, I understand that it was because she and her co-star Christopher Timothy were having an affair.) But this story follows Drinkwater after her Creatures tenure, when she is still acting and producing, but also in love with Michel, a divorced father of two. Both have always wanted a country home in France, and, on a mad whim, decide to sink all their savings into a crumbling old Italian country home and olive farm called "Appassionata." They are risking a good deal of money, because if they can't make up the difference in a certain time, "Appassionata" will be repossessed and none of the money they spent, even for upgrades, will be returned. So in they move to a property clogged with weeds and brush, into a house full of insects with a leaky roof, and try to carry out their improvements despite a nasty succession of hired people who either treat them like dirt or run out on them, their friends—an impoverished African migrant worker and a local, René, who helps them get the olive crop up and running—while still working on both their careers to be able to earn money to fix the money pit that is Appassionata.

At the same time that I was indignant over the people who cheated them and wondering how they could possibly live in such a hot, horrible climate in a bug-infested dirty house, I was really wistful over reading about their great adventure: taking an abandoned piece of property and turning it not only into a going concern, but into a home that embraces family and friends. Drinkwater's lively, descriptive style never flags and whether she is freaking out about having to fly back and forth to the States and make the closing on the property, mourning over her father's death, coping with Michel's slightly resentful daughters, or describing the beauty of the countryside just outside of Cannes, her narrative is spot-on. Looking forward to the sequel!

 The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi Waxman
Y'all know I have this love-hate relationship with chick-lit. At its most basic this is a love story, but the fact that the protagonist is an introvert book-lover who works in a bookstore and whose only social life is playing trivia was very close to my heart.

Nina Lee Hill was raised mostly by her beloved nanny Liz, but knows she's loved in her own way by her single mother Candice, a photojournalist. She loves her job at Knight's Books, but the shop's come on hard times and her boss Liz Quinn is always hiding out from the landlord. Nina lives with her cat Phil in an old, picturesque, and old-fashioned neighborhood in Los Angeles, and the highlight of her week is playing trivia with her closest friends (their team is "Book 'Em, Danno"). In fact, their team is so successful they regularly have to change venues—and that's where they come up on a new team that can wax their tails, and the team captain Tom, who completely captures Nina's attention and vice versa.

But there's a bigger shock in store for Nina: her biological father, who she never knew, has died and left her a legacy which includes a whole bunch of half-siblings and cousins she never realized she had, who range from Peter, who's gay, friendly, and delighted to find Nina, to Lydia, the aggressive cousin who thinks Nina's out to falsely claim their father's inheritance.

And, of course, there has to be the usual misunderstand where the couple break up and all seems lost, which is de rigueur in romance stories. But this one is fun

 Young Americans Colonial Williamsburg: Maria's Story, 1773, Joan Lowery Nixon
Ten-year-old Maria Rind faces her toughest challenge—previous to that it was coping with her three rambunctious brothers—after he beloved father dies. Maria and her father were very close, and now she needs her mother more than ever. But Clementina Rind can do only one of two things: give up and appeal to charity, or continue publishing her husband's newspaper, The Virginia Gazette. She chooses the latter, making Maria feel even lonelier than ever as she takes over most of her mother's cooking chores and rides herd on her mischievous brothers. However, when Maria realizes they will lose all they love, including her grandmother's silver spoons that mean so much to her mother, if her mother does not continue working on the newspaper, she tries to make do—and then fears that when her mother publishes stories counter to that of the opinions of the British Crown, they will lose the newspaper after all!

Some of this book is quite sad because of Maria's loneliness and need, and she just can't understand why her mother can't drop everything to comfort her; then later she cannot understand why her mother can't just go along with everything the King and Parliament says to keep their life secure. Only later will she understand that her mother has to stick to her principles.

Factual essays at the end of the story talk about child life in 18th century Williamsburg, the city itself, and the role of the printers in dissemination of news, and of the new ideas of liberty.

 The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1937-1943, From Novelist to Playwright (Volume 2), edited by Barbara Reynolds

Reynolds, also the author of a biography of Sayers which I quite enjoyed, has distilled letters of interest into this volume, which starts as the author brings her most famous creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, to the stage in a play called Busman's Honeymoon (the book followed later), and follows her as she becomes a playwright, author of both stage work (The Devil to Pay, The Zeal of Thy House) and radio plays (the noted BBC productions He That Should Come and The Man Born to Be King), as well as explaining her role as Christian apologist, noting that she was not stating her own philosophies but teaching the beliefs of the Church, coping with the approach and then ordeal of World War II, and keeping in touch with her son John Anthony, who is now away at school. There's a long row between herself and the BBC about her production of The Man Born to Be King because she wished to tell the story of Jesus as if he, as she believed, was a real, live human being, and the BBC authorities were apprehensive lest this "less than reverent" version of the Biblical tale be construed as sacrilegious. (They also complained that it used "slang" and didn't sound "Bible-like," which was what Sayers intended, to show Biblical people were just "folks" like anyone else. And the temerity of having ... gasp! ... Christ's words spoken by an actor? Shocking!)

I found myself reading passages aloud, not about religion, but about her feelings about freedom and responsibility, akin to that of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Which, apparently, is not what most people think it is, but in Sayers' case it was.) Very enjoyable if you are a Sayers' fan and can get past just thinking of her as Wimsey's author, but as someone with a great deal of interest in Biblical interpretation.

I thought there were the only two volumes of her letters, but it appears there are two more, one of which goes for online for $913.00! Needless to say I won't be reading them, even borrowed, as the library never has anything I read. A pity, because her writing engrosses throughout.

The BBC Production of The Man Born to Be King (not the original, from 1967)

 Murder in Tranquility Park, J.D. Griffo
In the second of the Ferrara Family mysteries, granddaughter "Jinx" has talked Alberta Scaglione (who recently inherited a lake house from her deceased aunt) into jogging with her in the morning, through a park that has a hand-built treehouse in one of its numerous old oaks. Unfortunately for both, one morning they find a dead body laying under that particular tree: Jonas Harper, an employee of the city.

You guessed it: before you can say sfogliatelle, Alberta, Jinx, Alberta's sister the ex-Sister, and sister-in-law Joyce are back on the case, especially after Jinx's best friend Nola, a schoolteacher, is accused of murdering Harper, and deputy Kichiro Miyahara, Nola's boyfriend, starts acting very strangely. With the help of Nola's principal, Sharon Basco, and the new medical examiner Lori LaGuardia, two elderly Italian ladies and their granddaughter, and one African-American sister-in-law dive into the crime. For their efforts, they have the police chief call them pazzo, get the brakes cut on a car they're driving in, and end up having Alberta and Jinx run smack into danger.

These books are sometimes highly improbable, but are just fun, and it's so great to have an Italian protagonist who uses all the sayings I heard in my childhood.

 The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America, Harvey Green
Another library book sale find. Illustrations of household items and Victorian men and women from the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum in New York liberally dot this interesting book about the lives of middle-class women. While men went pioneering, exploring, and out into the sordid business world, the woman was supposed to be the stabilizing, civilizing force that created a moral society. Therefore great steps were taken to keep her pure and innocent, giving rise to myths that women's brains weren't "large" enough to be able to cope with higher learning, and doctors' misunderstanding of how the female reproductive system actually worked led to belief that "female problems" inevitably led to "hysteria" (the same root as the word "hysterectomy") and mental illness.

If all this wasn't bad enough, there were so many rules: length of courtship, how women should dress and behave, the suppression of women's sexuality (it might cause mental illness!), a long list of mourning etiquette, and more. Through diary entries and history texts, women's lives are followed from their graduation from girlhood to womanhood, courtship, "of course" marriage, and finally death. Meanwhile there were some breakout ladies: women who actually remained spinsters because they wanted to, women who had ... gasp! ... careers, and women who rode that dangerous new fad, the safety bicycle!

The chapters on women's health (apparently you had to keep your uterus from falling out!) and housework are real eye-openers!