Books Completed Since February 1

 A Forgotten Place, Charles Todd
The Great War is over, but not for its men: they now face the repercussions of their injuries in their return to civilian life. Bess Crawford is serving as a nurse to these men, including Welsh soldiers from the same mining town. These men know that with missing limbs they will be unable to make a living anymore; too many are depressed. One man commits suicide, and Bess and the other hospital staff try to give the others hope. After they are shipped home, Bess is disturbed when she gets a note from the Welsh company's captain saying that another man has committed suicide. He asks if there is any way she can come to help them. Bess, good soul that she is, decides to use a few days of her leave to do just that. But by the time she arrives, all but a few of the men have died and Captain Williams has moved to a remote village. To make certain he's all right, Bess has a driver take her to this village since it is off rail or bus lines—and then the driver leaves her stranded. Captain Williams and his sister-in-law take her in, and Bess is sure she can find some way to get back to Swansea, until she realizes that the mysterious citizens of the tiny community are determined she not leave.

This is a slow-moving atmospheric entry in the Bess Crawford series, akin to a Gothic novel, with bodies washing up on the shore and mysterious burials, a strange tale about a sunken ship, violent acts in the middle of the night, and Bess' sensation that she is always being watched. The sea and the changeable weather add more fillips of mystery and atmosphere. You need to be patient with this entry in the series as it's written more like a 19th century suspense novel, but the spooky setting and ominous villagers make it well worth reading.

 Seven Letters from Paris, Samantha Vérant
In 1989 Samantha and her madcap best friend Tracy went to Europe, stopping briefly in Paris. There they befriended two Frenchmen around their age who took them on a dream tour of the city. Jean-Luc Vérant and Samantha hit it off immediately, and he begged her to stay in Paris. Samantha was nervous and the next day she and Tracy continued their tour. But Jean-Luc did not forget her and wrote her seven letters which she kept for the next twenty years. In 2009 Samantha's world fell apart. She was laid off from her job, she and her husband were on the verge of divorce, and she had no idea what she was going to do. But she'd kept Jean-Luc's letters all those years. She thought that, in having to start her life all over again, that she would at least contact him to apologize for never writing back.

Instead, something magical happened. Jean-Luc wrote back. And 20 years later, he was still interested.

This is, indeed, a modern-day fairy tale: attractive woman relegated from art director at a big corporation reduced to dog walker and moving back home after a divorce finding out not only did the handsome French guy she once befriended is still in love with her, but he's even free to marry her. Alas, Samantha has no confidence in herself and keeps shooting herself in the foot, but Jean-Luc is persistent. And when she visits Paris again, she finds everyone loves her—Jean-Luc's kids, Jean-Luc's parents, Jean-Luc's friends...Alors! Really, I'm glad it all worked out for her, but reading this is like reading a romance novel. I actually bought it because I was interested in her second book, in which she learns to get used to living in France.

What I really found annoying was the recitation of clothes and other stuff she bought or sold or Jean-Luc got for her by their brand names. Do women really know what all of these things are by their brand names? Sometimes I didn't know if she was talking about a dress or shoes. In fact, I found her brand name dropping rather intimidating. Plus she promises Jean-Luc's children, who suffered through a snooty stepmother, a cat, and even though she's nearly broke, she spends her cash on an expensive purebred cat. You couldn't have adopted a cat from a shelter? Sheesh. Talk about conspicuous consumption.

 Choices, edited by Mercedes Lackey
This is the latest edition of short stories set in Lackey's Valdemar universe. The stories, as always, range from stand-alone stories like "With Sorrow and Joy," the tale of a Herald who goes home to solve thefts and possibly make peace with a resentful cousin and "Of Crows and Karsites," where young Herald Rinton and his Companion sense a Gifted person on the other side of the Karse border, where Gifted people are viewed as demons, to stories with a continuing character who has appeared in other collections (Kitha and Hadara, a change child and a blind gryphon; Lady Cera of Sandbriar, trying to rebuild a shattered community; Kade and his companion Nwah the kyree; and more).

Sometimes the qualities of these stories waver back and forth between great and meh, but this was a particularly good collection: I quite enjoyed the first story mentioned; the final story, written by Lackey herself, which involves the sword "Need" who will only respond to a swordswoman to save other women; another entertaining and humorous tale with the Iron Street gate guards of Haven; "Letters from Home" in which a young trainee struggles with her Gift; "The Right Place" about a young orphan who can read animals and knows a horse and her foal are being abused; and "The Letter of the Law," in which a Herald must find out a way to save a family's prized ram in a city where the ruler will not bend the law. But they were all good this time, and perfect for fans of Valdemar.

 Re-read: In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, Bette Bao Lord
Since it's once again the year of the boar (these days they call it a pig), I had to pick this delightful book for a return engagement. Young "Sixth Cousin," otherwise known as Bandit, knows only that news that's come to her Chinese home has made her mother smile and her grandparents sad. Her college-educated father, she discovers, isn't coming back: he's made a new home in the United States, and he's sent for Bandit and her mother. Grandfather decrees that Bandit shall have a new name before she departs and she decides on an American one: Shirley Temple Wong.

Soon everyone is getting used to their new home in Brooklyn—including Mother, who discovers that with no servants, she will need to learn to cook, clean, and do laundry—and Shirley is off to the fifth grade, where the kids seem friendly at first, but then ignore her. It's due to her sudden encounter with the biggest, toughest girl in class that Shirley's status suddenly changes, and it's through her classmates that she becomes a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and their newest player, Jackie Robinson.

I had forgotten some of the events in this book, including the sad period when Shirley had no friends and the chapter about the family's homesickness, and also some of the laugh-aloud funny things that happen, like when Shirley volunteers to change a fuse. It's a sweet-and-sour look at the experiences of an immigrant child in the late 1940s, heartwarming and humorous.

By the way, did anyone notice what happened in the principal's office? Shirley told the principal she was ten, but if you went by the way she counted, she was only about eight and a half. She still learned English well enough to pass the fifth grade! I'm impressed!

 Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Books as an Adult, Bruce Handy
This book is about...well, just what the title says it's about: Handy goes back and looks at classics and sees them with adult eyes, still admiring most of the texts. He begins with picture books, painting a surprising portrait of Margaret Wise Brown, whose Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny may give people the impression she was some warm and wise granny. Instead she was a lively young woman with a creative way with words, who allowed herself to be bullied by her female partner.

There are chapters on Dr. Seuss, Charlotte's Web, Beatrix Potter (and other animal stories), Beverly Cleary's imp Ramona, the Little House books and Little Women, and more, all with entertaining information, such as Green Eggs and Ham was written after Ted Geisel was challenged by publisher Bennett Cerf to write an interesting book using just fifty words (the chapter also chronicles the difficulties he had writing a book using less than 300 simple words considered understandable to children; the result was The Cat in the Hat). I disagreed with him occasionally, but life would be pretty boring if we didn't have differing opinions!

Really enjoyed this, except I got tired of Handy suddenly pulling a fact that had nothing to do with the books he was commenting on out of midair and issuing an apologia for the author. The book is still good despite the author's political or personal leanings at another time of his/her life, and hopefully he/she learned better as they grew older.

 Death in St. Petersburg, Tasha Alexander
Lady Emily and her dashing husband Colin Hargreaves are in St. Petersburg, Russia, for Colin's newest assignment, monitoring political situations between Great Britain and Russia. They are at the Mariinsky Theatre to watch a performance of Swan Lake, with the lead role taken by the prima ballerina Irina Semnova Nemetseva. But during the interval, the crowd emerges from the theatre to find Nemetseva lying dead in the snow. Soon after she dies, an ethereal ballerina wearing Nemetseva's costume begins to appear at various locations in the city. What does it mean? Is her ghost haunting St. Petersburg? And who killed her? Was it her best friend Katenka (Ekaterina Petrovna Sokolova), who was her understudy, and who finished the Swan Lake performance to enthusiastic applause? Or someone else?

I enjoyed the story, despite the tongue-twisting Russian names, and immersing myself in pre-revolutionary Russia and examining the value the Russians placed on the ballet. I really liked the setting. But I am getting a little tired of the format Alexander has been using of alternating the Lady Emily and Colin (and Cécile) narratives with chapters about one of the persons involved with the mystery. In this case it was Katenka's narrative in fleshing out their pasts and their intense friendship. But she used to be able to keep the entire mystery narrative in Lady Emily's voice, and I don't find the newer books with the alternating chapters as crisp and clever as the older books without it.

 About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who: 2007, Series 3, Tat Wood and Dorothy Ail
So we're now on volume eight (!) of Mad Norwegian Press' in-depth look at Doctor Who, this covering "The Runaway Bride" through "Voyage of the Damned" along with the seven-minute "Time Crash" and the animated serial "Infinite Quest." Once again, each episode is examined by summarizing the plot, noting the characters, fitting the story into Who continuity, and then posing questions about inconsistencies and other things that just don't make sense. Interspersed with the episode examinations are the usual essays, ranging from "What Were the Best Online Extras?" to "Which are the Most Over-Specialized Daleks?" to "Why Should an Alien Love Cricket?" (There are seventeen essays in total.)

These are truly books for people who really, really love Doctor Who, so don't come into them thinking they are introductory volumes for the series. Wood and Ail point out the tiniest detail, which won't make a whit of sense unless you're familiar with the other seven volumes and the whole history of the series. If you are that Who lover, welcome aboard, but start from the beginning!

 Re-read: Heidi Grows Up and Heidi's Children, Charles Tritten
Since I re-read Heidi last month, I thought I would follow up with two sequels written by Johanna Spyri's French translator. Supposedly children kept writing to Tritten asking what happened to Heidi and he obliged them by writing a sequel (and then others, but only the first two were translated into English), stating that Spyri could never refuse a child and probably would have written a sequel or two if possible. Heidi Grows Up partially incorporates Spyri's own experiences with a cruel schoolmaster. Now fourteen, Heidi goes to the same finishing school that Clara attended. She makes fast friends with the other girls, save for snooty British girl Eileen, especially a Hungarian girl named Jeanne-Marie, known as Jamy. At school she continues the violin lessons she began in Dorfli, and is mercilessly teased when her grandfather sends her a gift of a little goat cheese. But it is when Heidi comes home for vacation accompanied by Jamy that things begin to happen and Heidi considers returning to Dorfli when she graduates to become the new schoolmistress.

The sequel title makes it obvious what happens at the end of Heidi Grows Up, but also features Jamy's little sister Marta. Both girls were raised by their sweet but sad grandmother, and after she passes away Marta doesn't wish to stay with their socialite parents, who spend most of their time partying and traveling for diplomatic purposes, leaving Marta alone. Instead she comes to live on the Alm with Heidi and her family, to the consternation of the Grandfather, who eventually comes to love her and she ceases to fear him. But she is constantly in fear of other things, and believes in all sorts of superstitions, which makes her especially nervous as Heidi's time arrives.

While these don't have the special touch that Spyri gave to her original, these are sweet, creditable sequels, and the source material is actually partially hers: Tritten borrowed incidents from other Spyri stories to incorporate into both tales (an incident with Jamy and Peter is taken from Moni the Goat Boy, for example). I only wish the other two volumes, Heidi: Grandmother and Heidi's Country, had been translated.

Here are the full verses to the song Peter sings that Marta likes so much.

 Finding Dorothy, Elizabeth Letts
I enjoyed this fictionalized account of the life of Maud Gage Baum, wife of the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The novel switches back and forth between 1938, in which an elderly Maud wangles her way onto the MGM lot to make certain the movie moguls don't ruin her husband's magical story and becomes interested in young Judy Garland, who is being pushed (to the point of being mistreated) into stardom by a rapacious stage mother and a lecherous studio executive, and Maud's memories of meeting, marrying and living with L. [Lyman] Frank Baum, who was a hard-working but mostly impractical dreamer, who skipped from being an actor and empresario to selling his family's oil product to managing a general store in the Dakota Territory to an unfulfilling job back in New York state until beginning his literary career with the first of many Oz books.

Maud lived a slightly unconventional lifestyle for a girl of her time, encouraged to run around with the boys by a suffragette mother who would write articles, papers, and books with Susan B. Anthony. Maud is sent off to Cornell University to be one of its first coeds and must face the harassment of male students; later her sister Julia marries badly and ends up suffering through bad times on a claim shanty in Dakota. Frank's dreamy ways and fun personality attract Maud immediately, but she ends up being the practical one of the family; while Frank works hard, disaster always seems to strike his enterprises, but he always takes time for dreaming and bringing up his four sons—they never had the daughter they so badly wanted—with happy memories.

Letts spins the tale of the Baums and of Frank's famous creation with a lively text. Maud herself is a bit of a stiff character, but Frank's magical qualities shine out from every page, and Letts' brisk portrayal of Matilda Gage is equally entertaining. She also brings her settings to life, whether it's Christmas at the Baum house or the bleak Dakota prairies (that stood in for Kansas) or the Gage neighborhood in New York. There are also memorable scenes in the 1938 narrative having to do with "Over the Rainbow" and its meaning to Maud, Judy Garland, and others who work on the film. The "star" system at the big studios of the 1930s is also given a grim once-over: it ruined Garland's life as it made her a star.

Not a perfect book, but the good parts outweigh the bad, and it does a good job of capturing the various eras.

 Food Will Win the War, Rae Katherine Eighmey
I've been looking for a book about the World War I homefront in the United States for a couple of years now and pretty much been unsuccessful until I found this book while looking for something else. It's not everything I wanted, but it gives a partial view of homefront America 1917-1918.

Eighmey, who wrote the historical cookbook Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen, consults diaries, news stories, and personal letters to bring the First World War in a farming community to life. She covers the buildup to war and then the continual effort put into rationing food for the public so that it could be saved to ship to the men (and few women) in the American Expeditionary Force and displaced citizens in Belgium and France. If you've heard of WWII Victory Gardens and thought they were only a WWII "thing," you'll learn differently here. Eventually the government suggested "wheatless meals" and "meatless meals," with only three meals a week with no restrictions. People were encouraged to grow potatoes for the war effort and eat rice instead, add nuts to meals to replace meat protein, and have egg dishes as a main course at supper.

While this book concentrates on Minnesota and particularly its rural community, it is representative of the sacrifices ordinary families made to support the war effort. This could be California or New Jersey or Texas. The volume is full of photographs, posters (complete with Columbia wearing a Liberty Cap, something that vanished in WWII ads), advertisements, and cartoons from the era, and of course filled with vintage recipes, some which sound interesting, and others which will make you wonder if people today could give up their hamburgers and steak and eat dishes like "rice au gratin" and creamed chicken instead. If you are interested in wartime homefront histories, food history, or both, you'll find a good deal to like in this book

 Attachments, Rainbow Rowell
I am just not cut out for chick-lit.

I admit, I picked this up based on the fact I mostly liked Fangirl and wanted to like Carry On, but found Simon too whiny, and that I found a quotation about autumn given by one of the protagonists: "October. My favorite month...[t]here's a chill in the air that lifts my heart and makes my hair stand on end. Every moment feels meant for me...I was born in February, but I come alive in October...October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!" How could you not love a woman who talks like this? And I love epistolary books and half the text is e-mails.

Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder work at the same newspaper, the Courier, one that has just made the jump to computers and the internet. Beth's living with a musician and reviews films. Jennifer, a copy editor, is happily married but is worried about fulfilling her husband's next wish: a child. Management is so fearful of the employees wasting time surfing for porn and goofing off on the web that they hire Lincoln O'Neill to read any e-mails flagged with "certain words." Lincoln's supposed to report Beth and Jennifer's brisk and funny (and irreverent) e-mails to management, but he can't. A bachelor still living with his mother years after the breakup with his first love, Lincoln enjoys the repartee between the two women, and especially loves Beth's wit. Soon he's falling in love with her and even checking out the club where her boyfriend performs.

I am so on the fence about this book it's not funny. Rowell has a way of writing about her that I enjoy, and it kept me turning pages to see what would happen, but I was irritated by the narrative. All these folks seemed to talk about was relationships and marriage. Okay, Beth likes good movies. Lincoln's an appealing geek who also likes movies and plays D&D. He's in contention with his sister, who wants him to move away from his clinging mother. Jennifer's afraid to get pregnant. Beth wants to tie the knot with her enigmatic guy and she's trying to save an old movie theater. Everything's awash with emotions. No one ever talks about anything but relationships, especially the women. I guess this is common in what's supposed to be a romance. As in all the romances, all the guys are adorable and all the gals are cute. It is so emotionally exhausting.

In the midst of this waterfall of emotions, two of my favorite parts are reliving the Y2K fracas (the story takes place 1999-2000) in the computing industry, and visiting Lincoln's friends Dave and Christine, who have this lovely warm marriage. The other stuff is so unreal: loud rock music, clubbing, buying expensive baby clothes and designer women's products. I could not relate to these people, except to the geeky side of Lincoln. The e-mails are a hoot, though.

 Smoky the Brave, Damien Lewis
Bill Wynne was attached to the 26th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron in World War II when he met a dirty mite of a dog that had been found in the jungles of the New Guinea island where he was stationed. Wynne loved dogs and took the fearless little animal that he named Smoky to his heart. She remained with him all during his war service and became known as the 26th's mascot, immortalized by a photo of her in Wynne's helmet in an issue of "Yank" magazine. Wynne taught her tricks and she kept up the morale of the squadron, and became the first known "therapy dog" taken to hospitals to amuse injured soldiers. In one instance, she even helped the squadron string telephone wire through a pipeline under a runway.

Lewis not only tells the story of Wynne and Smoky, but of the 26th and the essential work they did during the war and the dangers and hardships they faced outside of the Japanese troops trying to kill them: jungle insects, heat, varmints, thirst, tropical illnesses. Wynne lost friends, survived a serious fever, endured hurricanes and bombings, but always Smoky was there as his partner. She also endured illness and danger, plus the real threat of being left behind once the war was over.

This is well-told with a few gaffes by a non-American writer (no "fourth base" in baseball), but summarizes Wynne and Smoky's postwar adventures in about eight pages, devoting the whole book mainly to their wartime experiences. It's a good companion to Wynne's own story about Smoky, Yorkie Doodle Dandy, in which the last third of the book is devoted to their postwar experiences on local television and in Hollywood. Pick up this one to learn more about life in the European theatre and the work of the photo reconnaissance squadrons, but Wynne's book is a more personal look at their experience.

 The American Agent, Jacqueline Winspear
This newest of the Maisie Dobbs' mysteries begins a little slowly as Winspear immerses you in the sights, sounds, smells, and terrors of the Blitz. Maisie and her old friend Priscilla Partridge have volunteered for the ambulance corps and as the novel opens, they are being observed by young American reporter Catherine Saxon. Next day Maisie receives a shocking telephone call from her intelligence colleague Robert MacFarlane: after Saxon left them, she was murdered in her apartment. MacFarlane wants Maisie to investigate the crime, to be assisted by Mark Scott, the American agent who helped get her out of Munich. Maisie is also juggling a personal issue: her adoption of Anna, the young refugee living with her father and stepmother, is about to come up for review.

Once Maisie is on the case, the mystery deepens: who was the man Catherine kept meeting and fighting with, the man called "Scotty"? Could he have a connection with Mark Scott, who is uncharacteristically letting Maisie investigate on her own. And who was her "Stage-Door Johnny," as her roommates called Catherine's boyfriend, and could he have something to do with her death? Or could it be one of the roommates, or her landlady, or someone she's made an enemy of via her career?

While Maisie's investigation takes center stage, the Blitz and the reaction of ordinary British citizens to the hellfire is just as important as the mystery. Winspear brings the hellish nights vividly alive, and intertwines them into her plot, especially in the subplot involving the Partridges and young Tim's adjustment to his disability (see the previous book). She also emphasizes the yeoman work of the war correspondents and the women who fought to join "the boys' club" and prove themselves as competent as the men. And once again, Winspear is not allowing Maisie's life to remain static.

Not the best entry in the series mystery-wise, but outstanding in its portrayal of London and environs during the Blitz.

 Cool Hand Lou: My Fifty Years in Hollywood and on Broadway, Lou Antonio
Back when I was a teen with odd tastes, I didn't get "crushes" on contemporary music stars or actors; I preferred men, not boys. The cute series The Snoop Sisters provided me with Lou Antonio, with his nice dark hair and quick dark eyes (I'd seen him earlier, on Star Trek, but nothing clicked under the makeup he had to wear), and I have enjoyed his performances and his directorial efforts ever since. Recently I was listening to a podcast where the host interviews actors, but not the usual tired "pop" stars everyone else interviews today. When I was finished I scrolled through other episodes and was pop-eyed to find Mr. Antonio included on one, and was even more pop-eyed when I listened and realized he'd written a book! I read his book and rewatched The Snoop Sisters at the same time.

What a career! He actually wanted to be a ballplayer until a dislocated pitching arm killed that dream. Should he just stay in Oklahoma City and run his dad's chicken fried steak place? No, instead he went to New York City, studied acting under Lee Strasberg, and did stage and television series filmed in NYC until that option went away, then he moved to Hollywood and made a name not only in acting but in directing. His acting credits included Cool Hand Luke, four guest star appearances on the critically acclaimed Naked City, Route 66, The Defenders, Gunsmoke, and more. His director credits include The Partridge Family, Owen Marshall Counselor at Law, McCloud, McMillan and Wife, Something for Joey, Silent Victory: The Kitty O'Neill Story, and more. He's worked with stage greats like Geraldine Page and Colleen Dewhurst, and directed George C. Scott, Lee Remick, and Elizabeth Taylor. You follow him from struggling actor to noted director, from the gritty to the greats, with many goofs and triumphs along the way.

It's all written in an informal, conversational style that I found enjoyable, as if you were seated across from him at dinner and he's telling you stories. I could almost hear his voice as I read. Great book!

 Stirring the Pot With Benjamin Franklin: A Founding Father's Culinary Adventures, Rae Katherine Eighmey
Call it a biography of Benjamin Franklin with culinary interruptions.

Once again Eighmey tackles a historic figure in a different way, as in Abraham Lincoln in the Kitchen, by seeing what foods and drink that figure would have eaten during their lifetime, taken from mentions of food in their journals as well as typical menus of the era. In this way, we see a typical colonial/revolutionary diet across the boards, from Franklin's childhood as the son of a fairly poor soapmaker and chandler to his time in the salons of Paris eating nouvelle cousine. Eighmey extracts Franklin's diet from his legendary diary entry about arriving in Philadelphia with three loaves of bread to his name to the Franklin family's grocery orders to Franklin's letters home from Europe mentioning fashionable dinners. Each chapter is followed by a selection of foods from the era taken from cookbooks published at the time.

I didn't like this one quite as well as the Abraham Lincoln book. She has to do a lot of extrapolation and sometimes the recipe connections are tenuous, like the ones that accompany the chapter on Franklin's electrical experiments. However, if you're interested in "cookery," as the British say, or historic recipes, this should please.

Books Completed Since October 1

 Re-read: Rilla of Ingleside, L.M. Montgomery
Technically a re-read, but a new edition which is the complete book as published originally, not the edited version that was released in 1985 in the Bantam set of "Anne of Green Gables" books republished after the success of the Kevin Sullivan miniseries.

Anne's youngest daughter, Rilla—Bertha Marilla Blythe—is now fifteen. Like most girls her age, she is active, vivacious, and mostly carefree. She's also pretty and knows it, and is beginning to see her old playmate Kenneth Ford as something else than the boy she used to romp with in Rainbow Valley. Anne wonders if she will ever be serious. But on the night Rilla is invited to her first dance, a night in which her feelings for Ken Ford begin to change, it is announced that England has declared war on Germany after the slaying of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Suddenly life changes for everyone: Rilla's brothers and older male friends enlist except for Walter, her dreamy and artistic sibling, who is afraid his reluctance to kill will endanger his compatriots; her sisters volunteer for the Red Cross; and her mother and Susan Baker roll bandages and hold teas. And then Rilla, who is not fond of babies at all, rescues a newborn whose father has gone off to war and reluctantly takes him on as a responsibility.

There are now many books around about homefront life during World War I, since they have been written to commemorate the 100th anniversary, but Rilla of Ingleside was a rara avis of its time, and still one of the few novels written from a Canadian homefront point of view, written by someone who endured it. While there are humorous moments (Susan's sparring with her pessimistic cousin, the Blythes' mercurial cat Doc, youthful mistakes in raising her "war baby"), this book brings life in homefront WWI to vivid life: the dread of waiting for telegrams, the fearful perusal of the newspaper, the knowledge of knowing that any moment you may receive a missive telling you a loved one has died, being a man who has just received a white feather [a symbol that since he isn't serving he's a coward]. One particularly touching subplot in the book involves Jem Blythe's little dog Monday. A beautiful book.

 Back to the Front, Stephen O'Shea
It was natural for me to go from Rilla to this book. The author is a Canadian who admits right off that he he is not a "history buff" (just as Rilla moved in her own small sphere) and had no interest in the First World War until he moved to Paris in 1981 and accompanied a friend on a weekend trip to the Somme battlefield. O'Shea was flabbergasted to find that not only can you still tell where the battles were fought 64 years later, despite the population having grown and the fields having been cultivated (not to mention another war occurring), but that French farmers still plow up supplies from that war: gas masks, horse harnesses, shoes, hip flasks, ammunition, even the occasional live mine, etc. It inspired him to make multiple visits to France from 1985 through 1995 and walk the entire Western Front from Nieuport, Belgium to the Swiss border.

O'Shea proceeds from battle site to battle site, observing the current physical site and then adding the historical detail of pompous, know-it-all officers who sent men to their deaths (if you are a Douglas Haig fan you should avoid this book) and the many times bored and vermin-ridden soldiers in the trenches with the horrifying fates that awaited them: festering wounds, burned-out lungs from poison gas, crippling injuries, dismemberment and death, surrounded by screaming horses and mules shattered by shrapnel and bullets, and appalled by the bored tourists who visit the sites just because it's something to do.

Keep in mind that this is a memoir of his experience and not a real history. His descriptions of the battlefields and the war are real and immediate, but even after having lived in France he has a poor opinion of both the French and the Belgians and he often sounds snooty. His descriptions of how the officers in all the armies wasted human lives turn into lectures against war; the descriptions themselves should have been left to stand as a monument to that waste. This is an interesting way to acquaint yourself with the major battles of World War I, but be aware that there are some prejudices involved.

 Re-read: The Singing Tree, Kate Seredy
Since I had already re-read Rilla and continued with World War I reading with the O'Shea book, I thought I would complete a circle and reacquaint myself with another favorite, Seredy's sequel to The Good Master, the story of the two cousins Jansci and Kate Nagy, who live on Jansci's father's big ranch on the puzta, the Hungarian plains. Jansci, fifteen, is old enough to have his own small herd of horses, and Kate, a year younger, is growing into a young woman interested in going to dances. As the story opens, they are preparing for a neighborhood celebration, the wedding of Peter Hodi and Mari Vidor—but as they head home from the event, news comes of the assassination of an archduke in faraway Sarajevo.

Rapidly, things change: the Nagy horses and herders are conscripted into the Army, and finally Kate's father and Marton Nagy as well. Spoiled Lily Kormos comes to live on the ranch, but after a bumpy start, the cousins find her a good friend. Women and children and the elderly must get in the harvest on their own, and the cousins are called to drive up to the mountains to fetch Mother's elderly parents and there, among a crowd of refugees and the presence of an Army hospital, come face to face with the real horror of war.

This is a wonderful book which portrays war as terrible without going into hurtful details, with memorable supporting characters: Moses and Sarah Mandelbaum, the Jewish owners of the village store; Mother's stalwart parents; the six Russian prisoners of war who work as farmhands and the six German children that are sent as refugees from Berlin. When I read this again as an older child, I realized from my history lessons that if I had lived at that time, Jansci and Kate would have been my enemies, since their government was fighting against the Allies. A sobering thought, and one Seredy makes throughout the book, as when one of the German boys writes a puzzled letter to his mother wondering how the Russians can be enemies when "they are just big men like Papa," that behind bellicose politicians and generals there are just plain people who, like their "enemies," want to make a living, raise their children, tend their crops or business, and not wage war at all. Worth reading whether you are a child or an adult.

 Re-read: Beautiful Joe: an Autobiography, Margaret Marshall Saunders
I've had a copy of Beautiful Joe since I was old enough to read Western Publishing's line of Whitman Books. However the version I originally read was light years away from the original story.

Saunders was brought up in an animal-loving 19th century Canadian family and the rampant animal abuse of the era horrified her. When an American humane group offered a prize for the best novel portraying kindness to animals, Saunders wove a tale around a real-life Canadian dog who had his tail and ears chopped off by a cruel owner, set her story in Maine, and wrote a classic that all who have read it will not forget. But the book has gone through several changes throughout the years, the outright portrayal of the animal cruelty being excised from my children's addition, some of the farm chapters tossed out in favor of a chapter about a pet crow, and modern editions which remove the Victorian symbolism. I went through each edition until finding the Applewood edition, which was the complete novel as originally written, and this, the Broadview edition, is even more expanded, with footnotes, the crow chapter included in an appendix, and even a sequence where Bruno the farm dog is saved instead of destroyed.

I doubt very many parents would allow their kids to read the original edition today, although it was considered instructive and wonderful for older children in the 19th century, and even today, the story is not for the fainthearted. I'm an animal lover, and as hard as it is to get through some passages, I have loved all the characters since childhood—the Morris family, Cousin Harry, the Woods, the other Morris dogs Jim and Billy, Fleetfoot the wise colt, and more—and I love having the chance to have all aspects of the story complete with some additional material supplied about the humane movement in America. This is a classic in every sense of the word.

 The Gilded Age in New York, 1870-1910, Esther Crain
I am a history buff, but my favorite period of history has always been what is called the late Victorian/Edwardian era in Great Britain and the Gilded Age/Progressive Era here in the United States, so you bet I grabbed this book the moment I saw it. Much of the information in it I already know, having other history books about it, but I still found this book captivating because of its huge complement of photographs and woodcuts from the time period.

Crain divides the volume into different sections which talk about a specific topic: how the wealthy lived (and the difference--and feud--between "old money" and "new money"), the emerging middle class, and the poverty-stricken. There are sections about amusements of the era, with photos of Coney Island that I've never seen before, another portion devoted to crime and punishment, and, throughout the various sections, just how New York itself grew as a city from the tip of Manhattan Island to finally fill up the space once devoted to tenant farms and open land. With that in mind, the final section devotes itself to Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx, which eventually came together to form the New York metropolitan area. Special pullouts (a tiny bit hard to read with white ink on black paper) are devoted to things like famous crime of passion cases (think Evelyn Nesbit), the violent conflict between the old Metropolitan Police and the new City of New York Police, the Blizzard of 1888 which convinced the city to finally build a subway, Tammany Hall politicians, etc.

I must, must, must reserve some praise for the hand-colored black-and-white prints included in this book. Even if you are a history buff, it is sometimes hard to see past the flat, monochrome photographs that were taken in that era, and garish, badly hand-colored photographs are not my cup of tea. But the ones included in this book have been done by a talented professional and the result is that the photos have come alive to the point where you can almost hear the pedestrians chattering, the horses clopping, the iron-clad wagon wheels clashing against the pavement, the pushcart sellers hawking their wares, and feel the breeze coming off the bookended rivers. You immediately notice a striding woman with a scowl on her face--what's gone wrong with her day? you wonder--and children's faces, and flags fluttering in the breeze, and the attractively-colored signs on the shops and stores. Wow.

 Doctor Who: The American Adventures, Justin Richards
I admit, I was disappointed in this book. I didn't realize it was written for children (or if it wasn't, it certainly reads like it was). The narratives in all of the stories were rather simplistic: something odd would happen during a historical period in the US, the Doctor would show up, and then he'd find something to remedy the situation. He runs into some people who live in a world of horse-drawn vehicles and firelight and they don't seem more surprised that he has gadgets that light up that they've never seen before. The family in the Oregon Trail is particularly perplexing in this regard. And, perhaps it is hard to develop character in short stories, but all the characters in the stories seem particularly two-dimensional, especially the young girl in the Oregon Trail tale, as if she was just thrust in the story for some "girl power."

My favorite story in this collection was the modern one, taking place in Florida at an amusement park. There was an element of mystery and danger missing from the other stories. "Ghosts of New York," taking place during the construction of the subway, also isn't bad, with the Doctor and a "sandhog" trying to solve the mystery of deceased people turning up in the tunnels. The others are just pedestrian, and there's nothing particularly that marks these as 12th Doctor stories as, say 5th Doctor stories, except for references to his eyebrows.

I am rating this a 3 because children might enjoy it. It is more like a 2 - 2 1/2 for adults, depending on how much you want some new WHO tales.

 A Study in Scarlet Women, Sherry Thomas
"What if Sherlock Holmes was a woman?"

That's the interesting premise of this book and it begins with a foreboding prologue--and then suddenly the narrative seems to turn into a Victorian farce with a philandering husband and an innocent young girl. The story is then picked up from the point of view of the young woman's sister--but don't get too interested in her; she disappears (except for mention by the main character) for the remainder of the book.

Charlotte Holmes is an intelligent young woman in an era when a woman should be either ornamental or maternal (she is of the former school, a picture-book-perfect Victorian heroine). She eschews society and parties and instead desperately wants some higher education and longs to become headmistress of a school. Her father tricks her into thinking that if she is not married by age 25, he will sponsor her education. When he breaks his word, Charlotte takes desperate measures to make sure she is not marriageable, hoping this will force her father to keep his promise. Instead, all she does is create scandal, and therefore she is forced to make her own way in the world.

The most interesting character in the book, sadly, is not Charlotte, but the widowed Mrs. Watson she meets, who will pick up the threads of Charlotte's messy life and give it some purpose. For some time, Charlotte has been secretly posing as a gentleman named Sherlock Holmes, forwarding her suspicions via mail to the local police when facts reported about deaths in the newspapers don't make sense. Inspector Treadles of the police investigates the crimes based on her letters and usually finds he's--uh, she's--correct. In this case, "Sherlock" suspects that three unrelated deaths (including the unexpected passing of the woman who accused her of adultery) are indeed the work of one person...but can the police make the connection?

When you are reading a book whose synopsis sounded fascinating, but which you eventually approach with the attitude of "Oh, God, I have to finish reading this book because I promised," things are not good. Charlotte is intriguing, but her character never seems to come to any type of life--even the humorous asides about her healthy appetite don't round her out, and the romance portion of the book is pedestrian. Plus it seems inconceivable that Charlotte, while socially awkward, would not have known that the situation she got herself in would result in more problems for her--and her family--rather than forcing a decision. I can't believe that she thought it was her only solution.

In addition, one of the key aspects of the original Holmes stories is that he had more imagination and reasoning powers than the police; frequently they were shown at odds. No one could dislike Inspector Treadles; he's good-natured but persistent at his job, a good husband who thinks his wife is entitled to intelligence and outside interests, but his investigations are no different than any other "dedicated cop" character than I've read in other books--certainly not the slipshod investigators the classic Holmes despises.

Once Charlotte was finally "in place" in Baker Street, the story did pick up a bit, but I was actually relieved when I finished the book, and at this point I can't even remember "whodunnit." The characters and plot did not excite my imagination as it should have, and I would not recommend this book to a Sherlock fan.

 Houseboat Girl, Lois Lenski
Patsy Foster was born upon a houseboat in the Mississippi River, but now, at eleven, she's been living in a small town near Paducah, Illinois, for two years, attending school and making friends. So it is initially difficult when her restless father, a "born riverman," buys a new houseboat and uproots the family—Mother, older sister Milly, younger siblings Dan and Bunny, Patsy's pet chickens, and a dog they were given—so they can run down the Mississippi and he can earn his preferred living, catching and selling fish. Then Patsy comes to love her life, learning to swim, the ever-changing riverbank scenery, meeting new people (and even making some enemies that become friends when they stop for a while and her father incurs the wrath of a man who thinks he owns the fishing rights to the area)—but she still longs to be settled. Is there a way she and her father can compromise?

Children today might be surprised that in the era of early television, rock'n'roll and Elvis Presley, the beginnings of the Space Race, and the Cold War that people still lived such a relatively primitive life (Mrs. Foster does have a washing machine and electric lights, but they can only be used when they are moored somewhere with electric wiring). Patsy and her family and friends amuse themselves simply and use their imaginations in play, running barefoot unless they are visiting town. Watching television is a rare treat mentioned in one chapter. Not one of Lenski's best, but a book addressing a little-known part of society.

 In Search of Centennial: A Journey With James A. Michener, John Kings
This is a coffee-table sized but thin book written by one of the research assistants that helped Michener research his epic novel Centennial, my favorite of the Michener books that I've read. If you are at all interested in the writing process of a historical novel then this is quite revealing. Michener and his two assistants did research in Colorado and elsewhere for more than 18 months before he even sat down to start writing, and even then he confirmed things as he wrote and had assistants and family (his wife also did a great amount of the research) continually looking up facts and figures. He drove along the cattle trails written about in "The Longhorns," visited with the Native American tribes he was writing about to get the details of their 18th and 19th century lives correct, visited St. Louis to make certain the Bockweiss segment was factual, etc. The book includes numerous photographs, including ones taken by Michener in 1937 when he first considered writing a book set in Colorado. The final chapter is about his input into making the miniseries Centennial. Plus there are pages from his voluminous notebooks and four corrected typewritten pages from "The Longhorns."

Probably just for Centennial or Michener fans, but still a great insight into the craft of writing.

 The Land of the English People, Alicia Street
Not sure why I bought this slim volume for children that is part of a people and places series for different countries and cultures, but I certainly did enjoy it. It's a combination geography/sociology/history book that was originally written after World War II and updated in the late Fifties, with much of the text still applicable to postwar Britain. It does a nice job of explaining how the different elements of the English countryside determined how those people would live, and has a neat job, using a fictional American ex-soldier and an Englishman to explain why Americans and English see the world so differently. Interesting look at England before the Cold War heated up and smog was banished from London.

 The Happy Hollisters at Mystery Mountain, Jerry West
The Hollister clan is still traveling in a schoolbus they acquired on a previous adventure as Mr. Hollister looks for more Southwestern items to stock his store The Trading Post at the Hollister home town of Shoreham. When Mrs. Hollister buys little Sue a cowboy outfit in New Mexico, all the other kids—eldest Pete, Pam, Ricky, and Holly—want one, too, which precipitates them on two new adventures: to find some ancient stone dolls in a secret mountain location as told to them by their new friends Helen and Jack Moore, and to discover what's happened to the stolen sheep of their father's old friend Frank Vega, whose wife Maria makes the cowboy outfits the kids like.

The Hollisters never quit moving! Besides the mysteries involved, the kids take an airplane ride, attend a fiesta at a school, and go on a trail ride that precipitates them into danger—and there's even a kidnapping! They sure don't spend their time face down with their eyes on a tablet or staring at a television, that's for sure.

As a modern reader, I'm still impressed by how egalitarian these books are. Yeah, okay, Delores Vega and Helen and Pam get to rustle up the food on the trail ride while Jack and Pete make the fire, but since they have lost their supplies (their horses were deliberately let loose), Delores must find food for the kids using wildcrafting, and she manages admirably, plus she's been entrusted with the safety of the other children on the trail ride, where in most 1950s books a boy would be given that task. (Her brother Diego has had to stay home and ride fence.) When the kids have their airplane ride, all of them are invited to take a turn at the wheel, not just the boys, and Ricky is ribbed for his bad flying just like Pam. Plus the Vega family and their foreman Truchas don't have stagy Spanish accents or speak some dialect gibberish that approximates a Mexican way of talking. If something is referenced like a Mexican hat dance, it's part of celebrating the Vegas' Hispanic heritage.

These books are simple to read but yet full of adventures, with each chapter ending on a cliffhanger so you just want to go on. And you will.

(For Hollister fans: this is the book where the family acquires Domingo the donkey.)

 Christmas in the Crosshairs, Gerry Bowler

 Victoria, Daisy Goodwin
I think when most people think of Queen Victoria, they envision the faded monochrome photographs of the overweight, dour woman in black who gave her name to the latter half of the British 19th century and who imperiously and humorlessly reigned over an empire. It is such an ingrained icon that it may be difficult to imagine that once Victoria was a romantic young girl like many teenage girls, one who loved to dance and stay up late at parties, to get up at noon and try on new dresses and hairstyles, chafing against a domineering parent. Known as "Drina" (her first name was Alexandrina) as a girl, she was under the thumb of her ambitious German mother and her mother's British advisor Sir John Conroy, who hoped that Victoria's uncle William would die while the girl was still in her minority so that they could be appointed as regents. Victoria, as she told everyone to call her after she became queen, despised Conroy and the influence he held over her mother. Yet Victoria would also fall victim to the influences of a man—one who was reluctant to do so—her beloved "Lord M," William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, the prime minister.

This is Goodwin's book based upon the research she performed, with major input from young "Drina's" journals, while writing the new British historical series Victoria, written as a novel, which covers Victoria's life from her sixteenth birthday (in the prologue) to her marriage proposal to Albert. Both the new television series and the book play up Victoria's attachment to "Lord M." as more an at-first daughter/father relationship (since the Duke of Kent, Victoria's father, was not even a memory to her) that became a real-life romance (at least in Victoria's mind), than the straight queen/advisor always portrayed. Goodwin's prose is brisk and literate, always leaving you wanting just one more page, and Victoria-the-girl determined to be a good queen against a host of naysayers including her "Uncle Cumberland" who would love to declare her unfit to rule are absorbing. As a story that humanizes the young Victoria and simplifies some of the early goings on in her court ("the Bedchamber crisis") for instance), this is a good starter. However, it is fiction and if you are looking for a comprehensive biography, this is not the book.

 Brooklyn on Fire: A Mary Handley Mystery, Lawrence H. Levy
By the time I was about a third through with this book, I had to go back and check to see if the author was indeed a guy. Otherwise I would have wondered if our heroine's name was Mary Sue Handley.

I picked this up as a Vine book because I read many Victorian/Edwardian/early 20th century mysteries. A young woman setting herself up as a "consulting detective" (like her hero, Sherlock Holmes) in 1890 New York sounded like just the ticket. I hadn't read the first book in the series, Second Street Station, but the characters seemed pretty self-explanatory. Mary is from a middle-class Irish family; she has a policeman brother whom she can outwit at chess; her mother complains about her not being married; she's blonde, blue eyed and pretty and basically has educated herself via her brother's encyclopedia and reading voraciously (thus references to Maisie Dobbs—trust me, this is no Maisie Dobbs-type novel), and in the previous book she solved something called the Goodrich mystery and now all of New York knows who she is. But it's been quite some time since the Goodrich case and she's relieved when a woman named Emily Worsham appears asking her to find out if her deceased uncle might have been murdered.

In a trice, Mary is catapulted into a mystery involving—although she doesn't know it at first—the real-life fight between New York and Brooklyn (Brooklyn wishes to remain its own city; New York wishes to annex it) which includes (of course) dirty politicians, a few New York millionaires (Levy involves just about every famous name in his story: the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, Leland Stanford, etc.), an elderly lady who talks with her cats, a flipped-out method actress and her adoring friend, a supposedly dead husband, an OCD lawyer—and, if all these characters were too tame for you, a character who seems to come from another book entirely, one of those Law & Order: SVU creepy people by way of a noir mystery, a hired killer who gets sexually aroused by murder and fire. (And yes, it's described in detail. Ew.)

Our Mary forges on, especially when she discovers the coffin of the "dead uncle" is filled with rocks. She follows clue after clue, fends attackers off with ju jitsu which she learned from a Chinese instructor (and then later in the book it's revealed she also knows "the French art of kickboxing known as savatte), is so plucky that most people have no problem with the fact that it's 1890—a time where a woman can't walk down the street unescorted without being looked at askance—and she's a "lady detective," and is so brave and forthright that George Vanderbilt falls madly in love with her and at one point is willing to give up building his dream home, Biltmore House, for her. Or that in another chapter Mary is shot in the back and the bullet hits nothing vital and the blood transfusion she gets from George works even though doctors back then didn't know about blood typing and there's a 50 percent chance she might have died. (Incidentally the guy who shot her runs away into the woods and gets killed by a bear...honest.)

Let's not leave out the fact that Levy peppers his text with myriad little facts about the era or quotes from writers as if he couldn't bear to leave any of his research behind (in one chapter, Mary and George go to Richmond, Virginia, where Mary brightly observes that Richmond has electric trolleys, the first ones in the United States, and Manhattan is so behind the times). Or that no matter how much research he did, modern verbiage pops up to kick you out of the story (like the gay character who refers to himself as gay when that wouldn't be a term until 80 years later).

I'd give this book two stars, one because Mary was kind of a neat character who needed a much different author (Carolyn Keene would have done, since I kept thinking of Nancy Drew), and the other star for the laughs it provided to my husband and I when I discussed it with him.

 A Newbery Halloween, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh
There are a dozen more-or-less scary (for children) stories in this neat volume that followed A Newbery Christmas. It includes a Madeleine L'Engle short story I had heard about but never read, "Poor Little Saturday," in which she drew on her Southern roots and ghost tales from her relatives to produce a story about a haunted house. Some of the stories are more nostalgic than scary (even if there is a little frisson of danger when Ramona Quimby puts on her "baddest bad witch" mask), like ""The Baddest Witch in the World" and the Halloween chapter from Eleanor Estes' The Moffats. There are creepy stories the don't even involve Halloween, just mysterious spirits, taking place in China, Japan, and Genoa, Italy. Elizabeth meets the fey Jennifer on Halloween night in Konigsburg's "A Halloween to Remember, and Virginia Hamilton recalls an African-American family's tense Halloween in "The Year Halloween Happened One Day Early." The creepiest story in the collection is "The Witch's Eye," in which two girls attempt to get rid of the titular object.

Another great Newbery collection with just the right mix of treats and tricks!