Books Completed Since September 1

 Bonzo's War, Clare Campbell
I wish I could say this was a scintillatingly-written book, but it's rather pedestrian; however, the subject itself is fascinating: how London's pets made out during the Blitz and the remainder of World War II. Some jaw-dropping facts are contained here: that when it became inevitable that war would come, the British government recommended that pets who could not be taken safely to shelters should be put down—they were afraid animals would panic and harm themselves and others. The animal-loving English actually took this to heart and had so many hundreds of animals destroyed that veterinarians' offices were piled waist-deep with dog and cat carcasses, and they ran out of room to bury them!

There were protests, of course, and charities sprang up to rehome animals, and gradually the orders were rescinded. Other owners just ignored the instructions and found ways to keep their pets with them. To their surprise, some animals, once the first bombs were over, fell back into routines. Several even warned their families of air attacks—if a dog made a particular howl or a cat went to hide, the humans knew bombs were imminent.

Campbell has taken her stories directly from the newspapers and pamphlets of the day, and the writing is rather cut-and-dried. But it's such a novel subject about the second World War that if you are a pet lover or interested in more obscure details about a war subject, you might find this one interesting.

 The Glass Sentence, S.E. Grove
This is an inventive first book of a trilogy for young adults in which an alternate Earth has experienced what they called "the Great Disruption" in the year 1799. Abruptly what we would know as the thirteen original states has become "New Occident" and remains on the East Coast. The remainder of the earth has reverted to other "ages"; prehistoric ages sit side by side with medieval times and Renaissance eras. Countries like France and Germany simply vanished. Ancient Egypt exists in Africa. Our protagonist Sophia Tims lives with her uncle Shadrack Elli in 1896 Boston, having no idea where her parents, explorers who vanished, are. New Occident has decided to close its borders to everyone but citizens, and as well as anyone without proper papers, which means Sophia's parents won't be able to return.

One day Sophia sees a boy from the western Baldlands being exhibited in a cage. Incensed, she returns hoping to set him free, but he's gone. When she returns home, Uncle Shadrack is gone and his map room—he is a cartologer, a special type of cartographer, with a collection of maps of all types on all materials—has been trashed—and the boy she was trying to free, Theo, is there. However, a special set of maps he entrusted to Sophia is safe in her room, and she finds a note: "Sophia, go to Veressa."

Soon she and Theo are on the run with horrifying men with scars around their mouths pursuing them, and with the tale of a terrifying being called a Lachrima ringing in their ears. They're helped by a brother and sister pirate team, but there's no doubt there will be a time they can't outrun their pursuers.

This is a super fantasy, with some fantastic world building. The idea of maps that can be only activated by certain interactions, and that maps exist that can let you experience a certain time and place are fascinating. The idea of an earth fractured into different eras, and a "United States" that followed a completely different evolution, is also intriguing. Sophia and Theo have many adventures, including in a frozen wasteland and in a cave full of rapidly growing vegetation. The only problem is that Sophia herself is slightly bland. She has this grand talent of being talented with the maps, and she bravely tackles all obstacles, but personally Theo, the brother/sister pirates, and even her Uncle Shadrack overwhelm her personality.

Looking forward to reading the sequels.

 Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, Barbara Reynolds
I started reading Lord Peter Wimsey in college, but had never read much about his creator until a few years ago when I read the first volume of her letters (the second is still very far down in a pile of books).

This book captures Sayers in all her moods: the precocious child who learned Latin at five, who was producing plays in her teens, who was the liveliest girl in her class at Oxford, who had two tempestuous love affairs (one that produced a son who was brought up by her cousin, a boy who thought Dorothy was his aunt), who wrote Peter Wimsey as someone who had what she had not (but soon tired of him), who became a scholar of Dante without planning to.

I was awed by Sayers' creativeness and energy, especially as a girl and young woman. I don't know when she had time to sleep! I envied her the time at Oxford. However it affected her writing, though, I'm sorry she let herself get entangled in two love affairs that sounded toxic, especially the first (a rich source for her when she wrote Strong Poison, but she was soundly lampooned in her lover's book using the same background). (Her later marriage started out well until her husband became an invalid and they began getting on each other's nerves.) I would have loved to have known her, although I'm sure if she would have found me quite shallow.

 The Happy Hollisters and the Indian Treasure, Jerry West
In this fourth book of the Happy Hollisters series, a lost dog starts the kids on new adventures. Blackie belongs to Edward "Indy" Roades, a Native American originally from New Mexico and formerly a professional baseball player. When he tells Mr. Hollister that a member of his tribe is liquidating his store, The Chaparral,  Mr. Hollister wonders if he can't buy up the stock for his own store, The Trading Post. Of course the whole family travels out to New Mexico, only to find that The Chaparral was burgled the night before. The Hollisters feel sad for the proprietor and want to help find who stole his stock. They also wonder if they can discover the location of a lost turquoise mine that would bring the tribe much prosperity.

Of all the Hollisters' novels I've read so far, this one has aged the most in terms and some behaviors. The Native American characters are called "Indians" as they would have when the book was published, and "redskin" is used as a descriptor once,  as well as a joke about "going on the warpath," although neither is done in a disparaging manner. Several older Native characters speak in "Tonto" style. However, these are the story's worst faults. In my youth I knew elderly Italian people who spoke in "Tonto" style, too. All the middle-aged or younger Native characters speak the same grammatical English as the Hollisters and other white characters. The Yumatan tribe is treated respectfully, and the author consulted the governor of an actual New Mexico tribe as well as another Native source to make certain his characters were portrayed in a fashion that was correct and treated everyone with dignity. In fact, I was pleased that in one scene, some of the Native girls giggle when Pam and Holly join their brothers in shooting bows and arrows; they tell the girls it is a boys' game. Although both Pam and Holly wish to continue their archery, they decide not to because it would be rude to their hosts. Today perhaps they would make some "girl power" statement, instead they remain respectful of the tribe's customs.

These are nice adventure/mystery stories for younger children, with no mayhem/dystopia/death themes. The terms discussed in the previous paragraph would make a good springboard for talking with kids about how times and terms have changed, along with giving them a suspenseful story.

 Re-read: Lassie Come-Home, Eric Knight
Lassie! Such a smarmy show! is a comment I've heard for years. (Not my opinion, thank  you!) So why would anyone want to read the probably smarmy novel that inspired it?

In a word, because it's not smarmy. Instead it's the story of an impoverished collier and his family during the Depression who finally must sell the one valuable thing they own to the local nobleman and dog-fancier: a tricolor collie named Lassie. Lassie, however, understands neither short funds or new owners, and keeps escaping the Duke's grounds to go home to her real master, young Joe Carraclough. Finally, the Duke takes Lassie up to his Scottish estate, but the dog never forgets her quest, and, once escaped, must make her way over more than four hundred miles of wild land, unfriendly people, savage guard dogs, and bad weather to return to the family she loves.

Knight, who was born in Yorkshire but raised in the United States, never forgot the poor colliers who raised beautiful dogs only to have to sell them to feed their families. The story is tough, uncompromising, and neither anthropormorphizes its heroine or makes her a sentimental figure.

I re-read this because I managed to find the version I read so long ago in my elementary school library, with the wonderful Cyrus Leroy Baldridge illustrations that show Lassie as Knight described her, not as the movies changed her. A wonderful edition to find, from the People's Book Club.

 The Book of Dust, Volume 1: La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman
Before Lyra Belaqua came in possession of the alethiometer, indeed before she was ever a ward of Jordan College in Oxford, England, she was a sought-after baby looking for shelter. Her father, Lord Asriel, puts her into the keeping of the Priory of St. Rosamund, where she is befriended by Malcolm Polstead, eleven-year-old son of the tavern-keeper of the Trout. When authorities coming looking for baby Lyra, Malcolm becomes very protective of her. Soon there are other sinister things afoot, like an organization at Malcolm's school that rewards the children for tattling on their parents or other elders who disobey the Church.

But it's a flood of epic proportions that will put Malcolm and his little canoe "La Belle Sauvage"—and the Trout's scullery maid Alice, a sarcastic girl Malcolm dislikes—to the test when they must rescue Lyra from the priory and keep her away from the authorities tracking her down.

This is the first of a trilogy companion to Pullman's His Dark Materials series. It's very slow-moving, but if you are invested in Pullman's universe it is a fascinating look at Lyra's very earliest days and the first friends who keep her safe despite the odds. Malcolm is intelligent, steadfast, and quick-witted, but also caring and nurturing, and a joy to read about. There aren't as colorful characters as was in Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, no armored bears or airship captains, so the narrative is tamer, but I enjoyed it, especially the exciting second half.

(The next book will join Lyra as a student at Jordan College after the events of the first trilogy, and I wonder what adventures she will be facing.)

 James Thurber, Robert E. Morseberger
I picked up not one but two books of commentary about James Thurber at the last library book sale, this one Volume 62 of Twyne's United States Authors Series. I've read Thurber since I fell in love with the series My World and Welcome to It in 1969, but have never studied his work, so I found this enjoyable. I had never thought, for instance, about his change of tone in his work from the years when he was in an unhappy marriage to when he was involved in a happier marriage. Chapters cover Thurber's imaginative work like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and other fanciful tales, his chronicles of the "eternal war" between the sexes, Thurber's animals (especially the infamous "Thurber dog"), his involvement in the "Red Scare" with his play The Male Animal (written with his Ohio State comrade Elliot Nugent), his complicated relationship with his relatives and upbringing in Columbus, Ohio, his cartoons, and his wordplay, especially the latter that occupied his mind as he slowly lost his eyesight. Much to think about...probably need to re-read everything!

 Murder Lo Mein, Vivien Chien
In the third of the Noodle Shop mysteries, Lana Lee is enjoying her role as manager of the Ho-Lee Noodle House, even if her new romance with police detective Adam Trudeau seems to have cooled. She has entered the family's restaurant in Cleveland's Best Noodle contest, which will be held at Asia Village, and is certain that with Peter Huang doing the cooking, Ho-Lee is a cinch to win, even if one of the judges is picky Norman Pan, who hardly has a nice word to say about anyone.

It seems someone else has noticed that as well, since after the first day of the contest, Pan was murdered after receiving a threatening note in a fortune cookie.

Of course Lana and her best friend Megan Riley become involved with figuring out whodunnit, even if investigating detective Trudeau is less than pleased, especially after a second person is threatened. Will the killer be unmasked? Will the contest ever finish? And will Lana ever find out why Adam is holding her at arm's length?

I love this series because it's not about your typical white heroine in a quaint small town with a quaint small business, and Lana's dynamics with her go-getter mom, laid back dad, and law-student sister—and in this offering, her grandmother, who's a lot more than she seems. Enjoyable characters and fairly perplexing mysteries.

 The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden, Karina Yan Glaser
The Vanderbeeker kids (twins Jessie and Isa, Oliver, Hyacinth, and Laney) have always considered their upstairs neighbors Miss Josie and Mr. Jeet to be like grandparents, so they are devastated when Mr. Jeet has a second stroke. To take their minds off their worries, Jessie, Oliver, Hyacinth, and Laney (Isa is at music camp) decide to do as Miss Josie has always urged them, clean out the junk-strewn vacant lot between their brownstone and the neighborhood church to make a park out of it. When they try to get the minister's permission (it's church property) to do so, they discover realtors may be trying to buy it up. But the kids don't let it stop them—and so it's a race to finish their project by the time Mr. Jeet gets out of the hospital. If, however, he ever does get out, as his first days do not do well.

This is a good-natured take on a Secret Garden theme, emphasizing teamwork, the benefits of nature, and even the danger of judging a book by its cover, as happens with Oliver's bete noire, Herman Huxley. The Vanderbeekers are kids you'd love to know; even though they quarrel, get bored, and can act snotty like real kids, at heart they are good people who manage to make others (including old friends from the first novel in the series like Bennie at the bakery, Oliver's basketball-loving friend Angie, and even reclusive Mr. Beiderman, who pops up with more surprises in this go-'round) believe in their cause. Even though I wouldn't have wanted to grub around in a garden in midsummer, I was rooting for the kids all the way!

 The President and the Assassin, Scott Miller
Having been slightly disappointed by The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City, I enjoyed much more this account of William McKinley and his assassin, Leon Czolgosz, told in alternating chapters. The book begins with McKinley's fateful last day of life at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, then segues to his campaign of 1896, which he conducted from his own home. McKinley, a Civil War veteran and middle-class family man, gets into politics via shrewd Mark Hanna. Leon Czolgosz (who also called himself Fred Neiman), was the rather indolent son of hardworking and hardscrabble Polish immigrants. McKinley ran for office and became President just as Americans, especially those of the upper class, sought to end isolationism and make the United States a world power; Czolgosz came of age resenting the upper class who forced the poor to work for pennies and became involved in not just revolution, but anarchism, taking as his hero the killer of Italian King Umberto I, Gaetano Bresci. As each chapter passes, the reasons the two men came together on September 6, 1901, become more understandable. Meanwhile, in the text is revealed the rise of American imperialism, the start and battles of the Spanish-American War, the conflict over whether to annex the Philippines and Cuba, the causes and the movers behind the anarchist movement, and portraits of historical figures like Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Hanna, and Emma Goldman.

As always, the political details sometimes made my eyes glaze over, but for the most part this reads somewhat like a novel in moving to its inevitable climax.

 50 Best Mysteries, edited by Eleanor Sullivan
As a whole I enjoyed the stories in this book, especially the earlier ones. The fifty stories were picked from the 1940s-1980s issues of "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine" and, as the editor explains, she tried to pick ones that had not become famous or had become anthologized often; she wanted fifty unique tales. The stories range from ones told by noted mystery writers—John Dickson Carr, Patricia Highsmith, Ngaio Marsh (featuring her sleuth Roderick Allyn), Ruth Rendell, Simon Brett, Peter Lovesey—to authors I had not heard of previously. There's a locked room mystery involving a movie star solved from miles away, a tale involving the practice of "phantom guests" (which I'd never heard of; apparently it was common at some hotels to start a new page in the guest book you signed in the old days with made-up names so that people would not think there was no one staying at the hotel and turn away), the story of a little girl who doesn't understand why a beautiful woman and her snobby little daughter are not received into society until her beloved uncle comes into the picture, an adventure of Ellery Queen and his secretary Nikki Porter (who was an invention of the Queen radio series) near the town of Gettysburg, the melancholy story of a monk who vows (despite his gentleness) to get revenge upon the man who ultimately caused his sister's demise, a jaunty puzzle taking place at a dog show (featuring a Kerry Blue terrier), and many more excellent pieces.

My only problem with these collections, and the annual Best Mystery Stories of anthologies, is that several of the stories are not mysteries to me, and I really don't enjoy them. To me a "mystery" is just that, whether it's Nancy Drew figuring out what's in the old clock or Temperance Brennan or Kilsey Milhone tracking down a murderer, there's a puzzle and there's a solution. Several stories here I wouldn't classify as mysteries at all, like "Dressing-Up," about a hit man and his moll making it big after he betrays his boss, "The Marked Man" about a man who's supposed to practice hiding from the enemy by hiding in a New York park, the very dark "Woodrow Wilson's Necktie" about a young man fascinated by a horror waxworks exhibit, "The Fix" about a down-on-his-luck horse player, and a couple more. They're not mysteries, and they usually involve creepy people, like "Loopy," the story of a guy who likes to wear a wolf's costume his mother made for him, which I consider a psychological thriller, which I really don't want to read (although I have to admit most of the stories of that type were compellingly written). I just wish when the title said "mystery" they'd stick to "mystery" and stick the weird ones in a separate book. If you don't mind stories of that type being mixed in, this one is a definite winner.

 The Happy Hollisters at Snowflake Camp, Jerry West
In this sixth book of the Hollisters series, a lot happens before the family arrives at the titular Snowflake Camp. It's November and the kids are excited about a new club being started at their school, the Pet Club. Pam runs against perennial troublemaker Joey Brill for club president, and of course with Joey being involved, that can't run smooth. Also, Pam notices that there is something troubling her teacher Miss Nelson, who's the adult supervisor of the Pet Club, and there are two rather rough-looking men trying to talk to her as well. It all comes to a head at Gramp and Gram's Snowflake Camp in Canada, where the kids will encounter a ski champ and a sled dog race at the annual Trapper's Carnival that takes place over Thanksgiving weekend.

Again, major points for the teacher objecting to Joey Brill saying a girl can't be president of a club, and also for one of the Hollister girls excelling at a sport as well as a boy, as well as showing leadership skills and good sportsmanship. On the other hand, I'm at a loss why Joey gets to ride roughshod over the Hollisters and no one ever stops him. At one point Pete is so fed up with Joey insulting his family that he hits Joey, which may be troubling to readers today (however, Pete doesn't get into trouble over it, since it's clear to everyone, even adults, that Joey started the fight). I know this was written in the 1950s, but I don't know why Joey gets away with so much; maybe his dad is some kind of big bug in the city government?

Today's readers also may find the use of the word "Eskimo" troubling. The name is not used in a derogatory manner, and is what U.S. schoolchildren were commonly taught to call Arctic Circle natives at the time the book was written. Today we know it is a rather insulting term given to Inuits and Aleutians by another native tribe who disliked them, and who passed the word on to white explorers. The term is still used in Canada, from what I can tell. Again, a good discussion point.

Otherwise, a great lively book where the kids spend most of their time in outdoor activities, although they are shown watching television. When there's no snow they use their imaginations, and they snowshoe, ski, participate in dog training, help animals, and explore the woods rather than staring at video all day.

Books Completed Since August 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very much worth reading "yet another moon book."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books Completed Since July 1

 The Rise of the Rocket Girls, Nathalia Holt
Of all the science-related books I read in July, this was one of my favorites.

In the early part of the 20th century, the last place you would have found a woman working would be in scientific endeavors. Oh, there were a few "odd" women ("bluestockings," they were called, usually "repressed spinsters" who couldn't find a husband) who worked in the sciences, but young, attractive women who excelled in mathematics or sciences usually took more "womanly" jobs like teaching (or just surrendered and married). Then a few young ladies found employment at what would later be the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, like Barby Canright, Macie Roberts, and Barbara Lewis, performing manual calculations for rocket trajectories (or using a newfangled adding machine called a Friden). These "rocket girls," and other "computers" like them, formed the backbone of later rocket research—but the male engineers got all the glory.

This is a super profile of Canright, Roberts, Lewis, and the women who followed, women who juggled motherhood and marriage with 12-hour days and launch deadlines, and managed to balance being "all-American girls" while performing mathematical calculations that some men said were impossible for women to even understand. Even more amazing, most of the "rocket girls"'s husbands understood their dedication to their work and didn't mind their long hours, taking over "womanly" chores like caring for the children and keeping house. I felt like I really got to know all of them, and cheered them on each time one of their projects succeeded, or when they finally got newer computers to make easier calculations for their ever-more-complicated space vehicles. Their expertise sent us from simple rockets adapted from the German designs to spacecraft that orbited the planets and finally headed out into the solar system.

A scientific book that doesn't talk down, but makes each new challenge understandable. Highly recommended!

 Death in the Stars, Frances Brody
Kate Shackleton is requested to escort a famous singer  to the event of the century: a total eclipse of the sun. She's unsure why the woman is so afraid to go on her own, especially when a good friend of the singer's, a beloved comedian, is accompanying her to the event as well. The trip will be by air, but there seems to be something deeper in Selina Fellini's fear. Of course it's cloudy the day of the eclipse, but the clouds part just in time for everyone to view the spectacular. It's only after the event is over that they notice comedian Billy Moffatt is gone—and then he's found unconscious and later dies. Kate doesn't find this suspicious, only odd, until it's found out two others in Selina and Billy's performing troupe died of odd causes, a dog trainer named Douglas Dougan, and a ventriloquist, Floyd Lloyd. Could Selina's war-changed husband have caused one of or all of the deaths? Or someone in her family?

This is a enjoyable combination of behind-the-scenes at a music hall and the lives of its performers combined with an astronomical event and the repercussions of the aftermath of the first World War. I love the language and the narration of all of the Kate Shackleton books, and also the supporting characters like Mrs. Sugden and Jim Sykes. In this story, Mrs. Sugden reveals another piece of her past—one that is rather novel!—that eventually helps with the investigation, and there's also an unusual young character who provides a rather eerie clue via an odd means of communication.

Plus, Harriet's back, so am looking forward to the next book to see how Kate deals with having her niece aboard.

 Missions to the Moon, Rod Pyle
This is an interactive coffee table book about NASA and the moon missions to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings. Already chock full of photographs, diagrams, artwork, and original correspondence (a page from the FBI's investigation of Wernher von Braun, von Braun's original sketch of a space station concept from 1964, George Low's letter changing the name of the first space effort to "Project Mercury" (it was originally "Project Astronaut"), a hand-drawing of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, etc.), there is also an app you can download so you can click links in the text with your phone or tablet and see further artifacts and video.

A nice, basic look at man's interest in the moon, the first steps with rockets, and the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions (the latter which forms the bulk of the second half of the book), perfect for thos who were born after the wonder had happened.

 Shoot for the Moon, James Donovan
This was one of several books released for the moon landing anniversary, and we ended up buying most of them. I have books about the space program going back to the late 60s (John Noble Wilford's We Reach the Moon and Richard Lewis' Appointment on the Moon), and appreciated these fresh looks at the space program. This one is enjoyably narrated and focuses on some of the flight controllers and other participants who were never mentioned in previous books, like Steve Bales and Max Faget. It also took the time to focus on Wernher von Braun and his connection with the Nazis, and also a little of the history of the Soviet space program (I had no idea Valentina Tereshkova was not a trained astronaut; instead she was a skydiver who was given a chance to go up in space as a stunt and then given honors afterwards—she had no control of the spacecraft at all).

One review of this book on Amazon by someone who worked for NASA says the text is riddled with numerous small scientific errors and some mistakes of detail. I believe I did find a mistake but can no longer remember what it was. It's a shame because otherwise the text is a page turner. I would still recommend it for the story of the accomplishments of the engineers and the astronauts who made going to the moon a reality.

 Mayhem & Mass, Olivia Matthews
This is a pleasant mystery series starring Sister Louise LaSalle, who lives in the religious community of St. Hermione of Ephesus in Briar Coast, New York. Her nephew Chris LaSalle works as an official for the college connected with the congregation. Sister Lou has invited her old friend Maurice Jordan to speak at St. Hermione's, an unpopular decision with some of the community because of his controversial views. When he's late for his speaking engagement, Sister Lou hurries to his hotel room, and finds him dead by violence. A shaken Sister Lou is determined to find justice for him, just as a cynical newspaper reporter named Sharelle Henson thinks following the murder investigation will gain her some points at her new job, even though her editor is dead set against it.

I like the story characters, but the author's storytelling skills are occasionally amateurish. She introduces her characters as Full Name "Nickname" Last Name, which comes off as stilted. Although I appreciate her describing rooms and other locations by citing vivid colors, styles and architectural details, she vastly overdoes it; for instance we are introduced to Sister Lou's office with its bright blue chairs early in the story, and then they are described again and again and again. Yes, we know her chairs are blue. Enough already.

On the other hand, I've seen reviews saying that the ending "wasn't fair" because the killer isn't introduced into the plot until almost halfway through the book. Actually, most of the suspects aren't introduced until the story is well enough on its way; the beginning of the book is used to introduce Sister Lou, Chris, Shari, Lou's nemesis Sister Marianna, the other sisters, the two police officers on the case, and even the murder victim. And when all the suspects are introduced, there's also a big fat clue that leads you to the solution.

I'm going to stick with this series because I like Sister Lou and the idea of a sister sleuth, but I hope the author's writing improves. (And, swelp me, I was brought up Catholic, but had no idea there was a difference between a sister and a nun!)

 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo
I think an American child psychologist reading about Marie Kondo's childhood would have sent her off to therapy. She's the middle child, with an older brother who barely looks up from his video games, and her mother is absorbed with attending a younger sister. She started reading books about organization at age 5. She was always the kid who tidied up the classroom, then she'd run home and tidy her room. If it got untidy again she cried. To her tidying was not only fun, but personally fulfilling.

To live Marie Kondo's way, you must live very simply. She aspires to this, and it is a tenant of her Shinto beliefs as well. Many people like an austere lifestyle, most don't. But that works for "KonMari," as she's known. She realizes it won't work for everyone.

What she's saying at her most basic is that you should quit weighing yourself down with things you don't need. Maybe you can't cut your books down to thirty like she has—but are you hanging on to books you read ten years ago, don't recall the plot, and don't think you'll ever re-read? Why? If you really lose that thirty pounds like you've been promising yourself the last fifteen years, will you really pull those musty old size twelve skirts and pants out of a drawer and wear them? Aren't they all out of style? And why cook with dried up spices with no more flavor, or possibly give yourself food poisoning eating that outdated can of soup? You should look at a book and exclaim, "Oh, I love that; I'm going to re-read it!" or "This is a great reference book for my writing!" Look at an outfit and say, "This looks so good on me. I'm going to wear it tomorrow." These are the things that "spark joy." These you keep.

Of course there are certain things you have to keep even though they don't "spark joy." Even if you live in Florida, you keep a heavy coat in case of a cold spell. You are required to keep things like tax returns, business papers, medical records, etc. But those actually "spark joy" when you know you have them when you need them. Everything else is lagniappe.

I doubt if I'll ever get rid of all my clutter, but this is what I've been doing for the past seventeen months. I saved a whole bunch of autumn and winter magazines for the pictures. I pulled them down, tore out the prettiest leaf and snow pictures, but discovered I couldn't figure out why I kept half of them! Out they went. Clothes I didn't want got donated, tattered clothes went in the trash, gifts I had no room for went bye-bye to Goodwill so someone will love them as I don't.

I do like Kondo's method of not tidying by room, but by category. You pull your clothes out from wherever they are living and check them all. Are you wearing them? If so, why not? If you don't like them, let go. She even has a ceremony where you say farewell to the things you are giving away, thanking them for their service, and sending them off to make someone else happy. Could change your thinking about clutter.

 The Mercury 13, Martha Ackmann
In 1961, Randy Lovelace of the Lovelace Clinic, which provided the medical testing needed for the original astronaut corps, secretly tested thirteen women with the object of seeing if women as well as men were fit for space travel. There was then, and still is, a great deal of misinformation about physical differences in women making it impossible for them to travel in space (even though we now have female astronauts). It should be no surprise that the women tested, mostly trained pilots, passed all the medical tests with flying colors, as well as the psychological ones. In fact, there were certain advantages to women astronauts: they weighed less, used less oxygen, and some even dealt with solitary duty better than men.

However, of course it was 1961, NASA wasn't looking for women, and there was a requirement that astronauts be jet test pilots, a job which a woman was not allowed to perform.

This is the story of the women who volunteered for these tests, even though they knew the testing was not official. They hoped that if they did well NASA might change their minds about accepting women to the program, if not then, perhaps in the future. The women included Jerrie Cobb, who sought to break altitude records while reporters asked her inane questions like "Why does a pretty young girl like you want to spend her time around the dirt and grime and noise of airplanes?" And also Jacqueline Cochran, an orphan from Florida who fell in love with air racing and whose husband supported her dream. There was also Ruth Nichols (who is portrayed in Fly Girls), an air racer and competitor for flying awards; Betty Skelton, who'd flown with the Blue Angels, and Dorothy Anderson, who risked losing her job to participate in the tests.

I wasn't as taken by the writing in this one as in, say, Hidden Figures or Rise of the Rocket Girls, and was disappointed to hear about Jackie Cochran's actions. According to the author, she seemed determined to hog any glory that came from women's involvement in the space program. But it was interesting to find out that the women did have "the right stuff" medically and psychologically, and it would have been intriguing to see how they stacked up with the rest of the requirements had they only been allowed to participate.

 Murder Go Round, Carol J. Perry
In this fifth book in the "Witch City" mysteries, Lee Barrett goes to a storage auction with her elderly Aunt Ibbie, who raised Lee after her parents died, after Ibbie becomes a fan of a television series about them (clearly based on Storage Wars). The two bid on a lackluster unit, and most of what's in it is junk, but one item stands out: a vintage carousel horse that Lee loves and immediately takes to be restored. Next thing she knows her police detective boyfriend reports that the restoration shop was burgled and someone prised apart her carousel horse, evidently looking for something, and Lee's unwanted ESP has reared its ugly head again, showing her the vision of a dead man with a bleeding neck in the reflective surface of the silver samovar also discovered in the storage unit.

Next thing Lee knows, she's involved with Salem, MA's Russian community, an odd red-headed woman named Stacia, and someone who keeps following her around. After all, what has an old carousel horse got to do with people who were once servants to the Romanovs, not to mention the KGB?

Again, these aren't great art, but I like the combination of Salem, the mild "woo-woo" involved in the plots, the cat O'Ryan, and Lee, Pete, and Aunt Ibbie, not to mention River and the folks at "the Tabby." Lee and Pete's romance isn't intrusive as some cozy mystery romances are, either.

 First on the Moon: The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Experience, Rod Pyle
This is Pyle's more detailed narrative specifically focusing on the flight of Apollo 11 in coffee table format, a companion volume to the more general overview Missions to the Moon. Like that volume, it's crammed with diagrams, black and white and color photographs from the NASA archives, drawings, artwork, and clippings, with a foreward by Buzz Aldrin. If you were born after the event, a visual feast for the eyes and mind, if you do remember the incredible event, a walk down memory lane.

 The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery at Missile Town, Jerry West
How fortuitous that I still had this particular Hollisters book to read just as the anniversary of Apollo 11 rolled around!

When this novel takes place, Cape Canaveral was chiefly known as a missile base, but a few monkeys had been launched in rockets and recovered. The Hollisters receive a letter from Elaine Hollister's sister Carol Davis, inviting the family to visit them in Florida, and intrigues the family by enclosing a photo of Lady Rhesus, a monkey who has gone into space. She is owned by Miss Mott, a neighbor of the Davises. So Elaine Hollister and the kids (Pete, 12; Pam, 10; Ricky, 7; Holly, 6; and Sue, 4) are off to Cape Canaveral, where they get involved, of course, in several mysteries, including possible sabotage of the missiles and the disappearance of Lady Rhesus. (Holly also has an adventure on the train—she always was my favorite!)

Again, given when this was written, was surprised and delighted to discover that, when the Hollister kids are playing at a pretend missile launch, and Joey Brill (the resident bully) and his friend taunt the kids that "only men launch missiles" (meaning that Pam and Holly shouldn't be participating in the game), Ricky informs them that "plenty of women have jobs at the missile range"—their Uncle Walt, who works at Cape Canaveral, told them so. This was written in 1961, long before Rise of the Rocket Girls and Hidden Figures brought out the important work women did in the space program! Later in the book they meet Miss Mott, who helped train the monkeys that were shot up in experimental rockets. (Lady Rhesus is clearly modeled on "Able," a rhesus monkey who was shot into space, and her partner "Baker," a squirrel monkey, who lived until age 27.) At the Cape, they meet both women and men reporters. At the end of the book, it is Pam who helps find a missing missile payload. 

A cool entry in the "Happy Hollisters" series!

 Carrying the Fire, Michael Collins
I haven't read all the astronaut biographies, but this is supposed to be one of the best, and I quite concur. Collins relates his early years as an Army brat (he was born in Rome, Italy), but the majority of his story is about his days as a test pilot and then as an astronaut. This is a delightful read because Collins explains everything in an understandable way without being condescending and keeps the tone light except when the situation requires it. He states in his Preface: "I bore easily, and I have written for people who bore easily," and indeed, there is not a boring page in this volume. His narration is engaging, often self-deprecating, and frequently humorous, but always interesting, whether talking about his training at Edwards Air Force Base or narrating some of the negative parts of astronaut life, including stupid and/or repetitive press questions, body rebellion under the pressure of training, and, of course, detailing the rigors of spaceflight and his own views about being "the guy who went to the moon, but didn't get to walk on it." There are also short sketches about each of the astronauts he worked with (Collins has something nice to say about everyone, even if his capsule characterizations hint that a relationship wasn't all gravy), and he's included a poem his wife wrote for him before he left on his moon voyage, which will leave a lump in your throat.

Glad I finally had the time to invest in this book. Highly recommended as an astronaut bio and behind the scenes look at the 1960s Space Program.

 Re-read: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
In 2075, the moon has become a penal colony, but most of the sentences are long over; people have remained on the moon partially because a body used to the moon's gravity suffers on Earth and partially because the "Loonies" have built their own society, pretty much ignored by the corrupt warden and his cadre ("the Authority") so long as no major laws are broken. We join this world via Manuel Garcia O'Kelly-Davis (just call him "Mannie"), who has become the go-to computer repairman for the Authority's computer who runs everything: a HOLMES FOUR that Mannie calls Mycroft or "Mike."

And Mike has become sentient, with Mannie as his first "not-stupid" friend.

With Mike's help, political agitator Wyoming Knott and elderly Professor Bernardo de la Paz, plus an initially-reluctant Mannie, the Loonies decide they are tired of all their profit going to Earth (mmmn, students of US history, does this sound familiar?) and wish to be a sovereign nation. They're not afraid to fight, and that's good, because the Federation on Earth doesn't want to give independence to a bunch of convicts and will do anything to stop them. Mike becomes one of the revolutionaries and concocts an audacious scheme to defend Luna against the overwhelming presence of Earth shock troops.

Heinlein basically recreates the Revolutionary War in space, with Earth as the evil British and Luna as the American colonists, and in the process creates a new society where line marriages are the norm (multiple husbands and wives), the characters speak in a mixed patois that includes Australian English and Russian, and no one is crazy to "go home" since Luna is their home. The characters, especially brainy Mike, who grows from an innocent youngster taking his baby steps in the world of men to one of the leaders of the rebellion, will stick in your mind long after you finish the book, and the end, at least back when the book was written, is a stunner.

 Eight Years to the Moon, Nancy Atkinson
If you are a space program fan and have enjoyed all the television specials and all the new books about NASA and the "Space Race," but are looking for "something different," you might want to try this oversized hardback that turns its back on the politics and the public, and actually does takes you behind the scenes. The astronauts make brief appearances, but the protagonists in this are the folks that built and programmed the computers, tested the spacecraft, managed the companies that built the vehicles. You meet Ken Young, one of the first employees in the new Mission Control location in Houston, TX; chemical engineer Norman Chaffee (no relation to the astronaut Roger Chaffee) who went into building rocket engines; Dottie Lee, who, as a "computer" at Langley Research Center, worked out trajectories for missiles; Earle Kyle, one of the very first African American aerospace engineers; and more.

If you're fascinated most by the the science behind the space missions, this is definitely the book for you. Full of black and white illustrations from NASA files and photographs of the people who made the rockets fire, the capsules work, and the astronauts breathe, with text that covers everything from propulsion to life support.

 Murder by the Book, Lauren Elliott
I'm a sucker for mystery books taking place in New England, not to mention mysteries taking place in bookstores. I need to get suckered in less easily. This book makes me want to throw things. I'm not sure if it's the book or up.

Our protagonist Addison "Addie" Greyborne previously worked with rare books at the Boston Public Library. When a great aunt she doesn't even remember leaves her the old family home in the small New England town of Greyborne Harbor and a great deal of money, Addie takes the opportunity to move there and open her own rare book store. The day she opens the store someone in a dark car tries to run her down, then someone tries to break into her store, and then while she and her new friend Serena (owner of the cute tea shop next door, SerenaTEA [eyeroll]) are cleaning up a mess at the back of the store, someone breaks into the front and creates a mess, but just makes off with a cheap copy of Alice in Wonderland.

This is all in the first chapter. In the next 250 pages, the dark car tries to get her several more times and is seen hanging around her home, someone breaks into her home, someone steals her keys, etc. We also find out that a year earlier Addie lost her fiance David in a home invasion, six months earlier her father died near the Harbor in a terrible car crash, and then she was notified her aunt passed away. For most of the book she is either racing to open her store then back to her house where it takes her ages to get an alarm system installed to the police station or somebody's trying to physically injure her or break into the places she owns...she finally decides she needs an assistant and hires the first person she interviews. (Ironically, the new employee is the daughter of a fellow businessperson on the street, a sour woman named Martha who hates Addie on sight and gets together with a bunch of other Harbor businesspeople to force her to leave town because...well, we don't know why—check next paragraph.) Oh, and then one of the businesspeople is killed and Serena gets accused of the murder, and...

Where do I start? Serena helps Addie clean up an inadvertent mess and suddenly they are besties. Serena's brother Marc is the chief of police, and he and Addie meet eyes and suddenly it's romantic attraction 101. Next thing you know they keep running into each other; no wonder the other businesspeople are all atwitter. I'm shy, but Addie doesn't seem to have that problem, so why in heaven's name doesn't she march up to Martha and ask her, civilly, why all the hate? Apparently someone's been spreading rumors that Addie moved to Greyborne Harbor to escape prosecution on criminal activities in Boston, but even when that is squelched everyone in town hates her and Marc and Serena explain this is because they are jealous of Addie being a Greyborne. Wow, this sounds like a jolly little town. Also, at the time the book opens Addie has been in town a month, remodeling and setting up the store. Do you mean to tell me that at no time has she found a moment to talk to anyone in town, make some friends, go to the local coffee shop, or even notice the tea store next door? She had to eat; didn't she even go grocery shopping? Really?

So you've followed my narration about all the things that happened to Addie: the almost-car accidents, the break-ins at the store and at the house, the other threats to her life, right? So finally she gets the alarm system installed in her house! And what does this ridiculous woman do? She leaves the door open and the alarm off because she's expecting Serena for tea. Seriously? Seriously? In one chapter she wonders if Marc thinks she's a dingbat. Well, I for one, lady, can tell you you are.

(Also, note to the publisher and the writer: the name of the book is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. No book expert like Addie would call it just plain "Alice in Wonderland" [the title which is not even italicized in the book either time it's mentioned]. The original copy mentioned in this book would have been entitled Alice's Adventures Underground.)

Please. Find a better book. Even Dr. Seuss created more saavy characters.

 The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols, Nicholas Meyer
Back in the 1970s, Meyer penned The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, about Sherlock Holmes' efforts, with the assistance of Dr. John Watson and the famous "alienist" Sigmund Freud, to wean himself from a cocaine addiction that is making him increasingly ill and paranoid. (The book was later made into a film which kept those essential parts of the plot while changing the rest of the storyline; it too was well-received.) Later Meyer wrote two sequels, The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer. This is his fourth Holmes effort, which opens on Sherlock Holmes' birthday when Mycroft contacts his brother about an unsettling manuscript that has come into his hands. The British intelligence agent bringing it to him was murdered, and it has become essential, in the political climate, to stop its distribution. The manuscript is the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semetic screed published in Russia in the late 19th century, purportedly a true report of the "Jewish plot" to take over the world.

In Meyer's novel, it is Watson's new wife, Juliet, who provides the means of translation for the Russian manuscript—she has "bluestocking" family members belonging to the Bloomsbury set who are Russian-language scholars—and discovers it's a plagiarism of a French document criticizing Napoleon III. Holmes, Watson, and a Jewish-American woman named Anna Strunsky head for Russia under assumed names, dodging those who follow them, determined to discover who wrote this calumny and get his (or her) confession, thereby refuting the document if it is distributed.

It's a hair-raising adventure across Europe and into Russia, and all done in Meyer's marvelous voice: he has Conan Doyle's style down cold  and provides a narrative as much like the originals as possible (without the pesky racism). The result comes off as a "real Holmes story"—but there's one fly in the ointment: anyone familiar with history knows that the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" continued as a destructive juggernaut, causing the strengthening of anti-Semitism, pogroms, and eventually the Holocaust, and even today the document is taken for real by Holocaust deniers. So there is no triumph at the end for our intrepid pair. Also, Anna Strunsky is introduced as an intelligent, tough woman who gets through all of the hardships Holmes and Watson also suffer, but an event happens that lessens her role in the story. It was rather irritating to have a positive figure come out in such a negative manner. Still worth it for the great Holmes/Watson interaction and Arthur Conan Doyle feel.