SHS Book Blog

It seems impossible to avoid advertising in today’s world of media overload and commercial competition. There are ads on TV, Radio, the Internet, and just about anywhere you look.  In his book, Jennifer Government, Max Barry portrays a world where this has gone to the extreme.  There are no taxes, government services are paid for by the individual, and companies can do just about what they want.  In the beginning of a book, an executive at Nike hires someone to kill customers so they can sell more shoes.

 Jennifer Government is the agent called in to examine the shootings.  After finding someone one who will pay for the investigation she discovers that John Nike, a former lover and Nike executive, is behind the shootings.  Now she just has to find a way to track John down and arrest him.  Unfortunately, for Jennifer, John is in the process of trying to overthrow what is left of the government so his company and others can truly rule the world in the name of greater profits.

 This book is not one you will want to read if you think unrestrained capitalism is the answer to all our economic problems.  On the other hand, this is the book for you if you enjoy a well developed plot with believable character.  As Jennifer and her partner Calvin search for a way to arrest and charge John the reader is shown what could happen if we are not careful.

 Excerpt

           “I’ve given you a world without Government interference. There’s no advertising campaign, no intercompany deal, no promotion, no action you can’t take.  You want to pay kids to get the swoosh tattooed on their foreheads? Who’s going to stop you?  You want to make computers that need repair after three months?  Who’s going to stop you?  You want to reward consumers to complain about competitors in the media?  You want to pay them for recruiting theirlittle brothers and sister to your brand of cigarettes?  You want the NRA to help you eliminate your competition? Then do it.  Just do it?

          “Their faces; ah, their faces.  They hadn’t seen this coming at all, John realized.  He was opening the door to a brave new commercial world and they were transfixed by the pure, golden light of profit spilling from it.”

In Mexico in 1741, two  Spanish priests are exposed to a mind-altering drug used by  local Indians.  One priest embraces the drug and its uses, the other returns to the authorities and reports what they found.  When the second priest leads a group of soldiers back to arrest the first priest, they find that he and the Indians have disappeared into the rugged mountains.

In modern times, FBI Agent Sean Reilly is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force sent to Mexico to rescue a kidnapped scientist from a Drug Cartel.  The Cartel kidnapped the scientist to have him perfect the drug that they have rediscovered after almost 270 years.  In the course of the raid government agents recover the drug and the scientist’s journal but the scientist and some innocent people are killed. Sean Reilly returns to the U.S.and becomes involved in the events related in The Last Templar and Templar Salvation.

Five years go by, and a group of gunmen break into the San Diego home of retired DEA agent Michelle Martinez, killing her boyfriend and trying to kill her.  Grabbing her son Alex, Michelle flees for her life.  Not knowing what the gunmen want or who she can trust she calls her old lover Sean Reilly in New York who comes toSan Diego.  Soon thereafter Michelle is killed and Sean has to take care of Alex, find out what the gunmen want, and who sent them.

This book steps away from The Templar series. But don’t worry; Tess Chaykin is soon involved helping Sean to unravel the mystery. The Devil’s Elixir is a story that grabs the reader and leaves them wondering, or dreading, what is going to happen next.  Read this book.  You will enjoy it.

Excerpt

          As the chorus gave way to the song’s closing solo guitar strums, the next sound she heard wasn’t as pleasing.

          It wasn’t Tom’s voice. It was something else.

          Two sharp, metallic snaps, like someone had just fired a nail gun.  Only Michelle knew it wasn’t a nail gun at all.  She’d been around enough sound-suppressed handguns in her life to know what the automatic slide action of a real gun sounded like.

          The kind that fire bullets that killed people.

           Tom.

          She yelled out his name as she sprang to action, propelled by instinct and training, almost without thinking, as if the threat of death had triggered some kind of Pavlovian reflex that took over her body.  Her eyes quickly picked out the large kitchen knife from the mess of cutlery, and it was already firmly in her grip as she rounded the counter and hurtled toward the kitchen door.

Alton Richards has just finished his junior year in high school, his girlfriend has broken up with him and is dating his best friend, and he has no job for the summer.  Then his parents tell him he will be driving his blind great-uncle Lester to his bridge club several times a week.  It seems that Lester is rich, he is divorced, and his one child is not close. Alton’s parents want Alton to get on Lester’s good side so Lester will leave his money to them when he dies.

To say that Alton is not excited is an understatement. He has never played bridge and Lester is a grumpy, old man.  It turns out that Lester needs someone to drive him, tell him what cards are in his bridge hand, and place or turn the cards.  Despite Alton’s best efforts, he starts to learn how to play bridge and even enjoys meeting the other players. When Alton meets Toni Castaneda, the granddaughter of Anabelle, the one woman Lester truly love he is hooked on the game.

I don’t play bridge and still don’t after reading this book.  Sachar manages to explain bridge and keep the story flowing.  You’ll be cheering forAltonand Toni when they enter the National Bridge Championships under the names of Lester and Anabelle (read the story to see what I’m talking about), and you will really enjoy this book.

Excerpts

          “I hope I remember everything,” said Toni.

          “You won’t,” said Trapp. “That’s how you learn. But after you make the same mistake one, or two, or five times, you’ll eventually get it.  And then you’ll make new mistakes.”

          I always make the biggest fool of myself just when I think I’m being the most clever. –Alton Richards

The Templar Salvation by Raymond Khoury

 Sean Reilly and Tess Chaykin are back in this sequel to Khoury’s The Last Templar.  This time Tess has been kidnapped by an Iranian secret agent bent on finding the lost manuscripts of Ancient Christianity.  His plan is to use the documents to destabilize the West and its remaining Christian believers in order to gain revenge for the death of his family almost 20 years ago.

 Reilly, the FBI agent, is forced to lie his way in to theVatican’s libraries in order to find information that will help the Iranian find the lost documents.  Eventually, Reilly manages to free Tess but then chases the Iranian into Turkey in order to stop his murders and save the ancient documents.

 This one is even more of a page turner than The Last Templar and you will really enjoy it.  As with the previous book this one looks at some of the events of the beginning of Christianity without bringing into questions the beliefs of Christians in general.  Read this one if you want an exciting and entertaining mystery.

 Excerpt

         “Where is she?” Reilly asked.

          “Everything in its time.”

          “You’re not walking away from this. Reilly’s eyes were locked on him, his senses alert, processing every morsel of information at hand, looking for an edge.

          “I disagree,” the bomber countered, “We’ve established that you care a great deal for this woman.  You wouldn’t have flown halfway across the world and taken me in to theVaticanif you didn’t.  Which means you won’t stop me from walking  away from here if that gets her killed.  Which it would. Unquestionably.”

Recently, my Information Literacy classes watched took notes on a video about inventors that had changed America and the world. One of my students wanted to know why Nikola Tesla wasn’t on the list. Most of the students did not know who Tesla was. And this is one of the main reasons he was not on the list because so few people actually know anything about Tesla and what he actually did.

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in what is now part of the nation of Croatia. At a young age he showed an ability to understand and explain complicated ideas. As he grew up and attended university, his brilliance brought job offers with companies trying to harness electricity so it could be used to light homes and businesses. The problem was that the electricity was being generated as direct current DC which could not be transmitted very far and had proved dangerous.

In 1881 Tesla came up with the idea of alternating current, or AC, in which the magnetic field rotates at predetermined speed. By 1883 Tesla had created his first polyphase generator that produced alternating current. A year later he moved to the U.S. and worked to get people like Edison and Westinghouse interested in his polyphase generators.

Eventually, he succeeded in getting Westinghouse to finance his research and began a lifelong series of inventions that would improve the world’s use of electricity. Along the way he worked on many new inventions including radio transmitters, artificial lightning, and Tesla coils that are still used in TV and radio transmitting today. He may also have demonstrated the first lasers 50 years before their actual invention.

Unfortunately, he also had to fight an almost lifelong series of battles with other inventors and companies over who owned the patents to his ideas and inventions. This combined with some of his mystical views led to his being overshadowed by other inventors and companies. Since his death in 1943 he has been forgotten by most people.

This book is a great way to get to know him and understand what he did and believed. It also answers the question as to why not many people know of him today.

Quote:
…if I were to be sufficiently fortunate to bring about at least some of my ideas it would be for the benefit of humanity. –Nickola Tesla

Robert and Rudolf Rasendyll are two Englishmen and distant cousins to the ruling family of the country of Ruritania. While traveling through Europe, Rudolf decides to go to Ruritania for the coronation of the new king, who also happens to be named Rudolf.  When Rasendyll arrives in Ruritania he accidentally meets the soon-to-be-king and both are amazed to find that they look exactly alike. On the night before the new king’s coronation the two have dinner at the Royal Family’s hunting lodge to celebrate meeting each other. 

The next morning, Rasendyll is awakened by the king’s advisers and told that the king has been drugged.  It all appears to be a plot to keep Rudolf off the throne. If the king fails to arrive at his coronation, his brother Prince Michael will become king.  In desperation the king’s advisers convince Rasendyll to impersonate the king and keep Michael from taking over.

In the process there are attempted murders, sword and gun fights, and a beautiful princess to be protected.  Though written in 1894 this book is an excellent and exciting story to read.  You will be glad you did.

The Prisoner of Zenda is not in our collection but can be downloaded for free from Manybooks.net or an audio version at Librivox.org.  (If you try to download The Prisoner of Zenda here at school, from Librivox you will find it blocked by the filter. Give it a try at home or see Mr. Burt if you would like to listen to it.)

Check it out and take the quiz (Quiz No. 13639), you will enjoy it.

Excerpt

I jumped up, flung open the door, and advanced into the ante-room. Michael was sitting at a table, a heavy frown on his face. Everyone else was standing, save that impudent young dog Fritz, who was lounging easily in an armchair, and flirting with the Countess Helga. He leapt up as I entered, with a deferential alacrity that lent point to his former nonchalance. I had no difficulty in understanding that the duke might not like young Fritz.

I held out my hand, Michael took it, and I embraced him. Then I drew him with me into the inner room.

“Brother,” I said, “if I had known you were here, you should not have waited a moment before I asked the princess to permit me to bring you to her.”

He thanked me, but coldly. The man had many qualities, but he could not hide his feelings. A mere stranger could have seen that he hated me, and hated worse to see me with Princess Flavia; yet I am persuaded that he tried to conceal both feelings, and, further, that he tried to persuade me that he believed I was verily the King. I did not know, of course; but, unless the King were an impostor, at once cleverer and more audacious than I (and I began to think something of myself in that role), Michael could not believe that. And, if he didn’t, how he must have loathed paying me deference, and hearing my “Michael” and my “Flavia!”

“Your hand is hurt, sire,” he observed, with concern.

“Yes, I was playing a game with a mongrel dog” (I meant to stir him), “and you know, brother, such have uncertain tempers.”

 He smiled sourly, and his dark eyes rested on me for a moment.

“But is there no danger from the bite?” cried Flavia anxiously.

 ”None from this,” saidI.”If I gave him a chance to bite deeper, it would be different, cousin.”

“But surely he has been destroyed?” said she.

 ”Not yet. We’re waiting to see if his bite is harmful.”

The only time I have lived in a different culture was the two years that I spent in Bolivia. Working as missionary I knew that I would be going home eventually.  Additionally, I had the common experience of a shared religion that made it easier for me to adapt and exist.  I have never had an experience like Tamim Ansary’s of trying to balance two cultures. So this book was a real treat for me.

 Born to an Afghan father and an American mother, Ansary grew up in Afghanistan and came to the States to attend high school.  He never returned to live in Afghanistan because of the political changes, his father’s involvement in the government, and the fact that he had a U.S. passport through his mother. Never a strong Muslim, Ansary became more accustomed to living in the States and American culture even though his father was forced to return to Afghanistan. Married and raising his daughter he gradually lost contact with his Afghan roots.  His only contact was an occasional letter from his father.

 When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ansary was shocked to hear the hatred and anger directed towards Afghanistan and the kind, gentle people he remembered.  In an effort to express his feelings he sent out an e-mail to friends.  Within days it was forwarded to hundreds of strangers and people he didn’t know contacted him.  This book is an extension of that e-mail that details his upbringing and true Afghan culture. The reader is introduced to the importance of family and clan in Afghanistan.  Ansary also shows how that loyalty makes Afghanistan a difficult country to rule as a whole.

 You should definitely read his explanation of the Taliban and where they com from.  Though brief, it shows how their violence and hatred developed and warped the teachings of Islam in the process.

 Excerpt

I remember an anecdote I heard about early Islam. A pompous agent of an exalted monarch of a pompous and exalted state went to Medina to negotiate with Khalifah Omar.  He reined up his hourse next to a bunch of guys who were sitting in the shade along a wall, trading tales and cracking jokes like small-town geezers in a lemonade commercial.  “Get up,” he ordered. “take me to Omar Ibn Al Khatib, leader of the Muislim community, supreme commander of the empire that stretches from Anatolia to Africa.” One of the old geezers stood up, dusted off his trousers, and said, “I’m Omar, What do you want?”

 It pleases me to imagine the social spirit that might enable the leader of a vast and powerful political community to loll about, between state duties, with a random group of citizens, cracking jokes and trading gossip, not only indistinguishable from them to an outsider but treated as nothing special or fearful by them.  It also pleases me to think that in the early Islamic empire, what really conquered the Sassanids and the Byzantines was this social spirit.

This week’s blog is courtesy of Senior Kayla Carmichael

When I read Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, I couldn’t put the book down once I started.  I was so amazed by the things that happened in the story.  It was just so awesome.  The forbidden love between a Gatlin lifer and a new girl, Ethan and Lena have to deal with a lot of stuff, but they face them together.  Everything they have together has a change that you must read about in the following book, Beautiful Darkness, where there love is questioned.  How far is Ethan really going to go for some girl?

In 1949, the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Zedong, defeated the Nationalists and took control of China.  Seventeen years later, in 1969, Mao and other leaders became concerned that the people were not committed enough to Communism.  To change that, Mao encouraged the formation of young people into associations known as Red Guards.  These groups went after people who they thought were not doing enough in schools, factories, farms, and the government to carry out Mao’s plan.  The Red Guards could arrest, punish, and force confessions from any person who they thought wasn’t doing his part or even fighting against Communism.  Often there would be little or no evidence against the person.  The suspicion of the Red Guard members was enough to destroy a person’s life. Though the worst of the Cultural Revolution was over by 1970, people were still being arrested and forced to confess until Mao’s death in 1976.

Moying Li was 12 years old when the Cultural Revolution began.  Her father who had fought in the Communist Army, against the Japanese in World War II, her mother,  and grandmother taught her to believe in the Communist Party and Chairman Mao.  As the Revolution proceeded she saw friends’ parents, teachers, and neighbors accused, arrested, and forced to confess their “crimes.”  The headmaster of her school committed suicide rather than face the Red Guard.  Eventually, her father was arrested, his books confiscated, and he was sent to a prison camp.  Her was mother forced to stay at the school where she taught and Moying and her brother couldn’t visit her.

 Moying movingly relates her confusion and fear as friends and respected adults became informers, accusing others of crimes they hadn’t committed..  She did not understand why teachers disappeared, people lost their jobs. or committed suicide. 

This account of how a young girl dealt with such adversity and eventually succeeded should be read oftern and repeatedly.  Li’s persistence and patience were outstanding.

 Excerpt

All of life’s principles so carefully instilled in me by my parents and reinforced by school and society seemed to have been suddenly turned upside down.  Friends became enemies, love turned into hatred.  Heaven and hell seemed to have switched places.  Now I felt confused, vulnerable, and deeply saddened—feelings that had been totally foreign to me just a few years ago….Unlike the days when I was little, I realized, I could no longer trust grownups with all my heart…In the past, our country’s enemies had appeared as black and white as my own loyalties…But now, enemies and fiends were no longer that easy to tell apart.  To be loyal to ones family, as with Mrs. Tang, would mean to be disloyal to the Party.  Sympathizing with one’s friends might be perceived as disobeying Chairman Mao.  Nowadays, I felt like a child lost in a dense forest, with darkness shrouding every familiar path.

What would you do if war came to your hometown? What if the enemy invaded and cut you off from the rest of the world?  That is exactly what the people of the island of Guernsey, in the English Channel, were faced with when the German Army took over their homes and lives at the beginning of World War II.  Isolated and alone, Elizabeth, Dawsey, Isola, Eben, Booker, and Amelia come together one night to eat a pig that they had hid from the Germans.  When soldiers catch them out after curfew, Elizabeth invents the Literary Society and a tradition is born.  Coming from different professions and experiences the members meet regularly to discuss books they are reading.  But the Society becomes more than a book club as they all come to depend on and trust one another.

 The book actually begins in 1946.  The war is over and Miss Juliet Ashton, an English writer living in London, is trying to put her life back together now that there is peace.  Having written a successful newspaper column during the war Juliet is unsure what to write next or even if she wants to.  Then she receives a letter from one Dawsey Addams, resident of Guernsey Island, and a pig farmer.  Dawsey has just read a book about Charles Lamb, the famous English essayist, and really enjoyed it. When Dawsey finds Juliet’s name and address in the book he writes to her hoping she can help him find more by Lamb since he is unable to buy new books on Guernsey.. 

 More letters are exchanged and Juliet meets more residents of Guernsey and finds out about the Literary Society. They tell her of their experiences during the war and what they had to do to survive.  Drawn to these fascinating people and their stories, Juliet eventually goes to Guernsey.  While there she finds herself, new friends, and a reason to keep living.

 This book is absolutely amazing.  The reader will come to care about all of these people while reading their letters.  The effect of war on ordinary people who aren’t soldiers is rarely examined.  This is a wonderful and fascinating examination of people trying to deal with the reality of war.  Besides, how could you pass up a book with a passage like the first excerpt below.

Excerpts

That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, that tiny thing will lead will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for not other reason than sheer enjoyment.

…it was too late; six German patrol officers suddenly rose out of the trees with their Lugers drawn and began to shout—Why were we out after curfew? Where had we been?  Where were we going?

          I couldn’t think what to do.  If I ran, they’d shoot me.  I knew that much.  My mouth was dry as chalk and my mind was blank, so I just held on to Booker and hoped.

          Then Elizabeth drew in her breath and stepped forward.  Elizabeth isn’t tall, so those pistols were lined up at her eyes, but she didn’t blink.  She acted like she didn’t see any pistols at all.  She walked up to the officer in charge and started talking.  You never heard such lies.