SHS Book Blog

One of the purposes of this blog is to tell you about good books we have in our collection.  To do that, I try to read a variety of authors and tell you what I think.  Buf after having enjoyed Past, Perfect, Present Tense, I just had to read another one by Richard Peck.

This book tells of the yearly, summer visits that Joey and his sister Mary Alice have with their Grandma.  Sent by train from Chicago to Grandma’s small town, Joey and Mary Alice suspect that the trip is an excuse for their parents to travel without them.

Grandma turns out to be quite the character.  Seemingly uncaring about her neighbors and their feelings, she shows her grandchildren what it means to be part of a small town during the Great Depression.  Along the way they help Grandma save a friend’s house from the bank, enter a pie baking contest at the County Fair, make soap, help a girl run away from her mother, and meet some real unusual people.

Excerpt

Miz Eubanks had to notice the yard below had filled up with people.  But now she had the screen loose and was ducking under to get inside.  She had one knee on the sill.

That’s as far as she got.  Grandma strolled over and took the ladder in both hands.  She jerked it free of the ground, and it fell, scraping down the house.

It must have seemed to Miz Eubanks that the world had dropped out from under her.  She had one knee on the windowsill and the rest of her was in space.  She grabbed the window screen, and it came with her as she fell.

She was in the air a long moment, turning as she dropped, legs working hard. Then she crashed through the snowball bushes, still clutching the screen.

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Mr. Stubbs cried, “and she’s not insured!”

I went in to the shelves to see if I could find a book that met the two requirements; I had not thought of  it before. and  it would be fun to read. For me, Past, Perfect, Present Tense met both and was a great read.

I wasn’t sure what to expect having never read anything by Richard Peck.  This collection has stories that deal with the past, the supernatural, and the present.  I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.  The stories that were meant to be funny made me laugh during SSR.  The scary ones, especially, “The Most Important Night of Melanie’s Life,” made me glad I wasn’t reading this at night, alone, in the dark.

These are some great stories, read them.

Excerpt

Quicker than it takes to tell, Grandma was back and already raised to her shoulder was the twelve-gauge Winchester from behind the woodbox. She swunt it wildly around the room, skimming Mrs. Wilcox’s hat, and took aim at the gauze that draped the yawning coffin.  Then she squeezed off a round.

I thought that sound would bring the house down.  I couldn’t hear right for a week.  Then Grandma roadred out, “Rest in peoace, I tell you, you old–” Then she let fly with the other barrel.

The reporter came out of the chair and whipped completely around in a circle.  Beer bottles went everywhere.  The straight route to the front door was in Grandma’s line of fire, and he did didn’t have the presence of mind to realize she’d already discharged both barrels.  he went out a side window, headfirst, leaving his hat and notepad behind.  Which he feared more, the living dead or Grandma’s aim, he didn’t tarry to tell.  Mrs. Wilcox was on her feet, hollering “The dead is walking and Mrs. Dowdel’s gunning for me!” She cut and ran out the door and into the night.

“Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground”

During the period known as the Age of Reason in Europe and North America, people began to change the way they thought about other people, science and philosophy.  During this time France went from the absolute, divine right of kings, as shown by Louis XIV, to the rule by the people of the French Revolution.  Additionally, scientists began to look for scientific reasons to explain why things happened. During this time scientists like Pierre-Simon Laplace proved that the other planets in the sky were affected by the gravity of the Sun and other planets. Great advances were made in medicine in such areas as training people as midwives (women who help other women have their babies in safe, healthy conditions).  It was truly a time of changes in Europe.

I hope that if you have read this far you are not thinking that this book would be boring.  It is anything but that.  In its 168 pages, the editors use pictures and very readable text to tell the reader about Louis XIV, Madam Pompadour, and all the people who made important scientific discoveries during this period.  It is very interesting to read this book and find out just how people lived.  Louis XIV had a daily routine that began when he got out of bed, with help, and mapped out his entire day. Compare this to the peasants who worked from sunrise to sunset, seven days a week, and barely made enought to survive.

This book looks at the lives of royalty and the businessmen of this time period.  In so doing it also tells us about the lives of ordinary people who worked in the fields for their rich landlords.  This book is fascinating and well worth reading.  Check out the excerpt below as it explains how children were rounded up to control their misbehavior and make various policemen richer.

Excerpt

Soon, teenagers and even younger children began disappearing from the streets.  Policemen in plain clothes would approach a group of youngsters and then whisk them off to prison in closed carriages, bypassing the usual arrest procedure in which a a suspect was taken to a district police commissioner  to dermine if action was warranted.  Eager to augment their meager incomes with the promished bounty, the police acted indisciminately, collecting not just vagrant children but the offspring of respectable merchants and tradesmen.  Many of the youths themselves had jobs as aprrentices or clerks.  Berryer himself did not object to the wide net his men were casting.  He explained that for months he’d been receiving complaints from parents about their delinquent children stealing money from them in order to gample openly in the public squares.  Such parents, he said, actually wanted their children to be arrested to chasten them and set an example for others.

Ambrose Bierce was an American writer and newspaper reporter who fought in the Civil War.  After the war he became famous for his biting, sarcastic style and for a book he called, The Devil’s Dictionary.  In 1913, at the age of 71, he went to Mexico to observe the Revolution and disappeared.  To this day, no one knows exactly how Bierce died.

In, The Old Gringo, the famous Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, imagines Bierce as a bitter, remorseful old man who came to Mexico in order to die.  Once in Mexico Bierce meets the peasant general Tomás Arroyo and the American governess Harriet Winslow.  In the process of telling what happened to the Old Gringo, Fuentes explores the causes of the Mexican Revolution, the motives of his characters, and the relationship between Mexico and the United States.

This is a powerful and moving story.  Originally written in Spanish we have copies in both its original language and English translations.  This book will help you to better understand the Mexican Revolution, the changes it caused in Mexico, the relationship between Mexico and the U.S., as well as how these things came to be.

Excerpt

There were new men, unsure of their ground, the prisoners who had come over to Villa’s side, content simply to reach a village and make new friends.  A revived La Garduña, arranging the bunch of dead roses at her breast, was there to welcome them, to say that life is for the living, that all of them were like her, they had never left their villages before but now they were traveling everywhere, conceiving a child in Durango, giving birth in Juarez, losing it in Chihuahua; from the beginning of time, they had been isolated in their forgotten villages, their huts in the desert, their hovels in the mountains, and now everybody knew everybody, they were riding around in trains to boot: Long live the Revolution and General Tomás Arroyo!

I’m not quite sure how I managed to get to the fourth book in the Artemis Fowl series and not blog about it but it looks like I have.  But I’ve gone through the reviews on this blog and found no other reference to Artemis Fowl. 

Artemis Fowl, is a teenage, Irish, master criminal, who has a genius I.Q.  In the first three books of the series he has had contact with the Fairy Folk, tried to steal from them, come to respect them, rescued his own father, and even worked with the fairy police detective Holly Short, to stop the evil plans of various people both human and fairy.

In The Lost Colony, Artemis and his faithful bodyguard Butler are tracking demons that are starting to randomly appear in the human world.  This can only be bad news as Holly and the other fairy police have worked hard to keep the secret of the Fairy Folk from humans. To make matters worse there is one demon who is trying to return and destroy the humans. 

 This whole series of books is great and should be read by anyone who loves funny fantasy.

Excerpts       

          Foaly turned once more to his precious wall screens.  He selected and enlarged an artist’s impression of the island of Hybras.

          “I know this all sounds very cloak-and-dagger, and I know you think I’m making an anaconda out of a stink worm.  But believe me, somewhere on that island there is an unsuspecting demon who is bout to take a reluctant visit to Earth and make life very difficult for us.”

 ————————————————————————————————

       There will be consequences for this, he thought.  You can’t alter time and be unaffected.  But whatever the consequences are, I will bear them, because the alternative is too terrible.

          He returned to his mission, dragging the bomb the final few feet to the plateau…

Fitting in with the people and groups around us can be one of the most difficult things in life.  It may be that we are shy or tall or short or a different race or speak a different language.  Sometimes we never know why we don’t fit in only that we feel excluded from the groups around us.  This is a terrible feeling. Each of us longs to belong, to fit in.

 In Sellout by Ebony Joy Wilkins, we meet NaTasha, who lives in a New Jersey suburb.  NaTasha is the only African American in her ballet troupe and one of the few African Americans in her school.  NaTasha is concerned when her grandmother, Ms. Tilly, invites her to spend the summer  in Harlem and volunteer at Amber’s Place, a shelter/school for girls with problems.  NaTasha is less than thrilled to be leaving her home and best friend to spend the summer in a new situation.

 But Ms. Tilly is a force of nature and insists that NaTasha come to spend the summer and NaTasha goes because she loves her grandmother so much.  Once at Ms. Tilly’s NaTasha meets old friends like Khalid and Rex.  When they go to Amber’s Place the troubles really start for Natasha.  It seems that the girls at Amber”s Place think NaTasha is a sellout and tries to act too white.  One group led by a girl named Quiana is especially active in attacking NaTasha.

 Eventually, NaTasha decides that she has to make the best of the bad situation and reaches out to the girls at Amber’s Place.  In the process, NaTasha makes some amazing discoveries about herself and the other girls.

THIS IS A GREAT BOOK!  READ IT!

 Excerpt

          “Sometimes on the street, people look at me like I’m some kind of disease,” Rex continued, “like I’m not good enough to walk on the same sidewalks as they do.”

          I’d never thought about how hard Rex’s life must be.  He always looked content to me.  His shopping cart was filled to the brim with torn blankets and plastic bags full of canned goods.  A pair of sneakers was thrown over the top, almost hlding everything in place to avoid an avalanche of his belongings.  Living on the street must be rough, but I’d never heard him complain or even talk about it.

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.”