Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan

 

Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, 112 pages  

Is there anything so delightful as revisiting a book you loved as a child?! The surprising details that have stayed in the back of your memory somewhere, the charming little things you didn’t notice at a different point in your life, the surprise when you find yourself identifying with the adults in the story...what’s not to love? I had read this one several times, and certainly long after it was an academic challenge, just because it was so darn good.

This is the story of a father and two children in a setting that I took to be 1880’s Kansas, but was surprised on this read to find it is actually a little more vague. A widower places a personal ad in the newspaper, and his two children eagerly await an answer. A response comes from the titular Sarah from the exotic land of Maine. Sarah arrives to spend a month the family before deciding if she’ll marry the widower and stay forever. Behaving as no actual children ever have, the kiddos strive to impress Sarah both because they want so much to have a stepmother and because they come to love her as an individual. They enjoy a sampling of prairie-life experiences, and hear how different things are in Maine. It’s difficult to call this a spoiler because the book is 45 years old, and because it’s a predictable book: Sarah decides to join the family!  

Of course this is one of many White People on the Great Plains type of books, that don’t offer a variety of experiences, but did lack the more overt insensitivity of the Little House books (which you’d expect from 1980s and 1930s books, respectively). It did get a little monotonous that Sarah responds to everything with “in Maine, we do xyz instead!” Girl, we get it, you’re from Maine! Otherwise, a fun little one-sitting read. 

Invisible Man

Invisible man, Ralph Ellison, 599 pgs.

Our summer reading choice for 2018, a powerful novel of a young African American man who leaves his home in the south and goes to Harlem to seek his fortune.  Unnamed, the protagonist is involved in a series of events that reinforce his invisibility...often he is not seen in society.  Over time, he witnesses violence, is harassed and learns that many can not be trusted...they will use you and discard you.  The book is widely regarded as one of the best of the 20th century.  It is packed with imagery, meaning and is often reminiscent of jazz solo.  After not reading it for many years, it was good to revisit.

Victor LaValle's Destroyer

Victor LaValle's Destroyer by Victor LaValle, art by Dietrich Smith and Joana LaFuente, 170 pages

Dr. Josephine Baker is a genius with a chip on her shoulder.  She out-tested everyone else as as child and ended up working for a shadowy lab that lets her go when she becomes pregnant.  She moves to academia and splits from the father of her child. Working at the University of Chicago, her resources are a little more limited but she has a lot of freedom to pursue her work.  One day, they come for her to identify her son't body.  He was shot by the police while waiting for the bus.  Her anger sets her on a path of vengeance.  Did I mention that she is a relative of the original Dr. Frankenstein whose monster is out there and likely to return?  Surely you see where this is going.  Take a look at the cover and get a hint.  An absolutely excellent updated version of a classic story.

The talented Ribkins

The talented Ribkins / Ladee Hubbard, 295 pages

All of the Ribkins have a special talent. The type of things your don't hear about all the time.  Johnny has a way with maps, Franklin could climb walls, Simone appears to people as she wants to be seen, Bertrand can belch fire and young Eloise catches things. Each is trying to use their gift in the best way possible but at the same time, they are often stumbling and making mistakes.  Johnny is in a situation where he owes some money fast and takes a trip "running errands" which means he is digging up old treasures.  He and half brother Franklin had a nice partnership of stealing things for awhile before Franklin died and so lots of holes contain cash and jewelry.  Johnny's niece Eloise has just met her uncle and is traveling with him to get to know her dad's side of the family.  Her father died before she was born so there is a big gap.  Always a fan of a good dysfunctional family, this group is really more functional that most.  Also reminiscent of last year's favorite "Spoonbenders."  Certainly a fun book to read.

The Clarence Principle

The Clarence Principle by Fahed Said and Shari Chankhamma, 224 pages

A graphic novel with beautiful art that explores a young man's suicide. I picked up this book at the library when I realized that I had come to the Library for a children's activity without a book to read and without my earbuds. I was upset at first and then realized that since it was a library, I could easily find something else to read. I went to the graphic lit section and found a couple of books, including this one. I thought that he art by Shari Chankhamma was extraordinary and very moving. I found the story that went along with the art a little muddled and sort of self-indulgent, but not bad. Clarence kills himself, apparently over a love affair gone wrong (not sure if Elissa left him, disappointed him or killed herself), and then enters an odd sort of afterlife.

The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, 119 pages.
Graphic Lit account of the days surrounding the death of the Soviet dictator in February of 1953. The book is based on actual events but focuses on the imagined words and actions of the Central Committee members Lavrentiy Beria, Nikita Krushchev, Antastas Mikoyan, Lazar Kanovich, Nikolai Bulganin, Georgy Malenkov, and Vyasseslav Molotov. The action is centered around the jockeying of Beria, head of the NKVD and a rapist and murderer on a evilly epic scale, and Krushchev to consolidate power. Marshall Zhukov, head of the Soviet army, is the key in the end. The graphic novel was the basis for the recently released movie of the same name. Kind of liked the movie better, but this was very interesting. Evokes nostalgia for a time when brutal, murderous thugs were considered our foes, instead of people whom we pathetically fawned over.

Waypoint Kangaroo

Waypoint Kangaroo / Curtis C. Chen, 312 pgs.

A spy thriller in a science fiction setting, special agent Kangaroo is sent on a vacation to avoid the auditors.  While on his luxury cruise to Mars, he is called into action when there is a murder on board.  The murder is just the start of a larger conspiracy that puts everyone on board in peril and threatens to start an interplanetary war.  Kangaroo has a bunch of special features, built in communication equipment and bionic features that allow him to "see" radiation and radio waves as well as implants in others.  His big superpower, however, is a parallel universe that only he can access through is "pocket." All the best equipment in the world can sometimes have a hard time foiling a well planned operation.  Kangaroo is a guy who always has a quip at hand and is mostly competent on his missions.  If you are someone who agrees that a bad plan is better than no plan at all, you will have fun reading this book.

Stephen Florida

Stephen Florida / Gabe Habash, 287 pgs.

Stephen Florida is kind of a sad sack.  His parents died in a car wreck when he was fairly young and the grandma he lived with died of cancer right about the time he graduated from High School. Now he has devoted his energy to wrestling.  He wants to win a national championship.  Nothing else really exists...he attends classes and deals with loneliness but only thinks bout winning. He takes a young wrestler under his wing. Along the way, he meets Mary Beth, and they seem to fall in love.  Stephen gets injured and comes closer and closer to losing his mind. He worries that his coach is plotting against him.  He discovers a horrible secret about his young friend and Mary Beth leaves for a job.  Stephen realizes he has nothing in his life beyond the national championship.  Will he win it?  Does it matter?  What will happen next?  An interesting story of obsession and an insight into a brain that I could not always understand but often found relate-able.

Circe

Circe by Madeline Miller, 393 pages.
Miller's retelling of Greek myth and story from the point of view of the title character, the sorceress and witch, best known for her part in the Odyssey.
Circe, the daughter of the Titan sun god Helios and Perse, the nymph daughter of the Titan Oceanus, tells of her early years as a powerless nymph, seeking favor with her father, but at odds with her sorcerer siblings, Aeetes, Pasiphae, and Perses. Circe's explorations in magic, both for love and revenge cause her to be exiled to the island of Aiaia, and that's where she performs her best know tricks, pigs and such
In her telling, with her careful weaving of the known stories and the unknown bits behind it all Miller shows herself to be among the smartest, craftiest, and just the best of us. An inspiringly good story.

Titus Groan

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, 496 pages.
Peake wrote this first volume of his Gormenghast trilogy back in 1946. He completed the second volume in 1950 and the third in 1959. There is a fourth volume, of which I hadn't heard until now, that was published after the author's death. I'm not sure what the story was with that last volume, and I'm not interested enough in its story to look into it now. We live in an age of posthumous books, so many of which aren't worth anyone's time or effort, most of them seemingly bearing little relation to what the author intended to publish. I will wait to see if I make it all the way through the original trilogy before I hunt down information on volume four.
I read The Lord of the Rings when I was twelve or thirteen. My father had a set of LOTR with the Barbara Remington cover design. The fact that LOTR was a trilogy, and therefore trilogies were inherently good, coupled with the similarities (to me, anyway) between the Remington LOTR covers and the Bob Pepper-covered Gormenghast books, which my father also owned, convinced me that I should read Gormenghast. It took another forty-odd years, and several false starts, but my reading of this set of books is now underway.
There is a lot to love about this strange book. Gormenghast is a land unto itself. There's no no world-building here, not in the more modern fantasy novel sense. Gormenghast is the only place of which its inhabitants are aware. It is an almost endless moldering castle, part in ruins, part neglected and unremembered. The days of the inhabitants are filled with ritual; not particularly elaborate or glorious, but more mundane, celebrating something ill-remembered from the castle's murky past. The
characters, from ruling family-Lord Sepulcrave, the countess Gertrude, their daughter Fuschia, and Titus, the newly-born heir to the throne- to the retainers, Dr Prunesquallor, Mr. Flay, Sourdust, and Swelter are an odd, Gothic, and even macabre bunch. They are all locked in a battle, though they aren't aware of it immediately, with the displaced kitchen-boy, Steerpike, as he begins his quest for power.
Peake's writing is strangely Gothic. It's set in a strange and  threatening land, that is populated by the oddest of people, but for most of the characters and much of the time, the threat is internal. Nothing much is happening to anyone that's not everyday and pedestrian; their days are all wrapped in ritual, remote and linked to strange threats from long ago. Peake made it all come alive though. He was a very good writer.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie / Muriel Spark, read by Nadia May, 187 p.

I suppose I must have seen the film based on this brief novel starring Maggie Smith, but if so I didn't remember it as I was listening to this taut, strange and fascinating tale.  Miss Brodie, a rebellious and unconventional Edinburgh teacher, has a group of 6 young girls that comprise her set.  She opens their minds and wields an outsize influence, but this is no heartwarming tale.  Yes, Miss Brodie gives primacy to the arts and imagination, but alas, she is rather too fond of Mussolini and Franco for her own or anyone else's good.  Weird and wonderful.