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Well, I did it again. Spent the whole weekend reading. Of course, it didn’t hurt that we were at Black Lake in a cottage with no phone, limited TV, and no computer. Or that it rained…and rained…and rained some more. Here’s my haul…

The Valley of Secrets by Charmian Hussey – I wasn’t sure about this one because the blurb on the back didn’t say much about the story other than that it involved an orphaned boy who suddenly finds out that he’s the only beneficiary in a never-before-seen great-uncle’s will. But it takes place in Cornwall, which is, as any folklore lover knows, one of the most mysterious places on earth. We first meet Stephen Lansbury as he’s just finished a course in botany and is fretting over whether to return to the children’s home where he grew up or set off on his own. An elegant letter from Postlethwaite and Postlethwaite arrives, which brings Stephen to an odd interview with an ancient lawyer nestled comfortably in an office overrun by a jungle of plants. Bertie Postlethwaite informs Stephen that his great-uncle Theodore Lansbury has left him an estate in Cornwall, and Stephen should be getting on there right away to “take care of things.”

With a train ticket and 100 pounds from Mr. Postlethwaite in his pocket, Stephen heads to the wilds of Cornwall. There he finds gates that mysteriously open, overgrown grounds, and an empty but spotless manor house. As he explores, Stephen begins to notice things. Like the strange “woomp, woomp” calls in the forest, the fact that the house has no electricity, that some of the rooms have thick layers of dust all over everything while others are spotless, the odd hammocks hung in the library and in a room upstairs, and the creepy feeling that he’s being watched. Eventually, Stephen finds his great-uncle’s journals and becomes privy to a grand adventure had by his uncle and his friend B. As the days and weeks pass, Stephen comes to realize that his uncle brought part of his adventure home with him, a revelation that solidifies when Stephen finds an injured animal of a type he’s never seen before. He nurses the animal back to health, and is eventually led by the animal to find the greatest secret of all.

I confess that I am a sucker for stories that involve mysterious houses, unexpected inheritances and great secrets, so this book captivated me immediately. As I read, I felt like I was gently being led down a path and at the end I would find a fabulous gift. And that’s just what I found at the end of this story. The events unfolded at exactly the right pace, and the characters were all wonderfully drawn. The only thing I didn’t appreciate was the author’s occasional tendency to preach about the destruction of the rainforest. Although the topic was certainly pertinent to the story, the facts were presented awkwardly and didn’t really fit into the narration. All in all, though, this was a lovely, gentle story…give it a try.

Gothic: Ten Original Dark Tales – I always take a book of short stories with me on vacation, and this new one just jumped out at me when I was picking out books last week. Some of my favorite authors like Joan Aiken, Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix and Vivian Vande Velde writing my favorite genre of story? Oh yes, this was coming with me. But, as often happens with short story collections, this one is mixed at best. There are a few great stories — particularly Lungewater by Aiken, Morgan Roehmar’s Boys by Vande Velde, and The Prank by Gregory Maguire — but most of the entries in this collection are not fully developed and don’t stand on their own as short stories. The Stone Tower by Janni Lee Simner for instance, would be much better in a longer form. The same is true for Gaimin’s story, Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire, which was scary as far as it went…but it should have gone further. If I had to pick the best story, meaning the one that totally gave me the creeps, it would have to be Morgan Roehmar’s Boys by Vande Velde. The end of that story totally shocked me and made me put the book away for a little while and go out in the sunshine…what little we had on Saturday, that is! This is an okay collection. Nothing great, nothing horrible, but all pretty readable.

Here Lies the Librarian by Richard Peck – I’ve been reading Peck since the Blossom Culp days and he always delivers a good story. A Year Down Yonder made me laugh out loud, and so did this one. Of course, you know I picked it up because of the title. After all, how could I resist a book that takes place in a town that had a librarian named Electra Dietz? Although libraries and library science students play a big part in the story, it really all belongs to Eleanor “PeeWee” McGrath, who operates a garage with her big brother Jake. It’s the early 20th century and automobiles are just becoming an accepted form of transportation, and women are driving as often as men. Four refined but forward-thinking women arrive one day in a lovely Stoddard-Dayton automobile and promptly have a flat in front of PeeWee’s garage. Although she fixes the flat, PeeWee has no idea that these women will turn her world upside down. The story is typical Peck — lots of laughs, goofy characters, and wonderful language. I was particularly taken with this exchange between Irene Ridpath, the forward-thinking library science student, and PeeWee:

• “Grace, Lodelia, and Geraldine? They’ll soon be reporting for duty [in the library]. Presently, they are floating on Lake Maxinkuckee in canoes with beaus.”

  “Beaus? What are they?”

  “Suitors. Gentlemen callers. Fraternity men with ukuleles.”

  “Oh.” I strove to picture this. “Are they spooning?”

  “Or reading aloud,” Irene said.

If you like Peck, you love this story. He’s beginning to remind me of Norman Rockwell — instead of painting those goofy slices of early American life, Peck writes them.

Sorcerors and Secretaries by Amy Kim Ganter – Cute but not terribly original graphic novel.

The What Kids Do post got me thinking about all the stories and movies my kids read and watched over and over gain. That and the fact that I’ve been sifting through my book collection, trying to weed it out so I have room for more books. I came across some old favorites and realized that some of the oldies but goodies had disappeared. Probably too much love. Anyway, here are the lists of books and movies Scott and Liz L-O-V-E loved.

The Must-Reads of Sir Scott and Queen Elizabeth

• A to Z Animal Band (Play a Sound series) – one of those Sam’s Club buys that totally captivated him from the time he was 1 to about 3 or 4. I so clearly remember sitting on his bed reading this to him when I was hugely pregnant with Liz. He’d get mad because he’d put his head on my belly and she’d kick him. He and I would take turns making the sounds. It was pretty hilarious at the time.
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin – this is the quintessential picture book — wonderful colors and shapes, and a catchy little refrain that Scott still repeats sometimes.
• One Hungry Monster by Susan O’Keefe and one of my favorite illustrators, Lynn Munsinger. Both kids loved this one and so did I. I’ve used it in storytime on many an occasion, and the illustration of the monsters with peanut butter painted on their mouths is priceless. Liz dug out our old copy and used it this year when she read to the 1st graders at school.
• Sailor Pig (a Furry Face Board Book) – Liz especially liked this one, although Sailor Pig’s snout was pretty smushed by the time she got him.
• Whatever You Do, Don’t Get a Gink by Dr. Seuss, but really Louise Gikow – Every now and then, Scott will say “hey Mom! Whatever you do….” and I respond “Don’t get a gink!” and we both just totally crack up.
• More, More More Said the Baby by Vera Williams – Scott absolutely loved this book. He’d have me read it over and over again, and each time we’d act it out and he would laugh uproariously. What made this book extra special was that it was given to me by Ann Gibson and she had it signed by Vera Williams.
• Hi Pizza Man! by Virginia Walter – Both kids loved the repetition of this story and we spent hours thinking of other people and creatures we’d like to have deliver our pizza. Even today, whenever we order pizza, one or the other of the kids will invariably holler out “Hi Pizza Man!” when the doorbell rings.
• Uncle Wiggily’s Storybook by Howard Roger Garis – I’ve never been able to figure out the affection Liz had for this book. The stories are so dated and not very interesting, but she asked for Miss Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy and Squirrel time and again.

There are more, but this post is a-gettin’ long so I’ll cut it short for now. I’ve been surprised at the number of books that are counted among our favorites. Part two will come soon….

I couldn’t help it. I saw this book on Anne’s desk last night and I had to pick it up. Mary Engelbreit holds the same weird fascination for me as Martha Stewart, and her involvement in this book is total and complete. It’s a simple little book featuring Mary’s illustrations and short, sweet and sometimes trite sentences to describe what kids do. Of course, the illustrations are the key, not the simple text. And maybe that’s why there’s no author listed. I can totally imagine Mary’s promotions team sitting around a table looking at leftover illustrations from one of her other wildly popular publications and saying, “You know, we really must do something with these darling illustrations. How about a book of cute little sayings about kids? And we can sell it for 10 BUCKS!”

Some of the things kids do in Mary’s world?

• Like reading a favorite book over and over again.
• Seldom clean their rooms.
• Give the best hugs.
• Watch the same movies over and over again.
• Show off.
• Spoil their dinner.

Some of the things kids do in *my* world?

• Spray their brother’s deodorant on to the bathroom mirror at close range and ruin the finish on the mirror.
• Chew an entire pack of Bubblicious bubble gum…all at once.
• Maintain hidden stashes of candy throughout the house, thereby attracting every damn ant within a hundred miles.
• Wear the same pair of socks for a week because the others in the dresser suddenly became invisible.
• Enjoy spraying me with the hose every chance they get.

I can only dream of the perfection of life in a Mary or Martha world, but I can’t help but suspect that life would be awfully boring. I’ll take wet-hugs-right-out-of-the-bath and ice-cubes-down-my-back any day.

I don’t have a lot of time right now to blog about every book I read last weekend, so I will settle for just listing the titles. Let me just say, it was a fabulous weekend of reading! I hope Motherreader is happy!

• My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prudhomme – I love Julia even more after reading about her life in France. Boy, those snooty chefs at the Sorbonne must have *hated* her!
• The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall – Can anyone say “Bobbsey Twins?”
• Men of Bronze by Scott Oden – an odd combination of war and sex in ancient Persia & Egypt.
• A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray – Good but not great, bad, but not terrible.
• When the Missisissippi Ran Backwards by Jay Feldman – interesting, and scary, history of the New Madrid fault and the great earthquake that changed the course of a war and a country.
• Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads – excellent treatment of how fads can affect our lives when they’re adopted by the medical, educating and business communities. TQM, the bane of my existence at library meetings during the span of 1998-about 2002 or 2003, is totally skewered.
• Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic by Robert Lanham – totally hilarious. I think I have a touch of “Happy Monday” in me.

I really wanted to read more YA books, but I never made it to the library last week to get some. I was on vacation, for those of you wondering how I couldn’t make it to the library when I work in one!

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt is plain and simple the most oddly compelling book I’ve read in ages. It’s cataloged as fiction, but it reads like a gossipy biography or memoir, and yowsa is it good.

You may remember Berendt as the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which put Savannah, Georgia on the map for millions of readers. His treatment of the off-beat, eccentric elegance that is Savannah made for a good read, but his similar treatment of Venice, Italy makes for a great one. Berendt use the destruction by fire of the Fenice Opera House in Venice as the hub in the wheel of all these strange and lovely stories about the people who inhabit this most unlikely of cities. When I started the story, I wondered how Berendt was going to deliver on the promise written on the flyleaf and become a detective investigating the fire. As I read, it became clear that the fire was the vehicle Berendt used to insinuate himself into the daily life of Venetians. His reporting put him in contact with a colorful array of personalities, including

• Ludivico deLuigi, a renegade artist who is ultimately disappointed when the carabinieri don’t arrest him for defacing a public painting.
• Friends of the American Peggy Guggenheim, who describe to Berendt how she re-enacted the sinking of the Titanic, during which her father died, by walking naked into the Grand Canal along with a full orchestra.
• Archimedes Seguso and his dysfunctional family of glassmakers – Archimedes, a master glassblower who, in the days after the Fenice fire, spent all his waking time creating representations of the fire in glass; and his son, who split from the family business, started his own glassworks, and attempted to copyright his father’s name.
• Jane and Philip Rylands, who made their fortune and achieved their position in society by hornswoggling rich old ladies like Peggy Guggenheim and Olga Rudge, the longtime lover of American poet Ezra Pound.
• and so many others I can’t recount them all…

Reading this book was an oddly uplifting experience. I felt a little guilty reading all about the various sins and personal quirks attributed to all these people, but at the same time I began to feel as though I knew these people and I cared about what happened to them. I also learned a little bit of Italian, which is just a two-for-one kind of bonus. Definitely a book worth your time.

The Templar Legacy by Steve Barry – I don’t know why I keep picking up these books that center around debunking Christian mythology, but I do. It must be rooted in my youthful rebellion against the mind-numbing church history classes I was forced to endure at my Catholic high school, which were taught by a nun, Sr. Delphine, who looked, moved and spoke as though she were a step away from one of the catecombs she taught about with such relish. But I digress.

This book is one of the recent spate of DaVinci Code-alikes that have hit the bookshelves. Now, I have to say that I wasn’t too enamoured of Dan Brown’s controversial tale, mostly because I thought Robert Langdon was incredibly boring, and that the French police officer was a total stereotype. I liked Templar Legacy much, much more…better characters, better pacing, better everything.

Our protagonists, Cotton Malone and Stephanie Nelle, find themselves smack in the middle of another gosh-darn conspiracy that will reveal a shocking historical truth intended to rock the foundations of the known world. Stephanie’s dead husband, Lars, spent most of their marriage searching for the lost treasure of the Knights Templar. Seven years after his death, Stephanie receives his journal, sent anonymously through the mail, and decides she must have closure. So, she pulls up stakes from her high level government job, and flies to Copenhagen, where she stirs up a whole bunch of trouble. Teaming up with former intelligence officer turned bookshop owner Cotton Malone (maybe I’m wrong, but I really do think this is the name of the sports announcer played by Gary Cole in the movie Dodgeball), the two follow clues supposedly leading to the Great Devise — the legendary Templar treasure hidden in the 14th century as the Knights were being exterminated by French royalty. The two are challenged by Raymond deRoquefort, Marshal, then Master, of the current, hidden Knights. Twists and turns abound as Cotton and Stephanie race against time to discover the Great Devise and foil the evil deRoquefort’s plans of world domination.

Yep. It’s a page-turner all right. Actually, one of the things I liked best about this book is the short sections within the chapters. There wasn’t that whole one-chapter-about-Raymond, one-chapter-about-Stephanie thing going on. I could pick the book up, read for about 5 minutes, put it down to check dinner, change the laundry over, or help a patron and then pick it right back up without missing a beat. And the story itself was full of surprises. I sure didn’t see the twists coming at the end.

The setting is almost identical to that in The Labyrinth by Kate Mosse — Carcasonne and other areas of France — and there are echoes of the same ancient legends in both books. Templar is a much better read, however. Definitely pick it up and give it a shot.

I’m posting this on all my blogs just because I think it’s such a cool odea. I hope some of you will participate!

The 48 Hour Book Challenge, thrown down by Mother Reader, will take place over the weekend of June 16-18. Mother challenges everyone who participates to read as many books as possible in that 48 hour span and then blog about their experiences. Books have to be at least a 4th grade level. Sign up here and start gathering your books. What a great excuse to sit around all weekend and read all the J Fiction and YA books I’ve been eyeing for months.

There are several variants of this book meme out there and they’re all fun!

1. A book that made you cry – Peace Like a River by Leif Enger – the main character suffers from asthma, and boy, could I relate!
2. A book that scared you – Ghost Story by Peter Straub – a waterlogged ghost gets me every time; Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien – the scene on the rock where Frodo gets stabbed by one of the Riders always scared the hell out of me.
3. A book that made you laugh – Bad Dog which is really just a collection of photos of dressed up dogs; The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love by Jill Connor Browne was one of the funniest books I ever read. The scene where she finds a possum under her bed is priceless.
4. A book that disgusted you – Helter Skelter; and The English Roses by Madonna, just because if she was a regular person, every publisher on the face of the earth would have laughed her out of their offices for this insipid story. Pretentious much?
5. A book you loved in elementary school – Flat Stanley, Hailstones & Halibut Bones, Nancy Drew, Trixi Belden, Judy Bolton, The Dana Girls
6. A book you loved in middle school – The Hobbit, trashy gothic mysteries
7. A book you loved in high school – Roots
8. A book you loved in college – Praisesong for the Widow
9. A book that challenged your identity or faith – The Deeper Song by Patricia Pfitsch
10. A series that you love – Harry Potter, Richard Jury, the Meg Mysteries, the Maggody mysteries
11. Your favorite horror book – The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
12. Your favorite science fiction book – None
13. Your favorite fantasy book – Harry Potter, the Mists of Avalon, Christopher Chant books
14. Your favorite mystery book – Laurie King’s Mary Russell series, Be Buried in the Rain by Barbara Michaels
15. Your favorite biography – Candy and Me by Hillary Liftin
16. Your favorite coming-of-age book – Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas and Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block
17. Your favorite book not on this list – Trojan Gold by Elizabeth Peters

I’ve been re-reading this book because Cosmo had to read it for school and he was totally taken by it. I read Peace Like a River for the first time a couple years ago when it was the selection for All Rochester Reads the Same Book and it didn’t really strike a chord with me at the time. When Cos loved it, I decided I should give it another try, because this is a man who is not a reader. I wanted to see what appealed to him so much, and believe it or not, I understand.

Peace is a family story full of mystery, memorable characters, and heart. I find myself totally drawn to Swede this time around, even though I found her rather annoying during my first read of the story. I’m wondering now why I wasn’t moved by the story the first time I read it. It is full of magical realism, which I first encountered done beautifully in The Milagro Bean Field Wars and thought then that it couldn’t be done any better. I was wrong. Enger blends the power of God with faith, healing and love in a way that rivals the story Nichols spins in Milagro. There are no shrines to Smokey the Bear in Peace, but there is Sunny Sundown, which bears a remarkable similarity in meter to my grandfather’s favorite poem, The Shooting of Dan McGrew. I’m about halfway through the book right now. I’ll be writing more when I finish it.

I’ve always been a fan of reworked stories, going waaaay back to my early years in college when I was obsessed with rewriting fairy tales from all sorts of strange perspectives. It was considered odd back then, but now it seems to be the thing to do. So, when I read the description of Marly’s Ghost, I was intrigued. It’s pretty simple, really. Take A Christmas Carol and move it to Valentine’s Day 2000something and make the characters teenagers in love. The Marly in question is the dead girlfriend of our tragic hero, Ben, who has completely lost faith in love since her death. The three spirits visit Ben and show him the purity and beauty of love, and also show him what he’s missing by shutting love out of his life. The Dickens formula is followed pretty closely, and Ben ends up redeemed as expected.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. And some parts were heartbreaking. However, I just couldn’t stand Ben. I found him whiny, mean, and very unsympathetic. Kids will like this because it’s short, but I’m betting that anyone not familiar with A Christmas Carol just won’t get this.