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Sunday, July 31, 2005
Books for July
(bold indicates a first-time read; ratings are out of a possible five)
- Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane) -- Gavin de Becker -- 4.5 (nonfiction)
- This is a book which I am not only going to buy for myself, I'm going to buy copies to give away to my friends who are parents. It's an excellent, necessary book about using our instincts (and teaching our children to use theirs) to keep our children safe, with a lot of very useful information about what tactics to watch out for in people who would abuse our children, or ourselves. It was written by an expert on violent behavior, who advises the Supreme Court and the White House about security issues. Read it with discernment, as the guy draws some evolutionary parallels which I don't agree with, but I can't argue with his main points, and I have already begun applying his advice to my life and my parenting.
- The Living -- Annie Dillard -- 4.5
- This is not a book through which you race along. It took me a full month to read it, I think. It's very dense, very solid, full of similes that make you think, and situations that make you cringe or cry or laugh or shudder. There's not much of a plot, which in this instance is OK, because the focus of the story is on the people and on the place in which they live and on the nature of life there. You get a definite sense in the first half of the book of the apparent randomness of death on the 19th-century Northwestern U.S. frontier, and the second half goes more into life in a boom town and the way the ups and downs of that kind of existence affect the characters. I'm making it sound very dull, but it's not; the writing is lyrical and thoughtful and very, very good.
- Into the Wilderness -- Sara Donati -- 4.5
- This is a romantic historical fiction series I've read a few times before. This first book in it is my favorite of the four available so far, I think. I needed something whose plot would keep me turning pages, after all the heavy reading in The Living, and this was exactly what I needed: quick reading without being light, romance without ripping bodices, and a likable cast of characters (when you have two people who are loosely based upon Elizabeth Bennet (and other Austen heroines) and Daniel Day-Lewis* in "The Last of the Mohicans" marrying and living in the wilderness of upstate New York in 1792 -- how can it go wrong?). The research is impeccable, but the author doesn't bog you down with a lot of stuff she thought was too interesting to leave out of the book -- which sometimes happens in historical fiction.
*the author actually based him on the son of Daniel Day-Lewis' character, as he was portrayed in Cooper's The Pioneers -- but she also acknowledges that she pictures DD-L when she writes about him, and let's just say the guy takes after his father in a big way.
- This is a romantic historical fiction series I've read a few times before. This first book in it is my favorite of the four available so far, I think. I needed something whose plot would keep me turning pages, after all the heavy reading in The Living, and this was exactly what I needed: quick reading without being light, romance without ripping bodices, and a likable cast of characters (when you have two people who are loosely based upon Elizabeth Bennet (and other Austen heroines) and Daniel Day-Lewis* in "The Last of the Mohicans" marrying and living in the wilderness of upstate New York in 1792 -- how can it go wrong?). The research is impeccable, but the author doesn't bog you down with a lot of stuff she thought was too interesting to leave out of the book -- which sometimes happens in historical fiction.
- Dawn on a Distant Shore -- Sara Donati -- 3.5
- In this second novel in the Into the Wilderness series, Elizabeth and Nathaniel go to Scotland. Still very well-written, but a little more "intrigue" than I like. Warning: if you have children you will really want to give them lots of hugs about a third of the way into this book. Make sure they're available.
- Lake in the Clouds -- Sara Donati -- 4
- The third novel in the Wilderness series. There are some very disturbing mental images here, but some very good storytelling too, with three-dimensional characters (especially the new ones -- with the exception of Hannah and Curiosity, I find the characters we already knew from the previous two books to be perhaps a little flat in this one).
- Fire Along the Sky -- Sara Donati -- 4
- The fourth novel in the Wilderness series, and I think my second-favorite, after Into the Wilderness. Often when an author adds in new characters as a series moves along, they fail to excite as much interest as the originals who started the whole story moving, but this series is definitely an exception to that. In this fourth volume, several previously minor characters become major ones, and it is a delight to get to know them better; they flesh out as very real-seeming individuals -- without taking away from the story surrounding the other principals whom we've known longer.
One caveat about this whole series: the author has a bit of a bias against Christianity, and it shows. My skin's thick enough to handle this, and I can still enjoy the series a great deal in spite of it.
- The fourth novel in the Wilderness series, and I think my second-favorite, after Into the Wilderness. Often when an author adds in new characters as a series moves along, they fail to excite as much interest as the originals who started the whole story moving, but this series is definitely an exception to that. In this fourth volume, several previously minor characters become major ones, and it is a delight to get to know them better; they flesh out as very real-seeming individuals -- without taking away from the story surrounding the other principals whom we've known longer.
Posted by Rachel on July 31, 2005 07:17 PM in nose in a book
