« Before/After: The Video Shelves Etc. | Main | mark it on the calendar »

Monday, October 03, 2005

Books for September

I forgot to post these before I took off over the weekend.

1. Homecoming -- Cynthia Voigt -- 4
   • This was, I believe, the second novel Cynthia Voigt wrote, and the first she had published. But I could have those reversed. Especially for a first novel, it's an amazing accomplishment. You meet the Tillerman family, who will be with you in six other books, and for the rest of your life in other ways. Voigt's characters are so real that you expect to look up and see them sitting in the room with you when you put the book down -- which is frequently very hard to do, and as soon as you're done, you want to move on to the next one. This first novel in the Tillerman saga introduces you to four children, Dicey, James, Maybeth, and Sammy, who are abandoned by their (schizophrenic?) mother en route to their great-aunt's house. This happens in the first chapter; the rest of the novel follows their journey (mostly on foot) first to the aunt's house and then from Connecticut to Maryland, where they wind up with a very real, very spirited, very conflicted grandmother. Kid-lit like this is definitely not just for kids.
2. Dicey's Song -- Cynthia Voigt -- 4.5
   • This is a continuation of Homecoming; we see Dicey and her siblings adapting to life at their grandmother's and at school, watch them learn about being themselves and holding on and letting go and growing up. It sounds cheesy when I talk about it. It's not. See above rave review for my opinion of it.
3. A Solitary Blue -- Cynthia Voigt -- 3.75
   • One of my favorite things about the way Cynthia Voigt writes is that she will occasionally tell about the same events, in separate books, from different points of view. A Solitary Blue follows the life of Dicey's friend Jeff, through his early childhood well before he knows Dicey, as he deals with disillusionment and his parents' divorce and learns not to shut himself off from the world just because the world has the capability to hurt him.
4. Come A Stranger -- Cynthia Voigt -- 4.5
   • This book concerns another of Dicey's friends, Mina, and her struggles as a young black girl growing up. Really eye-opening to me, and riveting; also my favorite example of Voigt's multiple-POV technique.
5. The Runner -- Cynthia Voigt -- 4.5
   • This is a flashback book, telling the story of Dicey's uncle. The best thing about it is the view you get of Dicey's grandmother as a younger woman, and all the hints of what made her the way she is. Interesting treatment of a domineering father -- made me think of the way someone very dear to me grew up -- and also of mindless racism and what happens when people can put it aside. You probably want to read this one before "Come a Stranger", come to think of it. I did. It's in here out of order.
6. Silent to the Bone -- E.L. Konigsburg -- 4
   • This story succeeds on several levels. It first struck me as an anthem to friendship -- young male friendship, at that, which is not given as wide a treatment in literature, for children or adults, as its female counterpart. It developed into a good detective story (as an adult, the whodunit and the why became clear relatively early on, but I think the target audience might be in a bit more suspense than that), and touched on themes of psychology, family issues, sexual manipulation (!), and divorce as well. All in all, a strong, worthwhile read. Honestly, I'd never read any Konigsburg except for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I have read numerous times since the age of eight or so; I was glad to see that over thirty years later, she's still writing very well indeed.
7. The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place -- E.L. Konigsburg -- 3
   • I found that this book started out really strong, and lost it a bit at the end. However, again, I'm out of the target audience, and I think a middle-school girl might feel differently about the ending than I do. If you care, I'm about to spoil the ending here, so on the off-chance that I'm not the only person in my little blogging circle who reads children's literature, and on the further off-chance that a fellow reader would mind having the ending spoiled... be warned. I thought the initial camp scenes were excellent. I bitterly hated the brats who tormented Margaret, I really did, and they all had faces drawn from my own elementary-school and junior high days. In the middle of the story, I pretty much forgot about them, and found myself (as a lifelong resident of a once-sleepy but still-small town) identifying heartily with the main character's frustration at uppity newcomers to her fictional hometown of Epiphany, New York, who want to raze her great-uncles' life work, an artistic trio of towers in their backyard, because of concerns about property values. So when the bratty camp girls came back into the story, I rubbed my hands a little, thinking that in some way or another they were about to Get Theirs. I wanted to see abject humiliation. I wanted to see, I dunno, maybe a little blood (me, bitter?). What I did not want was to see them become, essentially, heroes who help save the towers. No no no. Nooooo. This is not a terribly realistic reaction, because, well, isn't that what any mature, thinking, Christian person would love to see happen -- villains turning into "good guys"? And hey, real life villains, y'all have my permission to turn your lives around and save a local landmark near you, more power to you, really. It's not nearly so satisfying in fiction, though.
8. Sons from Afar -- Cynthia Voigt -- 3.5
   • We get to know Dicey's brothers better, as they take a journey (in more ways than one) to find their deadbeat father. Still good, but probably my least favorite of the set.
9. Seventeen Against the Dealer -- Cynthia Voigt -- 4
   • The last (waaah!) novel in the Tillerman cycle. Dicey's an adult, trying to run a business; James is at Yale and Sammy and Maybeth have various high-school struggles. This would not be a terribly remarkable book (although Dicey's business struggles are heart-rending) except for an INGENIOUS sub-plot so subtle that I would never ever have picked up on it if I hadn't been told about it. BRILLIANT. It changes an ordinary story into a -- wow, a brilliant one.
10. Voyager -- Diana Gabaldon -- 4
    • Much of the time this is my favorite from this series, even though there's a bit of smuggling intrigue sort of whodunit kind of stuff that I always want to skip, and there's a character who's quite obviously only there because the author needed someone in the book to perfomr a service he performs (and yes, the author admits in interviews etc. that this is the case). The emotion is really good in this one. Again, though, I'm not as enthralled with the series as I once was. I think Sara Donati kind of ruined me for Diana Gabaldon, truth be told. Better research, better writing, less like a 900-page Harlequin (not that DG's books ARE 900-page Harlequins, but they're closer than Donati's, especially on the fourth or fifth re-read).
11. The Blue Castle -- L.M. Montgomery -- 4.5
    • I LOVE THIS BOOK. It's so different from most of Montgomery's other books (not that I don't also love them, some of them even more than this one). It's one of her only two books that were written for adults -- and it's the only one where all of the main characters are adults. In fact I don't think there's a single child in the book, except for the narrator's descriptions of the characters' childhoods. This has been a life-changing book for several people I know; it has one of my favorite female characters in literature, and her interactions with her world are surprising and a joy to observe. The only reason this book doesn't get a 5 is that it contains some rather long-winded nature-description passages; in the story they're quotes from the main character's favorite author, but it's rather obvious (especially on rereads) that they're simply the author, finding an excuse to include Victorian-ish nature descriptions, which were abundant in her earliest books, in a book published in the mid-30's. I skip them. You don't miss any plot points in so doing.

Comments

Posted by: debi at October 3, 2005 12:17 PM

Posted by: mary at October 3, 2005 12:33 PM

Posted by: Courtney at October 3, 2005 01:55 PM

Posted by: Valerie at October 3, 2005 11:09 PM

Posted by: Kristy at October 5, 2005 01:00 PM

Post a comment