After reading 2/3 of the book, I tried to explain what it was about. It seemed to be about several different characters, but I couldn’t make out a theme among their stories. There was a ton of foreshadowing, so I figures that each story would end up in the same place at the same time, creating a climactic event that would solve all their problems. It didn’t happen. A few problems were solved, but the central problem, the “Who am I?” essay, was left hanging. I would have preferred to have at least one person (ideally, Kalpana) answer that question.

After his tenure at Camp Green Lake, Armpit is trying to play it straight. He’s doing pretty well until X-Ray comes along with a plan to make some fast money scalping concert tickets. In “Small Steps” we see how one bad decision and the ensuing occurrances changes Armpit’s life in remarkable ways.

Sachar keeps the style of telling the story from several perspectives, and does it well. This story is less magical and less funny than “Holes”, and more moralistic. In Holes, Stanley was in trouble by accident; he never actually committed any crime. In “Small Steps”, Armpit is well-intentioned, but he did agree to participate in ticket scalping.

It was a good story. It reads easily, and it’s engaging. But there isn’t anything special about it. It’s no “Holes”. But it’s worth a read.

I reviewed this book for the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. My complete review will soon be found there. In short, Dr. Tyler presents the radical theory that a variety of diseases - genital and otherwise - are caused by exposure to another’s sperm. Due to the infusion of religion and moral judgments, Foreign Sperm should not be read as a medical or scientific text. It should be shelved beside Of Pandas and People, and used as an example of non-science.

I really enjoyed it. I love the quirky and the morbid, especially this month, and I liked the way it walked the line between reality and nonsense. See, I can go with a forest filled with bears out for blood as long as there’s also a kid spouting the virtues of internet commerce.

I actually got the feeling this wasn’t even written for kids, from the swearing and the liquor. I had to check the shelving sticker (J). I suppose kids would get it, but maybe miss a few things, or have to look them up. (“Mommy, what’s cointreau?”)

The ending was fine. It did move much faster than the rest of the book, but I feel like it was only there to tie together the loose ends, and if it had been drawn out, I would have gotten bored. Horvath didn’t seem to concerned with plotlines through most of the book, so a quick tie-up at the end was all I needed. I like that the girls stayed there, but had lives. I would have been sad if they both turned out so isolated like Tilly and Penpen.

I really enjoyed this book, although I can’t discern why, or even what the book is about. Hope is a 16-year-old waitress who lives and travels with her aunt, Addie, a diner cook. They move to a small town in Wisconsin as a diner tag team, and make a home there, as Hope gets involved in the local politics. The diner owner, G.T., is running for mayor, against the corrupt incumbent, even though he has cancer and just finished a round of chemotherapy.

I know it’s about hope, that’s pretty obvious. But the message doesn’t seem clear. Or at least it’s not clear cut, like, “have hope”. It seems more complicated, like “you don’t have to go looking for the things you want, as long as you’re open-minded about how they might turn out to be, because they might not be what you expected, but they’re still good.” Something like that.

It’s simple and undramatic. It’s simply a kid who finds a way to grieve his grandmother’s death, and in doing so makes a mistake and then fixes it. The Kevin Henkes I know is there, with the understated moments and feelings, often conveyed by the setting and the weather. It’s a pleasure to read.

I don’t normally read popular books, especially ones with an Oprah sticker on the cover, but it was recommended, and I read the first few pages in an airport bookstore, and I decided it was worth borrowing the library copy.

First, I’ll say that it’s written appropriately. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s written well, but the form reflects the function, which seems to be to convey the feeling of having an addiction. The author often omits sentence structure and punctuation, especially when his character is feeling an urge to use. Though it’s effective, it also makes me want to send the author a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

One reader review I read lauded the author not only for his success in beating the addiction, but more so for being in control of his program. Through the book, his character constantly rejects the 12 steps because they are intimately linked with religion. He’s rude to almost everyone in authority, and he plainly refuses to submit to the program. Instead of being strong, willful, and confident, I find this arrogant and obnoxious. To make it worse, he capitalizes nouns (like People and Room) as if he were an 18th century English writer. He basically annoyed me as both character and author.

As for the story, sure, ok. It was pretty much what I expected. Whatever. I can’t say there was any part I especially liked or disliked. It was just there. I didn’t find it captivating or enthralling, in fact it took longer to read it than I expected, and had to rush to get it back to the library on time. It was just there, and I read it because it was there.

Now, for the controversy. Apparently he embellished. He exaggerated some of the details to make it a more interesting story, and made his character seem “tougher and more daring and more aggressive”, probably hoping readers would like him more. I’m glad he made the effort to try to entertain, but I probably would have liked him better unedited.

Great book. It’s simple and fun. I read it in less than a day, and yet I didn’t feel like I was rushing. When Leslie moves to town and becomes Jesse’s new best friend, she introduces him to a new world, with imagination and curiosity. She helps him try new things and confront his fears…

Spoiler alert!
I was totally into it and interpreting the symbolism that Terabithia, their imagined land, represented everything Jesse feared, or prejudged, and Leslie brought that world to him and let him explore it. At first, they had to get there by swinging on a rope over a rive, and when Jesse got scared of it, I figured they would build a bridge and he’d no longer be scared to try new things. See, I had it all figured out.
Then she died! She was too brave, and fell into the river when crossing it. Terabithia was still this other world, but now it became HER world, where imagination ruled. Jesse ended up building the bridge so he could share it with his little sister.

I suppose the effect is the same, that Leslie still served to bring imagination to Jesse’s childhood world, and likely open-mindedness to his maturing self, but for some reason I find it less powerful. Marginally.

I got my mom this for her birthday. She liked it and said I should read it, so I borrowed it. Good book. It’s so interesting and for exactly the right reasons. The author simply wants to take a detailed look at what happens to bodies after the people are done with them. There’s rotting and the different ways to do it, as well as things that cadavers can be useful for, like vehicle safety tests and anatomy lab, or as fertilizer. To an extent, we each have a choice of what to do with our bodies once we’re dead, and the author seems to have a logical (and sensitive) perspective on the choices. She’s also way funny and just comfortable enough to make it not so weird to read about dead bodies.

I wouldn’t say I loved this book. A lot of it was the nonsense that probably goes through a 10-year-old head. It was obvious to me that her best friend was no longer her best friend, but she didn’t seem to get it. What I didn’t get was why?

But that’s not really what the book was about. The little girl who lives in a funeral home sees death all the time, and doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, even when her great uncle, then her great-great-aunt die. She doesn’t even seem to mourn. She seems remarkably well-adjusted.

Maybe it’s because I was often distracted while reading, but I seem to have missed a few plot points. Why did the friend stop being a friend? Why did the girl learn to mourn? What really changed? And if it’s the events I remember, it doesn’t seem to make sense.

But it was good, sure.