Books

I found this story of two dogs on Facebook."Both at separate times walk into the same room. One comes out wagging his tail, while the other comes out growling. A woman watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so mad. To her surprise, she finds a room filled with mirrors. The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him, while the angry dog saw only angry dogs growling back at him. What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are." KikiKiki was startled by the mirrored closet wall when we moved here, but she soon approached it, plopped on her side, extended her paw behind the open door, and looked at me as if to say, "See, I know there's no cat behind here." After that, Kiki would occasionally stare at herself in the closet mirror from where she slept on my bed, but most of the time she ignored it.SammySammy still fights the cat in her mirror. She usually pauses to get up her courage before entering her room (she and Donna share the other bedroom in our apartment), then Sammy either marches past "that other cat" without looking or stops to hiss and growl at it. Sometimes she stands on her hind legs to do battle. She obviously can't stand that other cat."What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are." The last sentence in the story adds a new thought. Mirrors reflect who we are, but so does the world. Now I must ask myself, what do I need to change to make my world a better place?

The Icelandic police have launched an investigation into what happened to our missing summer. Their website announces that they are presently interviewing witnesses and suspects. And I am not making this up. But Icelandic weather is not today‘s topic. Sweden is. So here goes. Please not that I will be generalizing a lot, going by the principle that sweeping statements are OK if highly positive. Sweden is the largest of the Nordic countries in terms of population with 9.5 million inhabitants and the third largest country in the European Union in regards to area. It is considered the best governed country in the world in 2013 according to the Economist. Sweden, like Denmark and Norway, has a monarch that serves a figurehead purpose but is for all accounts a democratic state with a parliament and cabinet ministers running the show. Not being an expert in political science I can only note that popular belief in Iceland considers Sweden to be the inventor of Social Democrats and the welfare state. It is also said that in Sweden any action is one of two things: compulsory by law or forbidden by law. But whatever they are doing it seems to be working. For one, Sweden has a long standing relationship with the arts and design. Swedish music, literature, furniture and various functional design objects are well known to the rest of the world. They are also known for meatballs, pickled herring and lutefisk, the last-mentioned not likely to reach IKEA popularity. Most of those reading this are well familiar with the numerous great crime writers Sweden has begotten – the first widely translated being a husband wife duo Sjöwall and Wahlöö that wrote 10 novels that set the stage for the crime-novel with a social agenda. The next international sensation was Mankell, followed by the sensation to end all sensations Steig Larsson. Having just come from Stockholm I must say that the clean and elegant style one has come to associate with the country‘s products is not a chance happening. It has apparently been this way for some time. The old buildings are beautiful and the dwellings within seem prepped for impromtu photoshoots for magazine spreads, no matter what the household income bracket. The Swedes have mastered some sort of minimalism that manages to look warm and livable - not like a cool place for open heart surgery like so many other minimalistic spaces. I think I am not taking too much of a risk by saying that in general the Swedes are stylish at heart. There must be a special nucleotide pairing in DNA strands for style. The people I saw on the streets also seem in a whole lot better shape that in most other countries I have been to. Life seemed less processed somehow than in other, larger EU countries. Everyone I met could have passed for a personal trainer and the population just seems effortlessly gorgeous. I did not see anyone that appeared to have had their face done or gone loopy in a hair salon. The Swedes just seem to be a nation of very healthy people which in part relates to the Swedish lifestyle being quite healthy. The exception to the rule - the not so stylish lit candles on the head. Why do that to such a beautiful girl? In a small way that lifestyle is governed by official regulations. What is bad for you is made expensive and hard to access - what is good for you more affordable. For example, my husband attempted to buy a Long-Island-Ice-Tea at the bar of our hotel but was told by the barman that he would feel like a robber if he were to sell him this drink. It is basically made up of nothing but alcohol and the more alcohol in a drink in Sweden, the more expensive it becomes – exponentially. The price tag for a single Long-Island-Ice-Tea at the bar was 68 dollars. My husband ended up having a glass of Prosecco. We had both begun to show signs of increased healthiness when we departed, only to be thrust dow

Ross Macdonald got so excited one day in 1952 that he dropped his commas. A year later, another writer had a character express his opinion of that sort of thing. Please welcome Macdonald's "The Imaginary Blonde" and Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me:"The blankness coagulated into colored shapes. The shapes were half human and half beast and they dissolved and re-formed, dancing through the eaves of my mind to dream a mixture of both jive and nightmare music. A dead man with a furred breast jumped out of a hole and doubled and quadrupled. I ran away from them through a twisting tunnel which led to an echo chamber. Under the roaring surge of the nightmare music, a rasping tenor was saying ..."And here's Thompson's Lou Ford:"In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He'll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can't figure out whether the hero's laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff—a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to to his job."Who's right, the psychologist or the psychopath? How has description of lowered or heightened states of consiousness changed in crime ficiton since the 1950s?© Peter Rozovsky 2013

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. Masaryk Station, by David Downing (Soho Crime): With this sixth installment in his morally complex historical series (following Postdam Station and Lehrter Station), British author Downing is apparently closing out the adventures of John Russell, a well-traveled ­Anglo-American journalist (and onetime communist) who has become caught up in the rife disillusionment and redundant horrors of the Second World War. The series began with 2007’s Zoo Station (set at the end of 1938), and each successive entry has taken its name from a railway depot in Berlin, Germany. Masaryk Station finds Russell in Berlin in 1948, after the war’s conclusion, still working as a double agent for both the USSR’s notorious NKVD and America’s recently launched Central Intelligence Agency, and hoping he can extricate himself from both camps before either discovers his activities. But the ruined former Nazi capital is a city divided between occupying powers, where spies proliferate at the dawning of the Cold War. Worse, there’s talk of Western forces abandoning the city and leaving it prey to Soviet soldiers, who have a long reputation for brutality. Amid these tensions, Russell and his Russian liaison, Shchepkin, chase after one last bit of intelligence that may change the direction of the Cold War--and help answers questions that have plagued Russell’s mind throughout this series. Author Downing works hard, sometimes too hard, to present his period atmospherics, but his understanding of mid-20th-century history and politics is expert. Although Masaryk marks the end of this particular series, he’ll be launching a second one in April 2014 with the U.S. publication of Jack of Spies (Soho Crime), set in 1913 and introducing Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman whose itinerant ways and dexterity with languages make him an espionage asset in the run-up to World War I. * * * Also worth looking for is The Heist (Bantam), the opening number in a new series penned jointly by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. Fans of the movie and novel To Catch a Thief, as well as the classic Robert Wagner TV series, It Takes a Thief, should find much to appreciate in this fast-moving yarn about FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare, whose lengthy pursuit of handsome con man and crook Nicolas Fox takes an unexpected turn, when Fox convinces the Feebs to offer him a job, working with none other than O’Hare herself. ... Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Sara Gran’s sprightly follow-up to Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, find private eye DeWitt struggling to solve the murder of her musician ex-boyfriend, Paul Casablancas, in San Francisco--a mystery that will cause her to review some of her previous cases. ... And though I haven’t yet succeeded in reading an e-book myself, I’m going to at least mention this one, because proceeds from its sales go to charity: Grand Central Noir (Metropolitan Crime). Edited by Terrence P. McCauley, its an anthology of tales set in and around New York’s 110-year-old Grand Central Terminal. Among the contributors are Matt Hilton, Ron Fortier, Jen Conley, and R. Narvaez. The release of this book benefits God’s Love, We Deliver, which McCauley says is “a non-profit here in New York City whose mission is to feed those too sick to feed themselves.”

“The Son” spans 200 years, six generations and a great many downfalls in one proudly purebred American family, the McCulloughs of Texas.

Today I will be sending out the new issue of the Growing Bookworms email newsletter. (If you would like to subscribe, you can find a sign-up form here.) The Growing Bookworms newsletter contains content from my blog focused on children's and young adult books and raising readers. There are 1685 subscribers. Generally, I send out the newsletter once every two weeks. This time, however, it's been three weeks, because I was on vacation last week (my daughter's first trip to Disney World). Newsletter Update: In this issue I have nine book reviews (three picture books, three middle grade novels, and three young adult novels). I also have two posts with children's literacy and reading-related links that I shared on Twitter and one with the WordGirl word of the month for June. Terry Doherty, Carol Rasco, and I are taking a bit of a break from the children's literacy and reading roundups for the summer (though I think Carol will squeeze in one more this week), but we'll continue to share reading links on Twitter. Look for the #litRdUp hashtag for items of particular interest.  Reading Update: In the past 3 weeks, I finished 2 novels for middle grade readers and 3 novels for young adults. I read:  Claire Legrand: The Year of Shadows. Simon & Schuster. Middle Grade. Completed June 5, 2013. Phoebe Rivers: Saranormal #6: Giving Up the Ghost. Simon Spotlight. Middle Grade. Completed June 6, 2013. Anne Applegate: The Last Academy. Point. Young Adult. Completed May 30, 2013. My review. Bethany Griffin: Masque of the Red Death. Greenwillow Books. Young Adult. Completed June 12, 2013, on Kindle from library. Sarah Jamila Stevenson: Underneath. Flux Books. Young Adult. Completed June 17, 2013, on Kindle. Several of these were vacation reads, for my personal enjoyment - reviews may or not be to come, depending on how the week goes.  I'm currently reading Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen by Donna Gephart on my Kindle, and Dust Girl (Book 1 of the American Fairy trilogy) by Sarah Zettel in paperback. I'm listening to Clockwork Princess (Book 3 of the Infernal Devices trilogy) by Cassandra Clare on MP3. I recently introduced Baby Bookworm to The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. I don't think she completely gets it, but she's enjoying it anyway. She's also enjoying 1, 2, 3 ... By the Sea: A Counting Book by Dianne Moritz & Hazel Mitchell. We took lots of Fancy Nancy, Berenstain Bears, and Little Critter books with us on vacation, because these are relatively text-dense paperbacks, and make excellent travel books. The Fancy Nancy books are particularly good for vocabulary-building.  How about you? What have you and your kids been reading and enjoying? Thanks for reading the newsletter, and for growing bookworms. Wishing you lots of summer reading! © 2013 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved.  You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook. 

Late '80's into the early 90's Sunday evening television meant 'Lovejoy' in our house. Mum and I were both fans and I don't think my sister hated it, so it's possible that part of my affection is based on it being the one hour of the week when two teenage girls and a harassed working mother didn't argue... Thanks to freeview 'Lovejoy' has been repeated on various obscure channels almost continuously over the last five years; I watch it whenever I can find it, the early series especially are, I think, really very good, the later series become more formulaic but are still worth a watch.I've been curious about the books for a long time, so was pleased to find a cheap copy in a discount book shop a few weeks ago, and despite being forewarned that book and filmed version were quite different was still in just the right frame of mind to give 'The Grail Tree' a go. I assume that this one is a reasonable example of the series as a whole - it made for interesting reading. In many ways it was a better book than I expected; decent plot, lots of stuff about antiques, and a very exciting finale all kept me turning the pages.On the downside there is a really unappealing misogynistic streak running through this book. The action opens with Lovejoy being disturbed during an illicit tryst in a marquee, the promise of an antique is more tempting than somebody else's wife, she attempts to slap him so he hits her hard enough to send her flying into a table. It's not attractive, or necessary, or the only time it happens. This Lovejoy also gets into a lot of nasty fights, and has a not altogether feasible line in threats to senior policemen. 'The Grail Tree' was written in 1979, I'm to young to remember quite how bad the bad old days were regarding attitudes to women and gay men but this book was offensive enough for me to doubt I'll pick up another one - although I notice Gash is still writing, or was until recently. Amazon is prompting me to purchase one written in 2010 (Faces in the Pool) and I did think for a moment that it might be interesting to see how his attitudes have developed over the intervening 30 years, but as it features a pole dancer I'm fairly sure I don't need to bother. None of this changes how I feel about the TV series, I can now add to the nostalgia and the general enjoyment the realisation that this is one of the few dramatizations I've seen that's better than the source material. I don't regret reading the book, offensive bits aside it was worth the time, but it's not one I'd recommend either.

The late great Robert B. Parker had this to say about the work of mystery/thriller/espionage writer Sam Reaves (aka Dominic Martell):  “Sam Reaves is too good. He makes me nervous.” Reaves is the author of seven noir mysteries–many of which are set in Chicago–and of three espionage thrillers under the name of Martell, set in Barcelona and other parts of Europe.  These works, Lying Dying Crying, The Republic of Night, and Gitana–featuring Pascual Rose, former terrorist and then counterterrorist and finally reluctant gun for hire–are, according to Booklist, “spy fiction of the highest order.” Reaves has recently released these works in very affordable e-book format and they are prime examples of excellent espionage and thriller writing. Looking to be transported to another time and place? Want to stay up deep into the night wondering how the hell Pascual is going to get out of this one? You can’t go wrong with Reaves/Martell. Sam, it’s a real pleasure to have you with us at Scene of the Crime. Could we start things off with a discussion of your connection Barcelona. How did you come to live there or become interested in it? I first went to Barcelona on a junior year abroad program in college in the early seventies.  Franco was still alive, Spain was backward and repressed, and I was a wide-eyed kid with good Spanish and little knowledge of the place it came from.  What I knew about Spain was Hemingway, Michener and El Cordobés.  On my first night in the student dining hall I heard somebody ask for the wine by saying Dona’m el vi, si us plau and I realized I had a lot to learn. Catalan was only one thing I learned—for a small-town kid from Illinois, a great cosmopolitan port city was Wonderland.  The academics were the least of it; the practical lessons in navigating the streets and the friendships, some of them lasting to this day, were the real payoff.  I did some growing up in Barcelona; it gave me a sense of vast horizons and worlds to conquer. I left Barcelona at the end of that year with a real pang of loss and separation; the place had gotten under my skin.  When I went back two years later, Franco was gone and Spain was democratizing.  The political and social picture was getting complicated as the Catalans revived their language and culture.  In regular visits over the years I watched the city change, culminating in its coming-out party with the 1992 Olympics.  The EU, the euro and the current crisis have since complicated things further, with a spike in separatist sentiment and grave questions about the future of Spain’s regions.  I’ve been seriously interested in Barcelona and its fortunes for nearly forty years now, and the only thing that’s certain is that it will always be one of Europe’s great crossroads cities. What things about Barcelona make it unique and a good physical setting in your books? Not many places have Barcelona’s mix of stimulating physical environments, cultural dynamism and flat-out good-time vibe.  Barcelona is a provocation to the senses.  The Ramblas sweeping down to the harbor is one of the world’s great streets; Gaudí’s hallucinatory Güell Park on the heights above the city has to be seen to be believed.  Barcelona has the best-preserved medieval core in Europe in the Gothic Quarter and one of the great successes of modern renovation along the Barceloneta waterfront.  The stolid middle-class Eixample, the regular street grid laid out in the nineteenth century, was one of Europe’s first experiments in urban planning and has matured into one of its most congenial cityscapes. Higher up, the neighborhood of Gràcia with its narrow streets retains the charm of the village it once was. But the soul of a city is what the people make of the physical setting, and when it comes to culture the barcelonins have attitude.  Their resentment at being governed from Madrid gave them a prickly sense of apartness and an appreciation for rebelliousness i

It's called Country Girl: A Memoir, and it was the word "memoir" that I kept stumbling over, that one word that kept causing me to stop, look up, ponder. For certainly this life story by Edna O'Brien is fascinating on several levels and beautifully written in many instances, and certainly O'Brien is a formidable writer, an important one, a writer so revered that the life she lives—the life she writes about here—is peopled with the great writers and the celebrity actors and the rock stars, even Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton. The notorious and notoriously famous are her friends. Entire counties are her enemies. Everything is escalated in her world, and Country Girl gives us a vibrant view in. Does it matter, then, that Country Girl is not truly a memoir? That Country Girl is, indeed, autobiography? At the heart of memoir lies a universal stance, a politics of readerly inclusion, a this happened to me, did it happen to you, and how, in the end, does this make us both human? At the heart of memoir themes percolate, and not just events. In autobiography, there is a divide—the audience in its seats, the storyteller on the stage, no mingling in the aisles, no presumed need for thematic integrity. Memoir gathers others in. Autobiography says, See, this. And this. Two very differently readerly experiences. Two different kinds of books. Still, there was so much here—so much so beautifully rendered, so many episodes that provoke great sympathy, especially when the famous were off the page and it was O'Brien alone, O'Brien facing down her mother, O'Brien trying to recover her children from an angry ex-husband, O'Brien trying to write again, O'Brien musing on failure, and success. And, always, O'Brien on love, of which she writes so knowingly: Meanwhile, there was the vertigo of the affair, the many twists and turns, the reconsidered wisdoms, trade winds blowing hot and cold and hot again. It is impossible to capture the essence of love in writing, only its symptoms remain, the erotic absorption, the huge disparity between teh times together and the times apart, the sense of being excluded.

As a child growing up in suburban Connecticut, I was fortunate to have many books, but my favorite by far was a chestnut, leather-bound Encyclopaedia Britannica. I spent hours cross-legged on the carpet flipping through each volume, but I remember only the three things I repeatedly returned to: Sylvia Plath, Nostradamus, and Biafra. I read Plath’s entry so many times that twenty years later I can still recite some of it verbatim. “Horror of childbirth.” Self-mutilation. Oven. It was like a nightmare, and I was enraptured. While my own obsessions might have been particularly gloomy, they were no less monstrous than the adult-sanctioned books I owned. In my tiny library sat such classics as “The BFG,” by Roald Dahl, in which a girl is plucked from her bed by an ogre, and “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” a veritable catalogue of grotesqueries accompanied by the most spine-tingling drawings I’ve ever seen. Another favorite was the sunny-covered “D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths.” Though it looked benign, it featured the story of Cronos, who ate and regurgitated his children. Childhood attraction to the morbid, and its function in storytelling for kids, has been widely acknowledged since the publication of “The Uses of Enchantment” by the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, in 1974. Even so, Matthue Roth, a thirty-four-year-old writer and video-game designer, is usually met with befuddlement when he tells people he has written a children’s book of re-told Kafka stories. The idea came to him while spending a lazy afternoon at his home in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his two daughters, now three and five years old. He read aloud to them the story “Jackals and Arabs”—about a group of talking canines who beg a European traveller to help them slaughter the Arabs—and their delighted reaction was the seed that grew into “My First Kafka: Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs,” published this week. ...read more