Happy Sunday Salon! I can’t believe it is just a few days ’til those of us in the US celebrate Thanksgiving.  The weather in Seattle has been cold and rainy and I have been sick.  Even stayed home from school for a day to try and recuperate.  So I’m now spending the entire weekend curled up with hot tea and a good book.  Well,  actually several good books.

Besides finishing the second part of Kristin Lavransdatter, continuing to read Guernica and writing two reviews, I have started Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood.  I reread Oryx and Crake in September to prepare for this new novel and find I like the new one better.  I’m not sure why but will make an effort to describe my reasons when I write my review.

I am thinking about my reading for 2010.  I will be joining in on Moby Dick Monday as soon as I’m done with the Kristin Lavransdatter read-along.  I was planning on reading Melville’s classic sometime this winter and this is a great way to read along with others.

I have signed up for several challenges,  plan on joining in on Amanda’s GLBT 2010 Challenge and am hoping some of my favorites from 2009 will come around again for the new year. What about you?  Are you signing up for new challenges?  Which are your favorites from this past year?

I hope you all have a great reading week and a happy Thanksgiving, how ever you celebrate this glorious harvest holiday.

Amanda at A Zen Leaf has graciously decided to organize the Challenge that Dare Not Speak its Name for 2010.

The rules are as follows:
The basic idea of this challenge is to read books about GLBT topics and/or by GLBT authors.

The challenge runs year-round, and there will be three levels of participation:

• Lambda Level: Read 4 books.
• Pink Triangle Level: Read 8 books.
• Rainbow Level: Read 12 or more books.

You don’t need to choose your books right away, and they can change at any time. Overlaps with other challenges are fine.

Amanda and Jen have created a wonderful challenge blog site. There will be prizes and mini-challenges. I’m signing up for the Pink Triangle level.  How about you?

Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places

by Bill Streever

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009

Borrowed from my local library.

Bill Steever, an Alaskan biologist, takes his readers through the cycle of  a year visiting different places affected by cold.  Not just the temperature, but the geology, the impact on human habitation and plant and animal adaptations. He includes the history of the science of cold, the search for absolute zero  and human exploration into regions were temperatures fall to 60 below.

This is the kind of natural history-science book I love, the kind I can open up at any page and find something really intriguing.  He includes writings by authors who have studied the cold, animals that live in cold habitats or lived through expeditions into frigid climates including Apsley Cherry-Garrard, John Muir, Farley Mowat, and Bernd Heinrich.

There are sections on the discovery of  the ice ages.

A year later, in 1837, Agassiz presided over a meeting of the Natural History Society of Switzerland.  In his introductory speech, when he was expected to talk about fossil fish, he sprang the idea of an ice age.  Although Charpentier knew that the alpine glaciers had once covered more of the Alps then they currently did, Agassiz went further.  He described a sheet of ice that went from the North Pole to the Mediterranean.  He knew that some would view this as hairbrained.  “I am afraid,” he said, “that this approach will not be accepted by a great number of our geologists, who have well established opinions on this subject, and the fate of this question will be that of all those who contradict traditional ideas.  From page 62.

There are many references to animal adaptation, evolution and migration.  Why do some animals thrive in the cold and others migrate?  And its not just animals, all life forms have found their place on this planet and as the climate changes all living things adapt or die.

There is more to be learned.  There are , for example, physiological adaptations.  Not unexpectedly, birds put on fat, but in some cases nonessential organs shrink.  Just before migration, the bartailed godwit becomes fifty-five percent fat, but its kidneys, liver and intestines shrink.  Then it flies nonstop at something like 45 miles per hour for days on end.  The speed and exact route of many birds are not known.  Migrating sea ducks tracked by radar in the Arctic fly at more than 50 miles per hour.  A dunlin– a long-beaked shorebird–was once clocked at 110 miles per hour, passing a small plane.  From page 88.

Ranges of species go where species work best, destined by the character of their enzymes, destined by how well their enzymes work at different temperatures.  But also: Who will graze on my leaves?  Who will eat me?  Whom will I eat?  Is there space for my nest?  Is the soil right for my burrows or my roots?  Who will drive me away?  Puffins became scarce around Great Britain after 190 not because of air temperature, but because the fish they ate followed a shift in water temperature.  The birds followed the fish.  When water temperature shifted again around 1950, the fish returned, and with them the puffins.  The lives within biomes are interwoven, and if one species can go no further because of the temperature, it may affect another species, and another, and another, until it appears as though there is some definite boundary and that everything responds in concert.  But zoom in on the map, look a little closer, and the boundaries blur. Brown bears live in tundra and taiga and temperate deciduous forest.  Caribou migrate across biome boundaries.  The red fox, the tiger, the wolf, the wolverine and the raven all cross biome boundaries as if they did not exist, as if they have never read an ecology textbook, or studied a biome map.  From page 99

Streever talks about climate change in a balanced way, describing planetary changes and changes exacerbated by human technologies.   He is enthralled by the cold, and saddened by the prospect of loosing areas of colder climates.  This well-written little book is full of interesting facts about humans and animals that live in cold places.  I plan on adding a copy to my shelf of natural history books.

Often whales and seals and otters are the hottest things around.  A Wendell seal, a thousand pound of fur and blubber and heart and lung and rete mirabile, might lie on the Antarctic ice, open the shunts that let warm blood flow through its blubber, and create above a cloud of steam.  After a time, bored or hungry or spooked by a nosy human, it might flop from the ice into the water.  It might leave behind the marine mammal equivalent of a snow angel, an outline of itself melted into the ice, a negative image of belly and fins and head in three dimensions.  The Wendell seal thumbs its nose at the cold, leaving in the ice an image that is often called a seal shadow.  From page 129.

The Music Room by William Fiennes

Picador USA, New York, 2009

Borrowed from my local library.

In September I read and reviewed  The Snow Geese by William Fiennes.   I loved it so much I wanted to read his new book.

The Music Room is memoir written in narrative style.  It is the story of the house, actually a castle, where Fiennes grew up.  It is also a tribute to his brother, Richard.  Richard, eleven years older than William and suffering from epilepsy, was the family’s emotional center as well as it’s focus, but never in a way that detracted from anyone else.

The Music Room describes the great house, part of which was open to the public, and the people who cared for it.

Mid-morning, they came into the kitchen for coffee.  I’d last seen them passing through the door to the public side: it seemed they lived in that other world of portraits, plaster ceilings, suits of armour, swords.  In the corner, under domed wire-gauze fly guards that hung on nails like fencing masks, Joyce sat on her high stool, feet on the rung.  The kitchen was her domain.  She put a pan og milk on the hob, a china puck sitting in the bottom to stop it boiling over, and made milky coffee for Mrs Upton, Mrs Green and Mrs Dancer, and hot chocolate for Bert, who arrived with the cut-grass smell on him, unhitching his dentures so his teeth floated out towards me on his tongue.  By half-past ten they’d have gathered in the kitchen, Joyce perched on her stool like a tennis umpire, a bowl of cake mixture in her lap while Mrs Upton, Mrs Green, Bert and Mrs Dancer too sat round the green Formica table, delving into the Victoria biscuit tin, Joyce like a mother hen presiding over her chicks, providing for them.

If I wasn’t at school, I’d sit with them.

“How old do you think I am?” Mrs Dancer asked.

“I don’t know,”

“I’m about the same age as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth.”  from page 39.

This house is filled with history, the people who live and work there have lots of stories to tell.  There are all sorts of events held on the grounds,fairs, concerts and festivals.  Sometimes film crews show up, bringing with them actor and other interesting people.  Fiennes tells of the history of the land and of the house.

But the book is also an accurate description of the difficulties of  living with someone who suffers from epilepsy that has caused brain damage, the ups and downs of an illness that has no cure.  Fiennes intersperses his narrative with the history of the study of electricity and its effects on the brain, including the famous story of Mr. Phineas Gage.  He also includes descriptions of Richard’s bouts with anger, depression and lack of impulse control, and the amazing patience and love shown him by his parents.  I am awed by the graceful way Richard was accepted and included in their lives.

Whenever he was fully engaged in some physical task, his tongue dropped in front of his bottom teeth and pushed out his cheek below the corner of his mouth like a wad of dentist cotton wool.  Certain epilepsy drugs can cause unusual facial movements called extra-pyramidal movements, and for a while Richards pills caused him to circle his jaw unconsciously, as if he were chewing a cud, his lower lip enlarged and blubbery.   Now his tongue already probing his cheek in concentration, he leaned into the branches, fitted the blade and wrestled the saw back and forth until there  was only an inch of trunk intact.  We heard the first splinter-cracks as the tree teetered.  From page 61.

The Music Room is also filled with images of being a child and an adolescent  in such an amazing place, with such a challenging brother. Fiennes describes the private and the public spaces.  I had great fun just imagining an eight year old boy with free run of a castle, it even has a moat!

I start to look for ways of being alone, self-reliant, away from Richard and my parents.  I want, even within the circle of the moat, to be beyond observation.  So I disappear into the Barracks or out onto the castle’s roofs, scrambling across leads and stone slates, settling in secret enclosures like pockets among dunes, rooks crossing overhead between the worm-rich park and their rendezvous trees. From page 152

This little book is a loving  tribute to Fiennes’s brother and his family.  I found it very well written, lyrical and a bit melancholy.  I enjoyed it,  and look forward to other books by this fine British author.

This is a special Sunday Salon post.  I can hardly believe that just one year ago today I wrote my first stumbling, bumbling blog entry.  My first review followed three days later.  I have learned and grown so much as a reader and reviewer over the past year, have taken part in wonderful events and completed some interesting challenges.  I have enjoyed every moment.

There are bloggers out there I have to thank for many reasons, but mostly for making me feel so welcome, for offering kind comments and suggestions and for sharing wonderful books.  My heartfelt thanks go out to  Care, Claire, Eva, Frances, Kerrie, Nymeth,  Richard,  Sandy, softdrink, Vassily, Wendy,  and another Wendy.

To all of you out there in the book blogging community thank you for hosting events, organizing challenges and offering give-aways.  I applaud every single one of you!

Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall

Delta Trade Paperbacks, Random House,

New York 2009

Borrowed from the library.

This debut novel by Carolyn Wall tells the story of Olivia Harker, her family, surrounding community and the land she loves.  Living in poverty on the land left to her by her ancestors, Olivia is threatened by hunters killing the wolves that live on her property.  She and her grandson struggle to save these wolves and to find the culprits.

At once a mystery and a love story Sweeping Up Glass offers reflections on  madness, racism and family secrets.

I have read reviews comparing Wall to Harper Lee and Flannery O’Connor.  Sweeping Up Glass is a good first novel but it is not that good.  Olivia’s first person voice is strong, her life  full of darkness and light, and  the story immersed in  “southern gothic” but I found the last third of the novel rushed and not as fully developed as the first two-thirds.  It is still an enjoyable read and I look forward to Wall’s next effort.

Other reviews:

As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves

Bookworm’s Dinner

Literary License

Musings of a Bookish Kitty

Stitches: A Memoir by David Small

W.W.Norton and Company, New York, 2009

Borrowed from the library.

Stitches is an extraordinary memoir presented in graphic format.  David Small, an award winning children’s book author and illustrator,  has written and drawn a story that covers his life from babyhood to adolescence.

The graphics are pen and ink and ink wash, beautiful, dark and sad.  As with most parents, David’s Mother and Father thought they were doing their best.  Small illustrates the trauma and pain of childhood is a way that moves from reality to dream to nightmare, without being overly dramatic.  David Small’s story is intense but well told and his notes at the end reflect back on his parent’s lives in a very kind and loving way.

This book is turning up on many “Best Books of the Year” lists and the recognition is well deserved.  There are many fine reviews out there.  Here are a few:

Bermudaonion’s Weblog

Boston Bibliophile

Regular Ruminations

This week I am posting a review for the Crime Fiction Alphabet.

The letter for this week is F, like in Flynn.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Shaye Arehart Books, New York, 2006

Borrowed from the library.

Camille Preaker is a struggling reporter for a  second-rate  newspaper in Chicago.  In the small town of Wind Gay, following the murder of a young girl, another girl turns up missing. Wind Gap is Camille’s home town and her editor, thinking this opportunity might push her out of a rut, sends her to cover the story.

Camille is on edge, drinking too much and recovering from self-abuse.  She finds herself back in her childhood home, pushed up against her bizarre mother, and a half sister who heads a gang of twelve-year-old girls that reminded me of every mean, bitchy girl I ever knew.  All this brings up  the remnants of her past life, her dysfunctional family relationships (her step dad is a piece of work) and the memories of a long dead sister.  The longer Camille stays in town, the closer she comes to completely losing it, but she manages to hold it together long enough to sleep with the investigator from Kansas City and an eighteen-year-old suspect, and to get good and whacked with her creepy half-sister, Amma.   Eventually she discovers the murderer.

There were times when I almost gave up on this one.  This is Flynn’s first novel, very good in places and wobbly in others.  She is an edgy, creepy writer who invests a lot of twisted energy in her protagonists.  It didn’t take me long to figure out the murderer but I’m glad I stuck with it.  Flynn is very good at diving beneath the surface and exposing human frailty and pain, she knows what drives us. This is a good introduction to a writer who will only get better with time.

I read her second novel, Dark Places and reviewed it here.

Other reviews:

chaotic compendiums

Sam’s Book Blog

Winter isn’t far away.  We have had intense rain squalls this week, and, unusual for Seattle, lots of thunder and lightning.  There have been many children staying home with fevers and coughs but I seem to have avoided getting sick so far.  Must be all that hand washing and vitamin C.

This week I wrote several reviews, read The Ask and The Answer by Patrick Ness, Stitches by Davis Small and about 100 pages of the second book of Kristin Lavransdatter.  I also picked up a pile of books at the library including:

Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall.  This is a mystery written in a style reviewers have compared with Flannery O’Conner and Harper Lee.

The Music Room by William Fiennes.  A memoir written by the author of The  Snow Geese, a book I read in September.   This is the story of William’s older brother, Richard, who suffers from epilepsy.

One of the books I’m reading right now is  Guernica by David  Boling.  This is a LibraryThing early reviewer book that got lost in my TBR stack.  Must finish and review soon!

What are you reading this week?

The Sunday Salon is a gathering of bloggers who read and who write about what they read.  You can find out all about it here.

The Ask and The Answer

Chaos Walking: Book Two

by Patrick Ness

Candlewick Press, Somerville, 2009

Borrowed from the library.

I read the first book in this series, The Knife of Never Letting Go,  in January but did not feel competent enough to write a review.  Now I wish I had, I also wish I had read that book again before reading this one.  That said I think the second book of the series is even stronger that the first.

In first book we meet Todd and Viola who are running from and fighting against the forces of Prentisstown.  It is a fast and furious novel with a cliffhanger of an ending.  The Ask and The Answer takes up just were the first book leaves off.

Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss.  Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor’s new order. From the  jacket flap.

I do not want to tell too much of the story, because to say anything other than the story continues with Mayor Prentiss, and that there is a force fightong against him,  would give too much away.  Just know that this novel touches on many timely issues.  It is a study of racism and prejudice.  It is a study of trust and love.  But, for me,  it is a mainly a study of war, from every side.  Ness touches on all the rationalizations of war, all the reasoning behind terrorism and torture,  in a way that is honest and extremely direct.  Bad things happen, good people do bad things, and every possible behavior is explained and excused by logical sounding arguments.  Except that it isn’t.

“If you ever see a war,” she says, not looking up from her clipboard, “you’ll learn that war only destroys.  No one escapes from a war.  No one.  Not even the survivors.  You accept things that would appall you at any other time  because life has temporarily lost all meaning.” From page 102.

That is one of the best thoughts about war I have ever read.  I highly recommend this book. I think young adults and adults should read this series. Then they should talk about it, together if possible.

Here is another thought.

War makes monsters of men.

There is more, the ending is another cliffhanger and has left me waiting excitedly for the third book in this series.  Patrick Ness has a fine web site.  It can be found here.

Other reviews:

Bart’s Bookshelf

books i done read

Jenny’s Books

Persnickety Snark

things mean a lot

Wands and Worlds