Mother Mother by Koren Zailckas

Violet Hurst's family is a vortex of toxicity. Nearly everyone is a narcissist, liar, or addict, an abuser an enabler, or some combination.

After a drug-fueled night that Violet has trouble remembering, she is sent to a mental health clinic. Her mother, Josephine, insists that she has tried to hurt her brother, Will.


Though she can't remember the incident, Violet thinks she has been framed. She does not believe she would intentionally hurt Will.

What happened that night is slowly unfolded through the eyes of two of the novel's characters, William and Violet. 

Rose, who ran away from home before the incident, has her own emotional problems. Though readers never get her point of view, she blames her mother for pressuring her to have an abortion--a decision that has left her emotionally scarred. 

Trapped in lock down, Violet has a hard time discerning what is happening at home. She tries to contact Rose because she thinks her sister is on her side.  

Violet's yearns to be emancipated from her psychopathic mother, Josephine. This wish becomes even stronger when she learns the depth of her mother's deceit.

This is a novel by talented writer who writes with confidence and dark humor. While its a great read, it may not be a great Mother's Day present. 

"With Time Their Wings Fade" by Erika Swyler

This story combines loneliness with magical realism, the uncanny, canning, and longing.

El has lived with almost unbearable loneliness--visiting almost no one for twenty years in a house so far from town. Mercy is the only one who visits because she sells her canned vegetables for her in town.

Anyone, who longs for something, will identify with this woman. 

In this story, El has a stack of unused diapers in her closet and jars of tomatoes and other vegetables. Never having had the children she expected to have, she ends up with a cache of diapers.

She buries sparrows and bluebirds in unused diapers when they accidentally hit themselves against her glass window. They seem to do that frequently even after her strange house guest, a boy covered in dust, arrives.

The descriptions in this story are wonderful. The sparrow weighs less than "a breath of dust."

The boy, too, is made of dust:

"The cat was on the doorstep. Behind her was a child, brown, a layer of dirt covering every inch of his skin, making it velvet. His eyes were like his skin; soft, dark. A quick tilt of his head brought to mind hiccups or a sneeze. Four or five, she figured him, and without a stitch on but the dirt."

He appears to have wings that will not wash off:

Where skinny shoulder blades should have ended, they began, two shadows sprouting from the child’s back. Clouds, wings made of dust.

The wings are uncanny yet Mercy, El's only friend, tells her not to mind his strangeness. Children do not feel different until someone tells them they are different. 

The boy brings more and more children to the house--two little girls and a boy. El and her husband, Davis, a mason, contact the Sheriff but no one has reported missing children.

The mysterious boy clings to El's legs. He is mostly non-verbal but seems wiser beyond his years. He says "not yet," when she asks him his name. 

El finds homes for the other children; these children bring brightness to the people who have led dull lives like Mercy and Jeanne. 

The story tells readers that grief , like the uncanny wings, fade over time. 

Even though El loses Davis, she finds this unnamed boy who takes his rightful place beside her.

https://catapult.co/stories/fiction-with-time-their-wings-fade

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter is an unforgettable novel with a horrifying premise. Kidnapped at gunpoint by an unknown assailant, Jason Dessen is forced to drive to an abandoned power station. He is given a drug that knocks him unconscious.

Later, Jason wakes to find that his assailant has hijacked his life.  Jason finds himself questioned by a room full of strangers. 

Years ago, Jason had abandoned his scientific research to become a professor at an average university and have a family. Waking up in this aberrant world, Jason realizes that none of the life he knows and loves has ever happened. 

In this parallel world, Jason pursued scientific research. He ended his relationship with his girlfriend before she had his son, Charlie. 

Using a device (a "box") his alternate self created, Jason escapes. He hopes to find his previous life, even if it means looking for one life among infinite lives. While taking a trip through the multiverse, Jason is met with danger, heartbreak, and surprises.

The novel asks several philosophical questions that are chilling in their implications. Overall, this is an entertaining thriller, even if there are a few quibbles and unanswered questions.  

Dark Matter will soon become a feature film. 

If you like Dark Matter, you may also like Connie Willis' Cross Talk, Audrey Niffennegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, or Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven. 

Lariat Reading List

Lariat Reading List

This past Thursday I attended the Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List Author Section at the Texas Library Association conference. Authors Benjamin Ludwig, Matt Goldman and Lisa Wingate were there.

Each of the presentations was warm, funny, and inspirational. Ludwig who has won many awards for Ginny Moon said he wanted to write about a kid looking for her own voice. 

Ludwig is a teacher and he comes across many kids who don't speak in class because of their troubling circumstances. 

For reasons that make sense only to her Ginny tries to get her biological mother to kidnap her from her foster family. 

The second presenter used to write television screenplays for Seinfeld but has since turned his attention toward murder mysteries. 

His mystery, Gone to Dust, features Nils Shapiro who is faced with an enigmatic situation--a body covered in vacuum dust.

Goldman admits that one of the main reasons he added this detail to his crime novel was he hope to baffle fans of CSI.

Though he no longer writes comedies Goldman makes his characters relatable and quirky.

Before We Were Yours has been on the New York Times best seller lists since August 2017. Lisa Wingate explained that she first ran across the story of Georgia Tann while watching a history documentary. 

Wingate brings the character of Rill and the other "river rats" to life as only she can. Since Rill is the oldest, she feels responsible for the plight of her siblings. She feels doubly devastated when she and the others are taken to the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

The story of these siblings and the later generation that reconnects with them is a rare achievement.

For more books on the Lariat Reading list, please go to,

http://www.txla.org/Lariat

From Marrying The Hangman

“To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self. She is living selflessly, she finds a hole in the stone wall and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes her mirror.”

— Margaret Atwood, from Marrying The Hangman in “Selected Poems II: 1976-1986″ 

Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach tackles many topics--the Brooklyn Naval Yard, racketeering, the meaning of family. 

In the "shadow" world that Dexter Styles inhabits, Styles is the top of the food chain who can indifferently make people disappear. Eddie Kerrigan is different. When given the order, Styles regretfully shoots Kerrigan.

For every gangster, though, who thinks he is at the top, there is someone else more omnipotent. 

In Dexter's case there's the mysterious Mr. Q and his sons and even someone much closer to home that can change the landscape of Dexter's world.

But this novel is not simply about gangsters. Manhattan Beach is also about the incredible sacrifices families makes for their loved ones.

Mrs. Kerrigan gives up a career she loves with the Ziegfeld Follies to raise her daughters, one of whom is severely disabled.

Eddie Kerrigan chooses to make another sacrifice; one that leaves his favorite daughter, Anna, bereft and angry. 

Anna had always been close to her father. She was his accomplice at twelve when he meets Dexter Styles at his Manhattan beach house.

That incredible meeting is forever seared in Anna's mind and will alter the course of her father's life and her own.

Despite resistance from the top brass, Anna works in the Naval Yard, choosing to dive and repair ships. 

Later, she will make an even riskier dive that will take her to the heart of the mystery of her father's disappearance.

Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon

"The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us...People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this crazy world of mazes...you don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is...When I was twelve years old, in 1964, Zephyr held about fifteen hundred people. There was the Bright Star Cafe, the Woolworth's, and a little Piggly-Wiggly grocery store...My hometown was probably a lot like yours."


Cory Jay Mackenson of Boy's Life

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury

Imagine this scenario.

 Chris has just returned from a cross country bike trip with his best friend, Win. He goes on to orientation at Georgia Tech but his best friend never checks in at Dartmouth.

As it turns out, the two got separated at the end of their tension-filled journey. Chris assumed Win went on to Seattle where he was to meet an Uncle. Except the uncle was fictional. That's one of many lies Win told. 

Win also claims to be broke when he actually had $19,000 in cash on hand.

The FBI come to Chris's college and expect him to know where his friend went.  Only he has no idea. Everything he thought he knew about his friend and his life has just shifted.

That's the conundrum Chris finds himself in Jennifer Bradbury's 2012 novel, Shift.

When the boys go on their road trip, for the first time, they feel cool. Win's father is rich yet he doesn't feel supported or loved. The bike trip gives him purpose.

Girls respond by sending both of them postcards. Some of the postcards, however, are signed "Tricksey." 

Chris does not know who the mysterious Tricksey is though its pretty easy for readers to guess. 

One of the best scenes has Win wrestling with Chris, reminiscent of the wrestling match Jacob had with the angel in the Bible.

This is a novel about new starts and about saying goodbye. A powerful debut.  

Additional Jennifer Bradbury books:

Wrapped.

A Moment Comes.

River Runs Deep.

http://www.jennifer-bradbury.com/

All sorrows

All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them--Isak Dinesen.

One solution

Here's what happened in Florida. According to a  Sun Sentinel article by Skyler Swisher, the killer,

"fired more than 100 rounds in a roughly three-minute span, killing 17 and wounding 15 others."

Right after the incident, there was the usual hand-wringing. What can be done? Why is this happening?' 

Gun rights advocates say, of course, its not the gun but the wielder of the gun who is at fault. In this case, however, it wasn't a handgun, it was a high-powered rifle that could fire 100 rounds in three minutes.

Here's a partial solution to a complex issue. Ban the AR-15, the weapon Cruz used. Make it as difficult as possible to obtain weapons that can fire that many rounds that quickly because it isn't a defense weapon.

No one fires that many rounds to defend themselves unless they are in a war. 

Printz Awards

The Michael L. Printz awards are given each year to outstanding young adult literature. 

In 2017, the Printz prize went to John Lewis' March (Book 3). 

This year's award went to Nina LaCour's We Are Okay.

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

C.J. Tudor likes writing mysteries about small towns. As reported in a January 2018 Kirkus interview, Tudor said,

"In small towns, you've got this hothouse for stuff to happen--accusations, for arguments, for fallouts, for resentments...It's the perfect breeding ground for mystery."

Engineering Tables for Public Libraries

Self-directed programming:

For kids, there are engineering tables like the ones Abby Johnson describes in American Libraries. 
bit.ly/2gM4pWc

Engineering Apps:
BOSEbuild Speaker Cube. 

Engineering activities:

Burker, Josh. Invent to Learn. 
Mercer, Bobbi. Junk Drawer Engineering. 

Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer

DCI John Marvel wants to be promoted but he hates the new task his supervisor has given him. Marvel is given the unenviable task of finding his boss' wife's missing poodle. 

The humor of this scene contrasts with the grim details of two other missing cases--that of a male toddler, Daniel, and an twelve-year-old girl, Edie, who vanished in the same vicinity. 

Coincidentally, Anna Buck, the mother of the missing boy, and the supervisor's wife both consult the same "shut eye" or psychic. A natural skeptic, DCI John Marvel calls the "shut eye" a quack.

DCI Marvel is a stereotype who loves stereotypes yet he has a pure heart. He wants to find Edie more than anyone, even if it puts his career in jeopardy.

Ang, who works in a garage with Anna Buck's husband, is an illegal immigrant who tries yet fails to understand Western ways. Like the story cloth his mother made, Ang's tragic story is woven into the unusual events that occur in this novel. 


Belinda Bauer's debut novel Blacklands won a Gold Dagger award.

Virginia Woolf

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."--Virginia Woolf

The Albertine Prize

The Albertine Prize recognizes noteworthy Francophone fiction. 
http://www.albertine.com/

This year's contenders:
Angot, Christine. Incest.
Eduoard, Lewis. The End of Eddy.
Enard, Mathias. Compass.
Garreta, Anne. Not One Day.
Mabanckou, Alain. Black Moses. 



Safe House by Christophe Boltanski won the 2015 Prix Femina, another French literary award. 

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

"You have to take a chance don't you? Its like crossing the road with your eyes shut...you don't know what's going to happen next." --Kitty Finch.

Nina decides that standing near Kitty "was like being near a cork that had just popped out of a bottle." Nina thinks Kitty is a wild, adventurous spirit.

Jurgen wants to marry Kitty; Madeleine Sheridan is afraid of Kitty and thinks she is "mad." Joe thinks she's depressed and a dangerous groupie.

Kitty, a botanist, is unlike any house guest he's ever met. She has stopped taking her medication and sees people walking through walls. 

Kitty is also beautiful with a habit of walking around sans clothes.

Kitty's poem, which she calls a conversation, is called "Swimming Home." In it, she calls the pool a "coffin" so its easy to surmise her intentions. 

Joe who pretends he hasn't read her poem does not want to accept consequences. He warns his daughter not to get in a car with her, but then, surprisingly, he takes Kitty out for drinks at the Negresco.

Maybe its her madness that make her vision clearer, like the fool in King Lear. She gives a spooky foreshadowing of events:

"I know what you're thinking. Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better  and we'll all get home safely. But you tried and you did not get home safely. You did not get home at all. That is why I'm here...I have come to France to save you from your thoughts."

Nothing is as it appears in this novel about two couples vacationing in France. Everything rings true, however. The characters are well-developed and the scenes are well crafted.

This startling novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.  

Skin

A horse's skin is seven times thicker than human skin.

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy

Sophie takes her cracked laptop, where her unfinished doctoral thesis resides, with her to Almeria, Spain. She has a Master's degree in Anthropology so everything she sees and does is filtered through that lens. 

Sophie studies everything, including her mother, who is ill and looking for a cure at the Gomez clinic in Spain. 

More than once someone hints that Rose's illness is psychosomatic and that she had entrapped Sophie in her own destructive fantasies. 

Levy does a great job of making Sophie, who is at war with herself, accessible and likable. Though she is 25, Sophie remains child-like and dependent upon her mother. When she meets the irrepressible Ingrid Bauer, however, things begins to shift.

Ingrid is everything Sophie is not; she's bold and selfish. She carries a secret that changes Sophie's view of her. 

Sophie has been abandoned by her father at five, but it one climatic moment Sophie abandons her mother. 

This is a novel for reader's who like psychological, character-driven novels.

One question. Why is it called Hot Milk?

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Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Jack and Jill's backstory, hinted at in Every Heat a Doorway, gets fully realized in Down Among the Sticks and Bones. 

Their parents, Chester and Serena Wolcott, had children for the most selfish of reasons. When the twins weren't what they expected, Chester assigned them stifling gender roles. One of them he dresses as a tomboy, Jill, while the other, Jacqueline, he dresses in finery. 

Unsurprisingly, what their father does has disastrous effects. When they reach the Moors, they reverse roles; Jack becomes self-sufficient and skilled in the sciences while Jill becomes the vain daughter of a vampire. 

This is the 2nd part of the Wayward children series. Though it lacks the spark of the first part, it offers a wonderful depiction of the Moors. 

Pieces of Happiness by Anne Otsby

There's a certain kind of book that appeals to readers who are stuck in the daily grind. They feature characters who are of a certain age who are tired of life passing them by. 

NPR has called it "late life reinvention," and that is an apt description for these titles:

Backman, Frederik. Britt-Marie was Here. (2016)
Davis, Brooke. Lost and Found. (2014).
Evison, Jonathan. This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance. (2015).
Tyler, Anne. Ladder of Years (2010). 

Now, here's a new book that fits that theme, Pieces of Happiness by Anne Otsby. In Otsby's novel, a group of friends in their sixties move to a Fiji island and start a chocolate business. 

The Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne

This hypnotic novel tells the story of a house, Mortmain House, located in the Welsh Marches, and the people whose lives intersect with its sad history.

Mortmain, means "dead hand," because the house was protected from taxation for its so-called charitable purposes. The house served as a workhouse and orphanage before it fell into disrepair.

When Melissa Anderson gives birth to conjoined twins in the 1980's, the prognosis for their separation is good. Since they are only joined at the shoulder and side, doctors expect they will be able to separate them. 

Their story is intertwined with another set of conjoined twins who lived at the turn-of-the-century, Viola and Sorrel, who faced vastly different prospects. 

Hopelessly entwined, Viola and Sorrel, are sent to Mortmain, the house for unwanted children. From there they are sold to Tom Dancy's freak show. 

The novel moves back and forth from the present to the past. Readers are given glimpses of  the the twins from the eighties, Simone and Sonia, and contrasted with their turn-of-the-century counterparts.

In one fateful moment, Simone meets her twin at Mortmain, whom she has never met before. After the eighties twins are separated, one of the twins, Sonia, is kidnapped by a woman who feels she is "owed a child."

She has an odd reason for believing that Melissa owes her a child--and its all goes back to Mortmain House.

A thriller, a mystery, and a gothic horror story, this is an intriguing novel about the power of secrets, telepathy and ghostly occurrences.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Tom Sweterlitsch

In the future,  everything, even murders, will be recorded in an Archive that researchers can search for clues.  

This sounds like CCTV, which already exists, except its more of a virtual reality experience. Individuals, like John Dominic, who lost his wife, can relive moments with their loved ones in an endless loop.  

All of the wiring for internet streaming is surgically implanted in their skulls, so no one needs a computer or device. 

John Dominic is not only obsessed with his deceased wife. He's also obsessed with solving a cold case, Hannah Massey, a woman whose body he finds in the Archive. 

Poetry, criticism, Adware, Internet streaming are all part of this eerie cyberworld. 

Framed for a crime, Dominic is forced to switch doctors and treatment plans. Previously, he had been a substance abuse addict. He is referred to a new doctor, Dr. Reynolds, who may be hiding a shady past. 

John Dominic has also been entrusted to find another woman who has disappeared from the Archive--the elusive Albion. Pursuing her will prove dangerous.

Soon to become a feature film, this exciting science fiction novel will please mystery fans and fans of Hugh Howey's Wool. 

The Gone World is Tom Sweterlitsch's latest novel. 

The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr

The Shell Collector is a rich collection of stories by Anthony Doerr, winner of the Pulitzer prize.

These stories preceded All The Light We Cannot See yet the were crafted with the same level of meticulous care. Characters have strange obsessions with shells ("Shell Collector") or magic and hunting ("The Hunter's Wife") or fishing ("A Tangle By the Rapid River.")

Often Doerr writes about disabled characters who can understand the world more deeply than everyone else. The blind shell seeker, for instance, discovers that the deadly cone snail can cure illness; this turns him, for a time, into a miracle worker. 

Twyman's deaf daughter, Belle,  in "Caretaker" develops a friendship with another outcast, a war refugee from Liberia, Joseph Saleeby. She's the only one who can see him clearly; that's he is not a criminal or poacher but someone chasing a dream like her.

Two stories have couples that become estrange from each other. In "The Hunter's Wife," a hunter hunts a shy magician's assistant as he would any other prey. He doesn't know her secret: "I have magic inside me."

She had the gift of being able to see visions, the sights animals and people see right before they die. Though she becomes something of a celebrity, her gift frightens the hunter so much that he avoids her for twenty years. 

In "Mkondo," a man chases a woman until she becomes his wife. He is a paleontologist looking for a rare bird artifact to take back to his museum. He weds an African woman, Naima, and takes her to Ohio. He becomes estranged from her. He like the hunter in the last story doesn't understand her.

Maybe the most empowering heroine arc is the one found in "For a Long Time This Was Griselda's Story."

For years, Rosemary lived in the shadow of her sister who performed circus acts with a metal eater. After a long period of estrangement, Griselda comes to visit her hometown but Rosemary has had enough.

"But--and this is what we remember later--she was the one we looked at:  her hair trembling on her head like flames, her shoulders back, her chest quaking--an image of power and fury. She burned, magnificent, in the snow, barefoot, in a T-shirt and green sweatpants, shouting at us."

Power and fury, indeed. These are all stories of outcasts who come powerful and furious, glorious in their gifts. 

The Year of Cozy by Adrianna Adarme

The Year of Cozy by Adrianna Adarme is a beautiful book with some outstanding recipes.

Divided into seasons and months, this recipe books also contains helpful advice and crafts.

In the Winter section, the "Crab Grapefruit Granita Salad" and the "Orange-Thyme Upside-Down Cake" look superb. The author is from LA; thus, there's a lot of citrus recipes. 

In the Summer section look for "Aguas Frescas."

http://www.acozykitchen.com/

A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne.

This 2011 novel by Sarah Rayne is wonderfully strange and gothic.

At outset, a reporter has a mission to uncover a mystery surrounding a family. He becomes compelled by the photographs that Simone Anderson displays at the Thorne gallery. 

Somehow the journalist can detect Simone's dark secret:

"She had been four years old when she became aware of this inner darkness, and she had been a bit over five when she began to understand where it came from.

The other little girl, The unseen, unheard child whom no one else

could see or hear, but who lay coiled and invisible inside Simone's mind. Simone did not know her name so she just called her the little girl."

The Dark: a Netflix original series

Some have referred this as a more grown up "Stranger Things." The kids in this series are in high school rather than middle school. Other than that, it shares many characteristics with the other series: a small town (this one in Germany), a government facility(a nuclear power plant), woods for kids to disappear in. 

Louis Hofman (Land of Mine) stars in this series as Jonas Kahnwald. 

Best books of 2017

An easy to use database (app) for finding best books by NPR. Use the filters on the left to narrow lists down:

https://apps.npr.org/best-books-2017/

The app features 374 books. 

Publisher's Weekly Top Ten,
https://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2017/top-10#book/book-10

Kirkus Review,
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/issue/best-of-2017/

Christmas Book Flood

In Iceland, there's a long tradition of giving books as gifts during the holidays. Iceland book gifting tradition is called "Jolabokaflod"
or "Christmas Book Flood." 

Each Icelander receives at least one book during the Christmas season. Gifts are typically opened on December 24th. Icelanders usually spend the night before Christmas reading.

This is what I want to do this year. No regular gifts. Just books. 

If you want to read more about Iceland, you may want to try these books:

Moss, Sarah. Names for the Sea.

https://guidetoiceland.is/connect-with-locals/aldasigmunds/the-icelanders-and-their-big-love-of-books

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Seth Godwin urges us not to become cogs in a wheel. Those are not the kind of jobs that will last or that will bring satisfaction.

Instead, he urges employees to become linchpins--someone who brings something valuable and indispensable to the workplace. The employees which he also calls "artists" will be the the ones who will shape the future. 

Linchpins take an ordinary job and become innovators.

Godwin names several well-known linchpins: Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Richard Branson of Virgin.com but he also lists less well known ones, Anne Jackson Miller at flowerdust.net, Keith Johnson, a buyer at Anthropologie.

He explains why being good at what you do is not enough anymore. What employers need to be is more employees like Jay Parkinson, a medical innovator, Sasha Dichter, or Louis Monier who innovated their respective fields.

Though this is an older book, published in 2011. it's well worth reviewing at this time when many jobs are being replaced by automation. 

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan Mcguire

The premise of Every Heart a Doorway is that the universe extends an invitation to certain children: a door to a new world. This new world, whether it be called Confection, or Prism, or Halls of the Dead is a magical place where the individual feels completely at home.

Some of these children are never seen again. Others are for whatever reason forced or told to return to real world for a short time. These children who have made this magical journey are heart-broken when they find themselves back in the real world

All of the students that end up at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children want desperately to find the door and the world that claimed them. 

Eleanor tells the parents of these children that she will offer group therapy and that she will shatter their delusions. Eleanor actually sees her school as a "way station." She wants nothing more than to help them find their door again, even if the odds are against it. 

Just as Nancy, a new student, learns to navigate her way around the school, the unthinkable happens. Her roommate, Sumi, is murdered, the body mutilated. 

Everyone suspect Jack (short for Jacqueline) because she has been to harsh world called the Moors. She and her twin sister were both in service to a Lord Vampire. 

When two more bodies appear, the magical fantasy becomes a mystery.

Seanan McGuire who also writes horror as Mira Grant blends genres in this slim, yet well-plotted fantasy.

Every Heart a Doorway won a Nebula award in 2016 for best novella as well as a Hugo award(2017)and Alex award (2017).

Penguin Random House debuts

Take a look at these exciting fictional debuts from Penguin Random House:


Debut Sampler
http://www.TinyURL.com/DebutSamplerFall17

Folk Healing

Some of the best fiction comes from Appalachia; most likely, because of their storytelling habits. I've always been fascinated by folk medicine, maybe because it is similar to what my ancestors did in Louisiana. One of my ancestors was a traiteur, or faith healer. Granted, this is different from folk healing practices in Appalachia, yet both relied on medicinal plants and faith. 

Lately,  its hard not to notice an explosion of taleneted Appalachian writers--authors like Amy Greene, Joni Agee, Ann Hite, Ron Rash, Wiley Cash, Robert Morgan, and Daniel Woodrell. 

These novels aren't simply set in Appalachia but are informed by the setting. These characters couldn't have lived anywhere else. In many cases, the folk  healing is a significant part of the story or other aspects of Appalachia--mining and its effects. 


Folk medicine:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40932250?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents


One of my favorite Appalachian novels, The River Wife. 
https://chantalreviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-river-wife-by-joni-agee.html

Soar by Joan Bauer

Listening to Joan Bauer speak about her latest middle grade novel, Soar, made me realize that I want to write hopeful novels as well.

Jeremiah in Soar faces a lot of adversity, a rocky start in life and a defective heart yet he pursues his dream of coaching a baseball team.

Bauer spoke about her days as a writer and how she got her first breakthrough after adversity--an injury that made her determined to write. She spoke of hearing the character's voice in her head. That character became the protagonist of Squashed, Bauer's first young adult book.

What the world needs, Bauer says, is more kindness and joy.

Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney (part 4)

Flora begins to have leadership problems with her crew when she accepts a man's place in the expedition for the money his sponsors can provide--Gilbert Ashbee.

Aniguin and her begin to drift apart after he returns from America. Armitage had taken him and a few other "eskimos" are tragically put on exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

This incident is reminiscent of events that actually occurred shortly after Robert Peary's 1897 expedition. Two books that chronicle the strange incident are Give Me Back My Father's Body: The Life of Minik and Minik: The New York Eskimo.

Aniguin does not seem to be based on Minik but some of the details are the same. In any event, the experience changes Aniguin as it had also changed Minik. 

Flora feels estranged from Aniguin when he returns to Greenland. Her old friend, Tateraq, has also changed. He leaves Flora to die on the ice.

At this time, there was intense competition to reach the Pole, so much so that some scientists were willing to fake their results. Real life fraudster, Frederick Cook, claimed to have reach the North Pole before Peary. 

His photographs and his story were later revealed to be hoaxes. Penney seems to base some of Armitage's chicanery on Cook or scientists like him. 

Armitage, of course, goes a step further by not only claiming to have made discoveries he never made. By destroying Jakob and Flora's records, he tries to obliterate their work.

Flora revels in the one thing Armitage cannot take away--her time with Jakob in the valley. Though this is a doomed love story, it is an incredibly rich look at at the life of two explorers who were willing to risk so much.

Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney (Part 3)

In the last half of the novel, a novel primarily focused upon desire, Flora finds herself caught up in a love affair with Jakob. 

Their paths have crossed before. At Neqi, they felt a connection which resulted in a three year correspondence. 

In Jakob de Beyn, Flora finds and rejects the love of her life. She has a five-day affair with Jakob. Soon afterwards, when her husband becomes sick again with a paralytic stroke, Flora makes a choice. She refuses to see Jakob again. 

Here Flora resembles many of the Victorian and early twentieth century heroines literature so frequently portrays. There is a "price" she realizes she has to pay. She feels she owes a debt to her husband, Freddie, for funding her trip to the North.

Jakob, too, represses his desire for the illustrious "Snow Queen," as Flora is known. He chooses to become an engaged to a woman, Clara, who loves him as a friend. She is lesbian and will never desire him romantically.



(Part 2)
(Part 1)

Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney, (Part 2)

This historical novel has an undeniable feminist bent. Flora gravitates towards a mentor who brings her to London and who helps her fulfill her long held desire to return to Ellesmere island. 

(photo by Noel Bauza, https://pixabay.com/en/users/Noel_Bauza-2019050/

Sadly, in order to secure funding she must make a marriage of convenience with a man who shares her interests but who does not love or cherish her. 

In becoming a "new woman" like her mentor, she has had to make some awful sacrifices. 

Flora marries Freddie, for one thing, whose influence and money help her return to the Arctic. Though Flora can continue pursuing her career, Freddie cruelly mistreats her.

Though Flora is a friend and advocate of the Inuit, she finds herself removing their mummified remains. Bringing Inuit remains to Europe would raise the importance of the expedition or so she thinks. 

(continued from Part 1)

Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney (Part 1)

If you want to read an astounding work of historical fiction with a feminist bent, read Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney.

What attracted me to this book, at first, was the story of a daughter accompanying her father on a polar expedition.

Somewhere I had heard that story before. Pictures of Robert Peary's daughter wrapped in furs came to mind.

Flora Mackie's story isn't based on Marie Peary's but some of the details match. The press made much of Marie Peary's allure. She became known world wide as the Snow Baby, as the Greenlanders called her.

In Stef Penney's novel Flora's story is sensationalized, too, except she is called the Snow Queen. Flora capitalizes on this to launch her return to the Arctic, a move her father does not support. 

(continued)

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The Royal Institute's Christmas Lectures

Initiated by Michael Faraday in 1826, the Royal Institute's Christmas Lectures on science continue to be produced in the present day. Many of the past episodes can be viewed on the web.

http://www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/watch

Learn many fascinating facts like we laugh. The 2017 lecture features "The Science of Laughter" with Sophie Scott. 

Scientific American has a wonderful article about Michael Faraday:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/christmas-with-faraday-the-chemical-history-of-a-candle/

Kingdom of Ash and Briars by Hannah West

This magical YA novel will have readers rooting for Bristal, an orphan raised by a cook. Bristal has a feisty, take-no-prisoners spirit that will resonate well with teens.

Even though she is kidnapped and forced into the Water, which has killed many, she refuses to lose hope.

Bristal chooses to work as an elicromancer after she is tested at the Water. Her mentor, Brack, gives her the choice which she accepts, even if there are many drawbacks. 

After training, she becomes a  a clandestine who can disguise herself as other people or animals. 

Her first assignment is to protect a princess but she soon finds herself taking the form of a boy and fighting with the Alliance against a group of rebel elicromancers.

Though being an elicromancer means forsaking love, she is taken with Anthony, the renegade Prince. 

Since she must save the lost duchess, create harmony among the warring kingdoms, and defeat Tamarice, Bristal knows she cannot allow herself to fall in love. 

Will love win out? 

Strange forces are at work throughout this novel. Bristal's past, her childhood in Poppleton, may be the key to helping her quell the evil uprising that threatens the kingdoms of Nissera, Calgoran, and Volarre.

Magic is strong but never underestimate the power of love.

Smart Clothes

Recently, Levis and Google have developed a Smart jacket that can connect to the Internet. The jacket is called a Commuter Trucker Jacket by Jaquard (https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/beazley-designs-of-the-year/fashion/levis-commuter-trucker-jacket-with-jacquard-by-google).

Those who wear the jacket can tap or swipe the jacket sleeve to access mobile services. The jacket can be washed (once the snap tag is removed).

Energy Action Month

October is Energy Action Month. 

What safe, renewable energy sources will be available to you in the future? Some researchers think that one day clothes--your T-shirt and jeans--may be able generate electricity. This electricity could be used to power devices e.g. cellphones. 

That sounds far-fetched but scientists at University of California at Berkeley have been working on this idea since 2010.
 
At the University of Georgia, Zhong Lin Wang and his team are trying to create a fabric that can harvest energy from the sun as well as motion.

Fabric that generates energy based on movement will use triboelectric nanogenerators. Fabric that generates solar energy would require photo anodes. 

Are we headed to a brave new world where our clothes will power our devices? 

More information about Energy Action Month for students and teachers can be found here,
 http://www.need.org/content.asp?contentid=175

http://www.energy.gov