The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki ****

I read the introduction by A.A. Milne to this short story collection just now, and I shouldn't have. Milne is such a great writer, it's hard for me to come up with a way to describe Saki without using his words now. I'll give it a go, but if you ever read this collection forgive me if I sound like Milne!

First I can say that Saki (H.H. Munro was his real name...hmm, these British gents back then liked to use initials instead of first names!) is one of the most sarcastic and bitter writers I've ever had the pleasure of enjoying! If one of his stories seems to be going along at a good, positive clip, you can be sure it's going to take a sharp turn soon towards irony. His recurring character in many of these stories is Clovis Sangrail, a 17 year old who has seen it all and knows how to use the people around him to make his life more amusing. The rest are about unrelated people and places, but they all have the touch of the dark side of life.

There are 29 short stories in this collection so I won't talk about all of them, but some of my favorites are "The Music on the Hill", "The Hounds of Fate", "The Remoulding of Groby Lington", "Tobermory", ... alright, I'll just talk about those four.

"The Music on the Hill" is the only story from this book that I've read before. It was part of a collection of short stories about weird and unusual phenomenon. It's actually why I thought that all Saki's stories would be like this, but they aren't. It's highly sarcastic, with a young couple living in their country home because the new wife thought it would be nice. It took a lot of persuading to get her husband to make the move, but now he seems to be reluctant to ever leave. There's an ominous feel about the place and the husband is acting strangely. So young wife decides to follow him one day, hears some odd piping music coming from the direction her husband went, and finds a small alter to Pan in the woods. Someone has put an offering of grapes on it, and in disgust she throws them away. The music stops, and her troubles begin.

"The Hounds of Fate" is one of those depressing little gems about how no matter how far you run, fate will track you down. It's well written and again rather eerie, though not as mystical as "The Music on the Hill".

For pure humor "The Remoulding of Groby Lington" is great. It's about a rather retiring man who has a pet parrot whose nephew brings to his attention that he's very similar to his pet. Then his brother brings home a pet monkey for Groby, and he turns from parrot to something else...

And "Tobermory" is just plain evil. It's about a cat who's been trained to speak English. Sounds great, eh? Well, that is until Tobermory starts blabbing about who he's seen doing what with whom...

All in all, a great collection. There are other stories I enjoyed also, but it's hard to go over them all here. Just take my word for it, they're worth the time!

The Awakening by Kate Chopin ****

I've read somewhere that The Awakening is one of the first books about women's lib. I'd have to agree with that, though it doesn't have the positive connotations that later works would have. I do think that it is a very realistic portrayal of what you might call a mid-life crisis, though Edna, the main character, is only 29. I feel like I'm having one of those crises right now and I'm 40, but I've justified the similarities by saying to myself that people didn't live as long back then (1890's) so 29 might have been mid-life, and also that I'm hopelessly delayed in all things in general so this would be no exception.

Edna is, as I said above, 29 years old, married to a man that adores her and has two sons aged 5 and 7. Edna doesn't adore her husband, she just married him because he came along at the right time and was the right man to marry. They live in New Orleans but are on vacation on Grand Isle when the story opens. They are comfortably well off, with a nanny and servants. During the vacation Edna has an "awakening"-she suddenly feels the shackles of her life and wants to throw them off. This coincides with her relationship with a young man, Robert. They fall in love on the island but do not act upon it.

When Edna returns to New Orleans with her family she can't stand her existence anymore. She takes up painting and drawing again, old hobbies that she hadn't indulged in for years. Her husband leaves for an extended business trip to New York and while he is gone, she suddenly finds herself free. Her children visit her mother-in-law and her obligations are only to herself.

I'm sure this book has been analyzed to death and I know many people probably won't agree with me on my interpretation of it, but I thought the book was very good, even the ending. I won't give it away, just that it is true to the time and true to the character. It can't be put in the context of our current social situation--so much has changed in our world in just 120 years. I can empathize with Edna's ennui. I admire her ability to pull herself out of it, even if the struggle exhausts her.

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne ****

I've resurfaced. To say I've had a heck of a time recently would be an understatement. I don't know if it's my age, my hormones, or just the time of year, but I was down in the dumps for the whole month of December & didn't know if I was going to be able to pull myself out. I've read that the early 40's are the most depressing time of most people's lives, so maybe this is just my new periodic normal. If it is, it sucks. I didn't read. Anything. Which shows how bad off I was. Even when I'm not actively reading a book I'm always reading something: a magazine, articles online, something. But not this time.

I'm glad to relate that I think I've snapped out of it. I hope like hell that I don't snap back into it, but I'm realistic if I'm anything. If you see a large break on here again, that's most probably what's going on. So bear with me, please.

On to the book--

I've been going through the Dover Publications catalog & looking at the books they offer in a new light. I had an AHA! moment & saw that most all of their items are copyright free. Which means something wonderful: Project Gutenberg. You see, I've got this doggone Kindle that I have a love/hate relationship with. I love the instant gratification of reading material, but hate the lack of sensory input, ie. the feel of the pages, the smell of the book, the heaviness or lightness of the tome. But when I get free ebooks from Gutenberg, well...I start loving the little devil again.

A.A. Milne, of Winne the Pooh fame, wrote a mystery book back in the 20's. And even though I kinda figured out what was going on before the amateur detective did in the book, I liked it. In fact, I liked it a lot.

The usual suspects are gathered at a British country estate in the roaring 20's for a lovely summer weekend. They do the usual stuff that those folk liked to do: golfing, playing on the bowling green (?), anyone for tennis, that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, & then a dead guy shows up & ruins the lovely weekend & I say!, let's figure out what happened, what?

There's all sorts of cool stuff like secret passages, a flamboyant actress, people doing mysterious things in a pond in the dead of night, & the really smart fella that just happens to show up just at the right time & figure the whole thing out. I'm amazed they didn't just kill off all those really smart fellas in England back in the day--they could have gotten away with so much crime without them!

It was a good book to get me out of my funk. If you get in a funk yourself & need a little nudge to get your ass back in gear, I suggest this chestnut. Jolly good show!

The Fairy Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley ***

This is the first book in a series that looks really cute for kids in the 4th-5th grade. The premise is two sisters have been abandoned by their parents and have been bumped around in the foster care system for the past year. Finally a woman who claims to be their grandmother agrees to take custody of the children--the only problem is that the girls had been told by their father that their grandmother was dead!

Soon the sisters are living in Ferryport, a small village in upstate New York, with their "Grandma" Grimm and her unusual associate, Mr. Canis. Adventure ensues when Grandma is kidnapped by a giant and the girls realize that fairy tales really are true--at least in Ferryport!

Though there are more books in this series, I'm not planning on reading them at this time because I'd rather try to get through all the Mark Twain Award nominees this year! Plus this book is one of those that is so focused on a particular age group that it isn't ageless--I can tell it's a great read for the younger set, but not a timeless classic.

I can recommend this book, and probably the entire series for 4th-5th graders.

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge ***

I belong to a great online support group, Hemi-kids, that I get a lot of information and understanding from. Though Puppy doesn't have hemiplegia himself, he does have the same underlying issue--stroke. Puppy had a blood disorder when he was born called NAIT. Though it can be complicated to explain, I'll just say it made him prone to bleeding. When he was born he was covered in bruises and because the doctor used a suction device to deliver him he had a stroke.

A couple of years ago some of the people on the list serv started talking about this great book that proved brain plasticity. Not only that, it talked about how plasticity doesn't go away when we get older. For those of us dealing either personally or as a parent of someone with a brain challenge, this information can make your hopes soar. Something can be done to help either regain or establish those connections lost to brain injury.

Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist, and maybe because of this his writing sometimes gets a little...dry. But despite that, the book compels you to continue reading. Three chapters in particular were not boring at all for me: Chapter 2, Building Herself a Better Brain; Chapter 3, Redesigning the Brain; and Chapter 7, Pain.

Chapter 2 is fascinating in that it is about a woman who was labeled mentally deficient and how she not only figured out how to overcome her own obstacles, but opened a school for children in order to help those with learning challenges. Two things I took from that chapter that I've already tried implementing with Puppy are tracing and memorizing. Tracing has been found to help with writing (duh!) by building up those neuro pathways in the brain that control that function. It's a low-stress way of dealing with it, but with good results. The memorization helps kids with poor auditory memory. Puppy has poor memory in almost all ways, but right now I've been reading poems to him at bedtime over and over in the hopes that it will help him memorize them himself, and help him to learn how to do that too.

Chapter 3 is fascinating because of a program that is being used at Puppy's school--Fast ForWord. A scientist named Michael Merzenich developed it to help people with learning disorders learn to read. But as a side effect, it was discovered to also help kids with autism and various other developmental disabilities. Basically he figured out how to rewire the brain using fun computer games that get results without kids even realizing it.

Chapter 7 was interesting because it was about V.S. Ramachandran. He's described in the book as the Sherlock Holmes of modern neurology, and that description is apt. He doesn't like working with fancy technology--he works with what is around him and comes up with startling and amazing discoveries. I won't go into how he does it, but he can make it feel like he's hit your hand with a hammer simply by hitting the table in front of you with one.

Overall this was a very good book. I have a very hard time reading non-fiction and this book was no exception. I start to feel like I'm back in college reading something I have to for a class, so even if it was my own idea to read it in the first place it soon becomes a chore. But I forced myself through it and I'm glad I did.

I don't agree with all the theories presented by Doidge in this book, but I do understand them. Overall it gives me some hope for Puppy's future. But I also worry--there is no such thing as a magic bullet. And even if there was one, do I want Puppy to be someone else? Thoughts to ponder.

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan ****

I am loving Percy Jackson! Rick Riordan has really done a fine job of blending the old Greek myths into modern times, and his characters are great. Tyson is one of my favorites, he's such a sweet clumsy kid--who knows how many kids like that are really cyclops in disguise!

In this, the second of the Percy Jackson books, Rick Riordan wonderfully captures the horror of some of the classic monsters: Scylla, Charybdis, the Sirens. I don't know how much kids know of the Greek myths these days, but if they didn't know about them before they'll know about them now. So not only are the Percy Jackson books entertaining, but they subtly inject some classical education in there too.

Rick also makes this a great series for boys and girls by introducing some strong female characters too. At the end of the book you may meet the most compelling one yet.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett ****

I'm not sure what I think of this book. It's well written and the characters will stay with me for quite some time, which for me is a sure sign that this is a good book. But I can honestly say I feel confused by this book in some ways. Maybe I can explore that here.

The Help is about the maids/housekeepers/nannies of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960's. I have no personal concept of having someone do your housework and raise your children for you, mostly because of where I grew up (further North) and the society I grew up in (I never knew anyone that had hired help at all). So this book was like entering a foreign country for me, one where racism is so deeply ingrained that you would build another bathroom in your house just for the black maid to use.

Mostly this book is about Aibileen, a black woman in her 50's who's job is to clean a white family's house and raise a white family's children, all while not complaining about her foul treatment at the hands of her employers. It's about the complex relationships between these women and the white children they love, and who love them in return. That is until they reach the age when the subtle teachings of their society make them realize that the woman they love is less than human in their parents' eyes.

It's also about the relationships between the white women who depend on their maids, and the maids who make their lives run smoothly. These white women can make their maids' lives hell on Earth, as is the case with Yule May. Or they can try to befriend their maids, and treat them as equals, which is what Celia tries to do with Minny. Either way, the relationships are tense and filled with a protocol that has been laid down by centuries of racism--the maid eats lunch in the kitchen alone, while the lady of the house eats in the dining room alone--both of them eating the same meal that the maid has prepared; the maid is to use one plate, cup, and set of silverware for themselves, and keep them separate so they aren't accidentally used by the white family--but the maid has to clean and polish all the good silver in the house.

It's a bizarre world that existed in Mississippi back then, before the civil rights movement had reached its peak. And it's hard to believe sometimes how far we've come as a nation and as individuals learning to live together.

We live in a strange world. The Help is a wonderful road map of where we've come from, and a hopeful and shining beacon of where we are still going.