Booking Through Thursday

Something I’ve been thinking about lately: “What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?”

It's easier for me to explain why I put a book back down immediately. I don't like to read formula books (i.e. detective) or romance stories. As soon as I see the word detective or investigator, the book goes down. The same thing happens if it hints of romance--like, young woman with 3 kids loses husband, moves to a new town, meets obnoxious contractor working on her new house. Bam! Down it goes. Sometimes I'll put the book down as soon as I get a good look at the author's name because of the genre they write in.

Books I'll open up and browse through:

They're "different" in that the hero/heroine is unique or has an unusual problem to handle. One example of a book I browsed further and then read is Stones From the River. Excellent book!

Maybe it's about a time travelling heroine--i.e., Outlander. I'll overlook the romance because there's enough other interesting and thrilling parts of the story.

I usually enjoy historical fiction so sometimes I'm hooked by the time period. Paradise Alley centered on a group of characters experiencing the anti-draft rioting in NYC back in 1863 (or was it 1862, duh!).

Books I read while I was unable to move around in July

From This That & The Other Thing:

I did a *lot* of reading the last 10-12 days which really helped me pass the long hours. Two of them I'm holding back while I decide which book to choose for a club I belong to on another forum. The others:

Dovey Coe by Frances O'Roark Donnell: I ordered the book because I saw it was about a family with a deaf member and I was interested in it. It's actually a book for teens or young adults but I still enjoyed it. Dovey Coe is a child growing up in the mountains around the time of the Great Depression. She is a plucky character and speaks in her mountain accented voice. There's a nasty bully that rags on her deaf brother and is pursuing her pretty older sister. He lures Dovey to the store his family owns. Dovey becomes involved in an altercation with him, trying to stop him from killing her brother's dog. She's knocked out but when she comes to, the bully is dead. She's accused of murder...but did she do it?

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin: This was a thoroughly enjoyable read for me. Doris Kearns Goodwin grew up on Long Island and so a lot of the places she mentions were totally familiar. She also describes small town/block living where people knew and looked out for each other and I remember that too. She & her family were avid fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers before they defected to LA. It's a great book for anyone who grew up in the '50s and '60s!

Moloka'i by Alan Brennert: The story is about Rachel Kalama and takes place in Hawaii between 1890s to mid 1900s. Rachel is about 7 when she develops leprosy and is forcibly quarantined on Molokai. Although you'd think this would be a very sad book, it's very upbeat in many places. Rachel has a great deal of courage as do many of the other people suffering from leprosy. I enjoyed it and was moved by it.

I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven: This is the story of a dedicated young vicar sent to live in a very isolated village of native Americans in British Columbia. The people grow to love and trust him as he learns their language and culture. Ah...but the bishop has a very special reason for sending the young vicar--a sad one. It's a quick and easy read.

I'm holding back on: In This Sign by Joanne Greenberg and Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen

Eye Opening Books II

When the civil rights movement began in the south I was still kind of little. I didn't know what was going on at first. Later, when I began watching the news for seventh grade current events, I saw the rioting in places like Watts and didn't understand. My parents explained the riots were instigated by "troublemakers".

I lived on Long Island with my parents and brother until December 1964. Our schools weren't segregated so I had no idea that they had been in the south. Later, I remember reading about the violence of busing issues in the north to fully integrate schools. The only thing I thought was how silly it was to have to ride a bus across town when there was a neighborhood school a kid could walk to. By then, I was living in Baltimore and I don't remember we really needed busing. The schools were pretty much integrated and so we went in our neighborhoods.

When Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was shocked, saddened and confused. He was only 39 years old, a preacher. Who would kill a preacher? I was confused, though, because my parents said he was a "troublemaker". How could he be? He was a preacher! Yet, there was rioting in Baltimore and smoke filled the sky. Maybe my parents were right, I thought...but why? Why were people so angry?

Well...I was dumb. I didn't know very much about what was going on in the country or in the world either until then--1968, when all hell seemed to break loose.

I read Gone With the Wind and saw the movie with my parents when it was re-released. Oho, the people in the south had owned slaves. That was very bad, I thought, but that was 100 years ago. Why was everyone still mad now?

I was thinking and seeing things like the naive child I was.

I started to get it when I read To Kill A Mockingbird. A black man was on trial for his life after being accused of raping a white woman. The first thing that troubled me was that some of the white people expected appointed lawyer Atticus Finch to put up a dummy defense. They all anticipated that Tom Robinson would be hanged anyway.

The "star" witness, Mayella Ewing, was a pathetically poor and lonely young woman who only had her child siblings for company. Their father was on the dole, an alcoholic, and the kids showed up for one day of school and that was it. They were worse off and off crummier character than anyone else, black or white, and yet she was going to be believed just because of her color. During question, it became very clear she was lying. She hadn't been raped. She'd been attracted to Tom and her father saw her hugging the terrified handyman. Tom ran out of the house and the bum father beat the hell out of his daughter.

Atticus proved there was no way Tom could have committed the crimes Mayella accused him of...yet Tom was convicted. He was "shot" while trying to "escape". I felt as sick as the kids in the story felt.

No wonder black people were mad! They were "kept in their place" by Klan mentality, shot, beaten or hanged because of what? The color of their skin. That was sickening.

I felt angry because no one had told me any of this happened. This was supposed to be a free country, why wasn't it? I began to argue with my parents about the things they said. Why did they think protesters were troublemakers? Why did they hate Puerto Ricans? Why did the government lie to us?

I still didn't know much about the civil rights movement in the '50s and '60s. It just didn't come up in school and my parents surely weren't going to talk about "troublemakers". Once I began to see footage of the police with clubs, hoses and dogs set on marching blacks I was really horrified. Those policemen and the hate filled white crowds looked more like Nazis than Americans.

I was already out of high school so it was after 1973 that I saw that old footage. I thought, what! That kind of segregation was still going on when I was a child? What! Blacks in states like Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana couldn't all vote? What! Even in 1968, Rev. King was still working on civil rights? It hadn't happened for everyone even then? What!

I just finished reading Coming of Age in Mississippi and again my stomach turned at the hateful behavior of white Christians. They'd kill a black man for even looking at a white woman. Anne Moody writes about the murders of several young men from her town and she had to get out because she couldn't stomach all the hatred.

She wrote about her work in "the Movement", exposing herself to being beaten, arrested or killed just to be able to sit in a restaurant and be served or sit down and wait for a bus like everyone else. Segregated restaurants, bathrooms and waiting rooms? She lived in constant fear because she had the nerve to go around trying to get other blacks to register to vote. That whole system was crazy. Blacks already had the right to vote...why did they need to pass some kind of crazy test the whites thought up?

Worst of all...where was everyone? It wasn't just the white southerners and the KKK causing the trouble. And they were the troublemakers, not the protesting blacks. What's wrong for asking for what you're due? It was the whites who responded with murder. Now that is wrong wrong wrong. Anyway, where were the rest of us? Where was the government? They were quaking in their shoes, I guess. They didn't care enough or were too scared to get involved.

I don't want to come off sounding sanctimonious or righteous. It just makes me sick. Apparently we're all capable of being Nazis and Klansmen. When we look the other way, that's just as bad. That's what happened in Germany to the Jews, here to the blacks, and all around the world.

Eye Opening Books

From This That & The Other Thing:

Eye Opening Books
This is probably going to be a rambly post today--sorry! I was thinking about the books I've been reading over the last several months and what eye openers they've been. Why are people so mean to each other--especially in the name of God?

I grew up with deaf parents, deaf relatives and deaf friends. I learned early about discrimination and repression of deaf people. Yes, they've been repressed too. I can't tell you how many times I was asked as a small child, "Can they talk?" "Can they read?" "How can they drive a car?" "How can they have children?" I mean, DUH!

Way back when, my parents couldn't go to school with everyone else. They went to special schools for the deaf. My dad's education was better than my mom's because the teachers and students all signed freely. At my mom's signing wasn't allowed and all the communication was through lip reading. No one was even allowed to gesture. Sign language was looked upon as dummy language. Deaf men could be printers or machinists, never managers or lawyers or doctors. Deaf women could be seamstresses or key punch operators, and certainly never managers, lawyers or doctors. Things are better now but we're not there yet.

What's that got to do with eye opening books? Now I'll get to that. I knew that Jewish people and people of color were also different but I had no idea of the extent and cruelty we could have towards one another. I read Exodus by Leon Uris, The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank and To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee when I was in high school. We didn't learn about the holocaust in Nazi Germany during my school years. Up until I read Lee's book, I didn't understand what African Americans were so mad about in the late '60s. Genocide, discrimination, repression--who wouldn't be angry about that?

Here's a funny thing: although my parents suffered discrimination themselves, they also carried around very bigoted ideas. When I was growing up in the '60s, they'd ignorant things about Jewish people and people of color, specifically African Americans and Puerto Ricans. They would say that blacks are trouble makers for protesting injustices against them. They had stereotypical beliefs about Jewish people. My dad told me he would disown me if I ever dated or married a Puerto Rican. I wondered where their hatred came from. When books like Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas and Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody were first published, I was afraid to read them because I knew my parents would disapprove and because I was afraid of what the books might say.

I joined a book club a few months ago on a support forum I visit regularly. Recently, one of the members chose a book called Prayers for Bobby by Mary Griffith. The book is about a young gay man who killed himself because he'd learned (from his mother & prevailing religious beliefs) to hate himself. He jumped from a bridge onto a highway below because he couldn't stand to live with himself anymore. I was shocked and saddened by the things I read in the book; that the suicide rate for teenagers is highest among the gay kids; that in the name of our loving God, parents and other people would condemn gay people instead of opening their hearts and churches to them. I remembered the gay pride parades and gay rights movements but am sorry to say I hadn't given them much thought--just as I hadn't given much thought to the Jews or the African Americans until I started to read about what had happened to them.

After that, I found both Down These Mean Streets and Coming of Age in Missippi at a book sale at the library and read them. They made me feel sick to my stomach and thoroughly disgusted that these things could happen in our country, so wealthy and supposedly "the land of the free". Free, yes--if you are white and Protestant (both of which I am). But what about everyone else? This country is for all of us, not just us white heterosexual Protestants!

Now...let's see what else I've got to read around here?

Gump & Co.

From This That & The Other Thing
Gump & Co. by Winston Groom


My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I absolutely loved the movie "Forrest Gump" so when I saw this book at a library sale, I had to have it. It picks up where the movie left off but I have to say that the first book and the movie must have been quite different. For instance, Forrest's shrimp company apparently went bankrupt and he was left flat broke. His true love Jenny didn't die as she did in the movie although she was pretty quickly dispatched in this sequel. Forrest got into plenty of adventures in this book as well, including Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin War, and other historical events from the 1980s. Forrest even met Tom Hanks who suggested that a movie should be made from Forrest's life. Heh. It was an amusing book, very light and easy to read.

Duma Key

From This That & The Other Thing:

Duma Key by Stephen King

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I just finished reading the book and while I liked it, I don't consider it to be one of his best. My favorite is and always will be The Stand, I guess. T



Edgar Freemantle was a happily married, middle aged owner of a construction firm when a horrible accident severely injured him physically and mentally. In the aftermath of such traumatic injuries, he's changed and as a result, his life takes some dramatic changes. His therapist suggests a change of scenery and Edgar chooses to relocate from Minnesota to Duma Key, FL.



Edgar had already begun sketching by the time he moves to the house he renames "Big Pink". Suddenly, he is a prolific artist, moving on from pencil drawings to oils.



There is a chilling mystery on Duma Island. Why is the southern part overgrown with trees and plants not really native to the area? Why does no one live on that part of the island? Edgar's only neighbors are an elderly patron of the arts struggling with Alzheimer's and her caretaker. As Edgar becomes friends with them and learns more about them, his artwork takes a dark turn.



I don't want to go any further and include spoilers. I enjoyed the book but felt it was too long. That's been an issue with some King books I've read, particularly the ones since his accident. His writing has changed and while I haven't read everything he's written since then, I haven't been a big fan of the stuff I have read. The story could have ended a lot sooner. Part of the ending reminded me of something that happened in one of his other stories and I didn't think it was necessary to have it happen in this book.



I love Stephen King and will continue to read whatever he writes, including going back and re-reading the old stuff.

Hideaway

From This That & The Other Thing:

Hideaway by Dean Koontz

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hatch Harrison and his wife Lindsey were on their way back from a vacation to try and rekindle their marriage (they lost their son almost 5 years ago) when they are in a terrible car accident. Hatch is actually killed in the accident but is successfully resuscitated by a dedicated doctor at the hospital. It's this second chance at life that revitalizes their marriage and Hatch and Lindsey decide to adopt a disabled child, Regina. Unfortunately, Hatch seems to have brought back a disturbing ability with him -- he has an inexplicable connection to a psychotic serial killer and is able to see through that man's eyes.

As Hatch struggles with the disturbing visions and dreams, he soon realizes that the killer is also able to see through his eyes and that it places his new little family in danger.

Is the killer a human or some evil manifestation from hell? That's just one of the myeteries to be cleared up.

This was an exciting, very suspenseful book which became almost unbearable toward the end. There was a couple of real nail biting twists in the story, something Koontz is very skilled at introducing into his stories.

This is one of his earlier books but one I hadn't read. I'm looking forward to reading more of his books.

The Colorado Kid

from This That & The Other Thing:


rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was very disappointed with The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. He wrote the book especially for "Hard Case Crime", a series of books by classic mystery writers and new ones that were supposed to have a 1940s/1950s old time mystery feel to them. I was expecting a hard boiled crime story and what I got was two old geezers in Maine telling their wide-eyed intern about some guy from Colorado who may or may not have choked to death on a steak sandwich. I kept waiting for the book to get better and it was charming but that is about all. Waste of time.

Pervasive Developmental Disorder: An Altered Perspective

From This That & The Other Thing:

Someone (I wish I could remember who) recommended that I read Pervasive Developmental Disorder: An Altered Perspective (by Barbara Quinn and Anthony Malone) so that I could understand better about PDD-NOS. I would like to thank that person because yes, this book helped so much! There are some sections in the book that are a little difficult to understand because the discussion is about biology and how our brains work. However, the authors suggest that the reader start out where the greatest needs or questions lie and skip around. I learned the differences between the spectrum disorders but basically it all boils down to this: the kids with PDD have some issues all of their lives, especially with socializing. There are a lot of interventions and medications available so a diagnosis of autism or PDD is not the end of the world. The book concludes with stories told by the parents of four kids diagnosed with PDD. The stories are hopeful without being sappy, realistic without being scary. I would recommend this book to anyone whose family member has PDD.

Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince

reprinted from This That & The Other Thing:

Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince
Reading the Harry Potter books is like watching Everybody Loves Raymond: I don't care for the main character but enjoy the supporting characters. Harry's become a cheeky, selfish bratty teenager--not all that much different from your typical adolescent. I just want to grab his shoulders and shake him for the disrespectful way he treats adults and other people he doesn't like. He's been known to criticize even those people he does like--Headmaster Dumbledore for one. He thinks he knows more than anyone else does and this in spite of all Dumbledore's wisdom and experience. Well, all right then.

Harry's been through an awful lot in his sixteen years. First, he was orphaned by the very evil Lord Voldemort when he was barely a toddler. Voldemort was trying a pre-emptive strike against Harry (the intended target) because of a prophecy made about the two of them. Harry's mother put herself between the baby and the dark lord after her husband was murdered and refused to budge, thereby saving the baby's life. Voldemort was weakened by his attack on Harry and ran off into the unknown. Dumbledore and several other protectors stepped forward to see to it that Harry survived. They left him with his aunt and uncle, a pair of truly despicable foster parents.

Once Harry was eleven, learned he was a wizard and went off to Hogwarts the wizarding school, he faced more traumatic events. For each of the years he was at Hogwarts, an attempt was made on his life. Voldemort was determined to come back to power but Dumbledore, headmaster of the school and prime champion, protected Harry throughout the years...until now. Each book has become darker with more twists, more deaths, and more tragedy for Harry. Lonely and neglected Harry learned he had a godfather--who was killed shortly thereafter by Voldemort's supporters. Not surprisingly, he's turned into a very angry boy.

Now that he is aware of the prophecy, Harry finds he has to learn all he can about Voldemort. His guide is his beloved mentor, Albus Dumbledore, who shows him through memories how Voldemort became the monster he is. At the climax, Dumbledore is betrayed by someone the headmaster believed to be an ally. Or was it a betrayal? Harry seems to think so but I'm not so inclined.

The half-blood prince refers to a certain someone who "helps" Harry get through one of his classes. It's totally ironic to me that Harry would feel such a pull toward taking the student's advice. Like Hermione, Harry's friend, I'm a bit miffed he felt it was okay to cheat. Well, we're all human right?

Speaking of seeing the human side, I also enjoyed seeing the "softer" sides to some of the previously thoroughly obnoxious characters...even Lord Voldemort was a thinking, feeling child once.

This was a very good book if you can get through the teenage angsty bits, the adolescents' crushes and loves, and other little boring details. There is enough of the good stuff to keep you going.

The last book is set to come out in print in July. Everyone is up in arms, worried that Harry Potter might die in the book. Stephen King, Lemony Snicket & other book writers have been appealling to Rowling to spare Harry. I sort of hope he lives even if he is bratty!