Senor Parrot's Perch

Today, Scott Esposito, in his blog�entry titled “This Book Does Not Exist”�tells the story of a non-existent book that somehow got 28 5-star reviews on Amazon UK. The book is “Useless America” and “written” by Jim Crace. The story he cites is told at the LA Times JacketCopy blog.

This is very interesting, in part because its a funny tail of how typos can grow into whole books. Who’d a thunk it that we really could maybe get some Shakespeare from a room full of monkeys with�wordprocessors if they just had enough time, disk space, and wildly unpredictable spell-checking?

Not quite as interesting or funny, but definitely related,�is the story that Amazon plans to reduce the number of reviews it lists on its book details pages. Ron, over at MediaBistro.com GalleyCat notes that very news from Gather.com. Seems some folks are upset about this. Well, I is and I ain’t. So, reading about all the outstanding reviews for a book that doesn’t exist posted over on Amazon UK sort of moves me more into the “I ain’t” side of the scale.

Now, I’ve wondered about many of those reviews, myself. I’ve posted a few, but they’ve all been for books I’ve read. Not only that, they’ve existed, too. And no, not even like the time in college when�I (more…)

Elizabeth Kennedy, on her blog About.com:Children’s Books, provides an excellently chosen�list of summer reading lists. I recommend taking the time to look at all 10. There are many excellent books listed, and it would take much more than a single summer to read them all.

The lists group books by grade or age, genre, or both. They have many classics on the list, which is a good thing.�

Another good reason to read the lists is to see what the schools, librarians, and educators are encouraging our children to read. Not everything on those lists is something I would want my child reading at the age of 13 or 14, when emotions and hormones are running high, and judgement and wisdom are not sufficiently prepared to resist some Siren’s song of pleasure and self-fulfillment. However, I did not see too many.

I was most surprised at the overall excellent quality of all of the lists, each a book lover’s dream. Lists included science, history, Economics (yah!-one list included Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations-thats an ambitious book for a high schooler), classical texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or Homer or the Bible, novels, poetry and books without any words like recently published�Flotsam. The lists run long and short.

So, go look at the lists and pick out more than a few. Head to the bookstore or your library and read. Happy Reading!

Recent reading has been quite good, with one exception-the exception will remain unmentioned, because I generally don’t discuss what I don’t care for, unless there’s a point to be made from it. I haven’t written in a long time, so I’m going to try to catch up a bit. Here are five quick comments about five recent books.

I just finished Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen last night. How I wish I’d been able to read this 40 years ago! I grew up in northern Minnesota and spent lots of my time in the woods, rivers, creeks, and lakes of that beautiful state. I dreamed of living off the land and fending for myself. That’s exactly what the young boy in Paulson’s excellent book is forced to do. On the way he discovers what is really important and he discovers what he can do and he discovers what his own attitudes can enable him to do. Big recommendation from me on this one. I think my oldest girl would like this book, but really, its great for boys. The environment is real and the lessons are too. Its so much better than the great majority of magical fantasy out there.

Before reading Hatchet, I read Searching for Mockingbird, by Loretta Ellsworth. This is another excellent book, I’d say for 12 and up, including adults. This book is a very well deserved Midwest Bookseller’s Association Pick for this Spring and Summer.

Its the story of a teenage girl named Erin. The night before her sixteenth birthday she runs away to find and meet Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, Erin’s favorite book. Upset that her father has decided to marry after so many years since her mother’s death, and haunted by the desire to learn more about her mother, who had died only 7 days after her birth, she hopes to learn some answers to her questions. She takes the money she has and rides the bus to Alabama, and on her quest she meets a few interesting people who help change her life forever. This is worth finding and reading.

Before that, I read Whistling in the Dark, by Lesley Kagen, another Midwest Booksellers Association Spring/Summer pick. Set in 1959, two young sisters, Sally and Tru, find themselves virtually on their own when their mother has to go into the hospital. There she contracts a severe infection after an operation and she remains at the edge between life and death for many days. The girls’ drunken stepfather ignores them, eventually beginning an affair with someone else, and their much older sister is completely wrapped up with her boyfriend. However, someone is interested in them. Someone is kidnapping, molesting and murding young girls from their neighborhood, and that person is after Sally. Clearly, this is not a children’s book.
The mood and elements of childhood are fairly well represented. The element of danger propels the story along quite quickly and Kagen uses it to great advantage to create a lot of energy within the story. The characters were real. The mystery was compelling with plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing at different culprits. There’s lots that’s funny, lots that’s sad. This was a very good showing for a first-time novelist, though at times uneven.
It too often sinks close to being little more than a dirty book. Sexuality is an important element of the book, with the girls wondering and confused by what was going on around them. What the children know or understood is uneven and changing without cause, and some of the details just didn’t fit historically, such as the reference to an Elvis song playing on the radio, but which happens to be a song Elvis recorded in the 1970′s, nearly 20 years after the setting of the story. In the end, I can’t recommend this one because I like my books on the clean side. I’d like to, because I found much of it very good in many ways, but in the end, I can’t. I really believe that a good writer doesn’t sell the story short or reducing its power by learning to write around the smut. Adults are easily able to fill in the blanks.
Another uneven book -much, much more uneven- was The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien, and edited together by his son Christopher Tolkien. If you’re a Tolkien fan and you can’t get enough, if you have read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit many times and intend to read them many times again, if you studied the Silmarilion for clues to your own family tree, then this is the book for you. Turin, son of Hurin, is one of Tolkien’s most tragic figures. Hubris abounds, and with it ruin, pain and misery everywhere Turin goes.

But, if you’re a marginal fan, I wouldn’t bother. The writing is turgid, obtuse, and antiquated, and sometimes awful (that’s redundant!). At times Tolkien can write excellent prose, but you’ll find none of that in this book. What you do find are heroic struggle against evil, and evil outcomes of arrogant human endeavors. This is pure backdrop for The Lord of the Rings and it helps develop a fuller understanding of stage set in Middle Earth. And me? I’m no marginal fan. I ate this book up, imperfections and all. Will I read it again? Someday, yes I will.

I actually got this book for my birthday, along with The Invention of Hugo Cabret. My family loves me soooooooo much. I’m a lucky guy!

And what about the book that I said I won’t mention? Don’t ask. Its a kids book that I’m reading aloud write now. My kids love it. It’s a wonderful fantasy world where amazing events always happen. So just why does it have to be so boring? Well, its only boring to me, it seems. My wife enjoys it as much as many of the read-alouds, and my kids enjoy every read-aloud. So who am I to complain?

I will complain. There’s no conflict or struggle. There’s no indignation over wrongs. There’s no sour moments to cause reflection. Its all sweet. And its all nothing.

Don’t burn that book! Don’t toss it out! Turn it in to book art!

Ok, so�that book�does stink. Its awful. Only an idiot would read it cover to cover. But, with a little inspiration, you can express yourself and turn that book into a work of art!

Over at the Mom2MomConnection, I found this link to books as art, but probably not what you expected.�There is, of course, the idea that mangling a books pages until they resemble something else is an act of desecration, but really, I’ve read a few that would be improved. Check it out! Here’s an example.