Reviewing "Stories of Norway" by John A. Yilek

Sometimes, when one reads quite a variety of books and starts to get a “feel” for them, one begins to identify books that don’t quite seem the same as conventional publications from established publishing houses. In short, you start to recognize self-published books when you see them.

First, let me say, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with self-publishing. I know some people who have done it. I’ve read some excellent books that were self-published, or had been originally self-published before a traditional publishing house saw its potential (for making the publishing house money, at least) and reprinted it.

However, it must be admitted that in general, self-published books have a certain “look” to them. Something about the glossy paperback cover, the graphic and font choice, and sometimes an “unedited” feel to the writing itself, all gives a sneaking suspicion of unpolished-verging-on-unprofessional work. Even readers who are not grammar or spelling enthusiasts can see the difference between a book that has been professionally copy-edited and one that skipped that (in my opinion, vital) stage.

Reviewing "100 Dives of a Lifetime" by Carrie Miller

I confess. Sometimes I put books on hold at the library not because of their words, but because of their pictures. These are the “coffee table” books that people don’t really read, just leaf through.

Except I do read them, I promise.

I borrowed 100 Dives of a Lifetime because I figured there would be plenty of pretty pictures, and I might learn something about diving. Not that I really am interested going diving myself—I’ve done enough of that vicariously through Shark Week…besides, I’m rather claustrophobic—but because one never knows whether learning about diving will inspire writing an adventure novel, or at the very least aid a conversation with someone who does like to dive.

Reviewing "The Monuments Men" by Robert Edsel

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History

With a title like that, how could one go wrong?

After all, it was made into a movie, right? Some editions even have George Clooney et al. on the cover with the “Now a Major Motion Picture” seal.

Of course, any book that was ever turned into a movie must be good.

Reviewing "No Beast So Fierce" by Dane Huckelbridge

When putting books on hold at my library, I often choose them on a whim. The cover, the title, even the font on the spine may induce me to put a book on hold. It’s an adventurous feeling, not really knowing much about a book before reading it.

And it makes for some odd “Why did I put this on hold, again?” reactions when the book finally comes in (often months later) and my confused expression makes the desk librarian wonder whether she gave me the right thing.

Some libraries sponsor an event called a “blind date with a book” where they cover random books with brown paper so you can’t tell anything about them (apart from the size) until you check them out and start reading.

My method is more like internet dating. I saw the book’s profile pic and name and decided I’d like to meet it in person.

No Beast So Fierce by Dane Huckelbridge was just such a book. The cover has a cool tiger photo, and the title intrigued me. I don’t think I saw the smaller words under the title (they were too small to see on the thumbnail in the library’s online catalog), so I didn’t know until I had the book in my hands that I saw the book was subtitled The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History.

Reviewing "Bog Bodies Uncovered" by Miranda Aldhouse-Green

My curiosity about bog bodies was piqued when I read Snow-Walker. As I mentioned in my review of that, there’s a section in the third book where the main characters encounter a tribe of people that live in a swamp. Although initially welcomed into this community, it soon becomes clear that the swamp people have a nefarious ulterior motive for keeping the heroes there. Sure enough, a “festival” turns into a ritual of human sacrifice, and one of the main characters is nearly killed and put into a bog. (It’s okay; he survived.)

So I went to my default place for information when I have a passing curiosity about something: Wikipedia. But Wikipedia’s page was so skimpy, I soon turned to the more robust resource of the library, and it was there that I found Bog Bodies Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery. Miranda Aldhouse-Green addresses this subject so thoroughly, meticulously, and…let’s face it…gruesomely, that my curiosity was more than satisfied. I don’t think I’ll need to read anything more on the subject, thank you very much.

Reviewing "All the Gallant Men" by Donald Stratton

I listened to the audiobook version of this memoir by one of the survivors from the Arizona. In All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor’s Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor, Donald Stratton recounts the events that led him to joining the United States Navy, what happened that day of infamy of December 7, 1941, and its aftermath. Though gruesome in parts, I was surprised at how clean the prose was (this is a sailor’s memoir we’re talking about, remember), and was refreshed by the glowing patriotism. Particularly interesting was Stratton’s account of 9/11, hearing his perspective as someone who experienced one horror and lived long enough to witness another.

My Personal Ranking of Mark Twain's Works

1. The Mysterious Stranger
2. A Tramp Abroad (NF)
3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
4. Life on the Mississippi (NF)
5. Pudd’nhead Wilson
6. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
7. The Private Life of Adam and Eve: Being Extracts from Their Diaries, Translated from the Original Mss.
8. The Prince and the Pauper
9. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
10. Those Extraordinary Twins
11. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
12. A Double-Barrelled [sic] Detective Story
13. A Dog’s Tale

Reviewing "The Sittaford Mystery" by Agatha Christie

Originally titled The Murder at Hazelmoor, The Sittaford Mystery possesses all the needed factors to make a quintessential Agatha Christie whodunit:

• Locked room” murder situation
• Small English village in the country
• Variety pack of suspicious characters
• Distracting fear of foreigners
• Level-headed police investigator
• Charismatic and beautiful young woman
• Ace reporter helping said young woman with an independent investigation
• Lots of random red herrings

My Personal Ranking: Charles Dickens' Works

Quick note: I am only including works by Dickens that I have actually read and remember. For example, I think I read Dombey and Son at one point, but can’t remember any of it! (I sense a reread coming on….) 

1. A Christmas Carol (I have to put it at the top of the list, if only because I have reread it most!)
2. Nicholas Nickleby
3. Our Mutual Friend
4. Great Expectations
5. Oliver Twist
6. David Copperfield
7. Little Dorrit
8. Bleak House
9. Sketches By Boz
10. The Pickwick Papers
11. The Mystery of Edwin Drood
12. Hard Times
13. Barnaby Rudge
14. A Tale of Two Cities
15. The Cricket on the Hearth
16. Martin Chuzzlewit
17. The Old Curiosity Shop

Charles Dickens vs. Mark Twain: Comparing Their Styles of Travel Satire

As I was being infuriated by Charles Dickens’ overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the United States in Martin Chuzzlewit, I could not help but compare his “satirical” treatment of traveling abroad with Mark Twain’s work, particularly A Tramp Abroad, which I have previously reviewed.

I loathed “The American Part” of Martin Chuzzlewit, where Englishmen immigrate to the United States. Yet I loved A Tramp Abroad where an American visits France, Italy, Switzerland, etc. This made me wonder: was I being a hypocrite, oversensitive about my own country being made fun of, yet laughing at other countries’ expense?

The American Part of Charles Dicken's "Martin Chuzzlewit"

I glossed over “The American Part” of Martin Chuzzlewit earlier because it warrants its own discussion. Charles Dickens obviously wrote this book on his return to England from his first tour of the United States. From the biographies of Dickens I’ve read, he was NOT impressed by the New World. And it definitely shows in Martin Chuzzlewit.

Heroic Hot Potato in Charles Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit"

The novel Martin Chuzzlewit was fundamentally flawed even before it was written. Charles Dickens decided he wanted to write on the theme of Selfishness, building a story around that infrastructure rather than incorporating it more organically. Aside from this ambiguous topic, it doesn’t seem like Dickens really had an idea where he wanted to go with the plot, or the journeys his characters would take.

Breaking the cardinal rule of storytelling, Show, Don’t Tell, the reader is told that Martin Chuzzlewit is the main character. Yet even when Martin is not being mind-numbingly boring, he’s being mind-numbingly annoying. Whether Dickens ever admitted it or not, I think he felt the same way, which explains why Martin disappears for chapters at a time. (And the reader doesn’t even notice, much less miss him!)

My Personal Ranking of Jane Austen's Novels

1. Mansfield Park
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Sense and Sensibility
4. Persuasion
5. Emma
6. Lady Susan

The Plot of Charles Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit"

A lot of Charles Dickens’ novels are titled with the name of the main character:

•  The Adventures of Oliver Twist
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
• Barnaby Rudge
• Little Dorrit
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• And, of course, Martin Chuzzlewit

Dickens usually has loads and loads of characters—some being more interesting or assertive than the titular character—often divided into subplots of their own which eventually weave tighter and tighter together. These subplots orbit the main plot that concerns the title character, sometimes converging. Sometimes the titular character is not so much the Hero as the MacGuffin…like Edwin Drood who is allegedly killed.

But, through it all, one has a good idea who to root for and to which characters one is supposed to become emotionally attached.

No such luck in Martin Chuzzlewit, however. This story opens not with an introduction of the hero, but with the villain: Seth Pecksniff. 

Fundamental Problems with Charles Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit"

I’m not mad, just disappointed.

Okay, I’m lying. I’m pretty mad, too.

At long last I finished reading Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel Charles Dickens apparently thought one of his best books. Which just goes to show that a person doesn’t always have an accurate gauge on the worth of their works.

(I guess that could be considered something positive that came of this reading experience. If a person can overestimate the worth of something they do, then it’s just as easy for a person to underestimate the worth of the humdrum things they do every day.)

Martin Chuzzlewit was written, as Dickens explains in a preface, as a condemnation of Selfishness. Having established himself as a force of social reform in Oliver Twist (treatment of orphans) and Nicholas Nickleby (the harsh world of boarding schools) among other works, Dickens decided to approach a broad subject of human self-centeredness. As a result, almost every character in Martin Chuzzlewit is selfish to the core.

Reviewing Catherine Fisher's "Snow-Walker": Conclusion

I liked a lot of things about the Snow-Walker trilogy, and there were even more factors that I wanted to like. The concept is intriguing, but in execution the writing commits a major storytelling mistake: it tells more than shows. 

Reviewing "The Soul Thieves" - Book 3 of The Snow-Walker Trilogy

The first two books of The Snow-Walker Trilogy create a gradual climb in tension, leading to the ultimate showdown of Gudrun and Kari. When Gudrun puts a sleeping spell on the kingdom and steals the soul of their king’s fiancée, Kari sees it is a ploy to get him to come to her. Jessa, Kari and his warrior-guardian Brochael, Hakon (who is now training to be a warrior), and the poet Skapti set out into the forbidden north where the Snow Walkers live. 

Reviewing "The Empty Hand" - Book 2 of The Snow-Walker Trilogy

The Empty Hand retells Beowulf, which perhaps contributes to its being my favorite installment of the trilogy. In this novel, Gudrun has been banished from the kingdom, intent on having her revenge. She sends a magical, phantom-beast after her son Kari, eating anything and anyone who stands in its way. A secondary plotline follows Jessa as she tries to hunt down a thief, uncovering a treasonous plot in the process. Her cousin Thorkil is mentioned, but not seen again—perhaps because he was so boring in the first book he needed to be replaced. 

Review of "The Snow-Walker's Son" - Book 1 of The Snow-Walker Trilogy

In the first book of the Snow-Walker Trilogy, Catherine Fisher basically retells Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen in a Viking fantasy world. (But no, if you’re a rabid fan of Frozen you will not necessarily like this book, even if both stories are based off the same source material.)

The kingdom has been taken over by Gudrun, an evil sorceress of unknown origin, with white hair and icy eyes. Cousins Jessa and Thorkil are brought to the queen’s stronghold in order to sentence them to banishment. Why she doesn’t kill them, or has to bring them to be banished by her in person, I don’t know. Anyway, she banishes them not just into the wilderness, but to an abandoned castle where the queen’s own son (rumored to be a monster) has been held captive for over a dozen years. 

Reviewing Catherine Fisher's "Snow-Walker": Introduction

On a whim when visiting the library, I went to the YA section and picked out a book by Catherine Fisher. Years ago I had read her novel Incarceron and its sequel Sapphique, which I remember as being vivid speculative fiction in a steampunk-prison alternate universe. My library has several more of her books that for one reason or another I haven’t gotten around to reading...until now.  

Picking out a book is hard on two sides of the spectrum. On the shallow end, there seem to be so few books out there that are actually excellent; after a string of disappointments one begins to wonder if they’ve possibly read everything worth reading. On the deep end, there are so many books, all of them with the potential to be excellent—after all, you can’t judge a book by its cover, right?

Practical Christianity: Traveling on Business

The main reason I wanted to discuss William Wilberforce’s 1797 essay, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes was the following passage, which I found both intriguing and comforting:

Practical Christianity: A Work in Progress

Among the (many) excuses people have for not exploring Christianity, there are two that are polar opposites, yet equally effective at keeping God at arm’s length:

1.      “Christians are perfect, and I’m simply not good enough.”

2.      “Christians are hypocrites. They pretend to be all goody-goody, but turn out to be just as bad as the rest of us.”

While William Wilberforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes is an essay aimed at exposing the hypocrisy mentioned in point 2, he does manage to address these two claims: 

Practical Christianity: Rational Affection

One thing that struck me while reading William Wilberforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes was how logical, almost scientific, his language and arguments were. He uses a lot of logical analogies to illustrate his points. He points to astronomy and the natural world, and even mentions Isaac Newton at one point. He also references historical, political, and international events to trace a pattern of human nature and behavior, thus laying a groundwork for his theses. 

He uses a phrase that I thought was interesting “rational affection.” We don’t often think of affection—an emotion—as “rational.” We don’t expect to be able to logically figure out who we’ll fall in love with, or to explain with a pros-con spreadsheet why you are friends with a specific person. Yet when it comes to our love of God, Wilberforce treats it as a rational act. Our loving God is not on our own initiative—we’re not doing Him any favors. Rather, our loving God is a natural, logical reaction of gratitude for Christ’s salvation, of appreciation of all the blessings He gives us, of acknowledging who God is, and of awe in how great and truly different He is from us. 

Practical Christianity: The Trap of Good Deeds

In his essay, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes, William Wilberforce explains that one trap for “nominal Christians” (and even those believers that are otherwise strong in their faith) is the problem of works. True righteousness has nothing to do with what we have done, and everything to do with what Christ has already done. “But they rather conceive of Christianity as opening the door of mercy,” but once a Christian has stepped through that door the rest is “up to them.” 

Practical Christianity: The Purpose of Imagination

The things we care about are often the things in the closest proximity. William Wilberforce uses the example of feeling more keenly the tragedy of an accident on the street just outside, than the tragedy of thousands of people being slaughtered on the other side of the world.

And the things that are in closest proximity to us do not even have to be real. Our imaginations allow us to feel more emotion for the characters in the book we’re reading than for real incidents going on farther away. In fact, because these characters in a sense live inside us, they are in the closest proximity anything could be…and therefore might be more powerful than things going on in our own homes. 

Practical Christianity: Ignorance Is No Excuse

William Wilberforce’s 1797 essay, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes, confronts the lukewarm attitudes of religion in his culture. It really resonated with me, more than two hundred years later, because there are so many parallels or foreshadowings of present-day culture.

One thing that is constant throughout history—thus putting my life on an equal footing with Wilberforce’s—is the presence of sin. Sin is often simply defined as “evil” or “wickedness” or “doing bad things,” but I would argue that sin’s scope is a little wider than your stereotypical “bad” things like criminal acts, but extends to anything that is against God.

Practical Christianity: William Wilberforce’s Thesis

In the upcoming entries I plan to discuss some of these “nuggets of wisdom” I found in William Wilberforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes.  But first it might be helpful to know the purpose of this essay.

“The main object which he has in view is, not to convince the Sceptic, or to answer the arguments of persons who avowedly oppose the fundamental doctrines of our Religion; but to point out he scanty and erroneous system of the bulk of those who belong to the class of orthodox Christians, and to contrast their defective scheme with a representation of what the author apprehends to be real Christianity.”

The point of this book was for Wilberforce to expose the shallow religious façade that had become so prevalent in Britain at the time. Times have changed drastically since then, and while I can’t speak to the state of British religious views personally, from my observations in America we’ve drifted even farther from Christianity in its truest sense. 

Practical Christianity: Introduction

Awhile back I slogged through a very long and very dense essay titled A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes. For brevity’s sake (and to belay carpal tunnel syndrome) I will nickname it Practical Christianity. Published in 1797, this essay was written by William Wilberforce, whom I had best known beforehand as being an instrumental player in abolishing the slave trade in Britain.

This work is in public domain and so I downloaded a free version on my Kindle. I read it during my breaks at work, which hindered me from reading it very fast, and in the end I think that was a good thing because this is one book that one cannot simply breeze through. 

Reviewing "Moon of Israel" by H. Rider Haggard

After the colossal disappointment that was She, I was dubious about trying another H. Rider Haggard novel that wasn’t part of the Allan Quatermain series. It was a pleasant surprise, then, when I read Moon of Israel: A Tale of the Exodus. In fact, I was immediately impressed when I read Haggard’s forward, which detailed where he got his historical information for this story from Sir Gaston Maspero, Director of the Cairo Museum and one of the first "serious" Egyptologists (as opposed to tomb raiders and sensational adventurers). As an Egyptology geek this intrigued me.

Reviewing "The Little Book-Room" by Eleanor Farjeon

I really liked Eleanor Farjeon’s Humming Bird, a novel geared toward adults. In a completely different way, I also like The Little Book Room, a collection of Farjeon’s short stories for children—most of which are fairy tales.

Like any collection of short stories, some chapters are better than others. Some were sort of sad, like The Miracle of the Poor Island, which reminded me of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. Others (and these were the ones I preferred) were witty and tongue-in-cheek, similar to E. Nesbit’s Melisande. Here are my three favorite entries: 

Reviewing "Humming Bird" by Eleanor Farjeon

Whether or not to continue reading a book that seems “just so-so” is a delicate balance. I’ve heard arguments from both side of the spectrum:

On the one side, there’s the sentiment that “Momma Didn’t Raise No Quitter”—that even bad books (for whatever reason, whether boring or poorly-written or offensive) should be read to completion. I tend toward this side because sometimes I want to review these books to point out the specific things that make these books “bad,” and it wouldn’t be fair-minded to give a poor opinion of only a piece of a work.

On the other side is the equally valid philosophy that “Life is Too Short to Read Bad Books.” In general I do this by not even beginning books that don’t interest me, no matter how much other people may recommend them. Horror novels or novels that are gruesome or depressing don’t appeal to me, so I skip them in favor of other genres.

The best approach is probably a middle-of-the-road one, but there is something to be said for sticking to a book one is not necessarily enjoying. Yes, there have been times I wished I could demand a temporal refund, that there were hours of my life wasted. But there have been other times that the end of the book (or, at least, a good halfway through) was a vast improvement and made all the slogging through initial chapters worthwhile.

Perfect Little Protagonists: from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “Little Lord Fauntleroy”

 Little Lord Fauntleroy is a quintessential rags-to-riches story of an American boy named Cedric becoming the heir to an English Earl. His father was the disowned son of the current Earl, a crotchety, proud, and selfish man. Through Cedric’s pure-hearted love and generosity, the Earl turns over a new leaf.

Basically, it’s Annie with a British Daddy Warbucks.