Books!

One of the nicer things about job-hunting would be the way it tends to leave spare time lying about which one may direct toward books. I have a Richmond library card. This card has been well used lately. :-) I've been researching young adult fiction, and thought I'd share some of my findings with y'all.

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson: not bad. Terribly modern, but I actually liked it better than the original Peter Pan book. It's a good rollicking adventure that ties together quite a bit of the back-history and still manages to tuck away some surprises for the reader. I liked the unusual treasure. Not recommended if you object to disgusting food items.

The Luxe by Anna Godberson: traumatic. It's set in turn-of-the-century New York high society, and it's chock full of hollowness, conniving, backstabbing, and politicking among so-called friends. Sin is sin, but I find it difficult to believe good society girls engaged in quite so much sleeping around. Maybe they did; but the plot was painful anyway. I couldn't put it down, but I don't mean to pick up the sequel.

Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies: very good. It's about a herd of Scottish deer, which isn't an encouraging premise, but stay with me here. The deer manage to stay deer-like for nearly the whole book, but it's about so much more: tyranny, loyalty, destiny, friendship, mercy, natural law, real guilt, justice, and sacrificial love. There are some great lines, and it even manages to make a quiet little natural-law assault on certain varieties of feminism. The author had clearly been reading great literature. There were even Macbeth allusions.

Maiden Crown by Meghan Collins: Northern. This is historical fiction in the high tradition of Rosemary Sutcliff, and it's a better book than the title sounds like. It's based off Danish ballads, set in twelfth-century Denmark, and written in the 1970s. We meet King Valdemar, his mistress Tove, his young betrothed Sophie, and Stig, the young man the king sends to retrieve her. Yes, it's quite as awkward as it sounds, but well-handled, I thought. And it has a kind of a happy ending, in a difficult Northern way, or at least a good ending. The book has virtue, not just passion, and forgiveness. I'd probably recommend it for older teens.

The Strictest School in the World: Being the Tale of a Clever Girl, a Rubber Boy, and a Collection of Flying Machines, Mostly Broken by Howard Whitehouse: hilarious. I checked it out solely on the basis of the title, read it in one evening, and kept bursting out laughing and reading good bits to Jonathan. I am definitely going to read the sequel.