This is the 4th book in Peacock's Boy Sherlock Holmes series. It involves people dressing up like the Spring-Heeled Jack, a character from "penny dreadful" stories of the day who wears a black-and-green wings-like cape, has a frightening appearance, and breathes blue fire. It attacks people, mainly women, and shouts dire warnings about chaos.
I was actually a little annoyed with this book because Sherlock doubted his own abilities so often, and misidentified the Spring-Heeled Jack so often that it got repetitive and felt a like the author was stretching his story out to fill pages. The previous 3 books didn't feel that way, though, so I'm not giving up on the series. And the last chapter made up for any annoyance, with young Sherlock having a chance encounter with the great British statesman Benjamin Disraeli, who counsels him thus:
"Human beings are not God. We were cast out from the Garden of Eden when we tried to be. We are all imperfect, but if we are wise, we learn every day" (p. 243).
I LOVED that. Because I agree with it wholeheartedly, and I found it refreshing in a book written in modern times, when so many spout humanistic ideas of man's inner goodness and innocence, etc. Also, coincidentally, the Sherlock Holmes bookmark I was using for this book had a line from "The Man with the Twisted Lip" on it: "It is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all." I thought that went superbly well with the above quotation.
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for violence, scary and intense scenes, and some mildly suggestive material.
Sigh. It's entirely possible that this book suffered from me reading it right after reading two AMAZING books, Dear Enemy by Jean Webster and The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery. However, I think that even if I hadn't just gloried in those two, I would still have found this book disappointing.
This, obviously, is a Pride and Prejudice pastiche. I have always pitied Mary Bennet, younger sister of Jane and Elizabeth, because she's socially awkward and doesn't fit in with the rest of her family. So I was pretty excited to read a book about her getting her own happy ending. And she does. She falls in love with a man who returns her affections, and by the end, they are engaged to be married. However, for the bulk of the book, Mary continually convinces herself that this man, Henry Walsh, could never love her because she was boring, unfashionable, plain, etc. This grows tiresome. Also, she becomes unhealthily attached to Lydia's new baby daughter for a while, which while believable, was uncomfortable to read about.
Is this a bad book? No. But I didn't like it very well, alas. My copy will very likely wind up in next year's Great Book Giveaway Bonanza, in hopes that someone else may enjoy it more than I did!
Particularly Good Bits:
Since Mr. Darcy married Lizzy, his manners in company had become easier, but he remained a formidable man. Not a man to be denied (p. 52).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of birth, mild sexual matter, and a few old-fashioned curse words.
Having read a few of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, I could not resist grabbing this book at the library. Sam is going through a phase of being really interested in knights and dragons and fairy tales, so I thought he might enjoy this too, but because Pratchett's adult books get a little ribald, I thought I should read it first.
This is totally appropriate for grade schoolers. No bad words, no off-color humor, not even any of what Sam calls "butt jokes." Just lots of funny, fanciful stories that Pratchett wrote when he was pretty young himself, for a local paper. I loved how he often turned fairy tale tropes upside down, especially in "Dragons at Crumbling Castle." The two stories about The Carpet People were probably my favorites, as they combine pioneers and fantasy and all sorts of funny stuff. And "The 59A Bus Goes Back in Time" was awesome.
Particularly Good Bits:
"It's too quiet, only it's the sort of quietness people make when they don't want you to hear them" (p. 181)("Another Tale of the Carpet People")
While the crooks were eating a sinister pork pie and a highly suspicious jam turnover, Fred Band -- the Blackbury champion -- was very worried (p. 212) ("The Great Egg-Dancing Championship") (This made me laugh a lot because it reminded me of one of my favorite lines in The Lone Ranger [2013], where the Lone Ranger threatens to shut someone down for having a "fairly sinister jar of pickles" on the premises...)
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some exciting and tense moments.
This month's edition of Heidi Peterson's Inkling Explorations is focused on "A Funny Story Opening in Literature." I'm going to share the beginning of Gambit, one of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Mysteries.
At twenty-seven minutes past eleven that Monday morning in February, Lincoln's Birthday, I opened the door between the office and the front room, entered, shut the door, and said, "Miss Blount is here."
Without turning his head Wolfe let out a growl, yanked out some more pages and dropped them on the fire, and demanded, "Who is Miss Blount?"
I tightened my lips and then parted them to say, "She is the daughter of Matthew Blount, president of the Blount Textile Corporation, who is in the coop charged with murder, and she has an appointment with you at eleven-thirty, as you know. If you're pretending you've forgotten, nuts. You knew you couldn't finish that operation in half an hour. Besides, how about the comments I have heard you make about book burners?"
"They are not relevant to this." He yanked out more pages. "I am a man, not a government or a committee of censors. Having paid forty-seven dollars and fifty cents for this book, and having examined it and found it subversive and intolerably offensive, I am destroying it." He dropped the pages on the fire. "I'm in no mood to listen to a woman. Ask her to come after lunch."
"I have also heard you comment about people who dodge appointments they have made."
Pause. More pages. Then: "Very well. Bring her here."
I returned to the office, shutting the door, crossed to the red leather chair near the end of Wolfe's desk where I had seated the caller, and faced her. She tilted her head back to look up at me. She was a brownie, not meaning a Girl Scout -- small ears and a small nose, big brown eyes, a lot of brown hair, and a wide mouth that would have been all right with the corners turned up instead of down.
"I'd better explain," I told her. "Mr. Wolfe is in the middle of a fit. It's complicated. There's a fireplace in the front room, but it's never lit because he hates open fires. He says they stultify mental processes. But it's lit now because he's using it. He's seated in front of it, on a chair too small for him, tearing sheets out of a book and burning them. The book is the new edition, the third edition, of Webster's New International Dictionary, Unabridged, published by the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. He considers it subversive because it threatens the integrity of the English language. In the past week he has given me a thousand examples of its crimes. He says it is a deliberate attempt to murder the -- I beg your pardon. I describe the situation at length because he told me to bring you in there, and it will be bad. Even if he hears what you say, his mental processes are stultified. Could you come back later? After lunch he may be human."
She was staring up at me. "He's burning up a dictionary?"
"Right. That's nothing. Once he burned up a cookbook because it said to remove the hide from a ham end before putting it in the pot with lima beans. Which he loves most, food or words, is a tossup."
(Gambit by Rex Stout, p. 1-2)
I always get a big kick out of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe, and these books routinely make me laugh, which is why I often refer to them as "nice, cheerful murder mysteries." This opener is one of my favorites, because I love how much Wolfe loves words, that he would burn a dictionary in their defense -- but it's so ridiculous too, and so I laugh with glee.
Don't forget to visit Heidi's writing blog, Sharing the Journey, to read other people's entries into this month's Inkling Explorations and to link up your own!
This is another book I did not know existed until I became active in the world of book blogging. Over the past couple of years, I have seen it mentioned over and over, always glowingly and lovingly. So I put it on my TBR list and my Classics Club list, and this past week, I finally got it from the library. Now, all those glowing, loving reviews made me a little hesitant to read it, because what if I didn't love it? But finally, on Wednesday, I started it.
I couldn't get to sleep that night because I was thinking about this book. In fact, I got up out of bed, fetched the book, and sat in our closet on the floor, reading it until midnight. And then I finished it on Thursday, right after lunch. Because... I loved it. Next time in a book store, I'm going to hunt down a copy of my own.
The Blue Castle of the title refers to an imaginary wonderland constructed by Valancy Stirling to escape the dreariness of her own narrow life. She's twenty-nine and unmarried, treated shabbily by her family, constantly pestered by her mother and the aunt who lives with them, and generally unhappy. She sees the doctor about some heart trouble and is told she has maybe a year to live. And the knowledge that she is dying convinces Valancy she needs to live while she can. She stops letting her family walk all over her, she tries new things, buys clothes she likes, and gets herself a job keeping house for the town ne'er-do-well and his dying daughter. This naturally causes her family to believe she has lost her mind, since she didn't tell them about her diagnosis.
 |
| (Michael Fassbender) |
And then there's Barney Snaith, that ne'er-do-well's buddy. You know how in 10 Things I Hate About You, there are all those wild rumors about what Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) has done before he moved there? Dated one of the Spice Girls, ate a live duck (everything but the beak and feet), lit a state trooper on fire, sold his liver, and so on. Barney Snaith has collected similar rumors: he's a defaulted bank clerk, an escaped convict, a fugitive murderer, an infidel, a counterfeiter, a forger, and probably the father of any illegitimate children wandering about town. (Busy boy, that Barney Snaith.) He also, in my opinion, should be played by Michael Fassbender if they ever make a movie, which they should. Fassbender excels at haunted, grim niceness, you see.
It's pretty obvious from the get-go that Valancy is going to fall in love with Barney. There are other fairly predictable things going on in the story, and the plot hinges on a couple of convenient coincidences. Do I care? No. It's a charming, earnest, lovely book anyway. As usual, Montgomery's descriptions of Canada and the outdoors soar, though I must admit skimming some of them because I wanted to get back to the people.
Particularly Good Bits:
It was permissible, even laudable, to read to improve your mind and your religion, but a book that was enjoyable was dangerous (p. 13).
Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, with her great, pale, expressionless eyes, who was noted for the variety of her pickle recipes and for nothing else (p. 54).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a couple of old-fashioned curse words, alcohol use, and discussion of an unmarried girl becoming pregnant.
This is my 26th book read and reviewed for the Classics Club.
I've decided to do a new series on my blog every week or two, in which I share some of the books my kids have been enjoying lately. I've been trying to figure out a way to share excellent kids books when we find them, and this seems like the ideal way to do so. My thanks to Jennifer at Healthy Simplicity for inspiring me with her "Library Time" series!
Sam (7)
He's read both The Runaway Princess and The Runaway Dragon by Kate Coombs three or four times since we got them from the library a couple weeks ago. He's also put them on his birthday list, and told me I need to read them!
I read Dragons at Crumbling Castle and Other Tales by Terry Pratchett first, and approved it for Sam, and I think he's read it twice now. I thought it was very funny, and if I get a chance before we take it back to the library, I'll do a proper review of it.
Sarah (5) and Tootie (3)
Bubble Trouble by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Polly Dunbar, is a funny fable about a baby who gets stuck inside a bubble blown by his older sibling, and the town's frantic efforts to rescue him. It's also kind of a tongue-twister. My husband has a fondness for tongue-twisters, and he loves reading this, so I leave it to him.
Peanut Butter & Cupcake! by Terry Border is about a piece of peanut-butter-covered bread looking for friends. The illustrations are actually quirky photographs.
Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk is the first book in one of my kids' favorite series. Sam and Sarah took their nicknames from these books, which feature a shy mouse named Sam who lives in a library and loves to write and illustrate his own books.
When I read Daddy-Long-Legs for the first time last year, someone told me that they liked the sequel, Dear Enemy, even better. I don't remember anymore who that was, but I thought to myself, "That's silly. How could anyone possibly like another book better than Daddy-Long-Legs?"
Well, turns out I was the silly one. Because I liked Dear Enemy better myself.
While Daddy-Long-Legs focuses on a girl growing up into a young woman, Dear Enemy focuses on a young woman growing from being shallow and frivolous into useful and capable. Judy from DLL asks her college friend Sallie to take over running the John Grier Home (orphanage) that Judy grew up in -- just for a year, until they find someone to manage it permanently. Sallie goes from finding this kind of a diverting exercise in chasing away boredom to being wholeheartedly devoted to caring for a hundred children and making their lives better.
And while a person's journey to adulthood tends to interest me, a person's journey from self-centered to devoted to caring for others fascinates and inspires me. No wonder I loved this book! Toss in a crusty Scottish doctor and lots of laugh-out-loud funny adventures and yup, I was hooked good.
Particularly Good Bits:
Has he committed some remorseful crime, or is his taciturnity due merely to his natural Scotchness? he's as companionable as a granite tombstone! (p. 141)
I can now sleep through the night without being afraid that my babies are being inefficiently murdered (p. 149).
The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but big boys grown too big to be spankable (p. 215).
You never know what is going on in a perfectly respectable-looking child's pocket (p. 241).
Isn't it funny how the nicest men often choose the worst wives, and the nicest women the worst husbands? Their very niceness, I suppose, makes them blind and unsuspicious (p. 265).
If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G. Clean and sweet and fresh and fun.
This is my 25th book read and reviewed for The Classics Club. I'm halfway done!!!
