Books Again . . .

I decided against keeping Mrs Aldrich after all.  I read it through.  I love some of her passages that describe daily life.  Some authors tend to over-do a description and it drags on and on.  She gives you enough information to easily picture it, without wishing that she’d move on to something else.  So, I decided that it’s someone else’s turn to love those passages and put it in the sack for the Friends of the Library Sale.  That happens next month and you can read about it here.

Speaking of links, there are a lot of them in this article.  That’s as close as I can get to lending you the books.  If anything sounds interesting, check your library for a copy.  If a title sounds like something you just couldn’t live without reading, and it’s not available locally, request a copy through Inter-Library Loan. 

Last night I pulled down my four Gladys Hasty Carroll books:  As the Earth Turns, Sing Out the Glory, One White Star, and Only Fifty Years Ago.  I read the first two chapters of Earth and decided that I didn’t need to read those books again.  It’s probably the mood I’m in, but not much fiction is getting my attention right now.  Maybe I’ve moved past these books - who knows. 

In the meantime, I did read - and decided to keep - On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells.  

Yep, the same gal who does the Max and Ruby little-bitty-kid books.  “Say apple, Max.”  

This story is about model railroads and real ones - here's a link to the real Blue Comet train.

The On the Blue Comet is a kids’ story and I like it - except for one thing.  Some editor slipped up and allowed a modern word to be used in a paragraph towards the end of the story.  The book is set in 1931, 1941, and momentarily in 1926.  My reading-brain screeched to a halt when I ran across the anachronism.  Things like that an ruin a story!  I managed to get myself back in the right time and read on.  It’s on my shelf for a while longer.

I read a lot of young adult books.  I buy very few.  Seems like young-adult writers, nowadays, write in series - -  the-longer-the-series-the-better? - - and I have an objection to a format that comes in 47 parts.  I read the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, series books when I was a kid, but they had all been written long before I was reading them and I could go from one to the other without pause. 

Now, I generally wait until a series is “finished” before beginning.  One exception has been the Rick Riordan books.  One of these days, when he’s finished writing, I’ll start again at the beginning and go through them in one fell swoop.  

We older readers at our house (an ancient me, a 16-year-old grandson, and a 14-year-old grandson) also like The 39 Clues series - one that drives me crazy with all the parts-to-come. 

For some reason, the girls (12, 10, and 7) read different books.  They don’t seem to care for adventure - except for young-reader TheMagic Treehouse stories.  There are a lot of these books on the home-library shelves in the back room.  We’ve all read them; well, not all: the 7-year-old is still working her way through them.

Here are two that I would buy and keep, if I were rolling in dough:  the 5 Fablehaven books by Brandon Mull and the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini.   

Grandson number 2 is re-reading the Mull books - we each read them about 6 months ago.  When one of the boys brings home from the library something interesting, there are two more of us waiting to read before the book goes back.  If it’s recently published, we have only two weeks for the three of us to read it before the book has to move on to the next person on the reserve list.  That makes for some pushy behavior:  Are you finished with it YET!?!?!

One more “kid” book that I have on my shelf, and will keep, is Ted Bell’s “In the Nick of Time”.  I have read the second book, but don’t have a copy.  I seem to remember that it was to be a series, too, but haven’t noticed a third book listed anywhere.  Maybe I ought to check again.  He writes a really good story.  I tried one of his adult adventure stories, but didn’t get very far into it for the language.  I figure if an author can write a Really Good kid’s book without foul language, then they ought to be able to write one for adults that way, too.  Will someone please tell them that?

I’m down to about 155 books now - probably the least number I’ve owned since I was a teen-ager.   Yikes!  I found another Gladys Hasty Carroll - The Light Here Kindled.   It will join the others in the library sale sack.