Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls

Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls by Ann M. Martin

There is a phantom phone caller burglar in nearby cities. The babysitters are freaked out. They are also obsessed with boys and an upcoming dance. Things get even scarier when somebody in town is robbed. The police think this may be a copycat, but girls are still scared. Things come to a head during one babysitting experience when they get strange phone calls, and then hear sounds from outside. The babysitter calls the police and they find the perpetrator. It is the "annoying boy" who was trying to get the girl's attention to ask her to the dance. She is happy to be liked, even though she has been so annoyed by the boy. Another girl finally hears a call from the boy she likes. He had been afraid and hanging up many times. They are happy and going to the dance. The criminal is later arrested - but it appears the one in town was a copycat. It is a lighthearted story of girls starting to like boys and having the relationships be up near the top of their concerns, even as other real-world events are occuring.

Kristy's Great Idea (The Baby-Sitters Club #1)

Kristy's Great Idea (The Baby-Sitters Club #1) by Ann M. Martin

Four 7th graders form a club to better manage babysitting. The advertise a time that potential customers can call up to schedule babysitting appointments. The club meets during that time and organizes the babysitting. This makes it easier for everyone. The girls get lots of babysitting gigs. There are also challenges in their personal lives. One girl's mom gets engaged to another divorcee. One girl is hiding her diabetes diagnosis and trips to the doctors. Everything gets resolved at the end. It is a fairly simple story that is most appealing to tween girls.

Pecos Bill

Pecos Bill by Steven Kellogg

Pecos Bill is one of the more "different" Kellogg tall tales books. Bill's family had fled the east coast for a place less crowded. They were going to settle in Texas, but decided to leave when another family moved in. Alas, baby Bill got pulled out of the wagon by a fish. He was raised by animals and thought he was a wolf until another man showed up. He had strength to kill snakes and used one as a rope to help herd the untamable cattle. There were various crazy experiences about capturing a horse, raising cows on steep hills and having a bride that goes into orbit. Finally, he catches his bride and discovers his long-lost family.

Cho-cho on a snowy day / Xia xue tian de Qiuqiu (下雪天的球球)

Cho-cho on a snowy day / Xia xue tian de Qiuqiu (下雪天的球球) by 間所久子著 ; 黑井健圖 ; 蕭秋梅中譯 ; Michael Skupin英譯., 間所久子 1938-, 黑井健, 蕭秋梅., 史庫賓 / Jiansuo Jiuzi zhu ; Heijing Jian tu ; Xiao Qiumei zhong yi ; Michael Skupin ying yi, Jiuzi Jiansuo, Jian Heijing, Qiumei Xiao, Shikubin

Originally "Ame No Hi No Korowan" bi Hisako Madokoro, illustrations by Ken Kuroi. Translated into Chinese and English.

The Cho Cho books were originally written in Japanese. This version is translated into English and Chinese. Cho Cho and Mao Mao find a glove and then try to return it to the kid that lost it. The story is simple and the language is fun to read. Kids love it, though for adults it is an acquired taste.

There Is a Carrot in My Ear and Other Noodle Tales

There Is a Carrot in My Ear and Other Noodle Tales by Alvin Schwartz (Author), Karen Ann Weinhaus (Illustrator)

The book has a half-dozen stories of family doing stupid stuff. They go "swimming" in an empty pool. They think fireflies are mosquitos going to get them with flashlights. Grandpa believes a pumpkin is a horse egg. He asks for a refund when a "baby horse" ( a rabbit) runs away after the pumpkin rolls down a hill. The humor is fairly dry, but easy to get.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

Peter Rabbit was written over a century ago and not properly copyrighted in the US. the version here was from Ottenheimer Publishers in 1986. Peter lives with his siblings. He is not obedient and gets into lots of trouble. He was very tired in the end.

Hungry, Hungry Sharks

Hungry, Hungry Sharks (Step-Into-Reading, Step 3) by Joanna Cole and Patricia Wynne

The kids absolutely did not want to read this book. Then after reading, they wanted to read it again. It starts with the time of dinosaurs and then makes its way to modern periods. There are big sharks and small sharks as well as pictures of all sorts of crazy stuff that sharks eat. Great for kids that like sharks or that don't yet know they like sharks.

You're Only Old Once!: A Book for Obsolete Children

You're Only Old Once!: A Book for Obsolete Children by Dr. Seuss

This is a Seuss book for adults. It feels more somber and less funny than the typical Seuss book. It deals primarily with the challenges of an old man visiting the doctor. The pictures can be funny, but the story feels like it is trying too hard to be cynical about medical visits.

Down on the Funny Farm

Down on the Funny Farm by Patrick King by P.E. King and Alastair Graham

A farmer wants a farm. He buys ones from an old man for a dollar. Then he finds the issue - all the animals are confused and think they are another animal. He trains them all. Then he marries a woman that comes by. All seems good, until they invite her father to live with him. He ends up being the original old man, and when they see him, the other animals return to their "wrong" behavior. It is a silly book.

The Ugly Duckling, A Little Golden Book

The Ugly Duckling, A Little Golden Book by Hans Christian Andersen and Lisa McCue

A duck is different from the other ducks. He self-exiles. He tries to find a home with geese, but leaves after hunters come about. He runs into trouble at other places, such as destroying food at a peasant house. Eventually he meets some swans and discovers that he is a swan. Like other golden books, this one has a bit too much text for the pictures.

The Truth About Stacey: A Graphic Novel

The Truth About Stacey: A Graphic Novel (The Baby-Sitters Club #2) by Raina Telgemeier and Ann M. Martin (based on the 1986 book)

Stacey has diabetes. Her parents keep trying to seek different treatments for her, including TV doctors in New York. She doesn't want to do all that. Meanwhile the babysitters club has competition with older kids that take their jobs. It turns out the older kids are poor sitters, and eventually this spreads after bad behavior and upset kids. Meanwhile the diabetic girl uses doctor connections to find an alternate doctor to see that helps her grasp the underlying psychological issues. She later makes peace with her old friend in New York (who she had a spat with) and things are all happy in the end. The graphic novel is well illustrated and has a simple, positive message. Sometimes it pays to be subtle in working through solutions to problems the slow way. (Though there are risks involved.)

The Enchanter

The Enchanter by Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov wrote The Enchanter in Russian while living in Paris. It was among his last works written in Russian. The novella is somewhat similar to Lolita, but much more disturbing. A man is attracted to a teen girl. He marries her mother. The mother dies. Now the man has custody of the girl. They have a flirtatious,  relationship. He fantasizes about taking the relationship to the next level and attempts to make a move one night when she is sleeping. She wakes up and starts to scream. He realizes how evil he has and runs away to attempt to destroy himself. 

2010 books read: Candide, Undaunted Courage, Speaker for the Dead, Arcadia

[Separated out from original post from 2/24/10]

 Voltaire - Candide. (1759) Life is a Journey, not a destination. Everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong, yet Candide remains an optimist. He even gives up on the city of gold and peace to try to find and marry the girl of his dreams. Through it all, he keeps on a face of naieve optimism. Alas, even that starts to go wrong, but he remains happy until he finally sinks in to a dull life on the farm. Finally the "lack of something bad" becomes the one thing that makes him question the "best of all possible worlds". It turns out that bad things actually kept life interesting. It is monotony that is the true bad.

Voltaire takes hilarious jabs at royalty, church hierarchy, society, and just about everybody. Its amazing that it survived all these years. As I was going through it, I kept hearing Bernstein's Candide overture in my head. So, I listened to the CD and ... well, I still don't have anything more than the overture going through my head.

Stephen E. Ambrose - Undaunted Courage. (1996) This is primarily a biography of Merriweather Lewis, with extensive coverage of the Lewis and Clark exploration. The superlatives and endless complements of Lewis get tiring. It reads more like a family tale, attempting to place the family member in the most positive light, with his adventures being the most important in the world. The laudatory prose gets very tiring.

Orson Scott Card - Speaker For the Dead (1986)
This is much better than Ender's Game. The story telling is much more "together" and riveting. It presents some interesting questions. Humans secure intergalatic peace, and in doing so bring their technological and social evolution to a veritable 3000 year stand still. When they do encounter other intelligent life, they look at it through there own condescending eyes. They don't realize that the others may have many abilities that they don't recognize. Furthermore, they also expose the futility of an "observe, not disturb" mantra in science. Any observation will lead to some change in the observed, even if the observer does not notice them.
Then there is the human interaction aspect. A quest to eliminate potential harm may bring about many external damages - while still letting the undesired harm take place.


Tom Stoppard - Arcadia (1993)
This funny play is filled with mathematical references, while at the same time taking jabs at literary critics and biographers. History is storytelling through the eyes of the historian. Their biases and time period can have a significant impact on the story that they tell. I think I'll be exploring other Stoppard plays.

Howl's Moving Castle

There are all sorts of your common fantasy bad guys and events. Things happen. The bad guys do some spells. But the spells are really not that bad. Or maybe they are. The person eventually ends up ok.

Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump the book is quite different from the movie, yet still leaves you with the same feeling. In the book, Forrest constantly describes himself as an idiot. He has a kind heart and stumbles through life. There are many adventures from the book that are missing in the movie. (There are also things such as running and Apple stock that are in the movie, but not the book.)

Gump manages to participate in many parts of US history. He plays fights in Vietnam, befriends President Johnson, protests the war, meets Nixon right after Watergate, goes to China and saves Mao's life. All these things happen more or less by accident. He also flies into space, films a movie scene with Raquel Welch, plays chess with a Yale-educated cannibal in New Guinea, and wrestles professionally. He meets up with Lt. Dan and Jenny multiple times, before they part ways. He starts up a shrimp business and makes a lot of money and even runs for senate before giving it all up to panhandle.

Through the novel, he has a genuine personality. He wants to help his friends. He even becomes could friends with the male ape named Sue. He tells things like it is. He also has to pee. He is willing to be friends with people that have been mean to him. He has a politically incorrect innocence with plenty of language in his thoughts and descriptions that would be offensive to someone. The large number of experiences almost strain believability. However, they are just held together well enough to make them plausible. He is just as likely to stumble into greatness as he is to stumble out of it.

Foundation and Earth

This is one of the "later" foundations books that Asimov wrote because people wanted to write them. We start with Travize on Gaia. Gaia is a collective mind where everybody shares the thoughts of everyone else, whether they be thoughts or emotions. Travize is going on a mission to try to find the legendary planet Earth.

Most of the novel consists of the group traveling around ancient, "uncharted" planets trying to find earth. Asimov uses this as a route to explore how isolated societies can fall. We have one planet that is now devoid of people, but now ruled by dogs and other carnivores. Another planet has people that have become hermaphrodites in order to not require the interaction with other humans and obtain maximal "personal freedom". (They also produce power on their own through 'tranducer lobes'.) Another society has a primitive culture that has advances in biotechnology and weather manipulation. They seem very peaceful. However, in order to maintain their their isolation, they inflict visitors with a deadly virus.

And so the novel goes, exploring these and a few other planets in order to find out more about the legendary earth (and hopefully find earth itself.) The exploration suffers from being very tied into the time Asimov's writings. These societies are separated by vast distances of space and time, yet they are very late-20th century in their outlook and behaviors. A "primitive" society looks a lot like 18th century Polynesia, despite being settled from earth many years in our future. (They also manage to maintain the same language despite thousands of year of time passing.) There are occasional "big differences" in technology, but somehow these don't cause any alterations to the society beyond their direct impacts.

Eventually the protagonists find earth. However, as in the legends, it appears to be too radioactive to support life. However, through something that looks like happenstance they end up on the moon, where a 20,000 year old robot has been manipulating human activity for some time.

The robot is on its last legs an has been quietly manipulating them so they can arrive there. This is an Asimovian robot with strong human characteristics. (The society at large is devoid of robots, viewing them as something that leads to degeneration.) The robot can manipulate people. However, it must adhere to the laws of robotics which require it to help humans and humankind. Thus it relies on Travize to make the decision to implement "Galaxia" instead of the Seldon plan for the betterment of humanity. Travize agrees and everything is happy.