Beloved

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The story is a slave story. Or perhaps a "trying to be free story". The main character struggles with life and death of a child and interaction with other whites and free blacks. I had trouble piecing together a narrative, though parts of it did jump out.

The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears

The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears by Donald Katz

Sears was the Amazon.com of its time. It started as a mail order company with a giant catalog. It then went into the physical store business. It was a huge business that dominated the retail sector. However, it became stuck in its ways and started to fade as shopping habits changed. It went through various attempts to improve its financial position. Attempts at international expansion fizzled out after showing potential. Acquisitions and non-retail business lines also showed potential. Sears invested heavily in computer systems. The company also realized that they sat on a treasure-trove of data that would allow cross-selling insurance and other financial products. 

The book primarily covers the Telling leadership of the company. He started shortly after the move to the Sears tower and had a "different" style of leadership. The book ends with the choosing of Brennan as the new leader. There are many different personalities involved, with the ups and downs of a company trying to find its way. Seas seemed to be finding its way through the struggles at the end. It is interesting toread about "classic" business practices. However, the book was written in 1987. Since then Lampert acquired the company and fully drove it into ground. Will this be the fate of Amazon? Despite Sears being nearly non-existant, past components like Allstate are still thriving.

Abe Lincoln (Landmark Books)

Abe Lincoln (Landmark Books) by Sterling North

This biography of Lincoln covers a lot of his law career and his early political career. It pretty much wraps up with him getting the presidential nomination. It is interesting to have insights into his law practice and family life. The presidency is well covered in many other books, so this one makes a nice addition to Lincoln stories.

The Twisted Window

The Twisted Window by Lois Duncan

A mysterious boy from New Mexico shows up at a Texas high school and hits on a girl. This set off a stream of events that leads to a kidnapping and an understanding of the boys mental illness.

The boy had loved his half sister. He did not get along with the step father. His parents had separated. However, the step father came to his half-sister's birthday party and gave her a stuffed animal. This really upset the boy (who had given the half-sister her favorite stuffed animal.) He drove off in a huff and accidentally ran over his half sister. The boy only has one friend, a girl named Jaimie (We don't learn this backstory until the end of the book.) The boy had somehow convinced himself that his stepfather had stolen the half-sister and taken her to Texas. 

The boy had enlisted the help of a girl in Texas who looked like his friend Jamie. She was to spy on her step-father and see if he had the girl. They end up finding the signs of a toddler in the father's relative. The boy is convinced this is his half sister. The girl babysits for the family and they use that opportunity to take the girl to bring her back to New Mexico. On the way, the girl becomes suspicious and tries to call the boy's family and learns some of the backstory and has someone come to help them. At the time, the boy got suspicious and went to his house in the cabin. They end up meeting out there and after some conflict, it seems to have a happy resolution, the details of which are never mentioned.

The book has believable characters and is carried out in a suspenseful way. It does seem to have some minor updates which are a bit distracting. (The boy has a cell phone, yet they still plan on watching movies on a VCR.) 

Koko's Story

Koko's Story by Francine Patterson (Author), Ronald H. Cohn (Author, Illustrator)

Koko was a gorilla that was trained at young age to use signs from American sign language. She was able to somewhat communicate with humans. There was also a male gorilla and some pets that were later connected with her. There are some photographs and a lot of text in this book. The author's claims have been somewhat challenged. A "gorilla foundation" was established, but there were never very many gorillas involved.

Willy's Wish (Bob Books Set 4, Book 6)

Willy's Wish (Bob Books Set 4, Book 6) by Bobby Lynn Maslen, pictures by John R. Maslen

Willy has a wish. He contemplates many things before he comes to a conclusion. This is a fairly decent story for a phonics book.

Kristy's Big Day

Kristy's Big Day: A Graphic Novel (The Baby-Sitters Club #6) (6) (The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix) by Ann M. Martin and Gale Galligan

Stylistically, the illustrations on this Babystitter's club has a much more "manga" style than the early books. The eyes pop out, and it feels Japanese. It is very clearly a different artist. Kristy's mom will be marrying Watson. They will then be moving into his mansion. Originally, they had planned to tie the knot in September. However, due to her mom getting a good offer on the house and having an upcoming business trip, they move it to the early summer. There is a lot of work to handle in a short time. Many kids come in from family. The entire babysitter's club comes together to help babysit all the kids. In the end, the wedding goes off well, and Kristy gets to wear her fancy dress and take part in the wedding. The girls also get paid well for the babysitting. It was a lot of work managing small kids  suddenly grouped together. After the wedding, the "big brother" takes over for watching the new blended family. He is intentionally lax.

The Truth About Stacey: A Graphic Novel

Mary Anne Saves the Day: A Graphic Novel (The Baby-Sitters Club #3) (The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix) by Raina Telgemeier and Ann M. Martin

The Babysitter's club series continues to be adapted for new media. The graphic novel is fairly faithful to the original book (while the Netflix series seems to make a lot more significant changes.) This story starts out fairly straightforward. The girls meet and get some clients. Then things go downhill. The girl the answers the phone for a job babysitting a baby immediately takes it. This makes everyone mad. They have difficulty even communicating together. Because of this spat, Mary Anne eats lunch by herself. Luckily, this gives her the chance to meet Dawn, the new girl from California. They become good friends. They also discover that their parents (Dawn's divorced mother and Mary Anne's widowered dad) dated each other in high school. As part of a babysitting job, Marry Anne has an emergency with a 104 degree temperature. Dawn comes to help her after she couldn't get in contact with any of the emergency numbers. They end up going in an ambulance to the hospital and both end up getting paid. (Seems they didn't bother to update this "telephone no-contact" problem to the days of cell phones.) Mary Anne ends up getting more privileges from her father after this experience.

The babysitter club girls work together for a kid's birthday party and nearly ruin the party. After that experience they finally agree to make peace. (Mary Anne had written apology letters to help make peace. She even wrote one to Dawn after having a falling out when Dawn discovered that Mary Anne had lied about her friends.) Dawn joins the club and everyone is happy. It is a simple message of how a simple conflict can get out of hand - and be hard to resolve. Often it requires a big stressor to realize how bad the problem is.

A History of the Jews

Paul Johnson's History of the Jews is hampered by a less-than ideal narration of the audiobook. It is a long history, covering the entire history of the Jews, from the biblical times to modern Israel. However, the coverage is more focussed on modern times (as more data is available.) The Jews have held together after significant times. Christianity sprung out of Judaism. Islam was also had Jewish ties. (The author proposes that there was an attempt to bring a monotheistic religion to the Arabs. The difference ended up being too great to be supported by the Jews, and thus a new religion was needed.) There have been additional modern variation of Judaism, yet they have not separated out into different religions.

Jews have historically been very literate and have significant impact in urban areas and learned careers. They have often been discriminated against, but still tolerated out of need. (Interpretations of prohibitions of usury had led to Jews being the money lenders.) Despite (and perhaps because of) the significant role of Jews in society, they have been forced out to ghettos and even exterminated. Yet, they have continued to be resilient. Jews were drawn to Marxism. When they were prohibited from integrating with Russian Marxists, they did it on their own (and thus became key Zionists) In Germany, Jews were among the chief intellectuals and scientists. Germany was one of the most educated society, yet still became prejudiced towards Jews and spawned the haulacost. 

The end of World War II was one of the few points that a Jewish could be supported by European powers. There was guilt from the treatment during the war and  policy hadn't turned fully towards local determination. The state of Israel was created. The state of Palestine was refused. Israel settled Jewish refugees. The Arab countries never settled the Palestinian refugees, and they remain multi-generational refugees.

At times, Jews have been the vanguard of humanity. At other times, they have appeared to be backwards traditionalists. They have survived and played a significant role in society despite their small numbers.

The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Habit

We found this book searching for thumb sucking. It did mention that one of the bears had the bad habit of sucking his thumb in first grade. However, the focus is on Sister Bear and her nail biting habit. She overcomes it by use of pennies. She gets 10 pennies in the morning, and loses one for each nail that she bites. The bears always seem to have "simple" solutions for their problems. Will any of these work these days?

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965

The Civil Rights Era had its ups and downs. Some of the bigger events seem to have been accidents. Others were very well planned. Brown vs. Board of Education really kicked things off. It was actually a collection of different lawsuits that were put together. It did not really overturn a precedent. Unstead, it used the settled law to show that things were not equal, therefore could not be valid. Interestingly, school integration has not been the end-all benefit that was hoped for. Restrictive covenants and legally segregated schools have been replaced by zoning restrictions and wealthy suburban schools. Is this what destroyed inner cities and led to the dominance of the automobile?

The Little Rock school integration was more of an accident caused by politician medling. The school district had a positive plan to integrate. However, the governor decided to insert himself into the mess.

It is interesting how the democratic party was able to pivot to take the black vote (and Republican party to take the rural white vote.) The country would be better served if allegiances were more divided.

There is still a ways to go with Civil Rights in America. It almost feels that we push one area and another issue comes up. Can we actually have a healthy multi-racial, multi-ethnic urban area where everyone can walk around together?

Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway

Most humans feel fearful when trying something different. How do we make the feat go away? Susan Jeffers proposes that we don't. We should instead acknowledge the fear and plow right through it. That sounds great. The book, alas, goes on for too long, and tries to be a "meta-self-help" book, encouraging looking for other books and affirmations. Alas, I'm not so afraid of skipping that.

Wyrms

Wyrms is a fantasy "quest", set in a futuristic time and planet. The teenage girl, Patience is the legitimate ruler of the world, but is currently a slave to the actual ruler. The ruler uses her for her skills at assassinations, but once her father dies, she flees so she is not killed.

The planet is home to "superDNA" that adapts and consumes all living organisms. Thus, wheat, once bred on the planet, will soon become a new "super-wheat", with enhanced traits. The wheat genome is "wrapped" in the genome of the super species. The original beings want to do that to Humans also (the heroine is the 7th 7th 7th daughter, who is predicted to be the "mate" of the ""unwyrm".)

In the end, the heroine mates with the unwyrm, but manages to kill him in the process. Her quick-to-be-born offspring dies shortly thereafter. She thus saves the human race, and then engages in a peaceful coup to take over her rightly throne and lives happily ever after. (Though she still questions why it was good to preserve humans instead of the "superior" race that she may have mothered.)

Card wrote this between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead, and it clearly shows. There are a lot of the same themes from those, as well as the Alvin Maker and the Homecoming saga. He is considered with different biological interactions of non-earthly beings as well as "non-verbal" calling and impulse control of others. It's almost as if he took some of his other books, mixed them a twisted version of a Tolkein universe, and popped out with Wyrms.

It also explores some moral ambiguities. Many people in the novel are "slaves", but the relationship with the master is more akin to modified employment. Technological innovation and killing are two traits that humans had brought to the planet. Destroying metal allowed the wyrms to reduce the strength of technology. However, murder is still a source of power.

At times the book slows to a crawl with long bouts of philosophy. Some of this could have been better tied in to the actual story.

Seventh Son: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume I

Seventh Son is clearly the initial book in a series. It sets up some characters and events, and then abruptly ends.

The book covers the birth and young childhood of Alvin Miller. He is born the seventh son of a seventh son - a birth position that gives special powers. And he seems to have those powers - though he is only starting to discover them.

The setting is an "alternate" early 19th century America. Some of the names mentioned (such as Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) are familiar. However, things are slightly different, with a small United States, a New Amsterdam, an 'Apalachia', and numerous other 'differences'. The "alternate America" is one of the more intriguing aspects of the book. However, it is not the central theme (and only seems to play a passive role.)

The more active differences have to do with "hexes" and religion. The characters are primarily Christian. However, they also have a variety of "supernatural powers" that they do not hold to be incongruous with the Christian faith. The local preacher, however, holds them all to be witchcraft. He is portrayed as a somewhat vain man with a strong desire to save souls - but also a desire to be known as a great soul saver. He provides one of the richer "foils" to the main characters in the book.

While this book does set up the basic background of the series, many of the events are repeated in the later books. It would not be much a problem to start with the second book in the series instead.

Cruel miracles

Cruel Miracles is a collection of science fiction short stories that explore religious themes as well as disgust. The cover seemed quite misleading, but sci-fi books are notorious for bad covers. In addition to the stories, the book contains a forward describing the themes as well as an afterward giving some background for each of the stories.

• Mortal Gods -
  Aliens that admire humans because they have the ability to die.
  This quickly got to its point.
  
• Kingsmeat - A "shepherd" that helps to "save" a planet from a human-eating king by cutting off body parts to be served up to the king. The people return the favor by preserving his life - without any "unneeded" body parts.
  This was disgusting. It does show the desire of people to seek "revenge" for "wrongdoings", even if it made them better off. In a "trial", the people all saw that the shepherd and bravely helped to defend their lives. However, they also knew that he was the one that would come and whack off their body parts. They were not able to let go of the bad feelings, leaving the Shepherd in a most debilitated state. The Shepherd, meanwhile, comes across as noble, willingly putting up with the "suffering" the people have given him.
  
• Eye for Eye - A cult of inbreds that can kill other people with cancer and one boy that was so powerful, they had him raised by an orphanage. This was long and well written, however, it seemed to end prematurely. It could be great fodder for a novel.
  
• Saving Grace -
  A boy that admires "healers" to the extent that he paralyzes himself so that he can be healed. Unfortunately, the healer is a fraud. However, the boy ends up being a healer himself, able to heal others (but not himself.) In the end, the first person he healed comes to his home, declares her life has been miserable since being healed, and asks to help out at the boy's house.
  
• St. Amy's Tale - A group of people that remove every last trace of "civilization" before going to live in a "primitive" society. The husband of the crew leader, however, had hid some documents of the civilization and attempted to have them preserved. The leader destroys these remnants, but the husband chooses to be destroyed with them, rather then be saved. The wife is later executed for attempted to provide food to neighboring groups. Would a society try to totally annihilate its culture? Could they really do it? And on a smaller scale, when a loved-one does not do the "right thing" you expect them to do, and is thus hurt by your reactions, how do you atone for it?
  I liked the style this story used, providing parallel tracks of the actual "past" and remembrances of the past.
  
• Holy - A man's quest to fulfill a quest to deposit a dead man's excrement at the top of a mountain while dodging bullets of a tribal war. I lost interest in this one.
  

The forward and afterword were every bit as good as the stories - maybe even better. The stories themselves were not that bad, though there were bits of violence and vulgarity that were off-putting. Eye for Eye and St. Amy's Tale both have a lot of open ends that could set them up well for longer treatments - though they would require some additional work.

1838 Mormon War in Missouri

Stephen C. LeSueur. The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri. University of Missouri Press. 1987.

This book attempts to present a balanced analysis of a conflict that has been heavily influenced by one-sided partisanship. To the Missourians at the time, all evil originated from the Mormons. At times multiple Mormons were "sentenced" to the death penalty, while no non-Mormons were even tried in courts. (This in spite of non-Mormons having killed many more people.) The Mormons, on the other hand, viewed themselves as peace-loving victims of mob violence. The truth, however, lies somewhere in between.

At the core, the problem seemed to be people taking sides, unable to respect the other sides point of view. Many non-Mormons would claim to not be upset with the Mormon religion and to respect many individual Mormons. However, they distrusted Mormons as a group. The Mormons saw the non-Mormons as thugs intent on driving them out of their land.

In a way, both sides were right and both sides were wrong.

The Mormons started an internal "police" group, the Danites to help police their own membership as well as protect others. The non-Mormons created vigilante groups and called on the army to help their cause.

It only took a few small sparks to get things out of hand. A drunken brawl on election day, where Mormons were attacked set the Mormons off. The Danite group then encouraged the destruction and looting of the town. This led to the army getting called in and finally the "Crooked River" battle. The battle was only a minor skirmish, with one non-Mormon and a few Mormons being killed. However, the non-Mormons were freaked out, and there were reports of many non-Mormons being killed. This led to a great overreaction, an extermination order from the Governor, a massacre of Mormons at Haun's Mill, and the eventual eviction of all Mormons.

The battle is a story of how the "media" can assert a powerful influence on outcomes. Seemingly small events were magnified out of proportion, leading to more violence and bloodshed. Even the 'peacemakers' found themselves forced to one side. To victors also went the spoils. Massive looting (sometimes under the guise of the law) took place. Could the sides have resolved the conflict peaceably? The author of the book thinks the conflict would have happened regardless. However, if the sides had been able to communicate better with each other, there may have been a chance. (After all, everyone looked so much alike that face painting or handkerchiefs were sometimes used to tell the sides apart.) Good leadership from the Governor could have probably help avert the crisis. However, it was not forthcoming.

Could this be similar to some of the conflicts we see today, such as the war on terrorism or illegal aliens. Immigrants are often attacked because they are seen as "different". Long term residents want the land to themselves. When immigrants are Muslim or Arab, terrorism is used as an excuse. I guess 170 years has not been enough for the country to really learn how to live with people that are different.