The Minstrel in the Tower

The Minstrel in the Tower by Gloria Skurzynski

Some kids in the middle ages are traveling around. They want to play a lute. Then the author talks about historical fiction at the end. It seemed to end a bit too abruptly before the full story was told. Perhaps the author cared a bit more about being educational than telling a story.

Matilda

Matilda by Roald Dahl

As I was recently rereading Matilda, I was amazed at how faithful the movie adaptation is to the book. Most of the major plot elements and themes are present. Matilda is an extremely precocious little girl. Her parents are a used car salesman and a white-trash beauty queen. They could care less for intellectual achievement and actively fight against it. As a toddler, Matilda goes to the library herself to read. At school, the teacher wants her to go to a higher grade, but the headmistress, Trunchbull, will have nothing of that. Trunchbull runs a strict school and uses kid to practice her athletic skills. Matilda discovers she has some magical talent and uses that to help "defeat" Trunchbull and restore Matilda's teacher's rightful inheritance. Things look up from the school perspective. But then Matilda returns home to find her parents moving. (stolen car fraud had caught up with Dad.) The family is more than willing to let Matilda be adopted by her teacher making everyone happier. 

Dahl utilizes his over-the-top humor to tell a compelling story. The events are almost real, but have exaggerated events occur. It is sad when those with intellectual talent are brought down by their families or the educational system. It is great that Matilda could have a happy ending. What about others?

The Ware Tetralogy

The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker

The four books of the series are available as a free download. They explore a near future world, but have different approaches. There are various cyborgs and androids. There are conflicts between the various degrees of artificial. Scientists are exploring new things. One drug is "merge" that allows beings to merge together. These can be different species or two of the same. In some cases they briefly go together before separating. In others they can be made more permanent. Regardless of these changes, people seem obsessed by sex from a very masculine, mechanical point of view. I guess this is male vs. female authorship.

I Can Read Stories

I Can Read Stories by June Woodman, Illustrated by Ken Morton

This collection has 4 short stories with the same characters. After the stories there are brief sections of vocabulary words with pictures. Each character has a personality, described in the titles. They are not anything special, but not bad.

Stories include:

The Forgetful Spider

The Clumsy Alligator

The Lazy Lion

The Shy Ostrich

Digging Up Dinosaurs

Digging Up Dinosaurs (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) by Aliki

This book details how people have discovered information about dinosaurs and pieced together their bones. It has some simple explanation of science principles. 

The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies

The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies by Stan Berenstain (Author), Jan Berenstain (Author)

The bear throw tantrums when they don't get the candy or rides that they want. Papa first gives in, but he eventually gets frustrated and gives the cubs a big punishment for the "gimmee tantrums". Then Grandma and Grandpa show up and detail stories of Papa's tantrums. (He seemed to live in an early pre-war time of general stores which would not fit with his age in the book, but hey it does make it interesting.) The cubs decide to follow the plan of getting one thing if they don't tantrum. They then look down on other tantruming bears. One of the beter books in the standard series.

Montigue on the High Seas

Montigue on the High Seas by John Himmelman

When a mole's hole is flooded, he seeks refuge in a bottle. Alas, during the night, the bottle is washed out to sea. He goes through a number of adventures before he ends up on a ship where he runs into a hole to escape from the cat. There he meets the mice. He tells them the story of his adventure and inspires them to seek their freedom. They all work together to build "ships" and set for sea where they find an island to inhabit. It is a cute little story.

Just My Friend And Me

Just My Friend and Me by Mercer Mayer

The critter invites his friend over. He talks about all he fun they are having together, but it seems like the friend is just taking advantage of him. He has rose-eyed commentary, even when the friend breaks his bike or doesn't help clean up. finally at the end, he is exhausted and ready for time alone. The ending then has a great visual twist, courtesy of his sister.

Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye

Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye: A Graphic Novel (The Baby-Sitters Club #11) (The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix) by Gabriela Epstein and Ann M. Martin

Stacey's dad is being located back to New York. She realizes things will be different when she gets back. She also misses her friends. Her friends help her have a big yard sell and later throw a big going away party for her - complete with games and all the kids they babysit. There are plenty of sentimental going away things. It all feels very cliché. 

Jessi's Secret Language

Jessi's Secret Language: A Graphic Novel (The Baby-Sitters Club #12) (The Baby-Sitters Club Graphix) by Ann M. Martin and Chan Chau

The twelfth babysitters club graph novel explores the deaf, ballet and sign language. Jessi is in a new ballet class and is one of the better kids in the class. Other kids feel jealous of her. She feels it may be because she is the youngest and newest girl. (The fact that she is the only black girl in the class is never mentioned.) However, she continues to work and gets a lead role in the upcoming ballet. Meanwhile, she also gets the job of babysitting a new family. She goes twice awake and learns sign language to communicate with a deaf boy and his hearing sister. The sister struggles with being looked down on because she is always helping her brother. Jessi helps her to overcome this. She also helps both to get good friends. She is also able to communicate with the deaf sister of a girl in her ballet class. For the opening performance, Jessi invites all her friends and the deaf class. They all enjoy the ballet. This one is a nice positive message that seems to have fewer false dramas than other BSC books.

Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles

Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles by Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester attempted to duplicate a walk through Korea. He wasn't able to complete the portion in North Korea, however, he did ask and was granted permission to visit the north at a later date. Along his walk, he meets with many Koreans (as well as some ex-patriots.) Korea was still a very traditional society with a strong emphasis on saving face. There are bits covering people engaged in activities ranging from diving for seafood to processing ginseng. South Korea at the time was just at the start of its big economic growth spurt. There were some hints of that at the time. However, the society was still very closed. It has changed a lot from the time it was written.

Another Fine Myth: Myth Adventures, Book 1

Another Fine Myth: Myth Adventures, Book 1 by Robert Asprin

The narrator is training with a wizard. He is struggling with some basic magic, but then things get really weird. There are people from various dimensions that are traveling around and participating in a significant conflict. They all seem to come from worlds that would be very "punny" from our point of view. They are "demons" (d-men - from other demensions), perverts (from perv), etc. The humor seems very 1980s. The narrator's mentor suffers an untimely exit, and he ends up being mentored by somebody new who is trying to help fend off a calamity. Story twists and turns, but it is mostly just a vehicle for jokes.

Player of Games

Player of Games follows the story of a game player from a "culture" who goes off to an empire. He is "tricked" by a drone into cheating at a game. The drone uses that as blackmail to entice him to help him as he goes to the empire. The culture wants him to go to the empire where a game is of prime importance. The emperor and high ranking officials are chosen based on how they play the game. He goes there as an alien and does well at the game. Others in the society try to convince him that he should leave rather than continue playing. However, he continues and eventually sees the downfall of the empire.
The story is an interesting concept. It is also intriguing what they other sees as "good" and "bad". The "good" culture is one in which people live for long times and there is minimal crime and punishment. They also are free to exercise whatever sexual desire they have, including freely going back and forth from gender to gender. The "bad" culture is the one where the game is important. They have many rules which the elite enjoy flaunting. They have three genders and a distinct gender hierarchy. The elite also privately enjoy forced violence and sexual activity. Alas, his utopia would probably crash and burn just as the "dystopia" did.

Prelude to the Foundation

Asimov's foundation series was one of the most popular in science fiction. As a kid, I had heard about it. However, I preferred reading Asimov's other books. Later, I finally read the original Foundation series. It wasn't bad, but when I think about it in retrospect, the final books seemed to ramble a bit. He seemed to be done writing.

Enter Prelude to the Foundation. In the introduction he admits that he thought he was done, but was convinced by his readers and publisher to write more books. So we get this uninspiring work.

Prelude to the Foundation is a critique of 1950s cultural norms, written in the 1980s and set tens of thousands of years in the future. Just imagine a world that sees rapid technological innovations, robots, space travel, quadrillions of people, the domination of science. Yet somehow, through all of this, people still have the morals and concerns of people in the 1950s. Yuck.

A "hand on thigh" story of situational moral relativism is repeatedly referenced. Why? Perhaps he just couldn't think of anything else to bring in the point.

The plot is also held together by threads without much substance.

Hari Seldon delivers a paper on "psychohistory", a mathematical concept in which large-scale history of people can be predicted given enough data. For some reason, people are interested in this. Some people try to chase him down. Others try to help him. He always manages to escape just in time. He also comes across as brash, violating norms of different cultures in an attempt to gain more knowledge to carry out his psychohistory. Somehow these actions all end up being just what is needed. In spite of some close calls, he and his friends have just the needed fighting skills and manage to escape without any harm.

In the end, it turns out that the emperor's assistant has been controlling them all along. Only Hari is able to determine that he is in fact not a person, but a robot who has been using powers of emotion to influence everyone and attempt to protect society.

The plot is a real yawner. The characters are not believable (or appealing.) The theme about questioning the norms of societies falls flat. Perhaps the only interesting idea here is that of information. In the quest to find all that is needed to "create" psychohistory, Hari realizes that knowing what unuseful information can be discarded is the most important part of accumulating knowledge.

Cat's Eye

This tedious book dealt with the childhood reminiscences of Elaine, a popular, controversial Canadian artist. She traces back her experiences growing during World War II and going to school in Toronto. Her big concern seemed to be the relationship with Cordelia, a friend who used to tease the narrator, but later had struggles of her own.

The novel occasionally bounces from the past to present, but seems to have an odd "remembering" structure. The earlier parts of life seem to be in much greater detail, while the later parts of life whiz by quickly. The narration is fairly easy to follow, and has fairly vivid pictures of post-war Toronto. Cordelia plays the role of Citizen Kane's "rosebud", representing the lost youth that is difficult to reclaim.

Elaine has had challenges in her life, never quite fitting in with groups, yet not forcing herself to be a victim, or altering her beliefs to conform to groups at any end of the spectrum. Alas, the book is slow moving, and not very engaging. The characters change, but don't seem to grow. This is not a book I would recommend.

Treason

When I started reading this, I thought I finally came across a Card novel that didn't recycle the same ideas. This was one of his first novels, so maybe he was still feeling around in original territory. The novel is set on a 'prison' planet, where leaders of an 'intellectual revolution' were exiled. Each member of the group has now (a few thousand years later) spawned a clan that shares some special "power". The planet has no easily accessible supplies of iron. However, every clan does have a device that allows them to send something of value back to the main "empire" in return for the precious metal. The goal of each group is to get enough metal to build a space ship to return to earth. (And on the side fashion enough weapons to defeat the enemies.)

The main character is a decedent of a geneticist. There society has developed the ability to rapidly heal themselves. This sometimes mutates to "radical regeneration" where extra body parts are produced. People with extra parts are treated as animals, with their extra parts harvested for sale to the "empire". The hero, while a male heir to the thrown, has started growing female body parts and finds himself exiled. In this exile he gets to know many of the others and eventually destroys a plot by one group to take over the planet, and in doing so, also destroys the devices that connect them to the empire.

This was all quite intriguing until the hero stumbles across a group of geologists and their "living rock". Hmmm... This seems a lot like the living rock in Stonefather or the Alvin Maker series. And it also started to stretch the "science" explanation to the extremes. Oh well.

Other "powers" were a little more in the science fiction vein. One group was able to alter the flow of time. Another group attempted to have a pure cash-free egalitarian society. (However, things were generally only "freely given" if something else was "freely given" in return.) Another group (the decedents of politicians) were able to make people believe anything - even allowing people to see a total stranger as their own son.

In his running, the hero is attacked, and eventually manages to spawn a duplicate of himself (that he attempts to kill). This duplicate however, ends up being used as a pawn of the politicians to ransack the planet. Luckily, the hero uses all the powers he has learned to destroy all the members of the political class, and finally, at the end, befriends his "spawn", and ends up living happily-ever-after with the girl of his dreams.

The first-person narrative keeps this novel moving more quickly than Card's other novels. The characters, while starting to show some of Card's "superman" behavior, are still different enough to keep them interesting. And, it is loaded with all sorts of interesting "sci-fi" that keeps the novel interesting.

Red Prophet: Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 2

The Red Prophet could almost be described as historical fiction. William Henry Harrison, Tecumsa and Napolean play active rolls in the book. Andrew Jackson makes a cameo appearance, and many other key players in American history are referenced. However, the historical situation is not America of history, but an alternate version.

The "red men" are given a prime role in this book. They are seen as being one with nature, having the ability to summon animals to die for food, as well as performing a variety of other "supernatural" events. The "red men" suffer two great massacres on the battlefield. However, the victory that the "white men" obtain is hollow.

Some of the events in the first book are told as flashbacks, or from different viewpoints in this book. While reading the first book first would help with the understanding, its probably not required.

In this book, Alvin comes to a greater understanding of his role as a "maker" and the battle against the "unmaker". We still don't understand clearly what the unmaker is. However, we see that he does lots of unmaking.

We also see characters develop more fully. Alvin's family show that they have faults just like other people. Meanwhile, Alvin's brother-in-law goes full-circle, nearly destroying Alvin, but later being the one man working hard to prevent an Indian massacre.

William Henry Harrison is one of the true villains in the story. In this "alternate history" he has one man killed to obtain his whiskey barge. He later incites an Indian war to build himself up. He has Alvin's brother tortured and left for bed to further his war. However, in the end he suffers the greatest "cursing" and the virtual end of his political career.

The book uses elements similar to many other Card novels. A young boy is the hero, and he has "super powers" to always do what is right. Other people "go stupid" when they try to do things that will hurt the hero; along with a large amount of scientifically-explained "magic" and "true dreams".