The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

In this town, the local protestant church is the glue of the community. A lady leads the Christmas pageant every year and it always is done the same way. One year, she is hospitalized and unable to lead it, so the narrator's mom takes leadership of it instead. However, this just happens to be the time that the narrator's brother had told the Herdmans that there is food at church. The Herdmans are a group of poor unsupervised ruckus bullies. They decide they want to be in the pageant and take all the major roles. (They threatened the other kids to prevent them from trying out.) The pageant has a totally new twist with more relatable things such as a ham for a wise man gift. At first people cringe at the changes, but then realize there is true passion and belief in this and it is the best pageant ever. It makes for a nice tear-jerker.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox  by Roald Dahl

Three gluttonous farmers are upset that the Fox is stealing their birds. They work to exterminate the fox with guns, tractors and other devices. They think they have finally trapped the fox underground and are ready to shoot him the instance he pops up. The fox's family is near starvation when he gets an idea. He tunnels and reaches under the chicken coop. He is able to sneak in and take some birds and bring them down to eat. He does similar activities to raid other farmers. Now the fox and his family and other tunnel animals can feast without risk of harm from the farmers. The farmers are still out there waiting to capture them. It is a great short work with Dahl's dark humour.

Benito Cereno

Benito Cereno by Herman Melville 

Benito Cereno seems like it should have been a good book, but I had trouble getting into it. An American comes across a ship in distress. Benito Cereno, the captain is always accompanied by his servant.  He explains that many of the Spaniards had been taken by a fever. Only at the end does he jump away from the ship and let the Americans know that a slave revolt occurred and that the blacks controlled everything.

The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger

The Twits, The Minpins & The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl

The Twits (1980)

The twits are a cruel couple who seem to always be fighting and playing mean jokes on each other.

The Minpins (1991)

Billy lives a controlled life. He ends up discovering the Minpins and then helps rid them of their enemies, making him well respected.

The Magic Finger (1966)

A girl has a "magic finger" which causes things to happen to people she is upset with. She has little control of the finger does. She sees some neighbors be cruel to animals as they are hunting them. When they get magic-fingered, they turn into the ducks and the ducks move to inhabit their house. After he experience, they get greater respect for animals and stop hunting for sport. At the end it is implied that another family will soon get the finger.

Magic Finger was my favorite of the books in this series. I got a little lost with Minpins.

The Iron King: The Iron Fey, Book 1

The Iron King: The Iron Fey, Book 1 by Julie Kagawa

The Iron King

Winter's Passage

This audiobook includes Iron King and the Novella Winter's Passage. The quality and originality of this book is a step above the typically female-driven fantasy. Megan Chase thinks she is just an ordinary girl who has had a tough time. Her father mysteriously disappeared one day when she was with him in the park. He was never found. Her mother remarried and she has a new brother. Together they live in the rural area outside a Louisiana City. She has a crush on a football player at school but things go really wrong when she tries to meet him for tutoring. He gets revenge by getting a picture with her and then photoshopping a nude body on her. She feels so embarrassed and goes to the nurse's office and then things get even weirder. She discovers that her younger brother has been swapped out for a changeling. Her friend is actually Puck from Midsummer's Night Dream. She then goes on a quest to get her real brother back. There she encounters a talking cat among others and discovers she is the daughter of the fairy king Oberon. She does eventually get her brother back and returns back home, discovering she has been gone for 3 months. (And that the cheerleader that got "pig-nosed" is now willing to be her friend.) This one ties into the real world as well as a Shakespearean universe as well as exploring things a little different from the standard tropes. The novella was about a return to Winter Court and was not as good as the main novel.

The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen

Disney's Frozen originated as an adaptation of Snow Queen, but then drifted significantly. In this original novella, an evil troll creates a glass which distorts everything so only the bad is viewed. Fragments of this fall all over the world. One boy gets the shard in his heart and eye. He becomes cruel. Later he disappears with the snow queen who makes him forget about his past. The others go on adventures. Then in the end, his sister is able to melt his shard with love and return him back to normal. There are plenty of elements that were adopted by Disney, but this story is more complex.

The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The narrator of this audiobook, Ralph Cosham, would often narrate under the pseudonym Geoffrey Howard.

Gregor woke up one day and discovered he was a bug. It was just a "oh, I'm a bug and not human". He is slow getting out the door. His family and even his manager try to come and get him out. Later they learn that he is a bug. His sister is the only one that regularly attends to him. Others protect him but generally avoid him. He was a primary earner in the house, so his "bugification" creates some stress. Eventually, he fades from view. They clean out human furniture from his room to make it more comfortable. They send him food, but he rarely eats. His room gradually becomes a junk room. His family takes on tenants to make ends meet. Eventually, while his sister is playing violin, Gregor goes out to listen. This freaks out the tenants (who are neat freaks.) Gregor shortly after decides to give up on life and dies. The family acknowledges his passing and opts for some privacy from the tenants. Then they go on with their lives. They are somewhat relieved that they don't have to tend for him anymore. They can now move to a smaller apartment and live financially well with their new work.

This can be seen as part of a struggle of caring for somebody that has challenges. They may have changed to be different. At first you see them as who they are. Gradually they become more of a burden. Eventually, there is a relief when you no longer need to care for them anymore. There may be a hope they can return to how they were, but an exit is a more likely outcome.

Telling this story primarily from Gregor's view helps emphasize the changes that are made. He was not killed, he just gave up. He was capable of thought and realized his change. However, he could not do anything about it. He gradually adopted more and more to the life of a bug. Eventually he stopped eating and stopped living. The world and his family was not capable of giving him a life that he felt worth living. He couldn't provide it for himself either.

Gregor's sister was the one that had cared for him. She also played violin in a way that pleased Gregor, but not the tenants. The family barely noticed her until Gregor's pasing. Only then did they realize she had blossomed into a woman. The first thing they thought to do then was to marry her to somebody. Is this good or bad? Is it another form of control or more freedom?

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

Fireside Reading of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King: Fireside Reading by E. T. A. Hoffmann

The Nutcracker ballet was based on this German novella. Interestingly, this audiobook credited the original author, but not the translator. I guess it was just the "most popular" version, whatever that may be. In the ballet, the plot was fairly baffling, as it is in the book. There are a lot of fantastical creatures and a battle with mice. It is unclear why it is all happening.

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. 

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

A writer lives in a New York Brownstown. In the same building lives a socialite from Texas. They become friends, but also have fights. The girl spends a lot of time with older men, with that being her only source of income. She hopes to marry a rich man one day. There is one Brazilian that seems a good prospect. However, it all falls apart when she gets arrested as part of a drug ring. (She had regularly been visiting a mobster in prison.) Later, we learn she abandons her cat and tries to move to Brazil on her own. The story is told from the point of few of the unnamed man as he flashes back in the future after seeing a picture which seems to show her. This is a short novella that is well more known for the Audrey Hepburn movie.

The Pole: A Novel

The Pole: A Novel by J. M. Coetzee

The namesake Pole is a piano player. A woman hears his concert as part of her group. He tries to seduce her. She somewhat follows him, while making it clear that she will not be seduced and informing her husband of the advances. Despite this, she has somewhat of a liking for him. After his passing, he leaves Polish poetry for her. She has it translated at great expense and discovers the artistic genius in the Pole. There is some connection with music and art along. Is there a personal connection also? Music can help produce a strong emotional tie.

Percy Jackson and the Singer of Apollo (Trials of Apollo)

Apollo has a concert with his 3 automatan singers. Alas, one of the singers is missing. Apollo has recruited Percy and the gang to help find them. They do. It is a short story and winds up quickly.

Blind Owl

Blind Owl is an important 20th century novella. It is quite weird. The narrator has a dead woman appear at his house. He toys with necrophilia, but decides against it. His father and uncle had an interesting contest for a woman in which they both somewhat lost. The narrator also sees a repetition in history through his art. He refers to his wife as "the slut". He acknowledges coping with challenges with much opium and alcohol. How much of this narration should be considered colored through the eyes of opium?

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Two "colors" are involved in battling through time. They fall in love. Red and Blue go through some crazy things to finally be together. I had trouble grasping the scope of the universe, but the interactions still made sense. I am still not clear what it was about losing a time war, but I did see a relationship built up and be connected in a complex manner.

Defending Elysium: A Cytoverse Novella (The Skyward Series)

Defending Elysium was a work written by Brandon Sanderson before he was a well known writer. He is now publishing it as it fits into the Skyward universe. 

A phone company "accidentally" discovered faster than light travel. It wants to keep it secret and also keep itself "above the law." Other beings in the universe want to control humanity because they are viewed as "less civilized". The novella centers on Jason White, a phone company employee. He has cytonic abilities, including teleportation and mind blades. There a murder, an alien posing as a human, and another person with "mindblade" powers. The novella has a lot of fun exploring different science fiction tropes before finally revealing that the source of faster than light travel is not what we think it is.

Perfect State

In Perfect State, people live in a virtual world that is optimized for their experience. Many with leadership abilities serve as emperors of their domain. They know how people the roles that others are playing and must resort to some trickery to have differences. The protagonist has been ordered to go on a date in order to reproduce. He questions this as being silly in the virtual world. However, he goes about it and has some weird things happen.

The book has an interesting premise. It is something like knowing you are living in the world of Matrix, but not caring. It would be interesting to explore the world more. The story itself is a little dull, but leaves open lots of possiblities.

Legion: Lies of the Beholder: The Concluding Legion Novella

Stephen Leeds has a group of "experts" that are always able to help him out. These "aspects" are hallucinations that each have a unique skill set. He can be exposed to something and have his aspect be able to understand it in detail. In this book, he attempts to communicate with Sandra, the person that helped him understand his aspect. She had struggled with them also. He used his "past time periods" camera to find where she was - but also find there were other people. He finds himself involved with others wanting to help him, but also wanting to change him. There is a bit of adventure involved. He believes he is sane but that his hallucinations are crazy.  

Evershore: Skyward Flight: Novella 3

I read the second and third Skyward books before reading Evershore. This helped a lot in understanding what was going on. This novella is told from the point of view of Jorgen. The earth people go to the planet of the Kitsen (small rodent-like creatures.) They Kitsen are not too fond of humans and challenge them to a duel. But, luckily for the humans, the Kitsen get bogged down in bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the Superiority comes to attack the Kitsen planet. Suddenly a league with the humans is not all that baad. They do a lot to realize the strength of the cytonic powers to finally come to a conclusion. The novella moves at a quick pace with plenty of action, filling in some of the gaaps in the Skyward novels. It felt like something that could easily fit in a Star Wars movie.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

This collection of Tolstoy short stories includes:

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• The Forged Coupon
• After the Dance
• My Dream
• There Are No Guilty People
• The Young Tsar

They explore ethical and religious topics. The title story focuses on a man that is dying. He had risen up in society and made some sacrifices along the way. However, his death is now leading to the unwinding of life in the relative unknown.

Others somewhat seem to connect together. The people explore their state in life. In one story, the hangman undergoes a religious conversion. How will people be killed? In another the Tsar contemplates his experience and that of his people. The purpose of God and the needs of men towards other are explored in detail.

Sunreach: Skyward Flight: Novella 1

Sunreach is a novella tells of events in the Skyward universe from a different point of view. We hear of the impact of Spensa, but she doesn't play much of a direct role in the book. Instead, the characters are battling through some of their own existential struggles. There is a fight without coms that leads to the death of a friend. There are also important beings that help the humans, as well as monsters that confuse space ships for food.