The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

     I really wanted to like this book.  It is the winner of both a Hugo and a Nebula award, so I had really high hopes.  Then I started reading it.  It took me about 100 pages to get absorbed into the world Bacigalupi created here, a post-apocalyptic, or rather a post-globalwarming, post-cloning world, run by the major agricultural companies, limiting the seeds and foods available, and producing infertile seeds, so that new seeds are always needed from the ag companies.  There is limited available energy, having used all the easy energy, so things are powered by animal, cloned mammoths do all the heavy lifting.  Everything we take for granted now is a rarity.   It took a while to figure out this world, but after I did, it was fascinating.  The world pulled me in.  The characters, however, not so much.  Not one of the major characters pulled me in, gained any sympathy from me, or any concern.  I did not like any of these characters, even the titular Windup Girl, who was the most interesting of the bunch.
    In the end, I found my interest really flagging, and found myself sludging through the last fifty pages to get it done.  Overall, interesting, but not recommended.

Throne of Fire - Rick Riordan

This summer I am trying an experiment with the kids.  Each of them will write short book reviews of the books they read.  I am expecting them to do at least one a week each.  We'll see how this works.  This is the first, from Colin, on The Throne of Fire, by Rick Riordan.  He gave me more of a book report than a book review, but we are working on how to tell us what he thinks of the book without telling us about the book.  Let the kids know what you think of their reviews as you read them, to help them get better as the summer goes on. - T

     The Throne of Fire is a great book about Egyptian mythology. It is the second book in the Kane series. IThe main characters are Carter and Sadie Kane. It is told by Sadie and Carter who switch positions every few chapters and tell that part of the story from their point of view. Apophis, the Chaos Snake, is rising from his prison and is going to swallow the sun! Their only hope of saving the world lies in Ra, the Sun God, who went into exile millions of years ago. To awaken him they must find three well hidden and well guarded scrolls. Then they must read the scrolls and when they do they have a high risk of getting burned inside out!  Of course they have some help but not the kind they want. They get to have the dwarf god accompany them and his protection isn’t the best kind. He either yells boo or takes off all his clothes except underwear. 

       I liked the fact that the book was based on real mythology.  I also really liked all the crazy things that happened.  The descriptions made it even better because I could really imagine what things looked like.  In all, I think Throne of Fire is an awesome book. I can’t wait for the next book!

                                                           -Colin

             

Leviathan and Behemoth

I couldn't get this book out of the boy's hands.  He stayed up way past his bedtime.

Colin says:  I thought these were very good books.  They are based on events in a real war.   There are also some strange things made up, giant robots and monsters, both human creations.  I can't wait to read the next story.

I think it's steampunk for kids.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series

It is always a great pleasure to give your child something to read that you loved dearly growing up.  I am currently reading "The Trouble with Jenny's Ear" to my girls, a book I remembered fondly from when I was about their age.  I also started Lauren on Roald Dahl, in particular the non-Charlie books.  My favorite is still "Danny, the Champion of the World," the least fantastical of his books, although Lauren is currently reading Matilda, which seems a really perfect book for her.

But the really entertaining thing has been watching Colin plow through the many books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series over the last month.  You would hear him moving from chuckling to laughing out loud in the evenings and every once in a while he would come in and read aloud a passage that he thought was particularly hilarious.  He delighted in this series, and I am sure he will again, as he has also recently discovered the joys of rereading.

Also:

The Poisoner's Handbook

This I saw one day walking through Costco and just grabbed it and put in it my cart.  This is the story of the beginnings of forensic science, in particular the beginnings of forensic toxicology.  It is told through the cases solved by the New York City Medical Examiner's Office in the 1920s mostly, as the dedicated, and undervalued employees there solved cases of poisonings with all new and never tried methods. It's the kind of non fiction I like best, where you learn the science through the stories, and the stories were pretty tasty.

I also learned that there was a speakeasy operator during prohibition called Belle Guinan or Texas Guinan.  According to the internet (and we know we can't really believe the internet) this was, in fact, the inspiration for Star Trek's Guinan.  Just so you know.  (In another book, Cutting for Stone, I learned that Ferengi is an Ethiopian word meaning foreigner.  Who knew you could learn so much about Star Trek from reading non-Star Trek related books!)

Henrietta Lacks

Another very interesting read, this story of Henrietta Lacks is fascinating, well told, but a bit all over the place.   Henrietta Lacks is best known today as HeLa, a cell culture that has been grown in labs for over 50 years and has been used throughout biology and medicine to help us learn about cells, growth, cancer, and other diseases.  The book is less the story of Henrietta, as very little is known about her, as the story of what happened to her cells and her family after her death.  In my opinion, there is too much on her family and not enough on her cells in the story.  We hear all about how her family fell apart after her death, her children were abused by another member of the family, there were drugs and crime, and a lot of anger both about her death and about the doctors taking her cells without her permission, not unknown then or even today.  But we don't really hear a lot of what happened with the cells, except that they are at the center of everything we know today about cell growth.  I would have loved some examples, some followup on any single study that used them rather than just asserting repeatedly how important they have been to science.

Still very much an interesting read.

A Discovery of Witches

I loved this book.  Yes, I am probably sappy.  Yes, the middle of the book is a supernatural romance.  Yes, a lot of people have called it the adult twilight, and I have refused to read twilight.   I don't read books about vampires, although I do read books about witches (see also, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane).  But I couldn't put this book down.  Today as I finished it I read it in line at Starbucks, I read it walking to my office from my car and in the ten minutes between classes.  It has been a long time since a book has grabbed my like this.  Typically I am reading more than one at a time, but for the last three days, this was the only thing I was interested in.  No TV, no video games, just what was happening with my witch and my vampire.  And now I have to wait a year for the sequel!  (Although my guess is that that the sequel, the second in the trilogy, will probably be the weakest of the series.)  If you like witches, or vampires, or urban fantasy, take a look at this.  I thought it was a delight.