Chapter Eighty: The View from Saturday

The View from Saturday is a Newbery Medal winning (in 1997) novel by E.L. Konigsburg.  I know I've read it once before, probably twelve or thirteen years ago, but I didn't remember much about it except that I thought it was pretty darn cool that other time I read it and that I really wanted to be like the kids in it.  Then I happened across a copy, so I figured I'd give it another go.  While The View from Saturday is not quite as cool as I remember it being, I still enjoyed reading it.  Structurally, it's an odd story, alternating between the present (always narrated by Mrs. Olinski, a paraplegic 6th grade teacher and the book's adult-protagonist) and a moment in the (recent) past of each of the four child-protagonists (Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian), narrated by each child in turn.  It's really not clear at the beginning how these snippets of various pasts are pertinent to the present (the state championships of the academic bowl in New York state), but it all does come together by the novel's end.  We don't get to find out as much about Mrs. Olinski as I might like to know, though.  Still, the messages of the book (help each other, be kind to each other, be who you are) are always ones that need to be heard.  It's a cute, quick read.

Chapter Seventy-Nine: The Cuckoo's Calling

So The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling [rhymes with bowling]) is a mystery/detective novel.  I don't read a lot in this genre, and really I only decided to read this at all because Rowling wrote it, but I was hooked after only a few pages and it wouldn't have mattered who wrote it because this book is good.  It follows detective Cormoran Strike (what a great name!) as he attempts to find out once and for all whether a supermodel's fall from her apartment was suicide or murder.  Meanwhile, he is struggling to put his own life in order, which allows him to be a multi-dimensional character: he's not just a detective on the case--he's got rather pressing personal issues he's working on as well.  His secretary (who secretly wants to be a detective) is a fun character, too.  She's a little bit less fleshed out (although we do get some glimpses of her life outside the office, which is great), and I look forward to learning a bit more about her in the sequel The Silkworm, which is not yet published and which I am eagerly awaiting!  Whether or not you typically read mystery novels, if you like a good, engaging story that will keep you in doubt until the end (I had several suspicions, some of which turned out to be correct), then I heartily recommend this book.

Chapter Seventy-Eight: The Inflationary Universe

Ever since I took an intro to cosmology course (that's the study of the cosmos, not to be confused with cosmetology, which is a course an aspiring beautician would enroll in), I've developed a real fascination with this subject, and moreover I gained enough background knowledge to actually understand something about it!  So I was excited to delve into Alan Guth's The Inflationary Universe.  Guth, a leading cosmologist at MIT, came up with the original version of the inflationary theory, which describes, basically, what happened in the very early universe (times when the universe was less than a second old) before the big bang described in the standard big bang theory, which, as Guth likes to point out, doesn't say what banged, or why, or how.  I won't get into any more science here--that's for you to read about, if you're interested.  As for the book itself, it took me ten days to read, and it was definitely worth the time it took.  The prose itself is friendly to lay readers, and there are many really useful diagrams to help you along, too.  Mathematical or overly technical language is kept to a minimum.  Nonetheless, the content itself is pretty heavy stuff, so even with the clear prose, I just had to think a lot about what was being said.  That was great!  Reading this book really worked my brain in ways that I haven't worked it enough since graduating from college.  So if you're interested in cosmology (or particle physics) and want a bit of a mental workout, I'd definitely recommend The Inflationary Universe.

Chapter Seventy-Seven: The Book of Madness and Cures

This novel by Regina O'Melveny is a fun little historical fiction jaunt across Renaissance Europe.  The story follows the fictitious Dr. Gabriella Mondini, the only female physician in Venice at the turn of the 17th century.  She has learned the medical arts from her father, a renowned doctor in Venice, who years earlier departed on a trip through Europe to study other schools of medicine and perhaps to gain inspiration for the encyclopedia of maladies he was compiling.  As his letters have slowly stopped appearing, Gabriella has decided to set off across Europe in search of her father, and this story follows her journey.  I enjoyed reading it, though I don't know if I'd read it again.

Chapter Seventy-Six: The Island of Lost Maps

So looking at the behind-the-scenes of my blog now, I see that I haven't updated since May!  It's not that I wasn't reading in June, but I was busy with lots of other things.  Now that I have a bit more time, look for several posts!

So, The Island of Lost Maps by journalist Miles Harvey.  This wasn't the most thrilling non-fiction book I've ever read, but it was reasonably interesting, enough so to keep me reading it at least.  It divagates a good bit from the topic of  map thief Gilbert Bland, which in the beginning seems like it will be the main focus of the book.  However, these divagations--usually focusing on other aspects of the rare maps world in America--are not unrelated to the story of Bland's cartographic crime spree and are interesting in their own right.  I'd recommend it if you're really into maps, or ever have been.

Chapter Seventy-Five: Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories

This collection of short stories and a novella by Garth Nix is a delight to read.  The novella, "Across the Wall," is an extension of one of the characters from the Old Kingdom trilogy, and is enjoyable for that reason and in its own right.  The rest of the short stories are not related to the Old Kingdom trilogy, and they are also very enjoyable.  Some grow from traditional tales--there is a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, there are two stories that build on Arthurian legends--and all include some sort of fantasy element.  If you enjoy Nix's novels or you enjoy short stories of the fantasy persuasion, I highly recommend this collection.

Chapter Seventy-Four: Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen (Old Kingdom Trilogy)

So these are classic young adult books by Garth Nix, and I don't know how I'd never read them before now.  Crazy!  I'm so glad I finally read them after many suggestions from friends.  These are probably the darkest fantasy books that I've read, at least in the YA genre--but maybe in general.  The magic in this trilogy focuses on necromancy: evil necromancers Dead creatures use the reanimated Dead and their own wicked powers to wreak havoc.  (Dead is always capitalized in the books, so I follow that tradition here.)  The Abhorsen is a person invested with the power to work against necromancers and Dead entities.  So basically these books chronicle various epic battles of good versus evil as the Abhorsen and companions and allies work to restore safety to the world when it is threatened by evil Dead forces.  This may sound corny, but Nix pulls the whole thing off very well; it is definitely not corny, and definitely creepy, especially if you actually stop to really visualize an army of dead and decomposing bodies shambling toward you.  So these books are pretty dark while also remaining reasonably optimistic.  The title characters of Sabriel and Lirael are great female protagonists: strong, likable, and dynamic.  The plot and settings are definitely unique.  If, like me, you somehow haven't read these books and if you're a fan of YA fantasy, you definitely need to read them.