Chapter Eighty-Seven: The Swan Gondola

The setting--Omaha, Nebraska, the World's Fair, 1898--is almost as fascinating as the characters in this novel by Timothy Schaffert.  The Swan Gondola follows the story of "Ferret" Skerritt, an orphaned thief-turned-ventriloquist who falls in love with a young actress, Cecily, after meeting her once, briefly, and determines that he will find her at the World's Fair and win her love.  While the plot follows a pretty classic boy-meets-girl-then-loses-girl story arc, Ferret's uniqueness and the appeal of the setting help differentiate this novel from the herd and make it a bit more interesting.  There are a few Wizard of Oz nods, too, which are a bit corny but fun nonetheless.  Billy Wakefield is an average villain with a steampunkish silver hand, easy to dislike; supporting characters August and Rosie are your typical eccentric sidekicks; Mrs. Margaret adds a creepy carnie to the cast; the Sisters Egan are classic spinsters; oddly, Cecily, ostensibly the center of Ferret's attention, is a bit of a non-character, defined more by Ferret's feelings about her than by her own personality.  This is a slow, lazy kind of book, ideal for reading on a lazy summer day.

Chapter Eighty-Six: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (Essays, Etc.)

Who else but David Sedaris would publish such a strangely titled book of "essays, etc."? (The collection is comprised of "essays, etc." ccording to the cover--the etc. turns out to be monologues that he cheekily suggests high school students preform in forensics, a type of debate...)  It's not quite clear how diabetes comes into it--other than the fact that some of Sedaris's essays discuss various health issues (including periodontal surgery and colonoscopies), though diabetes is not among them as far as I recall.  But the owls... let's just say there's a story involving taxidermy.  Anyway, these essays and monologues are hilarious, replete with Sedaris's bizarre sense of humor and unusual way of looking at everyday events.  If you want a book that will have you laughing out loud (and if you're not squeamish), then I highly recommend this collection.

Chapter Eighty-Five: Crow Like Thunder

Crow Like Thunder is the sequel to Sparrow in the Keep (reviewed in Chapter Fifty-Two of this blog) by Jean Hudson.  The writing feels a bit more polished than in Sparrow, and the plot trots right along with plenty of fun-to-read drama.  Additionally, this novel is split into two parts, the second of which takes place fifteen years after the first, so there is plenty of character development as the babies in part one gain more importance as teenagers in part two.  It's interesting to see how they have begun to mature and I'm looking forward to reading the third and final book in this trilogy once it's published, hopefully later this year.  If you want a fun, light read, check these books out.

Chapter Eighty-Four: The Silkworm

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling) is the sequel to The Cuckoo's Calling and was just recently released.  Let's just say that I wanted to read it so badly that I actually shelled out to buy it in hardcover (rather than being number 10 billion on a library's waitlist) even though I am currently between jobs.  This book was definitely worth the money spent on it!  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The Silkworm is another captivating detective novel with plenty of human interest and further development of the main characters (Detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant, Robin Ellacott) from The Cuckoo's Calling.  It is a very fun summer read and I recommend it to anyone who wants to read an interesting story well-told.

Chapter Eighty-Three: Reality Is Broken

So the full title of this non-fiction book by game developer Jane McGonigal is Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.  This is another book that my grandmother purchased for me, and I would not have picked it up on my own, probably.  But it turned out to be absolutely fascinating!  I highly recommend it, whether you play lots of games or whether, like me, you rarely play games.  McGonigal starts by defining what a game actually is; she focuses on computer and video games but makes it clear that more traditional games such as board games, card games, or sports.  Then she explores why people like games so much, claiming that it isn't just about escapism: often games challenge us and reward us in ways that real life is not structured to.  Then she looks at how we can modify aspects of real life to be more gameful to increase engagement with the everyday world and to solve most any problem you can think up.  I'm not going to give any more detailed a summary than that, but I highly recommend you read this book if you want an interesting, thought-provoking, and highly-readable non-fiction book.

Chapter Eighty-Two: Kill Shakespeare

So Kill Shakespeare is actually a serial graphic novel that has been collected into so far three volumes, which my grandmother was kind enough to purchase for me.  She was interested in reading some graphic novels and then she found these and was interested, and that's how I got my hands on them.  I should say that I'm biased because I am not a big fan of graphic novels as a genre: I find the images distracting from the story, in general.  I simply prefer to read in print.  There have been graphic novels that I really enjoyed... Persepolis, actually, is the only one that comes to mind, though Maus was pretty good, too.  But I digress.  Kill Shakespeare is set in this really weird sort of world that encompasses many settings from Shakespeare's plays and where all of his characters are inhabitants.  Some of them view Shakespeare as a god, others as an evil figure who must be killed.  Hamlet finds himself drawn into this battle, ending up on the pro-Shakespeare side along with Juliet and Othello, as well as some others; his main enemies are King Richard and Lady MacBeth.  There are some funny Shakespeare jokes that you'll get if you've seen or read the plays they refer to, but the plot is quite violent at times--more violent than I would prefer.  There is also a lot of misuse of thee, thou, thy, thine, and ye, and this drives me crazy.  I don't know if it's supposed to be funny, if it's poking fun at old English, or if it's just sloppy editing.  The plot is reasonably interesting, but I don't see myself reading any future volumes.

Chapter Eighty-One: The Time in Between

What a great novel!!!  The Time in Between by María Dueñas, translated from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn, is an epic (609 pages) tale of one woman's journey from being the only child of a single mother in Madrid to becoming a dressmaker for the rich and famous, first for society women in the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco in the late 1930s and then, with the onset of World War Two, for the wives of Nazis and supporters of Franco in Madrid.  Protagonist Sira Quiroga also becomes involved with espionage during the war, finding totally new aspects of herself both as a dressmaker and as a spy.  This novel is rife with love, loss, intrigue, and drama, and also with smaller, daily concerns that make it really believable.  I became truly engrossed with Sira's world, the various characters populating it, and the lushly described settings.  If you want an excellently told story that will keep you interested, I definitely recommend The Time in Between, which I will certainly be re-reading at some point in the not-too-distant future.