Sunset at Middle Bay, Maine

Happy Holidays! 

I'll be back to blogging in the New Year.

Stealing Bases by Keri Mikulski and More Good Gift Books

Scout at Sunset, photo by my husband on Thanksgiving

From the books that I’ve reviewed this past year, I’ve compiled a list of novels that would appeal to a wide audience and are fun to read.  These aren't necessarily my absolute favorite books, but the ones that would make good holiday gifts.

Literary Fiction
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Commercial Fiction
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Classic
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Dystopia
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Award winning Young Adult Fiction (ages 14 and up)
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
Looking for Alaska by John Green (my 17-year-old son recommends)

Tween Girls and Reluctant Teen Readers (ages 10 and up)
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (my 14-year-old daughter recommends)
Stealing Bases by Keri Mikulski (reviewed below)

If the name Keri Mikulski sounds familiar, it’s because she’s part of our Book Review Club. Earlier this year, I interviewed Keri and reviewed her first young adult novel in the Pretty Tough series. Head Games featured Taylor, a sweet basketball player who was victimized by a jealous girlfriend. Stealing Bases, the next book in the series, follows the “reformed” bad girl, Kylie, into softball season. I bought this paperback book for my collection of sporty teen girl novels.

Kylie is trying very hard to control her legendary temper, but her parents’ divorce and the loss of her starting spot on the varsity softball team push her over the edge. Her hardships explain her behavior without excusing it. Our unreliable narrator spins out of control, but we can’t help feeling sympathetic. It’s also bad fun seeing the world from a snarky girl’s point of view. The one disappointment was Kylie’s complete transformation; it seemed out of character. The lesson of good sportsmanship is, nonetheless, an important one.

Keri writes so well about sports and speaks to teens in their own language. Her girls play hard and get dolled up for prom. In the Pretty Tough series being athletic is both feminine and attractive. It’s wonderful to have easy-to-read books for girls in which sports and friendship take precedence over romance. Keri Mikulski hits a home run with Stealing Bases. The next two books in the series, Making Waves and Fifteen Love, are due to be published in 2012.

Do you have more gift book suggestions? List them in a comment or blog about them in the next 2 weeks, and I'll link to you from this updated post.  Also check out my links below.  The Book Review Club always has great suggestions.  Read on!

1. From The House of Edward listed Christmas classics, old and new.
2. The Education of a Pulp Writer listed Patti Abbott from our book review club.

Click icon for more
book review blogs
@Barrie Summy

War Horse Review: book, play and movie soon

Horse in Port Meadow, England

I usually prefer the original book to the adaption, but War Horse by Michael Morpurgo improved on stage. The novel follows a horse and his boy from a farm in Devon, England to the battlefields of World War I France. In reality, the cavalry was pitted against machine guns, barbed wire, trenches and tanks. Over 15 million people and 8 million horses died. War Horse does not glorify war but remembers the bravery and sacrifices of those who served, both human and equine.

Although the book was very good, it was absurd to have a horse narrate a story of war brutality in which many sympathetic characters suffer and die.  Animal narrators belong in innocent books for young children.  Furthermore, the voice wasn’t believably equine, and there was no explanation for how a farm horse could understand three languages. We also lose track of the boy’s story when they part. An omniscient third person narrator would have worked better. Still, what a great story!

Oddly enough, moving the story to the stage with horse puppets created more realism. The puppets didn’t speak, and they acted like true horses: snorting, galloping and even breathing. It was hard to see them abused because you believed they were alive. There was nothing childish or cutesy about these puppets, and the war scenes were horrific and loud. In fact, I would not recommend this play to families with young children or sensitive teenagers because it was terrifyingly real.

War Horse is a must see for a mature audience. Not only were the puppetry, acting and singing fabulous, the staging was gorgeously artistic. A cloud-like backdrop became an animated sketchbook. As the actor rode the puppet horse, an ink drawing of them galloped across the rolling fields. Later the screen projected battle scenes as the stage spun or broke into trenches. The play was true to the spirit of the book, but the secondary characters and the plot were condensed and modified for more poignancy and greater realism.


War Horse at Lincoln Center, NYC

War Horse is currently playing in London and in New York City. It won 5 Tonys, including best play in 2011 and extended its run. In 2012 War Horse is due to open in Toronto and will simultaneously tour American cities. My parents (thank you!) took my teenaged children and me to the New York production over Thanksgiving. I purchased the ebook and read it before seeing the play. Thank you, Bee, for the recommendation.


Steven Spielberg’s film adaption of War Horse will open on Christmas Day, 2011.

Update Movie Review: my husband (who's family comes from Devon) and I were disappointed by the film version of War Horse. The movie was overly sentimental with too many characters, and the film looked obviously photoshopped (ie a tropical red sunset in Devon). The best part was the first half set in England, even if the actors didn't get the Devonian accents right. The later war scenes felt contrived, and the farm in France was absurdly bucolic. Go see the play (best) or read the book instead.

Theater Watch: on a lighter note, we also saw and loved Noel Coward’s Private Lives on Broadway. Paul Gross and Kim Cattrall were superb.

How is a puppy similar to a 17-year-old boy?

Here’s Scout sneaking out of my office with the keys. She’s ready to hit the road. My son, with less than two weeks on his drivers’ license, wanted to drive two hours to Logan Airport in Boston on his own.

It was actually my idea for him to check out colleges solo. There is much more to campus life than what one sees on a tour. My son stayed with a friend who had gone to his high school. They had kept in touch via Facebook. I wanted him to not only see this college, but also to see that college is fun. He got to attend lectures and stayed in a dorm overnight. There were no parents.

Back when I was in high school, I had stayed with friends when checking out colleges. It was an invaluable education. I learned first hand that a coed dorm might be okay but not a coed bathroom. Frat parties were not my idea of fun. I applied early to the school where students had heated debates over philosophical ideas in their dorm rooms. I would not be the only geek on campus. There isn’t one right school for everyone; it’s more of an idiosyncratic match.

From NYC it was easy to visit colleges, but the journey is longer from Maine. I was okay with my son flying alone, but driving into Logan Airport, parking and making a flight would be stressful even for a seasoned traveler. When my husband drove down to Boston with our son, a smoking truck blinded them. Its engine was on fire. They took a wrong turn, but still made the flight on time. My son took the bus back to Maine on his return. I’m sure if you asked him, he’d say he could have done it all on his own.

If I left the front door open, Scout would run out into the street. I would be responsible. My puppy doesn’t know any better, but my son is a cautious, thoughtful boy. Part of me identifies with his desire to be free, even to make his own mistakes. I’ve let the leash extend 700 miles, but I’m not ready to let the boy go. That will happen only too soon, in less than two years. I think parents need to grow even faster than teens do at this stage.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

How to add blog pages with automatic forwarding or redirecting

 George J. Mitchell Field, formerly a US Navy Fuel Depot and now a public/dog park in Harpswell, Maine.

About once a year I give my blog a makeover.  My aim this time was to integrate my stand alone website (for my artwork and writing) with my blog.  I also wanted to reduce the clutter in my sidebar. On google blogger you can add up to 20 stand alone pages with tabs appearing under the banner (like mine) or in the sidebar. Thanks, Carol, for nudging me to add a homepage.

To add stand alone pages on Google Blogs:

Under the "Posting" tab click "Edit Pages"and then "New Pages." You create a new page like writing a blog post and then publish.

To create the automatic jump from the new page to my website, I added new code to my "Edit HTML" screen of the new page:

angelfire.com's instructions on adding automatic redirecting

This code would also work if you changed blog addresses and wanted to forward visitor to your new site. I changed the lag time from 1 to 5 seconds to accomodate search engines, but it jumps instantly due to the javascript. Don't worry, this is all much easier than it sounds.

More Posting Tips:

To improve your blog, read The Story Siren's Ten Things I Dislike About Your Blog. This is a must read post for all bloggers. The only point I disagreed with was word verification. I get bombarded with spam without it.

Here's my Advice for New Bloggers with your helpful comments.

Bookstore Watch: one of my favorite authors, Ann Patchett has opened a bookstore.

Shakespeare Watch: from the latest New Yorker, "Who Wrote Shakespeare," by Eric Idle. Hilarious!