Review:
To the tune of “Frosty the Snowman”

Da-vid Se-daris
Was a writer oh-so-droll
With a quirky style and take on life
That will put you on the floor.

Da-vid Se-daris
Writes the weirdest stuff you’ll see
About the Christmas whore and the Macy’s elves
And deathly children’s pageantry.

There must have been some crazy
In the Sedaris family tree
‘Cause David ain’t the only one
Have you seen his sister Amy?

Oh! Da-vid Se-daris!
Can your stories all be true?
It matters not when you write as hot
As in Holidays on Ice!

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Gorgeous buttons and badges here and here. And check out Becky’s blog for more ways to remember Dewey.

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If you want to know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to read The Raucous Royals by Carlyn Beccia. Check out the other blogs on the tour for more about this fun, educational book about the secrets of the British monarchy, and if you haven’t read my posts–check them out immediately below this one.

01 Charger, the 160acrewoods, A Mom Speaks, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Fireside Musings, The Friendly Book Nook, The Hidden Side of a Leaf, Homeschool Buzz, Hyperbole, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maw Books Blog, Never Jam Today, Our Big Earth, Quiverfull Family, Reading is My Superpower, SmallWorld Reads, SMS Book Reviews

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Review:
I was a big fan of Tana French’s In the Woods, so I leapt at the chance to read The Likeness, her followup featuring several of the same characters.

Former detective Cassie Maddox is stuck in Domestic Violence after being forced off the Murder squad due to her role in the catastrophe outlined within In the Woods. A routine murder investigation turns very, very weird when it turns out that the victim, Lexie Madison, looks exactly like Cassie, and is using an identity created by Cassie back when she was working as an undercover agent. Her former boss in the undercover unit decides to send Cassie back to the home she shared with four housemates and see if she can ferret out the murderer by pretending to be Lexie.

The roommates, who think that Lexie was in a coma, are Bright Young Things, living a hermetically sealed, intellectually and aesthetically stimulating life inside Daniel’s family’s estate home. They’re the kind of glittering coterie that has appeared in books like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Danny Boyle’s excellent film Shallow Grave. Cassie is instantly seduced–both by the closeness she finds among the housemates, and by Lexie herself, whose bright exterior masked a rabbit’s warren of dark secrets.

The Likeness was a riveting read. I found myself stealing every available minute for it–dishes piling up, bathroom growing fuzzier by the minute, with Superfast Toddler mercifully cooperating by giving me some very long naps. I was as much in suspense over Cassie’s impending breakdown as I was with the identity of the murderer. French previously limned Cassie’s friendship with former partner Rob in such heartrending detail that I felt like their chaos was happening to me. Here, she builds a web of friendship that conjures up what my friend Megan calls pre-nostalgia–where you anticipate feeling nostalgic while something is unfolding, where the ache is part of the pleasure. More than just bittersweet, pre-nostalgia is self-inflicted yet inevitable. Just like Lexie’s death.

Oh, and The Likeness features an outstandingly poignant last paragraph that will mean nothing unless you read the whole book first. Don’t spoil it for yourself!

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I really had a great time with this book and can’t wait until Superfast to-be-homeschooled Toddler is big enough to appreciate it. My favorite class when I was a girl in an all-girls’ school was British History with Mrs. Phillips. For a long time I could actually recite all of the rulers of England, starting with William the Conqueror. My friend Bethany and I thought it was hilarious that our book specified that William landed on the shores of England and 9 am, and because it mentioned that the waters were cold and we were also taking French, we speculated at 9:01 he must’ve said, “Aie!”

There’s nothing about dear Bill in Raucous Royals, there are lots of fun treats like a cryptography lesson in the section on Mary, Queen of Scots–with a tantalizing tidbit on why J, V, and W are missing.

Carlyn Beccia also maintains a fascinating blog with even more historical mysteries. It’s a must read for anyone who enjoys seeing the past come to life.

Check out today’s posts from the other bloggers on the tour:

01 Charger, the 160acrewoods, A Mom Speaks, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Fireside Musings, The Friendly Book Nook, The Hidden Side of a Leaf, Homeschool Buzz, Hyperbole, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maw Books Blog, Never Jam Today, Our Big Earth, Quiverfull Family, Reading is My Superpower, SmallWorld Reads, SMS Book Reviews

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Today is day one of the blog tour for The Raucous Royals: Test Your Royal Wits: Crack Codes, Solve Mysteries, and Deduce Which Royal Rumors are True by Carlyn Beccia. Quite a mouthful–but the book lives up, being jam-packed with all kinds of fun trivia about famous figures from the history of British Royalty.

The book is formatted as an adventure for kids to play through. Each section starts with a rumor, such as, “Rumor: King Richard III murdered his nephews! True or False?”

There’s a fun illustration, the dates of King Richard III’s lifespan, and a paragraph on the background of the story, ending with a challenge:

But Richard had a solution. He crowned himself king and hid the boys away in the Tower of London. The two princes soon disappeared, and no one knows what happened to them. Rumors spread that Richard had the boys killed in their sleep. Pretty dirty trick, huh? But is it true? Maybe you can solve the mystery…

Next up are bios on the suspects: King Richard III, The Duke of Buckingham, and King Henry VII; the physical evidence, and a testimony from a servant of Richard. I won’t give away the answer, but the solution name checks Sir Thomas More and William Shakespeare, and Beccia even gives a blurb on a mock trial chaired by Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1998.

Raucous Royals is educational, but I think super fun for an inquisitive kid. I think it would be especially fun for homeschooling.

Check out the other blogs on the tour and make sure to stop by the website!

01 Charger, the 160acrewoods, A Mom Speaks, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Fireside Musings, The Friendly Book Nook, The Hidden Side of a Leaf, Homeschool Buzz, Hyperbole, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maw Books Blog, Never Jam Today, Our Big Earth, Quiverfull Family, Reading is My Superpower, SmallWorld Reads, SMS Book Reviews

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Review:
I am so not cool enough for Little Brother. I’ve never hacked, coded, partitioned or flashmobbed. I don’t understand crypto and I’ve never touched an Xbox. I did learn BASIC programming when I was in elementary school, and one time I spent half a day typing in commands that I got from Mad Magazine, promising to render a picture of Alfred E. Newman right there on my Apple II+. When I hit RUN, imagine how disillusioned my 9-year-old self was to see my screen fill up with green, save for one blank dot right in the middle. Oh, Mad. You so crazy. I decided to stick with reading and counted cross stitch.

Little Brother follows a technologically adept teenager who builds an underground computer network in order to get around the Department of Homeland Security’s stranglehold on civil rights. Marcus is way smart, yet he keeps on underestimating the power that he has to sway the masses. Time and again, he sees that his flash mobs are no better than the terrorists that DHS purports to fight. Yet he keeps persevering, trying to find his righteousness, continually returning to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to remind him what the fight is all about.

There’s a love story, too, and a coming of age story featuring parents who just don’t understand. And just as Moby-Dick interspersed Captain Ahab’s metaphysical quest with the minutiae of whaling (whale-penis costume, anyone?), Little Brother digresses into discourses on the history of the internet, the logistics of cryptography, and the addictive power of writing code. Somehow author Cory Doctorow manages to keep it all from feeling pedantic, mainly because he obviously shares Marcus’s passion and exuberance.

The book suffers a bit from too much speechifying, and there’s not much depth in the character development. However, it’s a fun, breezy read with a worthwhile lesson about civil liberties and the importance of freedom.

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Review:
I should have reviewed this book in two parts, because it’s published that way, as Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel. Perhaps I would be less intimidated by the prospect of discussing what ended up being an immense, sprawling, daunting work if I took smaller bites. Too late now.

The Book of the New Sun is an epic fantasy with science fiction elements, or perhaps it is the other way around. I’m not really sure how to classify it. One of the blurbs on the back of the book summons Swift, Dickens, Spenser and Wagner, and I saw all of the above influences within the book. More than anything, however, I was reminded of The Brothers Karamazov. As in Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece, The Book of the New Sun is guided less by narrative agency and more by outsized moments of grotesquerie, beauty, philosophy and mystery. There is no guiding hand behind Severian’s elevation; unlike in Karamazov, God is not a force with which to be reckoned.

Superfast Toddler is stirring from her nap, and I’m far more interested in hearing what others have to say than in my own thoughts on this book. If you’ve read it, please leave a comment and tell me what you thought!

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1. I give books away all the time, and never expect anyone to return a book I’ve loaned to them. Of course, when it’s a loan I do hope that the books come back to me, but I never sweat it if they don’t.

2. I always return books that I borrow in a timely fashion. I have stopped borrowing books from friends because my TBR stack is so crazy big that I would have to keep their books longer than makes me comfortable.

3. I used to be pretty good in French and read “Les Jeux Sont Fait” by Jean-Paul Sartre in the original French when I was 17. I can’t remember a thing about it now.

4. I rarely blog about the parenting books I read because I worry that I will alienate readers who have different opinions about parenting than I do. I see so much divisiveness over parenting issues and don’t want to bring them here.

5. In addition to books, I read cookbooks and magazines. I read The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly every week. Monthly/bi-monthly I read Touchstone, Cook’s Illustrated, and the free issues of Cookie, Parenting, and Wonder Time that I got just by having a baby. I’m not renewing any of those subscriptions. In the past, I would always get a trashy women’s magazine and a Vanity Fair whenever I flew somewhere.

6. Superfast Husband is not much of a reader. He is very smart and when he does read, he reads challenging stuff, but he doesn’t need to read every day. I always thought I’d end up with another book nerd, but it doesn’t really bother me because I like lots of other things about him that he wouldn’t have time to do if he was reading like me.

7. It took having a baby for me to have a day without reading.

I’m tagging:
Sense of Wonder
Rhinoa’s Ramblings
James Rovira
Imani
Eva
Restless Reader
Bybee

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