"Wizards, Aliens, and Starships" by Charles L. Adler

This book purports to be a serious look at the physics and math involved in various fantasy and sci-fi topics. It is... sort of that. The book is divided into four sections: "Potter Physics," "Space Travel," "Worlds and Aliens," and "Year Googol".

"Potter Physics" is the only one to really discuss fantasy, and it mostly points out that a lot of fantasy magic violates either the Law of Conservation of Mass or the most depressing law of thermodynamics (that being entropy). There's also discussion of how the law of conservation of momentum plus the earth's rotation would majorly mess with teleportation, and some decently interesting things about various mythical creatures like dragons and giants.

"Space Travel" is about, y'know, space travel. While it does take an approach I haven't seen before, in that it covers the absolute energy cost of space travel in physics instead of just "as we make better rockets, space travel will get easier", it also is composed of mostly "this is how we could make better rockets" as opposed to "this is how these specific fictional rockets could work".

"World and Aliens" is mostly about exoplanets and the search for life on them. It doesn't really have much of anything to do with any specific fiction.

And "Year Googol" is just depressing, because it's about how long a civilization could theoretically last before inevitably dying of entropy. And personally, as I said, I think inevitably dying of entropy is depressing.

So Wizards, Aliens, and Starships is less "the physics of this specific science fiction" and more "some general physics about vaguely science fiction topics". Which is still interesting, but not as interesting to me as the first option would have been. (Granted, there are probably legal problems inherent to writing a book entirely about other people's books. But even so.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+, generally. There's nothing untoward about it.

3 stars.

(Endnote: It's mostly starships. Not a lot of wizards or aliens.)

"Carry On, Jeeves" by P. G. Wodehouse

I read this instead of reading some dystopian YA fiction, because I wanted something less depressing and more fun. Carry On, Jeeves did not disappoint. It's about as far from dystopian YA as it's possible to get.

This is a collection of ten (ten? *checks* yes, ten) short stories, most of which have the basic plot of "Bertie Wooster or one of his friends gets into a scrape, and Jeeves gets them out of it." The stories are:

"Jeeves Takes Charge", which details the first meeting between Bertie Wooster and his inimitably competent gentleman's gentleman Jeeves. It wasn't the first story written, but as far as I know it's the first one chronologically.

"The Artistic Career of Corky", which features the memorable phrase |"The Adventures of Baby Blobbs"|. (Spoilered to avoid spoiling the joke, which is best experienced out of the blue for the first time.)

"Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest", "Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg", and "The Aunt and the Sluggard", three fairly normal stories of the "Bertie's-friend-is-in-the-soup-and-Jeeves-gets-him-out-of-it" type.

"The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy", one of the few times it is revealed that |Jeeves did not simply spring fully formed from the head of Zeus, and in fact does have relatives|.

"Without the Option" and "Fixing it for Freddie", two instances of the "Bertie-is-in-the-soup" type of story.

"Clustering Round Young Bingo", one which features the recurring characters of Bertie Wooster's Aunt Dahlia and her French cook Anatole. Possibly the first one with them, but also possibly not, because these weren't written in any particular order.

And finally, "Bertie Changes His Mind", the only Jeeves and Wooster story ever to be narrated by Jeeves. It is exactly like what one would expect from something starring him.

Despite my general dislike for stories about people getting into trouble, I can't help but like P. G. Wodehouse books. Perhaps because you always know, reading them, that no matter how deep in the soup anyone is, Jeeves will somehow get them out again. He will also prevail over Bertie's occasionally atrocious fashion sense.

Jonathan Cecil, who did most of the audiobooks, is forever enshrined in my head as the voice for all of these characters.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+.

4 stars.

(Endnote: I deeply regret that I couldn't say "Roderick Spode" anywhere in this review. This is for the simple reason that he's not in the book.)

"Masterminds: Payback" by Gordon Korman

I was wrong. None of these people have superpowers.

I do, however, continue in my opinion that I'd be fine with it if the series were just about Eli and Tori, to the exclusion of the other four |(or five)| protagonists. They're the Jessicae (see my previous Masterminds post), and I'd happily read a series just about them.

For people who have been taught morality all their lives, these kids' moral compasses are remarkably shot. They take to lying and stealing and skulduggery really quickly. Original sin showing through, I suppose. For all that, they |don't stay in their life of crime at the end, so that's a point in their favor, I guess|.

Probably the single most charismatic character in this book is |Bartholomew Glen, the notorious (and fictional) serial killer. He's thoroughly evil, and he's in the book for like six pages, but one can hardly take one's metaphorical eyes off him during those six pages|.

|"Crushed to death by a manta ray"| is not a |villain death| I've ever seen before. Are |manta rays| even |heavy enough| to |crush someone|? I don't know. |Here, I'll go three for three on the| potato soup |jokes in my reviews of this series|.

As this is the final book in the series, I shall now talk about the series as a whole. It's, well... it's not the worst series I've ever read, though some of the plot points (coughBookTwoEndingcough) are frankly implausible. As I've been saying, the protagonists take to immorality a tad quickly for my liking, and their competence at stealing and hacking and breaking-into-places is somewhat baffling. But there's basically nothing inappropriate in the entire series, so it's got that going for it. The worst is a rather tense woodchipper incident, in which absolutely nobody is harmed.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some violence.

3 stars.

(Endnote: Who's "Back", and why do we have to pay him?)

"Masterminds: Criminal Destiny" by Gordon Korman

I would be just as happy, if not happier, if Malik and Amber weren't in this story at all.

Perhaps I should explain that a bit. This book has four POV characters: Malik Bruder, Amber Laska, Eli Freiden, and Tori Pritel. Malik and Amber are the tough ones, and Eli and Tori are the smart ones; the second pair, together, fill the role of the Jessica for me. Unfortunately all the characters get about an equal amount of screen time, so I have to sit through Malik's and Amber's chapters to get to those of Tori and Eli.

(Explanatory note: The "Jessica" is the one POV character I actually like in a book of multiple POVs. I'll often read said books mostly to get to their parts, and just read other characters' POVs to get to the Jessica's chapters. It's named after the character Jessica from the Mr. Terupt series by Rob Buyea, who ended up being almost the sole reason I was still reading that series.)

I like Eli, and I like Tori. They're both interesting to read about, and I can relate to them. But I don't like Amber or Malik nearly as much, perhaps because they're angrier, more violent, and less... uh... rational? They seem to me like less compelling characters, but your mileage may vary.

If anybody has superpowers, then they haven't manifested yet, aside from one incident on Page 13 where Eli briefly gains the power to literally fly. This is never mentioned or utilized again.

These kids are definitely not beating the |evil clones of criminal masterminds| allegations. So far they've run up normal theft, grand theft, grand theft auto, breaking, entering, breaking and entering, driving without a license, assault and battery, threats of violence, freight train hopping, innumerable traffic violations caused by learning to drive from videogames (yes, really), juvenile delinquency, trespassing, escaping police custody, |breaking a notorious criminal out of prison|, abduction (I think), and jaywalking. Not in that particular order.

The climax involves the kids |breaking a notorious criminal (who's also one of their clone sources) out of prison, which turns out to be an evil plot by the people behind the cloning; they manipulated the kids into breaking him out because he's actually one of them|. The trouble with that is |the kids' decision to break him out of prison hinges on a lot of mostly uncontrollable factors that all have to line up perfectly: the kids have to decide to go back to the town of Serenity, they have to decide to search the abandoned factory, they have to actually find the one piece of evidence planted for them, they have to manage to deobfuscate it, they have to decide to go visit this specific guy in prison, and they have to pull off the breakout itself. And not many of those can be planned for, especially because the villains have no actual contact or influence (even covertly) with the kids for almost the entire book|.

|But if you're going to have a "You thought you were foiling my plans, but you've actually just fallen into my trap!" moment, it has to feel earned. You can do that in one of two ways: either the actions the heroes take are the only ones they realistically would, or the villain has to have a hand in basically every place the heroes might turn away from the desired course -- basically, they have to be manipulating every decision the heroes make along the way to the villain's desired outcome. [Now I shall say| potato soup |to confuse people who didn't highlight the spoiler tags.] Unfortunately, neither of those is true here; there are many times when the kids might just as easily have done something else, and looking back, I can't see any villainous influence in any of them. So... that could have been done better.|

(I was critiquing the ending in the above two giant redacted paragraphs.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some violence.

3 stars.

(Endnote: There's also a companion short story, "Masterminds: Criminal Density", about stealing neutron stars.)

"Masterminds" by Gordon Korman

Why, why can't we have an idyllic, crimeless town/city/enclave/whatever without it actually being some sort of dystopian plot? Why is the plot always "the utopia is secretly evil" and not "evil threatens the utopia"?

While I vastly prefer the latter, I don't actually dislike the former as much as the above paragraph suggests. I think it's a tad overused, but it does work. Which is good, because this book is one of the first type of plots-that-involve-a-utopia.

Speaking of plot. Masterminds is about five kids who live in the town of Serenity, New Mexico. It's idyllic and peaceful, unlike the outside world with its alien concepts of "poverty" and "fighting", and nobody even knows the words for bad things like murder. Pretty much the sole employer in the town is a factory that makes traffic cones.

It is, of course, also all a lie. The tagline "A perfect life. A perfect lie." on the cover kind of spoils that. It's actually |a giant nature-versus-nurture experiment|: our five protagonists are |clones of notorious (and fictional) criminals|, and the people running this |illegal experiment| are trying to |see whether raising them in an environment entirely free from bad influences will make any difference in whether or not they turn out evil|. The protagonists may also |have superpowers, but if they do, nobody's superpowers have properly manifested yet by the end of this book. I have, however, made a joke about| potato soup.

Yes, it's kids versus adults. Not my favorite trope, but it's not a deal-breaker for me. And the kids are thirteen, which last I checked is not twelve.

For people who have been raised in an idyllic, crimeless town, these kids take to stealing things and sneaking around and general skulduggery very quickly. They're really not beating the |evil mastermind| allegations.

This suffers a bit from being the first book in what was clearly always intended to be a series, so it ends a tad early for my tastes, leaving a bunch of plot threads unresolved. It takes almost the entire book just to |get out of the town|. (Though if I recall correctly The Giver also took almost the entire book to do the same, so I can't complain too hard. But The Giver also never gave me feelings of "this is getting boring, can we please move on with the plot already.")

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some violence.

3 stars.

(Endnote: The way the title is formatted makes me almost want to call it MasterMinds instead.)

"The Revolutionary Samuel Adams" by Stacy Schiff

This book is less a biography of Samuel Adams and more a history of all the 18th-century politics he was involved in. And there's a reason for that; perhaps because his primary occupation was rabble-rousing, Adams was an incredibly private person. He wrote under dozens of different pseudonyms, we never know quite where he was at any one time (except when he needed an alibi; we know exactly where he was during the Boston Tea Party), and he seldom signed his letters. He's like the Invisible Man: we can't see him directly, but we kind of know where he is and what he's doing by looking at the aftereffects.

As was the fashion at the time, most of Samuel Adams's subversive newspaper articles were written under pseudonyms. My favorite one was "Vindex"; the actual Vindex was a Roman general who rebelled against Nero, but I was heartily amused by how it sounds like you're saying "Windex" with a vampire accent.

The book spends about a chapter on Adams's early life and about a chapter on his later life. They're not the important part. Also his life after the Revolution is kind of sad; he was very good at rabble-rousing, but got kind of lost and fell out of favor when rabble-rousing was now counterproductive in our newly formed nation and everybody had the rights he was yelling about not having.

But the parts in the middle are not sad. They are in fact kind of funny, with how the royal governors despair of their inability to actually do anything about this one guy who they know, but cannot prove, keeps writing subversive essays and turning the town of Boston against them. And then the one time they try taking him out is foiled by Paul Revere.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+, probably, for some violence.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    If you read only the essays in the papers you might reasonably conclude that ancient Romans peopled eighteenth-century New England.

    Page 159.

(Endnote: Von, two, three bottles of Vindex. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.)

Mini-Reviews 19: Remaining Quest Objectives

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

I can see why this is such a popular book. I mean, it kept me interested while I was sleep-deprived on an airplane, and that is no mean feat.

Treasure Island doesn't use all the pirate tropes, it started all the pirate tropes.

My mom reviewed this, and this mini-review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for reckless violence.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, adventure, classics, pirates, rated E10+

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

I didn't enjoy reading this, and I think the reason for that is twofold: A) I'm too old for it, and B) it was meant to be read aloud.

This mini-review is also part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. It's meant to be read aloud to children.

2 stars. Star ratings are a subjective measure of how much I liked a book, not a more objective measure of how good a book is, and I didn't enjoy reading this.

Tags for this one: 2-star, classics, rated E, talking animals

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

Honestly, I like this better now that I'm older. When I was younger, I found the book too tense, but I think it's just right for me now. Also it's about a mouse, so that's a definite plus in my opinion (I am, after all, the person who named his blog "Sam the Library Mouse").

I really enjoyed how the toy motorcycle works. You make it go by making motorcycle noises. It's just such a fun explanation. |And it's made even better by the toy ambulance, which shows up later in the book, being powered by making ambulance noises.|

This mini-review, too, is part of my first completed quest. Hence the title of the collection.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. Nothing objectionable.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, rated E, talking animals

(Endnote: Oddly enough, all three of these books have prominently yellow covers.)

"The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin

I have read this book so often I could probably review it from memory.

The first completed quest (of which this review is a part) was a nice excuse to reread it, though. I've read this book so often I feel like I know all the characters, so rereading it feels like hanging out with friends. And I don't even have to |ENDING SPOILERS not get attached to one of these people|, because |none of them is the murderer|.

The Westing Game is described as a "puzzle mystery," meaning that there's a puzzle to figure out. I did not figure it out when I first read the book, and neither did I do so on subsequent read-throughs, because then I already knew the answer. If you did what I didn't (i.e. |put all the clues together in one place and tried to solve them like that|), it does seem to be possible to solve it yourself.

My mom has reviewed this, twice. She likes it as much as I do.

Let the reader beware that exposure to this book may cause one to go around shouting "Boom!" at people for some time afterward.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for being a murder mystery. Other than that there's basically nothing untoward in the entire book; no swearing, no graphic violence, no (even mildly) suggestive themes...

5 stars.

        Today I have gathered together my nearest and dearest, my sixteen nieces and nephews 

    "What!"

        (Sit down, Grace Windsor Wexler!)

    The lawyer stammered an apology to the still-standing woman. "I was only reading; I mean, those are Mr. Westing's words."

    Pages 28-29. It's from the reading of Sam Westing's very strange will, which kicks off the titular Westing Game.

    First murder, now a swear word.

    Page 30. The swear word in question actually isn't one; it's "dastardly". When I first read this I didn't know the swear word that "dastardly" sounds like, so I didn't really get this joke until I was older.

(Endnote: Buy Westing Paper Products!)

"Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell

I first read this book for a literature class. I didn't really like it then; I didn't dislike it, but I also didn't like it.

Happily, I liked it much better this time around, now that it wasn't compulsory. Also I've read and enjoyed a few surviving-alone-in-the-wilderness books since then, which heightened my appreciation of this one. I actually rather like surviving-alone-in-the-wilderness books, for all that I don't read very many of them.

I found it darkly funny how |Karana and her younger brother are initially set up to be trapped on the island together|, only for |her brother to tragically be killed by wild dogs within like a day|. Granted, Island of the Blue Dolphins is based on a true story, and that's one of the things that happened in that true story, so it's not like the author decided to do it for no good reason. But the |abruptness of it| still mildly amuses me in a gallows-humor sort of way.

There's a |missionary| who shows up in this near the end. He's onscreen for roughly a single page, but he's a good |missionary| from what little we see of him. (Spoiler-tagged because that's sort of an ending spoiler.)

This review is part of my first completed quest.

The cover image was scanned by yours truly, because I could not for the life of me find a good image on the Internet of the version we have. Any defects are either my fault or the fault of the fact that our copy is old and slightly worn.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for violence (thanks, wild dogs).

4 stars.

(Endnote: The island of the blue dolphins can never be the same since the day the dolphins mysteriously turned beige.)

"Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi

This book is odd.

I thought, from its reputation, that it was written sometime in the 1700s. It wasn't. It was written, and is set, in the 1880s. But it seems older. It's also shorter than I expected; I thought it was going to be really long and take me forever to read, and I was wrong about that.

Pinocchio (which I always want to spell Pinnochio, with two N's and one C) is one of those morality stories that don't even bother to stop just short of hitting you over the head with their moral lessons. It hammers home its point of "boys should be good and not lazy or disobedient" with what may as well be an actual hammer. And also with some really strange situations -- Pinocchio's entire school class going to the Land of Toys for five months and then spontaneously transforming into donkeys comes to mind. As I said, this book is odd.

Early on in the story, Pinocchio visits the Inn of the Red Lobster. I can only assume that they have good biscuits there.

For all that "Pinocchio's nose gets longer whenever he tells a lie" is what everyone thinks of when they hear "Pinocchio", that's not actually a major part of the book. It's in a grand total of one scene. The getting-eaten-by-a-giant-shark, however, is a more major part of the book.

Pinocchio does get better, eventually, but it takes being put into a situation where getting better is literally his only option. It also takes him almost the entire book before he gets put into that situation, so for most of the book, despite his efforts (of varying sincerity) to get better, he keeps being lured away or presented with an easy way out. Which makes him slightly annoying to read.

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for being weird. There's bits of it that are honestly creepy if you think about them for long enough.

3 stars. 

Favorite lines:

    "I am the ghost of the Talking Cricket."

    Page I-haven't-the-faintest-idea-because-I-read-this-on-Project-Gutenberg-and-it-was-just-one-long-text-file-with-no-page-breaks. It's said by the ghost of the Talking Cricket, and it greatly amused me for some reason. I'm not sure why.

(Endnote: Sadly, my endnote was swallowed by the Terrible Shark.)

"The Hobbit" by J. R. R. Tolkien

One does not simply review The Hobbit.

I'm serious. You read it, you nod and you're like "oh, yup, that was a really good book," and then you go on your way. Nowhere in there does "reviewing" factor into it, because honestly, what would you even say?

Apparently, this.

I liked it reasonably well, although sometimes the narration style (with occasional asides of "of course, if he had known this, he would have...") got on my nerves. But as we later learn in Lord of the Rings that this is originally told by Bilbo as a story to small children, it does kind of fit.

Smaug is the best dragon. (He agrees with me on that point.) He's arrogant and powerful and terrifying and dramatic, and most importantly, he's villainous. All fictional dragons should aspire to be Smaug.

As it turns out, one also does not simply review The Hobbit because one does not have much to say about it.

My mom reviewed this, twice (first review, second review). This review is also part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence and giant spiders.

4 stars.

(Endnote: Most of this book is actually based on a much older text by someone named Bilbo Baggins.)

"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain

This review was definitely not written by a bunch of random other bloggers who I tricked into thinking it was a great privilege.

Does anyone remember Sid? I didn't. He's just so eminently forgettable next to Tom. So much so, in fact, that I forgot about him again between the middle and the end of the book. 

This book is full of little bits that remind me of myself at that age. Coming up with elaborate fake battles, falling into the depths of despair then getting right back out when something new happens, bits of aimless trolling... It's good to know that the vibes of being an eleven-ish-year-old boy haven't changed much since the 1830s. (I know this was written in 1876, but it's set in the 1830s.)

Also, getting into trouble. I have never liked getting into trouble, and thus have also never liked reading about people who do. So Tom Sawyer, who purposely does stuff he's not supposed to and then gets into trouble for it, is initially not very fun for me to read about.

But he's one of the rare characters who annoys me to start with and then gets less annoying as the book progresses. He proves he can take things seriously if needed, and there is a good heart in him. It's just buried under a lot of antics and a conviction that he is most definitely the coolest person around.

Sigh. Okay. Brief note about the racial slurs. Black people get called "negroes," among other things, in this book. In modern times, we shouldn't say that; they shouldn't have said that back then either. However, this book was written and is set when that was what they were called. Yes, it's offensive to modern people, and it was offensive back then too; however, it's also period-correct, as we know because it was written by a person in that period. I'm not saying it's good that people are saying slurs, but it honestly wouldn't make sense if they weren't; while not good, it was widespread at the time. This concludes my brief note about the racial slurs, which is also the longest paragraph in the review.

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for scariness and some mild violence.

4 stars.

(Endnote: Shenanigans! Many shenanigans are had in this book. I wanted to use that word in the body of the review, but couldn't find a good place for it, so now it's in the endnote.)

"The Black Stallion" by Walter Farley

The Black Stallion goes very fast. 

"But Sam," you may ask, "do you mean the book or the horse?" And the answer to that question is "Yes." The Black Stallion is a very fast-paced book, and the Black Stallion is a very fast horse.

It starts with a young boy of unspecified age, Alec Ramsay, who's the only survivor of a shipwreck. Well, the only human survivor; there's also a giant black horse. Having nothing better to do, Alec and the horse become friends during the time they're both stuck on a deserted island, and they remain friends when they get rescued and go back to New York.

The horse himself is rather wild and untamed-horse-ish, but he's also really fast. As in, wins-horse-races fast. So I think you can see where this is going; obviously, the Black Stallion is going to win some horse races.

This is not a terribly complicated or intricate book. It is, however, a fun one. I don't think there's actually a main antagonist, but there doesn't really need to be.

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for mild violence and mild blood.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    "It's good to be home," answered Alec. His mother smiled. 

    The Black moved restlessly beside him. Alec looked at him, then at his parents. "He's mine," he said proudly.

    "I was afraid of that," said his father.

    Page 85.

(Endnote: My mom also reviewed this.)

"Watership Down" by Richard Adams

Well, now I've read this.

I don't have very coherent thoughts about it, to be honest. It was better than I expected, but I still probably won't read it again for quite a while (if ever); it's also long and rather depressing, and I could only take so much at a time.

Watership Down has a bit of a problem in that its subject matter and its tone do not match: it's dark and long and depressing and occasionally violent, and it's about rabbits. That may be part of why it took me so long to read.

For whatever reason, the rabbits in this can't count past four. The numbers the know encompass zero through four, plus "all of them".

One of the characters in this, Fiver, kicks off the plot (and helps the rabbits through much of the rest of it) by having prophetic visions. But in the best nature of prophetic visions everywhere, they're apparently kind of trippy, so I had a joke theory for a while that he just had weirdly pertinent hallucinations.

|Nobody| dies in the |final battle|. However, |Richard Adams seemed to me like the sort of author who would kill off characters if given a reason, so I went through that entire ending sequence fully expecting someone to tragically die|.

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence and some veiled sexual references. This was intended as a children's book, so there's not a lot of violence in it (although, given the reputation the book has, I must acknowledge that there is still some).

3 stars, on the grounds that while it's well-written and I dare even say the ending is good, the rest of the book is long and difficult. Much like the rabbits' journey, I suppose, but that doesn't make it fun to read.

Favorite lines:

    ...Then, very quietly and with no trace of fear, the strange rabbit [Fiver] said,

    "I am sorry for you with all my heart. But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could."

    "Blame you?" answered Vervain. "Blame you for what?"

    "For your death. Believe me, I am sorry for your death."

    Page 452. Probably the best line in the entire book.

(Endnote: Next I'll be reviewing the spinoff, Airship Sideways.)

"Walk Two Moons" by Sharon Creech

I first read this book as a preteen. I didn't like it; later, I came to the conclusion that I was simply too young for it. And I still think I was too young for it then, but I also still don't like it. But I dislike it for different reasons this time!

Walk Two Moons is the sort of children's book that grown-ups think is good. Hence, probably, why it won the Newbery Medal. It's got tragedy, complex characters, that plot-within-a-plot thing that you sometimes get in this sort of book... all the things that make adults go "What a good book!" and make kids go "uhhhhhh..."

Basically, a thirteen-ish-year-old girl (the book does its best to avoid giving us any numbers regarding her age, perhaps in an attempt to make it appeal to a wider age range, but I infer from some context that she's thirteenish) has a mom who, some time ago, went to Idaho. And didn't come back. Our main character, Salamanca "Sal" Hiddle, misses her mom a lot, and embarks upon an Epic Quest (also known as a road trip) with her grandparents to go to Idaho and find her mom.

Along the way, she tells her grandparents the tale of Phoebe Winterbottom, one of her classmates. Phoebe's family has gone slightly weird from trying to be too perfect, and it's also (maybe) being stalked by a (maybe) lunatic. (Phoebe has a very vivid imagination and is convinced that this person she keeps seeing is a lunatic who's going to murder them all.) The tale of Phoebe Winterbottom also incudes general bits about Sal's school and home life. These sections serve as the "plot-within-a-plot" I mentioned above.

Sal's mom, by the way, |is dead|. I debated whether or not to spoiler that, because there's a lot of subtext that points to it. However, I can't speak to how clear that subtext is; I entirely missed it the first time I read this, but I was also bad at subtext in general at that age, and this time around I knew what it pointed to.

All right, the two main reasons why I didn't like it this time.

First: Phoebe Winterbottom annoys me. She's a good character, because she has both flaws and personality, but unfortunately one of her flaws is "getting on my nerves". Part of that may be because I don't like stuck-up characters in general, and Phoebe has acquired some upsticking as part of her family's attempt to be too perfect.

Second: Animism. Y'know how the book is named from a Native American proverb--something like "Before you judge a man, first walk two moons in his moccasins"? That sort of flavor runs throughout the whole book. There's random throwaway lines about praying to trees (don't pray to trees, by the way, they can't hear you so there's no point) and the like, and there's also a wistful and vaguely spritiualist denouement featuring a quote that quite conclusively shows the incompleteness of worldviews that don't include the Fall.

(I know I broke parallelism in the above two paragraphs. I couldn't figure out a better way to say them.)

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+. I don't like the book, but there's nothing really objectionable in it, aside from the animism and such (which I think ten-year-olds should be able to handle).

2 stars.

Unfavorite Lines Which I Wish To Refute:

    It seems to me that we can't explain all the truly awful things in the world like war and murder and brain tumors...

    Page 263. We can explain all the truly awful things in the world. They're Satan's fault. They came in via the Fall. That's literally what the Fall was.

(Endnote: Personally, I prefer the Discworld version of the proverb, that being the words of the trollish philosopher Plateau: "If you wants to understan' an enemy, you gotta walk a mile in his shoes. Den, if he's still your enemy, at least you're a mile away and he's got no shoes.")

"Charlotte's Web" by E. B. White

I did not expect to like this book. However, unlike Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, I actually did end up liking Charlotte's Web.

Before we go any further, I must provide a content warning for spiders. This is a book that heavily involves spiders (one spider in particular). If you have arachnophobia, maybe don't read it.

That said. Charlotte, the spider in question, is one of the most charactery characters I've seen in quite a while. She has a specific personality, and one that's evident pretty much as soon as you meet her. I'm not quite sure how the author managed to characterize Charlotte so well in only a few pages, but there you have it.

Actually, E. B. White displays an amazing ability with dialogue here. You can practically hear the tone of voice.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+, probably, for spiders and for the plot hinging on trying to avert the main character's impending death.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    "Can I have a pig, too, Pop?" asked Avery.

    "No, I only distribute pigs to early risers," said Mr. Arable. "Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one, to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly."

    Page 5, showcasing again the author's ability with dialogue.

    Mothers for miles around worried about Zuckerman's swing. They feared some child would fall off. But no child ever did. Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.

    Page 69.

(Endnote: This book has nothing to do with Charlotte, North Carolina.)

"Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" by Judy Blume

I did not expect to like this book. Turns out, I don't like this book, so my expectations were correct. And that is entirely due to:

"Look for the other books about Peter, Sheila, and the irrepressible Fudge!"

     -the back cover

"Fudge should be repressed."

     -me to my family midway through reading this

Fudge is the protagonist's incredibly annoying younger brother. He is, as you may have guessed, incredibly annoying. So kudos to Judy Blume for making him authentically awful, but at the same time, he's so awful that he ruins pretty much the entire book for me. Much like he ruins pretty much the entire book for his older brother, come to think of it.

Really, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is a cautionary tale on how toddlers (in general) will be as awful as they can get away with, and if you parent your toddler wrong (i.e. letting them get away with things) the toddler will be awful. If you ever find anyone who doesn't believe in original sin, just point them at a small child who's been parented badly (i.e. allowed to get away with things).

But hey, fourth graders aren't twelve! So there's that, at least.

Note: To be clear, I have nothing against twelve-year-olds. It's just that they comprise approximately 96% of all middle-grade fiction protagonists, so I'm kind of tired of reading about them.

I expected to dislike this, because I expected it to be a ten-year-old girl having school drama. Instead I disliked it because it was a nine-year-old boy having family drama with his incredibly annoying younger brother. I've never had an incredibly annoying younger brother, but I'm glad of that fact and have no desire to experience such a sibling vicariously.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for Fudge.

2 stars. Which rating it only manages because I generally reserve one-star ratings for things like "wildly inappropriate content" or "portraying Satan as a good guy".

(Endnote: I'm starting a petition to put Fudge in a timeout and ignore him until he behaves.)

Mini-Reviews 18: Wheels on a Big Rig

Callings for Life: God's Plan, Your Purpose by Jeffrey Leininger

This book takes a hundred and fifty-four pages to say something that I can pretty comprehensively sum up in three sentences: "God probably hasn't called you to do something grand and epic, so you should focus on where God has put you now rather than the grand and epic thing you think God wants you to do. Having a normal life is not bad, and you should value it. God intends you to do a lot of small things rather than one really huge thing."

As you may have suspected, I was not enthralled. Oh, it's a lovely exploration of the doctrine of vocation, I just couldn't get into it because A) I fully grasped the point from reading the back cover, and B) I already understand the doctrine of vocation. I read nonfiction to learn things, and I honestly don't learn much from a book that repeatedly tells me something I already know for 154 pages.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for people dying in some of the examples it gives. It would make a supremely boring videogame.

3 stars. It's not a bad book, it's just also not the right one for me.

Tags for this one: 3-star, Christian nonfiction, nonfiction, rated E10+

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams 

This book is quite short. Also slightly sad. Though not as sad as I was expecting, given that I expected |the titular rabbit to die outright, and he only sort of dies|. Also there's a fairy involved. 

I had to look up what velveteen was, because I didn't actually know. It's apparently "velvet but instead of making it velvety by cutting the vertical threads, you make it velvety by cutting the horizontal threads." Or something of that sort.

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for being sad.

3 stars. It somehow manages to be both slightly depressing and slightly sappy.

Tags for this one: 3-star, rated E10+

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater

This book is less short than The Velveteen Rabbit is, but I have similarly little to say about it. Hence this being a mini-review.

The plot of this is not terribly believable, but that's part of its charm.

This review is also part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, junior fiction, rated E

(Endnote: And they're rollin' rollin' rollin', rollin' rollin' rollin)

"Peter Pan" by J. M. Barrie

To anyone who thinks the movies made this book weird (I don't actually know if anyone holds that opinion but it sounds like the sort of opinion people would hold): that's entirely possible, but please keep in mind that the book was already weird.

Speaking of adaptations and retellings and things, could the people writing the retellings stop making Captain Hook cool? He's really not. He's evil, and not even the cool kind.

One thing which I rather liked about the book (and which none of the adaptations I've seen do) is that Neverland is a sort of imaginary-but-also-not place built out of the children's mental worlds. That would be a really interesting thing to explore in an adaptation or a retelling. (Though, personally, I suspect that any Neverland containing my mental world would either be rather boring or utterly terrifying.)

The beginning takes great pains to assure you that no, this was not all a dream. I appreciate that.

Neverland itself reminds me of the island-where-dreams-come-true from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for scary scenes and fantasy violence. And Captain Jas. Hook being an awful person.

3 stars.

(Endnote: Did you know there's actually a sequel? It's about Peter's younger brother, Frying.)

"Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien

This is an incredibly unique book.

Just the title alone is unlike pretty much anything else out there, and the plot is similarly singular. Or rather, the basic plot and elements are pretty standard, but it's the way the author goes about it that sets it apart.

It's a talking animal book. The animals have animal-scale problems, but they're also sentient. There's humans, but they're not really characters; that's the animals. All pretty standard, right?

And yet, the author rises above the genericness of those elements into something almost completely novel. The animals (specifically |the rats|) actually consider the ethics of stealing from the humans. There's backstory. There are just... a lot of little details that take this book from normal to excellent.

I've read this book twice; the first time was probably about ten years ago, so I decided to reread it for my first completed quest (which this review is part of). It's a testament to the author's writing that even though I knew pretty much exactly how it ended, the tense parts were still tense.

Approximately half the book is in the present, about Mrs. Frisby. Approximately half the book is flashbacks, about the rats of NIMH. Yes, it's about rats; no, it's not weird and disgusting.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for some scary scenes. All the flashbacks might make it a bit tricky to make into a videogame.

5 stars.

(Endnote: I'm not sure what NIMH actually stands for; I don't think the book ever tells us.)