bookpagedev

Children's & YA

The power of dreams

Review by bookpagedev

Littlest One isn’t quite sure what she is. She’s practically transparent, but she casts a shadow. She’s not like a dog (she doesn’t have a tail, after all), and yet she doesn’t seem quite human. All she knows is that she is learning, slowly, to do a most important job. Littlest is a dream-giver, one of countless of her kind assigned to grant dreams to humans. Along with her teacher, Thin Elderly, Littlest visits the home of an old woman each night. The two travel through the small home, touching objects and gathering their stories: memories, colors, words once spoken, hints of scents and the tiniest fragments of forgotten sound. A photograph of an old lover, an afghan used for cuddling a small child, a stuffed donkey, a beloved piece of music the dream-givers gather these fragments and piece them into a dream, which they bestow on their humans (or sometimes, on their pets). Dream-givers don’t take their work lightly, but they must not become too involved with their humans or their memories. If they delve too deeply, they risk becoming Sinisteeds, menacing creatures that inflict nightmares. When Littlest’s old woman takes in John, an angry young foster child with far too many sad and troubling memories, the Sinisteeds target the boy with some of their most powerful and damaging nightmares. Can Littlest use her creativity, her empathy and her gossamer touch to help save the boy from his haunting past? Although Newbery Award-winning author Lowry’s language is simple and the story straightforward, Gossamer is more complex and thought-provoking than it may appear at first glance. Here Lowry has effectively combined the realms of fantasy and realism. In spare, sometimes lyrical prose, she creates a race of otherworldly beings and an explanation for our dreams, both the comforting ones and the troubling ones. The novel also deals frankly and realistically with issues of foster care, child abuse and abandonment. Through their interactions, humans, dream-givers and readers alike have the opportunity to be transformed. Norah Piehl writes from Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Littlest One isn't quite sure what she is. She's practically transparent, but she casts a shadow. She's not like a dog (she doesn't have a tail, after all), and yet she doesn't seem quite human. All she knows is that she is learning, slowly, to…
Animals

The Philosoher’s Dog

Review by bookpagedev

<B>The Philosoher’s Dog</B> If your brow is high enough and your quest for a deeper understanding of the intricate bond between animal and human life is strong enough, <B>The Philosopher’s Dog: Friendships with Animals</B>by Raimond Gaita offers provocative insight. “The person who has rid himself of the need of others, who longs and grieves for no one, is not someone who is positioned to see things most clearly,” Gaita suggests, and he extends this need to include the love of animals. A professor of philosophy, Gaita uses what he calls a mix of “storytelling and philosophical reflections on the stories” to analyze mankind’s connection to animals. If you are as comfortable with quotes from Socrates and Kierkegaard as you are with tales of Jack the cockatoo and Gypsy the German Shepard, Gaita’s book offers both intellectual challenges and anecdotal treasures.

<B>The Philosoher's Dog</B> If your brow is high enough and your quest for a deeper understanding of the intricate bond between animal and human life is strong enough, <B>The Philosopher's Dog: Friendships with Animals</B>by Raimond Gaita offers provocative insight. "The person who has rid himself…
Nature

Preserving a precious resource

Review by bookpagedev

Throughout the millennia, human beings have existed in a delicate balance with water, beset sometimes by drought, sometimes by flood. In her new book Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst, Diane Ward observes that today “1.4 billion [people], almost twenty percent of those living on the planet, don’t have an adequate supply of clean water.” At the same time, “an overload of water endangers other peoples and places.” Venice is sinking into the sea, Holland’s delta is threatened as never before, and in Louisiana more than a million acres an area larger than the state of Rhode Island has disappeared into the sea. Floods increasingly threaten the majority of the world’s people who live in coastal areas or on floodplains.

Ward, whose rich background includes science writing, has surveyed water systems throughout the world including India, Pakistan, Egypt, China, Holland and many parts of the U.S. Her description of their strengths and weaknesses makes interesting reading. She looks at two momentous changes that are aggravating our eternal struggle for water. We add 90 million people each year to the world’s population, which both increases the water needed and makes less water available, dirtied by inevitable human, industrial and agricultural wastes. And global climate change, arguably “the biggest story of our lifetimes,” Ward observes, may fundamentally alter the planet on which we live, causing a catalog of calamities. Ward’s insights will be valuable as we confront worsening water crises in the future. Small hydroelectric power plants that can cleanly meet the energy needs of communities, although certainly not a complete solution, can be extremely helpful, she notes.

Near its conclusion, Water Wars cites tensions, skirmishes and full-blown wars over water. The attempt by Jordan and its Arab neighbors to divert water from Israel for their own use was a major cause of the Six Days War. Subsequent water agreements in the Middle East, and in the South Asian trouble spot of India and Pakistan, have prevented new conflicts, but throughout the world demand keeps rising and supply keeps falling.

Of course the water dilemma too much in some places, too little in others is beginning to affect us right here in the U.S. Ward emphasizes the need for public involvement in the critical decisions about water that will have to be made in the future. Water Wars can help us make those decisions wisely. Albert Huebner, a physicist, writes widely on science.

Throughout the millennia, human beings have existed in a delicate balance with water, beset sometimes by drought, sometimes by flood. In her new book Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst, Diane Ward observes that today "1.4 billion [people], almost twenty percent…
Children's & YA

Sixth-grade detectives crack the case

Review by bookpagedev

After recovering a priceless painting in Chasing Vermeer, there’s no rest for sixth-grade sleuths Calder and Petra when their free-thinking teacher tells their class that Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1910 Robie House is about to be severed into pieces and distributed to museums around the globe. In Blue Balliett’s The Wright 3, Calder and Petra are joined by Calder’s old friend, Tommy, who has just moved back to their Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. Once again the author introduces children to the world of artistic masterpieces and allows them to consider the meaning of art.

In a framework that combines ghost stories, mystery and adventure, art becomes exciting. As the precocious tweens fight to save the Robie House, they also try to unlock its secrets, including the ghostly shapes that pass by the windows, the messages it seems to emit and Wright’s hidden image. Helping them along the way are Calder’s pentominoes (this time in 3-D), Petra’s notebook and Tommy’s treasure-finding skills, as well as Fibonacci numbers, passages from H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, keen observation reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Rear Window and coincidences galore. Illustrator Brett Helquist once again adds nuance to the text and provides clues in his appealing artwork.

Balliett offers another layer to the novel, realistically depicting middle-school friendships and rivalries. Calder finds himself caught between his two best friends, as the trio must decide whether three heads are better than two or if three’s a crowd. Recognizing one another’s talents and learning to trust helps solidify the Wright 3’s bond.

The author’s Wright stuff surpasses her award-winning first novel, leaving readers to hope that Balliett, who lives within walking distance of the Robie House, will soon seek out yet another artistic treasure and lead us into its mystery. Angela Leeper is an educational consultant, freelance writer and art lover in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

After recovering a priceless painting in Chasing Vermeer, there's no rest for sixth-grade sleuths Calder and Petra when their free-thinking teacher tells their class that Frank Lloyd Wright's 1910 Robie House is about to be severed into pieces and distributed to museums around the globe.…
Animals

The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It

Review by bookpagedev

Geneen Roth’s The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It is a story of self-discovery and a struggle to fully and freely embrace the joys of living even while suffering its pains and sorrows. This time it’s a cat, Mister Blanche, a 20-pound male with a feminine name who looks like a “furry pyramid or a goat with curly stomach hair” who selflessly and wondrously fulfills the need. “Why love someone who is just going to turn around and either leave or die?” Roth agonizes in the early pages of the book, but it is through the actual loss of first her father and then Mister Blanche that she learns how losing a person or a pet you love can ultimately help you learn to love without fear, without reservation. Roth writes with candor and humor and does not spare herself the barb of her own self-awareness. Paralyzed by her fear of her cat’s death, she commissions an artist to immortalize Blanche by painting three portraits of him, and simultaneously makes a commitment to discover her true nature. “I figure it is good to cover all the bases: if I discover that my true nature is nothing to write home about, at least I will have a lot of nice paintings.” Still reigning: cats and dogs If your brow is high enough and your quest for a deeper understanding of the intricate bond between animal and human life is strong enough, The Philosopher’s Dog: Friendships with Animals (Random House, $23.95, 240 pages, ISBN 1400061105) by Raimond Gaita offers provocative insight. “The person who has rid himself of the need of others, who longs and grieves for no one, is not someone who is positioned to see things most clearly,” Gaita suggests, and he extends this need to include the love of animals. A professor of philosophy, Gaita uses what he calls a mix of “storytelling and philosophical reflections on the stories” to analyze mankind’s connection to animals. If you are as comfortable with quotes from Socrates and Kierkegaard as you are with tales of Jack the cockatoo and Gypsy the German Shepard, Gaita’s book offers both intellectual challenges and anecdotal treasures.

Geneen Roth's The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It is a story of self-discovery and a struggle to fully and freely embrace the joys of living even while suffering its pains and sorrows. This time it's a cat,…
Science Fiction & Fantasy

Riding herd on the human race

Review by bookpagedev

Reading The Mount is a challenging, but ultimately rewarding, experience. Author Carol Emshwiller expertly forces readers to identify with a narrator who is shrouded in ignorance and stubbornly resists being coaxed toward enlightenment. Like the best sci-fi, the novel uses a fantastical setting to illustrate a painfully realistic internal struggle.

Charley is a mount, a member of the human race on an Earth that has been invaded by small, weak-legged aliens the humans call Hoots. Hoots have used their superior senses and intellects to enslave humanity, training and riding them as we do horses, keeping them in stables, even breeding them to produce specific characteristics. Charley’s a Seattle, the breed engineered for superior strength and stamina. He’s also a Tame, i.e., born in captivity. Escape has never crossed his mind. As the mount of the Future-Leader-of-Us-All, a baby Hoot called Little Master, Charley enjoys every luxury: a comfortable stall, good shoes, plenty of playtime, plenty of food. The only thing he lacks is something that, as an adolescent, he hasn’t yet learned to value: his freedom. When Charley’s father a Tame who escaped and now runs with the Wilds scattered through the nearby mountains leads a raid on the village and frees Charley and his young rider, the teenage mount is resentful. Why should he give up his comfortable home just to run around in the mountains where there are no shoes, no racing trophies, not enough food and a bunch of Wilds who aren’t even purebred Seattles? On top of that, he doesn’t like his father partly because he’s a giant of a man who can barely speak, thanks to the scars left in his mouth by the spiked metal bit he wore as a Guard’s Mount, but mostly because the pure-blooded patriarch is in love with a lean, lanky Tennessee, not a Seattle. If his father and the Tennessee had a child, Charley frets, it would be a “nothing,” neither Seattle nor Tennessee, and no Hoot would want to ride it.

As Charley struggles with his conflicting emotions devotion to his Little Master, desire for prestige in the Hoot world, pride in his breeding, a growing admiration for his father, inexplicable fondness for a “nothing” girl the foolish bigotry, misplaced loyalty and other trappings of his upbringing slowly fall away.

Emshwiller is a much-admired writer in the genre who won the World Fantasy Award for her short story collection, The Start of the End of It All. Her new novel is a beautifully written, allegorical tale full of hope that even the most unenlightened soul can shrug off the bonds of internalized oppression and finally see the light. Becky Ohlsen writes from Portland, Oregon.

Reading The Mount is a challenging, but ultimately rewarding, experience. Author Carol Emshwiller expertly forces readers to identify with a narrator who is shrouded in ignorance and stubbornly resists being coaxed toward enlightenment. Like the best sci-fi, the novel uses a fantastical setting to illustrate…
Animals

My Therapist’s Dog

Review by bookpagedev

<B>My Therapist’s Dog</B> <B>My Therapist’s Dog: Lessons in Unconditional Love</B> by Diana Wells is the story of how Wells, devastated by the loss of her son and sister, reluctantly reaches out to a therapist with a black Lab named Luggs. Wells has no insurance at this difficult time in her life, but the therapist accepts her as a client free of charge. To give something in return, Wells begins taking part-time care of Luggs, and gradually the dog becomes a bridge, connecting and comforting the two women as they each come up against more of life’s catastrophes. Wells is a historian, and she infuses her inspiring story with literary references and canine facts, exploring the bond that humans and dogs have shared for centuries. She quotes Emily Dickinson, for example, who wittily noted in 1862 that dogs are “better than human beings because they know, but do not tell.” Through her relationship with the therapist and her dog, Wells eventually overcomes her skepticism toward counseling and discovers the power of human (and animal) connections.

<B>My Therapist's Dog</B> <B>My Therapist's Dog: Lessons in Unconditional Love</B> by Diana Wells is the story of how Wells, devastated by the loss of her son and sister, reluctantly reaches out to a therapist with a black Lab named Luggs. Wells has no insurance at…
LiteratureArts & Culture

Nobel laureate sizes up civilization

Review by bookpagedev

G.K. Chesterton once said that the purpose of journalism is to inform the public that Lord Jones is dead, when nobody knew that Lord Jones was alive. The purpose of the Nobel Prize in literature is to inform the public that an author is a great writer, when nobody knew the author existed.

The Nobel news is always electrifying. The laureate’s works are reprinted and resurrected; and his once mundane name assumes a holy aura. Hence The Writer and the World, a new collection of 21 essays, many of them previously published, by 2001 Laureate V.S. Naipaul. A native of Trinidad who has spent most of his life in England, Naipaul excels at finding the universal in the obscure. To study the repercussions of the colonial era, he visits Guyana and Mauritius; peers into Rajasthani politics; analyzes Black Power in Trinidad. To study the fateful marriage between God and greed in America, he wanders through the “Air-Conditioned Bubble” of the 1984 Republican National Convention. And in every instance he applies that “incorruptible scrutiny” for which the Nobel Committee praised him. Naipaul can always be counted on to expose the mimicked thought, the fruitless banality, the emperor’s new clothes.

Two essays stand out. The first, “A Second Visit,” summarizes Naipaul’s notorious contempt for India’s pride in its ancient culture, its spirituality, its self-victimization. The critique rings true, though at times it reeks of an easy Eurocentrism, as if his way is the only way and the whole world should resemble London. In “Our Universal Civilization,” Naipaul argues that the strength of the West lies precisely (and at first glance, paradoxically) in its intellectual “diffidence.” He contrasts the West with Islam, which often rejects Western ideals yet accepts the fruits of Western progress. This theme should be familiar to readers of Naipaul’s two books on Islam, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey and Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples. But what is this “universal civilization?” Who belongs to it? Naipaul mentions two of its fundamental precepts: the Golden Rule and the pursuit of happiness. Naipaul refers to the first as a Christian idea, but it was a Confucian idea long before it was Christian. As for the pursuit of happiness, it is arguably the basis of Buddhism. Naipaul is right to say that a new civilization is forming, and he is wise to distinguish it from both the West and the deliciously redundant “globalized world.” But what the future of this civilization is, even wise Naipaul cannot foretell. Kenneth Champeon is a writer who lives in Thailand.

 

G.K. Chesterton once said that the purpose of journalism is to inform the public that Lord Jones is dead, when nobody knew that Lord Jones was alive. The purpose of the Nobel Prize in literature is to inform the public that an author is…

FictionPoetry

Origins of a genius

Review by bookpagedev

Literature lovers will be in raptures over Edgar Allen Poe and the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), one of American’s most beloved authors. The new volume, assembled by Alice Quinn, poetry editor of The New Yorker, collects for the first time fascinating archival material, giving readers access to lesser-known poems, poems in progress, and brief prose works. Ever-attentive to both nature and culture, Bishop was truly a cosmopolitan poet, and the selections reflect this, categorized as they are by locale: Brazil, Nova Scotia, New York. Overall, the works are formal and orderly, adhering to strict schemes of rhyme and meter, but they’re leavened by Bishop’s wit and her observant eye, which never fails to provide fresh perspectives. Sometimes you embolden, sometimes bore, she writes of the sea in Apartment in Leme. You smell of codfish and old rain. Homesick, the salt/weeps in the salt-cellars. The collection provides a wonderful glimpse into the origins of Bishop’s genius, and her personal evolution the movement from girlhood to womanhood, from the romantic to the ironic can be traced here. Bishop won every prize imaginable during her lifetime, from the Pulitzer Prize to the National Book Award, and with this new volume, it’s easy to see why.

Literature lovers will be in raptures over Edgar Allen Poe and the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), one of American's most beloved authors. The new volume, assembled by Alice Quinn, poetry editor of The New Yorker, collects for the first…

Beach Read

Review by bookpagedev

Few Americans know that German submarines commonly ranged within sight of America’s Atlantic coast during World War II, and even fewer know that many were destroyed in those waters. In 1991, deep-wreck divers John Chatterton and Bill Nagle found a sunken German U-boat 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. Resting at a depth of 230 feet, the submarine which was unknown to naval experts, historians and governments was beyond the reach of all but world-class divers. The story of the efforts to identify the sub and its 56-man crew is vividly and, at times, chillingly described by Robert Kurson in his book, Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Discovered Hitler’s Lost Sub.

Yet the book is about more than just the sub: it’s also about humanity. Chatterton and fellow diver Richard Kohler, the two who did the most to identify the sub, disliked each other immensely, but their shared obsession led them to spend seven years piecing together the story of the U-boat, researching in museums and archives both in the U.S. and in Germany as well as making repeated dangerous dives to the wreck. In the course of their experiences, they pioneered diving techniques and equipment, became diving legends, developed a friendship and eventually rewrote history.

Shadow Divers is a mystery, an action-adventure, an education on deep-wreck diving, a drama, and at times, a tragedy. Its climax is so harrowing and emotional that anything Hollywood has to offer pales in comparison. Jason Emerson is a freelance writer based in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Few Americans know that German submarines commonly ranged within sight of America's Atlantic coast during World War II, and even fewer know that many were destroyed in those waters. In 1991, deep-wreck divers John Chatterton and Bill Nagle found a sunken German U-boat 60 miles…
Memoir

Those good old golden rule days

Review by bookpagedev

While in high school in 1969, Mark Edmundson knew what he wanted from life. Although he seemed destined to the fate of many in his working-class Boston suburb days of labor broken by nights of drinking and pool playing he had one great love: football.

In practice, he was a warrior, initiated into the cult of manhood by coaches for whom pain was a myth, sweat the coin of the realm and victory the only acceptable proof of effort. In his new memoir, Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference, Edmundson recalls how he compensated for his nearsightedness by working harder than most of his teammates and relying on guts and determination. He also remembers the high school figure who most shaped his destiny.

But it wasn’t a coach it was a slender, mannered philosophy instructor. As Edmundson relates in this touching tribute to the teacher who changed his life, his class wasn’t sure what to make of Frank Lears on the first day of school. Lears wore secondhand suits, drank tea instead of coffee and arranged desks in a circle instead of orderly rows. The students responded with subtle, and later, not-so-subtle, defiance of Lears’ authority. But Lears posed a greater challenge to his students’ minds than they did to his authority. Even the steps Lears employed to counter the students’ defiance didn’t fit into the stereotype of disciplinarian that the kids were accustomed to. And despite himself, Edmundson found his thoughts turning to the questions Lears posed, implicitly and otherwise, in class. Eventually, Lears’ influence would surface in the ways Edmundson reacted to the Vietnam War, race relations and a host of other issues. But while it changed his opinions Lears’ philosophy class also had a much greater influence on Edmundson. True to its nature, philosophy taught him to think. Today Edmundson is an English professor at the University of Virginia, as well as a contributing editor for Harper’s. Crediting Lears with setting him on the path to his vocation, he has written a humorous, vivid recollection of the friends, teammates and antagonists who accompanied him through high school in the ’60s a memoir that is sure to resonate deeply with readers. Gregory Harris is a writer, editor and IT consultant in Indianapolis.

While in high school in 1969, Mark Edmundson knew what he wanted from life. Although he seemed destined to the fate of many in his working-class Boston suburb days of labor broken by nights of drinking and pool playing he had one great love: football.
FictionPoetry

An isolated soul

Review by bookpagedev

The work of Franz Wright displays a different kind of craftsmanship. In God’s Silence the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer offers looser, more spacious poems with lines less closely knit, the absorption of them as natural as respiration for the reader. Marked by melancholy and a seemingly hard-won wisdom, the collection as a whole reflects the plight of an isolated soul at odds with the unseen.

In On the Bus, a poem at once nightmarish and lovely, a trip by public transportation brings to the poet’s mind a group execution, inspires diverting speculations/on the comparative benefits/of waiting in front of a ditch to be shot. Despite the sharing of a common, horrible fate, Wright imagines a lack of solidarity among the people involved. This tension between the opposing poles of isolation and communion is a recurring theme. For the poet, there is no co-existence, only existence: Nobody has called for some time./(I was always the death of the party.) he writes in Progress. Wright produces poems of unusual intimacy, and his humility, as evidenced in an urgent prose poem called From the Past, stays with the reader in the end: Who did I imagine I was, that things as they are, reality as God gave it, was not enough for me?

The work of Franz Wright displays a different kind of craftsmanship. In God's Silence the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer offers looser, more spacious poems with lines less closely knit, the absorption of them as natural as respiration for the reader. Marked by melancholy and a…

Life of a super salesman

Review by bookpagedev

Born in 1932 into a proud and happy family in Portland, Oregon, Bill Porter was still an infant when his mother found out he had cerebral palsy. Despite the advice of doctors that he be institutionalized, Bill’s mother was determined to keep him at home and help him live a normal life. In the inspiring new book Ten Things I Learned From Bill Porter (New World Library, $20, 160 pages, ISBN 1577312031) we see how her devotion and Bill’s own perseverance paid off. Though his speech was slurred, and he had problems with painful and uncooperative muscles, Porter never felt sorry for himself or complained about his condition. Faced with unsympathetic unemployment workers who wanted him to stay home and collect disability, he began selling household products door-to-door and went on to become his company’s top salesman.

Shelly Brady was a 17-year-old high school student when she first got a job assisting Porter by delivering products to his customers, and once she was out of college she became his personal assistant and, more importantly, his good friend. In her book, Brady shares the values and attitudes that made Porter such a special and influential presence in her life. His passion for his work and unflagging optimism are just a few of the qualities that made him a success and an inspiration for the thousands who heard his story, which was first broadcast on ABC’s 20/20. Filled with personal anecdotes from Porter’s life, this book is a marvelous and moving account of how one man’s determination changed many lives in addition to his own.

Lessons like “live your values” may seem simple, but Porter’s story (adapted into a television movie that debuted in July) is evidence that the simplest rules for living are often the most profound. Porter loves to say, “Never doubt that your life is important,” and this book proves his point beautifully.

Born in 1932 into a proud and happy family in Portland, Oregon, Bill Porter was still an infant when his mother found out he had cerebral palsy. Despite the advice of doctors that he be institutionalized, Bill's mother was determined to keep him at home…

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Features

All Features