Multiple Books!

Lost the entire post!

Coronet Among the Grass, the second installment in Charlotte Bingham's early autobiography. Stylistic change as writing matures? The author is maturing? Whatever the reason, Among the Grass is much more readable. Perhaps it's due to the sentence structure's improved flow, or even that short sentences seem more visually jarring, Among the Grass may not be as comic a tale, but was more pleasant to read.

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faiza Guene. I feel this book was a wonderful discovery. So many of the new YA books coming into our library are based in the US, Britain or Australia. Here's a book based in France, which also begs the question, why are we not seeing more books from other countries? The book would be readable for any teenager: an only child has hit her teens and is struggling through the normal teenage troubles, crushes, schoolwork, etc., yet also dealing with the psychological effects of being abandoned by the father of the family. This has a slight twist, as the family is Muslim and the father has left to marry a second wife so that he might have a male heir. Interesting glimpse into the life of a low-income single-parent immigrant Muslim family. More interesting: I borrowed my copy from the book sale shelf. There is only one cataloged copy of the book in Berks County Public Libraries.

I'm always behind the times when it comes to reading bestsellers. I prefer reading before the hype, or long after the hype has died down. In this case I'm finally getting around to reading Ice Bound by Dr. Jerri Nielsen, most likely commonly known as the woman who developed breast cancer while in Antarctica. At this point in my reading list, McMurdo Base and the Dome are old friends and I'm enjoying revisiting these places through another author's eyes.

Also got around to Stranger Than Fiction, delightful, and am currently enjoying season one of My Family starring Zoe Wanamaker and Robert Lindsay.

Coronet in the Weeds

At age 20 Charlotte Bingham decided to write the first installment of her autobiography Coronet Among the Weeds and it was published in 1963 (perhaps because of her father and mother's influence) whereupon it became quite a sensation. Really. In Britain. Maybe because the family was titled. And that pretty much descibes the sentence structure for the entire book. Easily read in a few hours with the delivery of a stand-up comic monologue. Humorous in parts, but also requires Brit-speak or a long acquaintance with BBC broadcasts.

Where does the time go: or why I'm still awake at 4am

Image by Angels Gate via Flickr

Recent Reads:

Young Adult

Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier - Always read the sequel first! I'm a sucker for the new book section and rarely stop to see if there's a book I should have read previously. The book does have a great cover, incidentally, Kinuko Y. Craft whom I'll be Googling. Cybele's Secret will be enjoyed by teens who've matured beyond Theodora Throckmorton, and by mothers who aren't ready for teens to be reading Libba Bray's The Sweet Far Thing. I'm always tickled by how relevant my reading choices seem to be so reading about Cybele's Gift so close to the announcement of the female fertility figure discovery was appropriate.

Paper Towns by John Green. Three for three. John Green has once again created a plot and characters that both sexes will enjoy equally. It has to be read. Similar emotional pull: the Watching Alice series by Daniel E. Parker (which also shares traits with the Gossip Girls series, which I sampled at approximately the same time).

The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Companion to Life As We Knew It which has to be one of my top ten YA books, but not neccesarily for young adults. The moon has fallen into an orbit closer to earth and the dominos fall as geophysic events cascade. LAWKI graphically describes the aftereffects of the event in a rural/suburban landscape while TDATG occurs in an urban setting where information seems less easy to obtain. For a good freak-out high, read LAWKI first.

Adult, or mature teens

The Cobra Event by Robert Preston. Graphic in forensic anatomy and epidemiology, The Cobra Event is probably the best bioterrorism book I've ever read. As gripping as Crichton with data spot on the latest in viruses, even for a book written in 1999. There are a few passages that date the book, but then The Andromeda Strain has those as well. Once again, I finished reading just BEFORE I read the article on the emergence of a class similar to Ebola/Lassa Fever.

September 11 causes the most glaring problem: can a forensic pathologist still travel with his/her own prosector knife even if it's in checked luggage? The book also answered a question that came up in this house after a photo of the CDCs representatives were in Berks County for swine flu. Yes, they were wearing uniforms and the CDC is a branch of the Navy. If I worked at the CDC I'd be up in arms about having to wear what looked like a Girl Scout vest.

Currently Reading:

Fiction

Surving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083 by Andrea White. So far I'd catalog it in the YA section, but BCPL Bookmobile has it in Fiction. Five teens enter a contest to recreate Scott's fatal voyage to the South Pole, without knowing that the gear and materials will be appropriate to 1912, or knowing the show's producers don't play fair.