Three Books in One Week Makes Me Feel Accomplished

Been catching up on my reading lately. I did manage to track down a copy of the last Artemis Fowl, so there's that. Minnick sent me the book list for next semester's Adolescent Literature course, and I've already made my way through one of them. And I even managed to sneak in a third book inbetween. Also, spoilers.

I've been following Artemis Fowl since near the beginning; I think I read the first book around the time the second came out; I was about twelve or thirteen. Even when they were being obnoxious about the environmental messages, I could look over it because everything else was so good - Eoin Coulfer has some sharp writing that leaves me in stitches. The dialogue more or less runs on snark and I just never get tired of that. The plot can get rather messy, especially in some of the later books, but never so much that I lost track of what was happening.

The last installment doesn't disappoint at all; I think I liked it better than The Atlantis Complex in fact. Entertaining as Orion was, I'm glad he's gone. All the major characters are back (well, that aren't dead anyway), and while I usually don't like it when an author introduces new ones this late in the game, it's well done here; Myles and Beckett are fun and Foaly's previously, briefly-mentioned wife is fleshed out and brought out to play, even if it is only for a single scene (and good Lord she is awesome).

The romantic sub-plot doesn't get resolved, overshadowed by something that would be quite a spoiler if I said much more, so I won't. But I do like that he let things lie they way they did; last-minute hook-ups just bother me. It's as good as saying yeah, I was putting off their happiness together for the sake of drama. That kind of thing always feels like a disservice to the characters if you ask me (but no one did, so I get to rant about it here instead).

Anyway, while the series as a whole does have its weak points, I can't really think of anything negative to say about The Last Guardian. I think he ended the books in a pretty dignified manner and even managed to do some clever retconning that made genuine sense and cast a few previous plot details in a different slant of light. The characters have grown, but not changed and I like that a lot; Artemis made the shift into more or less full Hero mode, but kept the bite he's had from the very first book. I can't really ask for more than that.

Second book this week; a collection of short stories based on Harris Burdick drawings. If you've never heard of Burdick, he's the short version: he made 14 odd drawings with a title and a caption. He had stories to go with them, and he promised the man he left the drawings with that he would return tomorrow with the stories. He was never heard from again.

So basically the drawings are now kinda like prompts from which people can build their own stories. The collection I was browsing had some rather big names in children's literature within; Kate DiCamillo, Linda Sue Park, Chris Van Allisburg, Stephen King, Louis Sachar, Gregory Macguire - I recognized at least 3/4ths of the names. I don't think I disliked a single story, though some did stand out more than others.

I particularly enjoyed the one by Cory Doctorow; it had a soft scientific thread running though it (not enough to make the story sci-fi, but enough that I have to comment on its presence) and I really enjoyed that about it. I can't remember who wrote the other one I really liked, but it was about a little girl whose father and older brothers were trying to unravel a difficult formula. One day while she's outside playing, she saved two caterpillars from a bird and it turns out they're sentient. And they know how to solve the formula. And I won't say how it ends because the ending is the reason I remember it so well.

Other stories include a house that turns out to be a rocketship, a short with a A.I. meets The Truman Show-esque plot, a floating nun, a harp-playing frog, a book you can't stop reading, and an author whose creations come to life during a housefire (maybe). This is one of the reasons I enjoy collections like this - I like the diversity, yet there's still something there to connect them. They don't feel out of place with one another. Several of them were like reading a novelization of a Twilight Zone episode, which is never a bad thing :P

Third book of the week: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. Something for Adolescent Literature.

First of all, Calpurnia is an awesome name. Now that that's out of the way...

He's assigning some longer books this semester. I'm glad I asked for that book list now. This is the second-longest one, the longest being The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict (by an author who happens to live in my city, and who I'm sure Minnick knows personally). I did read all of Calpurnia in a day, but I'm also a fast reader (and reading while I've nothing else to do); not everyone will be so on top of it :P

It takes place just before 1900 - in fact the last chapter ends on the New Year. If you know anything about history, you know this is a time of significant change, what with electricity and the telephone and all that jazz. The particular focus here though is on science and the influence of Darwin. Darwin isn't even that much of a presence come to that; more like a catalyst in the background. Things do kick off more or less when Calpurnia decides to track down a copy of The Origin of Species, but after getting her hands on one it's rarely mentioned. Most of the focus is elsewhere.

So we have our main character, Calpurnia. She lives on a wealthy farm in Texas, the middle of seven children, six of which are boys. You may already see where this is going. If not, then let us just say Calpurnia and her mother do not see eye to eye. However, that plot thread is background noise until we get closer to the end of the book where it really does rear its head. But before we get there -

Early on she becomes friends with her Grandfather, who loves to experiment and study the world. This is where much of the plot is; Calpurnia helping and learning from her Grandfather. It's rather difficult to summarize because the book, while linear, is kinda episodic. One chapter picks up one of the plot threads, and the next one is about a different one. Then the first plot thread comes back some chapters later. It's not hard to follow or anything, it's just difficult to say what the book is about as a whole when it works that way XD Though is I were to give a one-sentence summary, it would probably go "an almost-teenage girl living in a time of significant change aspires to be a Naturalist under the tutelage of her Grandfather to the annoyance of her mother."

Anyway, plot threads. We have the possibility that Calpurnia and Grandfather have discovered a new species of plant, Grandfather's brewing experiments, Calpurnia's interactions with various members of her family (her mother and her oldest brother in particular), various school/ etiquette lessons, and technological change. Again, it's not a bad thing at all - sometimes I was eager to get back to a particular plot thread, but the variety was interesting and it's not  as complicated as I'm making it sound. It has a sense of life to it in that way; life doesn't come with a single linear plot as it were XD

I really enjoyed the ending quite a lot, much for the same reason I enjoyed the ending to Artemis Fowl; it doesn't really resolve anything, but it's a good place to stop. The mother-daughter conflict isn't settled. Calpurnia's future is still uncertain. She's not going to be an adult for a long while yet. Grandfather never makes a good bottle of wine. It just ends and I like that.

So, long post is long. But I've been wanting to chat about my books and it's probably better I did it now before I read anything else.