The Door of No Return by Kwame Alexander

 Kofi lives in a village in Africa.  He and his friends go to a school run by a man from his village who had attended a mission school, and Kofi is better than many of his friends in reading and speaking English. He loves to swim, and he feels at home in the unchanging customs of his people. (spoiler alert) Then one day his brother does something that causes a rift between his village and a nearby village. Kofi and his brother as stolen and forced onto a heartbreaking path neither ever wanted or expected. 

This is the first in a series of books talking about Kofi's family's journey to America. As Alexander's other books, it is written in beautiful and often poignant free verse poetry. The portrayal of Kofi's life in the small village is both idyllic and harsh. Alexander does not shy away from the brutality of the slave trade, but manages to show that it wasn't only the white slave traders who were at fault. There are some really tough scenes, and parents should be wary in offering this to a sensitive child. Reading it reminded me of The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox, which won the Newbery Metal in 1974.  It may play a similar role in this generation as that book played for my generation, that is, a first introduction for children to the horrors of slavery. (432 p, 2024)

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

 In the small village where Sophie and Agatha live, two children, one good, one evil, disappear once every 4 years. It is rumored that the children are taken and put into the fairytale books all the children in the village love.  Sophie and Agatha are unlikely friends.  Sophie wants to be taken and feels sure if she is she will become a princesses and find her happily-ever-after.  Agatha doesn't want to be taken, but she is sure that if she was, she would become a villain and meet and unpleasant end. When both girls are taken they are surprised when Agatha is put in the school for Good and Sophie is put in the school for Evil.  They are sure it is a mistake, but every time they try to switch places, something goes terribly wrong.  And then there is Prince Tedros.  Sophie is sure he is destined to be her prince. Agatha has never really been interested in boys. As Sophie tries progressively more desperate means to win Tedros, her placement in the school of Evil and Agatha's place in the school for Good, begins to make more sense. 

I decided to read this because NetFlix had produced a movie based on the book.  Somehow I thought it was a new movie, but actually it came out in 2022.  I knew the series was very popular, so I decided I ought to read it. It is interesting.  The action is fast paced and there are a lot of plot twists and turns.  At some times it is rather funny, but at other times it gets very dark.  We have it in our I FIC section but it could as easily go into the YA section. The characters are very complex.  Just when you think one character is good and the other is evil, one of them does something that makes you question your judgement. The whole story explores what it means to be good or evil, and how that relates to appearances. Can a princess in a pink ball gown with a pet bunny be evil?  Can a hag with warts and long claw-like nails be good?  It is very sophisticated, and I think middle school age kids who have read lots of fantasy will enjoy and appreciate the moral ambiguity. (544 p. 2013)

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

 Western culture seems to favor introverts.  They are the ones that get the leadership positions, make a lot of money, and become famous. In this book, Cain tries to explain what it means to be an introvert,  how introversion is different than being shy, and that introversion is not a disability. Introverts have the valuable traits of being thoughtful, deliberate and careful.  They are often less ambitious than extroverts and are less likely to get carried away in a moment of excitement and make stupid decisions. Cain gives lots of examples of how introverts make valuable contributions to society and spends time helping introverts come to understand themselves and their abilities. She urges introverts not to feel bad when they take steps to meet their own needs for solitude and quiet. She also explains how introverts can act like extroverts for small periods of time when they feel passionate about a cause. Throughout the books she quotes scientific studies and gives real life examples to support her assertions. 

I read this book because I am leading a panel discussion at the ULA Conference in May about how introverts can be leaders.  I had read the book, Quiet Power, by the same author written for teens and I found it really helpful in illustrating how introverts can succeed in school and life. I enjoyed this book, but I found it less compelling than the one for teens.  It rambles a little and is more slow moving. Still, it gave me a lot of ideas I can use when writing the questions I will ask my panel at the conference.  This is a good book for anyone who wants to understand how being introverted or extroverted affects how people function and view the world. (2013, 368)

Treacherous is the Night by Anna Lee Huber

 In this second book in the Verity Kent series, Verity attends a seance with a friend but during the experience the medium reveals information about Verity's classified activities during the war.  She also mentions one of Verity's Belgian contacts whose code name was Emily. Verity knows the medium is a fake and feels that the experience suggests her friend is in danger.  After trying in vain to get those still in national intelligence to help her, Verity wants to go to Belgium to find and warn her old friend herself, but she knows that returning to the front lines would be very difficult for her war traumatized husband, Sidney.  Their relationship is still fragile.  Should she risk her relationship with her long lost husband to solve the mystery surrounding her wartime friend?  

I liked the first book in this series, and I liked this as well.  Verity's relationships with Sydney, Max, and her own past remain complicated, but the chemistry between herself and her husband is undeniable. The mystery is a little improbable.  Do people really ever leave complicated clues for other people to find? Still, I like the fact that Huber doesn't glamourize war and gives a sincere nod to the fact that even in WWI men came back with PTSD. The main problem with this book and this series is the audio reader.  She has a really unnatural cadence to her voice. I found myself replaying key sentences in my mind with a proper inflection to make them make more sense. I don't know if I will listen to the next in the series. (336 p, 2018)

The Guncle by Steven Rowley

Patrick used to be a sit-com star, until his partner, Joseph, got killed in an accident and Patrick secluded himself in a large house in remote Palm Springs. Then his sister-in-law, who was also his best friend in college, dies after a battle with cancer and Patrick races off to Connecticut for her funeral.  After the funeral his newly widowed brother, Greg, asks if Patrick will take care of his two kids, Maisie, age 10, and Grant, age 6, while Greg goes to rehab to get over a prescription drug addiction. Over the course of the summer, Patrick bonds with the children and, in very unconventional ways, helps them grieve for their mother.  Meanwhile Patrick has to face his own grief over Joseph and learn to reclaim life. 

I read this book because a picture book call My Guncle and Me by Jonathan Merritt has been officially challenged at my library.  I know this book is by a different author, but I thought the challenger might be uncomfortable about that book because she was familiar with this book. I had mixed feelings about this book.  The writing is great and all the characters are really endearing.  There are funny scenes and really heartwarming scenes where Patrick and the kids interact with each other.  The book is successful in showing how having kids in your life changes your outlook in the world but also how children are real people who have real emotions that need to be acknowledged and understood. However, the book portrays the children in situations that the white-straight-conservative-mother in me cringes at.  Patrick drinks alcohol incessantly throughout the book, swears frequently, and goes skinny dipping and has sexual encounters with a much younger TV star with the children in the house. This doesn't seem like an appropriate environment for kids to me. The author represents this opinion using a character in the book, Patrick's sister Clara. Clara is an active feminist who rants about white male privilege, but secretly is harboring a personal tragedy that is manifesting itself in her prudishness. I kind of resented the fact that the author seems to be suggesting that if you are worried about the kids being in the environment of profanity, alcohol, and sex, you are a deeply troubled man-hater. Still, if I am honest, I enjoyed the book overall, though it felt a little like a guilty pleasure. (2021, 336 p)

The Age of Resilience by Jeremy Rifkin

 This is one man's idea about how the humans can survive the impending mass extinction brought on by global warming and rising numbers of pandemics. Rifkin spends the first part of the book telling all the ways the world is doomed.  Some that he mentions are global warming, soil erosion, increased extreme weather,  and the resultant civil unrest.  He makes a case that all these problems arose out of human's attempts to be "efficient." Then he spends the rest of the book explaining how humans and societies must change in order to survive the catastrophes that are coming. In essence he suggests that humans must move away from the age of fossil fuels, capitalism, and centralized government, and instead become empathetic to each other and nature and learn to live in harmony with both. 

Ok, so that summary sounds flippant, but I was amazed at how lacking this book--by a really famous author and environmentalist--is in sound logic and objectivity.  After reading it I looked up his bio and I wasn't surprised to learn that he has no formal scientific training, but instead only has a bachelor's degree in economics. As a result, the book represents he own personal views on a lot of loosely connected world problems which he promotes with great enthusiasm and confidence but not a lot of rigor. His language is very emotionally charged, and he seems to only speak in superlative.  He also constantly makes logical errors in his writing.  For example, he takes a few examples and presents them as irrefutable evidence of growing trends, when, in reality, they are only a few small examples. As an example, he talks about forest pre-schools where kids stay outside all day regardless of weather.  He boasts that there are 600 such preschools in the US, a clear evidence of their growing popularity.  600? really. There are about 90,000 preschools in the US, so only about a half of one percent are forest preschools. He also compares things that are not comparable.  He spends a whole chapter talking about the problems infants have when they are neglected and fail to bond with adults. Then he says that modern people suffer with the same kinds of problems because they fail to bond with their communities and with nature. I am not saying that everything in the book is wrong.  I think he has some good ideas.  It is just that the solutions he proposes are pipe dreams that would require a pretty drastic change in human nature to come to pass. Still it was interesting to me to see all the different ways he tries to influence readers. (2022, 336 p) 

The Wordhord by Hana Videen

Here is a book for the word-nerds among us.  Ms Videen is a scholar of Old English and this entire book explores the origins and oddities of certain Old English words. She starts the book by explaining the differences between modern English, Middle English and Old English.  While many people can understand Middle English pretty well, Old English sounds like a foreign language to modern English speakers.  Videen posits that by learning Old English we can come to understand the culture and look inside the thought processes of people living 1000+ years ago.  This book was published by Princeton University Press and is pretty academic.  I am not sure how much appeal it would have to the general public, but I loved it.  I love ancient languages and have studied Latin, ancient Greek and Hebrew. This book made me want to go back and learn Old English too.  I was fascinated to learn that there are only about 200 texts written in Old English that still exist. I had never before thought of the challenge of trying to figure out what a word means when it only appears once in all existent texts.  I loved learning how medieval Englishmen put terms together to describe the people and things in their lives. I also was struck by how much Christianity permeated everything they did in 1000 AD and it made me realize how much our modern western culture has strayed from that. Finally, hats off the the narrator of the book, Sara Powell, who had to read all of the crazy Old English words.   (2022, 296 p.)

Seams Deadly by Maggie Bailey

 Lydia is starting a new life after a painful divorce by working at a fabric store in a small town in Georgia. She has been reluctant to reenter the dating scene, but after her first awkward date with Brandon, the guy next door, he turns up dead in his apartment.  Lydia discovers that she is the top suspect, and so decides she needs to solve the mystery to keep herself out of a life sentence in prison. As she starts to talk to people around the close-knit town, she soon discovers that there is more than one person who had a motive to kill Brandon. It is hard to think one of her new friends is a murderer, but it is hard to deny that it had to be someone within her own friend circle. Can she figure out who it is before she is sent to jail by default?

I have read several "baking" mysteries and this book seems to have the same vibe, but with sewing instead of baking. It was alright. It is in every way a "cozy" mystery, with a lot of the people being really nice to each other, except for the killer, of course. Bailey does a pretty good job introducing the reader to all the quirky people in the village. The author sets up plenty of suspects, with plenty of clues.  I wondered if the book would have sewing projects at the end of each chapter instead of recipes like they have in the baking mysteries.  It didn't, but it did describe some sewing projects in the book that would be interesting to try. (272, 273) p