Voice of Command by Melanie Cellier

In this second in Spoken Mage series by Melanie Cellier, Elena is facing her second year at Mage School.  This means learning to do combat, not only with swords, but also with magic.  At first she is unable to do her spoken magical compositions fast enough to be effective in a fight, but she gradually figures it out and hones her skills.  Meanwhile, she is looking in dread to her 18th birthday when she plans to enlist in the military to fulfill her family's mandatory service obligation.  Her second year of school is sidetracked by a plague in another part of the kingdom, and all the students, including Prince Lucas, are sent to use their skills to help combat the sickness. Elena's feelings about Lucas swing wildly from frustration to admiration to fairly intense attraction; yet she knows that she, as a commonborn, could never end up with a prince.

I am finding I am enjoying this series, maybe even more than the other series I have read by Cellier.  I think both Elena's and Lucas's personalities are different than some of the stock personalities I got used to (and a little tired of) in her fairytale retellings.  She has also created an unusual and interesting magic system and social dynamic.  One of the interesting plot devices is that Lucas understands the court intrigue and politics of the kingdom, but Elena doesn't.  Lucas is also torn between his attraction to Elena, and his duty to his kingdom. There are two more in the series, and then an entire companion series after that.  I will probably finish this series, and then we'll see if I do the other.  (266 p. 2019)

Ada Lovelace Cracks the Code by Rebel Girls

 Ada Byron Lovelace was the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron.  By the time she was born, her parents were already estranged, so she never really knew her illustrious father before he died when she was eight.  She was raised as an aristocrat and given a good education, but had few friends and was often lonely.  She also had delicate health and spent several years as an invalid after a terrible case of the measles. While ill, she turned to books as her companions, and as a teen and young adult became fascinated with math and logic.  She became friends with another female mathematician, Mary Somerville, who introduced her to her future husband, William, Earl of Lovelace, and to Charles Babbage who was a scientist working on a computing machine.  He was designing the machine to do mathematical calculations, but Ada was able to see that it had far more possibilities than just mathematics.  She became an advocate of Babbage's work and translated and added notes to a paper about his device in hopes of raising funding for his project. 

This is a short biography written as a highly fictionalized story of Lovelace's life focusing one her personality, early education, and work with Babbage. I found it interesting and entertaining.  At the end of it, though, I wasn't clear why she was considered to have been the first computer programmer.  I had to read a Wikipedia article to discover she had added to her translation of the article referenced above, a postscript with a description of how to calculate the Bernoulli numbers with Babbage's machine.  It is this postscript that is considered by some the first computer program. Still, I think this is a very accessible biography for anyone, especially girls, who are interested in computers and coding. (2019, 128p.)

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

 Dr. Dan Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics at MIT et alii.  In this book he catalogs how, contrary to assumptions, people don't generally act rationally, but that their irrational behavior follows predictable patterns.  In his position as an academic researcher, he has conducted a variety of research studies that demonstrate how people are swayed by suggest, emotion, offers of free stuff, the placebo effect and other influences. His studies are unconventional, often ethically questionable and amusing.  The writing is engaging, clearly written for the popular market.

I read this book because it was recommended by a co-worker.  I found it interesting and thought provoking.  There were some things about it that were suboptimal.  I did worry that some of the studies he did were unethical.  Also, while he delighted in showing human foibles, he didn't really set for any theory as to why we might be that way.  That's fine, because any theory he might propose would be speculation, but I did feel as if he was mostly just either laughing or shaking his head at the human family in kind of a demeaning way.  It would have gone over better with me if he had said something like, "the fact that the placebo effect work shows what a wonderful thing the human body is,"  or "Human propensity to be drawn to things that are offered for free stems from hundreds of generations where survival was at a subsistence level, and those who took advantage of free food and commodities were those who survived." Still, I am glad I read it and will probably recommend it to others. (2010, 384 p) 

Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson

 Homer has grown up as an enslaved boy on a plantation with this mother and sister, Ada. His mother and the two children make an attempt to escape to the south, and they are partially successful, but Homer convinces his mother to go back and get his best friend Anna.  When she does, she gets caught.  Homer and Ada are on their own in the swamp near their plantation.  The are found by a formerly enslaved man, Suleman who leads them to a secret community called Freewater deep in the swamp.  Homer and Ada find safety and friendship in the community, but Homer feels a terrible need to return and free his mother.  One of their new friends, Sanzi wants to be just like her hero, Suleman, and longs to leave Freewater where she was born to see the outside world. Defying all the advice of the adults around them, the children set out to make things right.

This is the winner of both the Newbery and the Coretta Scott King award last year.  I am sorry to say I didn't much like it. I only fought my way to the end because it received so much attention.  So, what didn't I like about it? The main problem was the character of Sanzi.  She was stupid and selfish.  Someone might defend her character by saying she was acting like a pretty normal 10-year-old would have acted, and that may be true, but I still didn't want to read about her.  She was making such big mistakes that had life-and-death ramifications for the whole colony and nobody was stopping her. Where were the adults in her life? All they did was give her a heart-felt lecture and then let her run off and do reckless things again.  I hate reading about stupid children in books. The other thing that bothered me was that the place, Freewater, didn't ever feel like a real place to me. I felt they didn't really capture how hard and nasty it would be to live in a swamp. They didn't talk about mosquitos, or stink, or fire ants, or the problem of getting enough nutrition living on a diet of fish and acorns. One commentator I read suggested the setting was implied to be in Florida.  I lived in Florida for five years, and know a little what a southern swamp is like.  In a southern swamp you never forget about the bugs, or the cotton mouths, or the gators if you want to stay alive.  Anyway, I think maybe kids might like it because there are adventures, and kind of an idealized hideaway place...I guess. Not my favorite Newbery. (416 p. 2022)

Voice of Power by Melanie Cellier

 Elena is a shop keeper's daughter from a small town.  Her society is ruled by powerful mages that use written compositions to harness and direct magic to do their bidding. Commoners are not even allowed to learn to read or write.  When Elena unwittingly unleashes a spoken "composition" to save her family business from looters, her act of power is discovered and she is taken to the mage school for further study and training. At the school, Elena is overwhelmed by the level of wealth and privilege that her mage-born classmates take for granted. As she gradually learns to use her unique skills, she is seen by some as a national threat.  She has to stay on her toes, and accept the aid of a few new friends to even stay alive. 

If you were to ask me who some of my favorite authors are I probably wouldn't list Melanie Cellier at the top of the list, but somehow I manage to read a great number of her books. This is the first I have read in an older series outside of the world of her fairytale retellings.  It is a pretty classic "magic school" story, but I enjoyed it anyway.  It has the stock characters you would expect: the kind girl who befriends the outcast, the cheeky boy who joins their social group because of interest in the kind girl, and the quiet and intimidating prince who internally fights against his attraction to Elena, but outwardly tries to wear a mask of indifference.  There is the older gentleman kindly mentor, the strict but fair lady teacher, and the kindly younger school nurse. If you say that those characters all sound familiar, you would be right.  There is not much that is original here, but it was still fun to read and I will probably read the next in the series. (2018, 312 p)

Culture: The Story of Us from Cave Art to K-Pop by Martin Puchner

 Dr. Puchner is a philosopher and teacher who received his PhD from Harvard. In this book he examines culture from the earliest cave paintings to modern time, showing how key events and people transmit cultural ideas from one people to another. He discusses a wide range of aspects of culture from all over the world.  There are chapters on Egypt, Greece and Rome, Aztecs, Ethiopian Christians, ancient Muslim libraries, the cultural exchange between China and Japan, and many more.  His main premise is that major cultural changes usually occur when one culture bumps up against another. He believes that these cultural clashes drive innovation and flowering of human creative potential.  

I picked this title because I was a Humanities major in college, and part of me still feels like a humanities nerd.  I didn't really expect to learn a lot of new ideas from the book, but was interested in refreshing my memory of topics I enjoyed in my studies.  Wow, was I wrong. I was bowled over by this book.  It totally made me rethink the Humanities education I received 30 years ago.  It made me realize how much my education was heavily biased toward the Western cultural ideal.  In my classes we discussed Egypt, Greece, Rome, European Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment.  I took one class on Asian humanities (an elective), but learned nothing about the huge influence of the Arab nations, South America, or Africa.   As I was listening to the book I also thought a lot about how I have always valued culture.  Like many in a dominant culture, I consider art and writing of high quality if it matches my culture's art and writing. The book opened my eyes a little to my own cultural bias. I don't know how many would get as much out of this book as I did, but it was paradigm shifting for me, so I am giving it a starred review. (2023, 384 p)

Sinister Secrets by Traci Hunter Abramson, Clair M Poulson, and Paige Edwards

This is a compilation of short novels by three of Covenant Book's most famous mystery authors. All of them involve a man who is working as some kind of agent, trying to solve some kind of mystery, and ending up saving a girl/woman as well.  In the first, a family man is investigating a money laundering scheme and finds a teenage girl in distress.  In the second an ex-Army Ranger joins a detective agency and helps a woman wrongly accused of murder, and in the third, a woman gets caught up in a FBI drug bust and must escape, with the aid of a handsome agent, the drug lords who don't want any witnesses. 

I haven't read short novellas, and it is interesting how they differ from a full length novel.  For one thing, these were more plot driven than character driven. This is partially because they are mystery stories which are already plot heavy,  but I was surprised how little character development there was.  Also, there was less effort to plug up all the plot holes.  Since they are so short, you just have to take it on faith that certain things make sense. The most surprising thing, however, was not due to their length.  I think it is due to to the fact that the publisher is associated with a conservative Christian organization that still has a pretty strong patriarchy.  So very rarely in modern popular books do you have a woman rescued by a strong male character.  The feisty woman who doesn't need rescuing, and the weak male who does, is such a strong trope in the modern world that few books with a damsel in distress ever gets published by the major publishing houses anymore.  Or maybe they do, but they just aren't the kinds of books I choose to read (ha, ha).  Anyway, it was a bit refreshing.  I think the pendulum has swung a little too far in the direction of "woman power" and needs to swing a little bit back to allow men to be heroes again, at least some of the time. (2022, 304 p)