lizard of oz

Sir Francis Bacon

This is a re-read. I was looking for something quick, and this handwritten, illustrated novella was just what I needed. I borrowed this from my childhood library after my older sister had read it and laughed through most of it as I recall. Its a trippy, early 1970's essay on how to get back or renew your spirit after its been suppressed by the machine. Its amazing how much the machine has grown in the 50 years or so since this was written, which means its even more relevant today than it was then, and perhaps even more important as a message. The message is dated however.

By you know what isn't dated? Puns. said no one

I won't repeat everything I wrote about this one when I found an old copy and re-read this about 5 years ago, you can check that out here. That post had links to what the author, Richard Seltzer, was up to at the time, and even an illustrated online version of the book, but those links don't work anymore. 

I think its a good bet that this Christin Couture is the book's illustrator, which she did while she was a student at UMass Amherst. Given the era, and the fact that she was a college student, I think these psychedelic images were pretty fun for Couture to come up with. 

The puns are prevalent throughout, along with some other pun-related word-play. The story follows an elementary school class on a field trip to rediscover the magic that is being washed out of the world by the aforementioned machine, personified by the humbug, which can be seen flitting about on insect wings, slowing beating his humdrum. The kids pile into their teacher's VW Bug along with the class fishbowl and its two inhabitants, to go find the secret fire again, in the unworld of Ome.

There's love, there's laughter, danger, giant potholes, and other fractured fairy tales. No not those Fractured Fairy Tales. The Lizard of Oz is a fun one, and it reads different as you get older.

treasure island

I think I read Treasure Island for a book report in middle school--which was called junior high school where I grew up. This was before I was a reader and I recall this book, like the others I was forced to read at the time, was a slog. Not so this time around! Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this, in the 1880s; it was originally published serialized in something called Young Folks under a pseudonym in 1881 and 1882, and first published in novel form by Cassell & Co., of London, under the author's name.

The story is set in the 1700s, and is one of the first to popularize pirates and buried treasure. According to the Wikipedia article, a lot of what we think of when we think of pirates, namely "deserted tropical islands, treasure maps marked with an "X", and one-legged seamen with parrots perched on their shoulders" comes from Stevenson's depiction of buccaneers in Treasure Island.

The version I read is a handsome volume published by Grosset & Dunlap of New York, copyrighted in 1942, but printed in 1972, as part of what they called their Illustrated Junior Library.* It has a number of full color plates, and many pen & ink vignettes throughout, done by Norman Price. Price's illustrations are warm and vibrant. The sketches help to fill in some of the imagery, that probably helps sell the story to the younger audience it was intended for. They certainly weren't worried about violence in stories for young people. It seems like folks may have had a better understanding about what teens can handle than we do today. 

 

Norman Price Illustration

 

The story follows the adventures of a young man named Jim Hawkins, who is referred to as a boy by others in the story, but because most of the story is told in first person from Hawkins' point of view, he never says exactly how old he is. Depictions of him in movies, plays, TV shows, radio plays (there are a lot!) have shown him at varying ages from about 12 to his middle teens. I'd say he is on the older end of that range, given what he gets up to, but considering that John Quincy Adams was asked by the new U.S. emissary to join him on his trip to St. Petersburg as his personal secretary and translator when he was 14, I think its safe to say that what we consider "kids" when this story was set, were often more capable than we train them up to be now.

Hawkins joins the ship on a hunt for treasure as the cabin boy, which I think is part of pop culture now and not a spoiler for folks. He takes a bold and heroic, one could say, view of his roll and I'm sure the idea is to inspire young readers, especially young men, to do the same in their lives, and to look for adventure. 

This was a goody. Read this book. Or better yet, give it to one of your kids and tell them to read it outside. 

 

* More pictures here from a similar volume, printed a year or two later, for sale online. 

 

 

 

book that held her heart

The third and final book of the Library Trilogy by Mark Lawrence is called The Book that Held her Heart. I was hopeful, as I mentioned in my review of book 2, that Lawrence would fill in some more details about the mechanics of the library, and put a little more flesh on the bones of the title book, and why it poses such a threat, and more importantly, hope it actually does that.

I didn't get that.

What I did get, didn't, in some cases, make sense to me. Are they plot holes, or is the author taking an easy way out. I'm not sure, but it can't just be me. This book was shorter than the others, and included a whole subplot that I'm not sure was originally even intended to be part of the story. Maybe I'm wrong, but it this was a television series, some of that stuff was filler episodes. Did it ask important questions? Sure. Did it help tie the fantasy of the first two books more firmly to our own shared reality? You betcha. Did it need to do those things, especially if they were done in lieu of resolving some other things that seem to have slipped by? Nope.

The ending of this one, reminded my of the end of The Firm, by John Grisham. Link has spoilers, but you know... it was written in the 90s. Not my favorite, and a little bit of a disappointment given the time Lawrence and his readers put into this. I would go as far as putting on my 'myeh' list, but it could have been better.

 

book that broke the world

The Book that Broke the World is book 2 in the Library Trilogy by Mark Lawrence. I mentioned that I was reading this in my review of the first book, but then forgot to write about it. That was a month or so ago,* but I actually purchased this book at a used book sale so I have it, and could give it a flip through to remind myself about it.

This books helps to explain what exactly is up with this book that is so dangerous has done, and how its doing it. Maybe I read over that part too quickly, but I'm not sure I got the explanation in the kind of detail I was looking for. I understand that this universe Lawrence has created is different, and has different rules, but as a reader, I don't understand those rules unless you explain them to me, and I'm not sure I left this one completely satisfied. 

I also think (if I remember correctly) that I was hopeful that the third installment would provide that clarification I was looking for. Now that I've read book 3 as well, I can confirm that this book was Lawrence's opportunity to explain it to me, and I don't think I got it.

This was a fin book in any case, and I certainly didn't give up on the series because of my confusion. Would I have if I'd known that the third book wouldn't provide the full answer to my niggling question? I don't think so. Maybe I'm not the only one?

 

* Okay, its more than a month ago now, I just found this when I opened this to get caught up. I've also finished the 3rd book in this series, as well. 

 

 

dark mirror

I may have cried about this before, but I normally like to wait until all the books are out in a series before digging into it. I've been burned a few times yeah, George R. R. Martin, I'm looking at you When I started to read the Bone Season, I was under the impression it was a 3 book series. It wasn't until a few books in did I realize there were 7, and then only recently, did I learn that the other two books out there in this series were NOT part of the series, but addenda, and short stories--outtakes that were cut from the main books is my guess--and that I need to wait for tow more to come! Yeah, that's right, altho started back in 2013 or something, the sixth book is due out next year and then the seventh... at some point after that. Assuming there isn't an eighth, or whatever.

She even took a break to crack out another series, which was pretty good!

Book 5 is called The Dark Mirror, and in the preface, Shannon points out that after working on this series for close on 15 years, starting when she was pretty young, she's found that some of the earlier things she wrote either don't hold up or have become problematic as the story arc, the characters, or maybe both, have evolved, so she has released revised, and updated versions. The preface includes a link to her site where you can go read a summary of the changes, or find links to the updated texts.*

This was an interesting installment, and includes both new things, as well as the return to some older things. Fans of the series will likely enjoy this book, is my prediction, and I thought that it was pretty well put together. When it started up, I wasn't sure where we were going, but Shannon has crafted a way to maintain the tension and the action, and keep it interesting enough to make us look forward to the next volume. Do I think it would have been possible to tell this story in less than 7 volumes? Sure, but Shannon has created some likeable characters and an interesting alternate universe for them to inhabit so I can see hardcore fans looking forward to as many volumes as they can get. I recall hearing that Tolkien said that his only regret about The Lord of the Rings, was that it was too short. I also think that if he had lived longer, we probably would have seen more from him. So on a related note, lets hope George of the familiar R.R. moniker, doesn't kick it before he gets done what he'd like to.

This was a fun one. 

 

* If you haven't read the books, the Revision Guide Shannon has put together, linked above, may have spoilers.