The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

From September 24 to October 1, libraries everywhere will be observing Banned Books Week. Books banned (or challenged) will appear in library displays to encourage customers to free their minds and read a banned book. The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls is one such book. Challenged for its profanity, criticism of Christianity, accounts of sexual abuse and prostitution, it is the amazing story of an unusual family.

 

Jeannette, a brother and two sisters grew up in an ever-changing environment. Moving from town to town, the family often “skedaddled” in the middle of the night. They camped in the mountains and in deserted desert towns. They slept in their car and in cardboard boxes

 

Jeannette’s father, Rex, was brilliant, a dreamer and an alcoholic. Her mother, Rose Mary, a would-be artist, preferred creating a painting to cooking a meal for her children. Both father and mother had an unconventional attitude about childrearing. The four Walls children basically raised themselves. Jeanette was three years old when she was seriously burned while cooking her own supper.

However, the children learned to read from their father, who also left them with dreams of a “glass castle.” Their upbringing was both a curse and a blessing. Cursed with embarrassing situations, like having to wear shoes held together with safety pins. Blessed with the desire to move forward and better themselves.

 

Walls was a respected journalist before writing The Glass Castle, revealing the truth of her childhood after twenty years of hiding her past. The “challenged” situations in her memoir are part of her history and need to be told. Despite poverty, fire, embarrassment, and near starvation, she tells the touching story of the Walls family with honesty and love.

 

Jane Kaufman

101 Weird Ways to Make Money by Steve Gillman

I didn't put the whole title in the heading.  It goes like this:  101 Weird Ways to Make Money: Cricket Farming, Repossessing Cars, and Other Jobs with Big Upside and Not Much Competition by Steve Gillman.

According to the introduction, this author has tried many of the jobs in this book or ones similar to them.  Did you know that there is a viable market for selling maggots?  Maybe you have a clean gene.  How about diaper service or crime scene clean-up?

Want a green business?  There's information on solar-roasted coffee, recycling electronic waste, and old oil-tank removal.

Are you computer savvy?  Maybe you can sell virtual real estate in game worlds or buy and sell domain names.

It seems like there is something possible for almost anyone in this book.  I noted a couple I thought were especially relevant to my skills, but not maggot farming.  lol

Kathi Linz

Write a Marketable Children's Book in Seven Weeks by Shirley Raye Redmond and Jennifer McKerley

I've read a LOT of books on how to write books, especially children's books. If you want clear, concise, easy-to-understand directions, then pick up Write a Marketable Children's Book in Seven Weeks by Shirley Raye Redmond and Jennifer McKerley. Very practical, very simple, lots of good illustrations and samples.

Kathi Linz

Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer's Manual by Rita Mae Brown

Lately, I've thought about doing some more writing, so I picked up a couple of books by writers on how to write and sell your work. 

The first one I read was Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer's Manual by Rita Mae Brown.  It really does have some different ideas.  No other writer's manual that I've ever seen talks about physical exercise as a way to improve one's writing.  Actually, she has several good points in that chapter.

I'm not so keen on the chapter that says that I need to learn Latin to write well.  I have an excellent grasp on the roots of many English words, be they Latin-by-way-of-France, Greek, Spanish, Germanic, or Native American.

I especially will not follow her advice about using a fountain pen or Selectric typewriter instead of a computer.  No editor would take the manuscript. This book was written in 1988.

Rita, how about an update?

Kathi Linz

Flight to Heaven: A Pilot's True Story, a Plane Crash...a lone survivor... a Journey to Heaven-- and Back by Capt. Dale Black

I liked Flight to Heaven: A Pilot's True Story, a Plane Crash...a Lone Survivor... a Journey to Heaven-- and Back by Capt. Dale Black better than 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. 

Dale Black's death or near-death experience changed him for the rest of his life.  As many of these stories are, this is as much about the accident and recovery period as it is about heaven.  In Dale's case, he becomes an airline pilot and a mission pilot in Africa.  You find out about an emergency landing in Zambia years after Dale's near-fatal crash when the entire country is in blackout conditions and the airport is shut down.  He and the members of his team are immediately arrested and spend the night witnessing to their jailers.

I found this book to be very satsifying. 

Kathi Linz

How to Make Money Using Etsy by Timothy Adam

In the book How to Make Money Using Etsy by Timothy Adam you will learn how to market your crafts online. 

Etsy is a website devoted to handmade crafts.  If you love what you make and the people around you tell you to get out and sell your stuff because it's so wonderful, then Etsy might be the right marketplace for you.  You don't have to go out in the weather and set up a tent or pay craft fair booth fees.

Besides all the good information on setting up your store, Mr. Adam gives you information on marketing techniques inside and outside of Etsy, ways to draw people to your stuff. 

In eight interviews with top sellers given at the end of the book, you will find out everything from time management to shipping tips.  Even photography techniques are discussed. 

This book is a foot-in-the-door for anyone who hopes to make a living selling their crafts.

Kathi Linz

The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss

The complete title is The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss.

Please note that the author does NOT have any intials behind his name.  He is not a doctor and makes no claims to being a medical professional.  What he does claim is that he has regular contact with sports people and coaches of all kinds.  These people, probably more so than doctors, are on the cutting edge of what works.

If you want to lose some weight, if you want to gain some muscle, if you want to increase your energy levels, this book will give you several ideas.  Some of the ideas will sound familiar, like vegetables and lean protein are good for weight loss.  Others might surprise you, like taking a cold shower will help you lose weight because the body has to work harder to get its temperature back up.

If you want some new ideas, this might be the book that will help you find a different way to get where you are going.

Kathi Linz

Around the World In 80 Days by Jules Verne

At 11:00 AM, on Friday, July 15, the Fantastic Fictioneers (JCPL's Book Discussion Group) will talk about Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days.  Imagine "The Great Race" in 1872. Travel by rail, steamer, and elephant - yes, elephant - move our globe-trotting heros along.

Englishman Phileas Fogg, a wealthy, strong, silent type and his newly hired man-servant Passpartout are off on their adventures. A journey, not for sightseeing, studying foreign cultures, or enjoying local customs but on a bet.  Phileas Fogg has wagered 20,000 pounds (2.11 million in today's dollars) that traveling around the world could be accomplished in 80 days.

Mr. Fogg has the trip planned to the hour and he, along with Passpartout, set out on October 2, 1872. Their goal is to return to London by December 2, eighty days later. Unknown to Fogg, a Scotland Yard detective is following them. He believes Fogg matches the description of a London bank robber and is escaping the country with his haul from the bank.

Fogg, Passpartout, and the detective are met with adventures - or rather misadventures - that are dangerous, exciting, and often comical. Especially enjoyable is their journey across the United States including encounters with bison and Native Americans.

My only disappointment was that the travelers never used a hot air balloon. That means of transportation  was created by Hollywood in the 1956 movie adaption of Verne's book.

Enjoy the book! Learn about world customs, geography, and history. Get to know two of the most quirky characters in literature.

Jane Kaufman

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede

In August, the Fantastic Fictioneers will take on a nonfiction book called The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede.  It sounded like an interesting book, so I picked it up.

On 9-11, 2001, there were 4546 civilian aircraft over the United States and over 250 planes over the ocean when American airspace was shut down because of the attack on the World Trade Center.  Canada took in the international flights of which 38 planes landed in Gander, Newfoundland.  The town of about 10,000 people took in 6,595 passengers, housed, fed, and clothed them for 4 or 5 days. 

By the time the "plane people" got off their planes and went through customs with nothing but their carry-on luggage, they were bused to various area shelters, given clean sheets, towels and new toothbrushes, were fed, showered (often in residents' homes), and, in general, made to feel like they'd suddenly come home.

The book mainly tells the story of a few families/individuals and their experiences during what became a continental crisis.

I found out that 9/11 ripple effect had far-ranging effects.  I found out that there are still places in the world where people treat strangers like family.  It made me want to visit Newfoundland someday.

Kathi Linz

Around the Corner: Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman

Sometimes a plain piece of knit or crochet can be transformed by a beautiful border.  The book Around the Corner: Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman shows how to join yarn to both knit and crochet pieces and figure out the correct number of stitches for straight places, corners, and curves.  A short section shows how to add crochet to woven cloth.

150 crocheted edging patterns go from simple to fancy with suggestions on color choices to make your work absolutely stunning.

I recommend this book for crocheters and for knitters who crochet enough to make finished edges.

Kathi

The Germans in Colonial Times

The Germans in Colonial Times. (1901) Lucy Forney Bittinger.


Determined to learn more about the folkways of the German and Swiss immigrants who probably included some of my ancestors in America, I purchased this book at a genealogy conference and took it with me to read while car maintenance was performed.


Most of my information these days arrives online as I graze points of particular interest, and I hoped this book on what sounds like a dry topic would hold my interest for an hour or so. As it turns out, I didn’t want to put it down. The next day I continued through it between chores, as unable to put it down for long as I would have been with a good mystery. 


People with the North Carolina ancestors so common in this area often don’t realize many of those Carolinians originated in the area of central Europe that became unified in 1871 as Germany. In some cases the ancestors migrated through Pennsylvania and traveled the Great Wagon Road south into the Alleghenies and the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia and North Carolina.


Would I find clues in this book to help me locate immigrant ancestors? Certainly I found unexpected food for thought that no history class ever provided in such rich detail. The first chapter is “Conditions in Germany Which Led to Emigration.” 


The Germans who survived more than a century of warfare from the early 1500s through the 1600s lived in a ravaged, diseased environment. Bittinger details the hardships under kings and princes who denied prosperity and exacted harsh penalties for resistance to accepting their beliefs. She tells of Mennonites from Switzerland as well as the Palatines of the Rhineland, Moravians, Schwenkfelders, Dunkers, Brethren – all aliens among the English in the colonies.


Sea journeys also are described. Emigrants must have wondered if they had jumped from frying pan to fire!


“[T]he first emigration of Germans to America in 1683 was influenced by purely religious motives and not at all by social conditions,” Bittinger says. Later emigration starting about 1709 did relate to social conditions. A hard winter left areas with “ragged, miserable Germans” heading to the Low Countries, then England. While these countries had some sympathy for the refugees, they could ill afford the cost of taking care of them. 


What happens next is told in the stories of individuals and groups as they arrive also in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and the southern colonies. Communities profiled as they develop include Germantown, Schoharie, Tulpehocken, Ephrata, Hagar’s Town, Shenandoah, Frederica, Purrysburg, Waldoboro, Orangeburg, Gnadenhutten and others. The narrative continues through the Revolutionary War with German connections to George Washington, Moll Pitcher and the Hessians. 


This book is indexed and has a chronology as well as a bibliography. It is held by some Evergreen Indiana libraries as well as the Indiana University Library at Bloomington. Full text of various editions also is available for free download online at archive.org, openlibrary.org, books.google.com and possibly other locations and can be viewed on Ancestry Library Edition or Ancestry.com. The search inside the book works better on some efiles than others. Let us know if you find this book helpful in your research.

- Charlotte

The Hound of Rowan by Henry H. Neff

If you liked the Harry Potter series or Rick Riordan's Last Olympian books, you will probably like Henry H. Neff's "The Tapestry" trilogy. 

In Hound of Rowan, Max McDaniels finds an alcove in Chicago's Art Institute which contains an old tapestry.  The tapestry begins to glow.  When Max leaves the alcove, he discovers a letter in his pocket which says he is invited to attend the Rowan Academy in New England.  It is an exclusive school for people with special talents.  And the alcove is no longer there.

Immediately, Max notices that he is being stalked by strange people and is nearly kidnapped.  As it turns out, more than forty other Potentials have disappeared.  Max makes it safely to Rowan Academy where he begins his training.  He is paired with a mythical animal called a lymrill.  It is about the size of a wolverine with steel quills.  To make matters just a bit more touchy, Max falls afoul of the school bully, Alex.

The story has the flavor of Celtic mythology without borrowing heavily from it.  The lymrill is an animal invented by the author, but it feels right in the story. 

Max is a rough-cut main character, not always following the rules, somewhat scrappy (yes, he was provoked), and occasionally a bit unexpected.  He gets in quite a lot of trouble and still manages to save the day in superhero style. 

In this first book of the trilogy, we are introduced to a world-class villain.  I have no idea how the good guys are going to defeat him, but I'm willing to read more in order to find out.

Kathi Linz

Around the World in Eighty Days

Around the World in Eighty Days is one of those classics that I kept saying I would get around to reading. I needed to read it for the June 22 Fiction by Night book discussion, and like most "required reading", I had to make myself sit down with the book and just start reading.

Almost immediately I got pulled into Jules Verne's story and found that I liked the characters and looked forward to reading the next chapter. I was also enjoying the experience of reading it on my new e-reader, finding that I could increase the size of the print, that when I turned off my e-reader that it held my place.

I found myself escaping on this adventure with Phileas Fogg, the unemotional English gentleman who has too much time on his hands, and perhaps, too much money. He spends his days at his club and makes a wager that he can make it around the world in a mere 80 days. His valet Passepartout, however, enjoys the sights and sounds and people in the countries they are madly traveling through. Fogg spends a number of days by rail and steamer simply playing endless hours of whist with like-minded English gents who are not interested in anything outside their own realm of experience. It was interesting to see Fogg gradually slip out of his "fog" and begin to experience the adventure. Passepartout unwittingly forces Fogg to get involved with others. By the end of the adventure, we see that Fogg has changed.

There is added tension to the plot. Detective Fix of Scottland Yard is following Fogg, whom he suspects of stealing 50,000 pounds from a bank. I was afraid this might be too contrived -- how could he follow Fogg without raising any suspicions? Would this book end up being resolved by a lot of convuluted coincidences?

I remember when the big 1956 movie production of Around the World in Eighty Days came out. It won an academy award for Best Picture of the Year. I suppose the movie is responsible for me associating hot air balloons with the book. Even the Bantam paperback edition has hot air ballons on the cover.

It's amazing to think of living in a time when travel was slow and unpredictable. Railways lines could end before you were at your destination. Phileas Fogg proved he was resourceful and determined. Does he make the trip in eight days? Read the book and come discuss it with the rest of group this Wednesday night.

The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes

The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes was not on the list that I'd been compiling of books that I might like to read, but I'd heard of it before & was looking for a book to start my summer reading program so I checked it out--& I'm glad I did!

Even though the book discusses the science behind DNA & genetic testing, it is an easy read. In addition to some discussion of genetics, the author shares stories of his career in which his team is involved in genetic testing of the Iceman that was found in the Alps in the 1990s & of the bodies found in Russia, also in the 1990s, that may have belonged to the last tsar of Russia & his family. I found these stories of using genetics in these ways very interesting because they put the revelance of genetics into a historic context that I wasn't expecting.

The author explains how similar genetic testing helped to prove how the peoples of both Polynesia & Europe came to inhabit those places & explains the concept of the "seven daughters of Eve"--the theory that almost all native Europeans are descended from only seven women. He also spends a significant portion of the book describing what life might have been like for these seven women. This part was slightly disappointing to me because instead of only describing the genetic background on each woman or even the world in which each woman lived, the author created fictional stories about each woman's life. While this was interesting enough (especially for me, a fan of The Clan of the Cave Bear), it wasn't what I was expecting & seemed kind of odd in a nonfiction book.

Even though I realized that this book is 10 years old--a period in which science could change drastically--I still found it very interesting & educational. Not only did it discuss genetics, but to some extent, it covered archaeology, anthropology, & history--something for everyone!

Monica Boyer

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Fantastic Fictioneers are reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer for their Friday, June 17th meeting.

Although this book is fiction, I came away with a lot of information about what happened to the Channel Islanders during the German occupation of the islands in World War II. The Channel Islands belong to England and lie just off the coast of France in the English Channel. Hitler was thrilled to capture them because they were part of England.

A few people were having a pork dinner one evening, having killed an illegal pig, and ended up being out past curfew. As some of them were walking home, soldiers stopped the little group and asked why they were on the street. Elizabeth totally invented a story about how they were part of a literary society that happened to meet that evening. They became so engrossed in the discussion that they stayed too late. The group felt compelled to meet every two weeks thereafter to prove that the story was true.

That is the beginning of the Islanders' story, but the book actually begins after the war, when a journalist is contacted by one Island gentleman asking her if she can find a book for him. He had found her address inside the cover of a book that had happened to make its way to the bookshelves of the literary society. Although not all of the story is pleasant, it reads quickly and ends well.

I posted another article about this book on April 12, 2010. If you are interested in this book and want a little more before picking it up, please check out my previous posting.

Kathi Linz