A Year in Books

I read 63 and one-half books in 2008, an average of one book every 5.7 days. That's one of the findings of my year-long Reading Log experiment.

Starting a year ago today, with Custer’s Brother’s Horse, and running through The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which I started on December 29 and was halfway through as the ball dropped between 2008 and 2009, I have kept a blog-style reading list. I have recorded title, author, publication date, publisher and a few short thoughts about each book that I have read.

The word-cloud that decorates this post (thanks wordle!) is built from the tags I used for each post. It suggests that I prefer fiction to non-fiction and favor historical fiction and fantasy (often in combination). Most books I read are set in the US or the UK and many had to do with war or its effects on folks.

Just over 56% of the books I read (36) were from the Lewes Library. Of the remaining 44%, most were books I bought or was given as gifts, except for a few that were loaners from my brother Matt.

The overwhelming majority (60) were novels. Two were collections of essays, one was organizational self-help, and one was biography.

I'm not certain how to carry forward into 2009. I know I'll keep reading. I always have, as far back as I can remember. But I don't know that I still want to "blog" my reading. I have a day or two to consider, while I finish 2008's final book. Then I may create an on-line spreadsheet, or look for some twitter-like tool that will let me keep track.

Any suggestions?

Half a Year of Reading

We're at the end of June, the (more or less) halfway point of the year. This seems a good time to look back over my 2008 Reading Log for a bit of literatural accounting. I read 31 books in the 181 days between January 1 and June 29. That's an average of one book each 5.8 days. (Yes, I know it sounds like bragging, but I'm being anal about this stuff this year.)

Most of the books I read, 27 of them, were from the Lewes Library. Only four were books I own; most of those were gifts. I like my small-town library.

Twenty-eight were fiction. Two were standard non-fiction and one was a book of essays. I enjoy the escape of diving into a fictional landscape. I have always read more of fiction than any other category.

Seventeen were set in the United States and nine were set in the United Kingdom. One was set partially in India and one in Roman Britain.

I read two books set around the US Civil War. Two were mysteries. And two were fantasy. Fourteen were historical fiction.

I'm In Sync With Delaware Public Libraries!

When I started my 2008 Reading Log at the New Year, I had no idea that I was pre-joining a new program about to be offered by the Delaware Public Libraries.

The Delaware Division of Libraries' Center for the Book has announced "Between the Lines," a journaling program designed to help readers use journals to "help them direct their free-choice learning to achieve self-awareness, self-improvement and self-empowerment." The program includes hard-bound spiral notebooks that participants can use to record their reading and their thoughts about their reading.

That's pretty much what I've been doing with my Reading Log. I swiped the idea from Jessamyn West (a librarian), but it's a fairly standard blogging approach.

I plan to stick with my on-line journal, but I think I'll try to attend the workshop the Libraries folks are offering later this month at Lewes Public Library about Between the lines. It's one of a series they plan (PDF).

I'm a big fan of the public library, especially my library here in Lewes. It's where I find so many great books.

Damn You, Art Garfunkel (Shakes Fist)

I'm feeling very eclipsed by the singer Art Garfunkel just now. Not because he's a better singer than I am; that's been true longer than I've been alive. I'm pretty much used to that. No, what has me feeling beaten is Art's reading list, which puts my new Reading Log blog to shame.

I started a 2008 Reading Log to celebrate the new year. I plan to post the titles of, and a bit about, each book I enjoy his year. You may have noticed the Book Log RSS feed I've placed in the left side column.

This is not a new idea. I swiped it from the librarian Jessamyn West.

But today, reading the New Yorker magazine, I came upon a report on the Garfunkel Library, "a chronological index of the thousand and twenty-three books that he has read since June, 1968." Forty years of reading, recorded on loose-leaf paper, and now posted on the official Art Garfunkel web site.

That's some impressive obsessiveness, Mr. Garfunkel.

RIP (and Thank You) George Macdonald Fraser

I was saddened to learn of the death yesterday of the author George Macdonald Fraser. Fraser, a Scot, created the Flashman series of novels, which have given me a great deal of pleasure over the years. He was 82. The cause of death was cancer.

Fraser had served in India during World War and worked as a journalist in Glasgow before becoming an author and screenwriter. The original Flashman novel started that portion of his career in the late 1960's. In it, he took a minor character in 19th century literature and imagined him into one of the greatest cads in English fiction. His novels are great fun and feature well-researched and accurate historical people, places, and actions.

He also wrote a wonderful memoir of his military service (Quartered Safe Out Here), and a series of short-stories inspired by that period of his life (the "McAuslan" stories). He wrote a parody of pirate books (The Pyrates) and a handful of novels set in Victorian and Elizabethan England. His screenplays included several "musketeers" movies and Force Ten from Navarone.

George Macdonald Fraser was a fine writer. He has left us an impressive body of work. Thank you, sir.

In Troubled Times, Where Shall a Bruised Nation Turn for Soothing Ironic Distance?

I found myself drawn to this recent headline from The Onion: Nation's Crumbling Infrastructure Probably Some Sort Of Metaphor.

The satirical "newspaper" recounts recent infrastructure failures and notes that these failures are "forcing many to question whether the nation's rapidly deteriorating roads, contaminated drinking water and groundwater, and run-down schools could perhaps be a metaphor for something."

"Everywhere you turn you see improperly maintained railways, structurally deficient bridges—not to mention billions of gallons of untreated sewage flowing directly into our groundwater," said Adam Perry, a representative for the ASCE. "Is there an underlying message here? There are so many layers, and each one is so subtle and nuanced, that I'm hesitant to make any kind of blanket statement about what this means 'for America.'"

"I think our overstretched and increasingly obsolete infrastructure might symbolize something important," Perry added. "But what?"

I find myself missing that sort of irony-heavy satirical commentary now that the TV-writers' strike has darkened the nation's airwaves. I wonder where to turn for the acerbic commentary I once depended on The Daily Show to provide.

As it happens, commercial television is not the only place to find such content. As we turn away from reality-TV, we are rediscovering thoughtful, written cynicism in all manner of formats, from traditional printed books and magazines to on-line blogs and, for the more adventurous, personal conversation.

Aside from The Onion, there are other goofy-news sites such as ScrappleFace, McSweeney's and the (somewhat NSFW) Daily Mash over in the United Kingdom. There are sites featuring humorous writing in general, such as Francesco Explains It All. And the TV writers are creating new on-line video content in their own cause at Speechless.

So, as the writers' strike drags into a new year, and we resign ourselves to television without great wit, people around the nation are re-discovering the joys of literature, learning about alternate media, and indulging in conversation.

And some -- a brave few -- are starting to express their own, very personal, satire.

Delaware Photo Blogs

I've been thinking about posting an item about Kevin Fleming's Wild Delaware blog ever since I ran across it back in September. I did add it to my blogroll, but I am lazy and easily distracted and eventually other Delaware bloggers made note of Kevin's blog and started spreading the word.

Kevin is Delaware's premier photographer. His are the coffee-table books we give when we want to give the gift of Delaware-ness. I had the privilege of meeting and being photographed by Kevin back in the spring of 2006; I'm a fan.

But Kevin is not the only one taking cool photos in our state. I've collected links to at least eight other Delaware photography blogs and even more Delaware photography web sites. So I thought I'd present a selection of those sites too. In absolutely no discernible order.

Tony Pratt also photographs nature in this area. Tony is an old friend I worked with at DNREC many years ago. He works in beach preservation and spends much of his time on the shoreline, in the dunes, and working with property owners. He is also a former Lewes leader; he helped write the City's first comprehensive plan, which I have now been part of updating.

Remind me to tell you the story sometime about working down the Delaware Coast with Tony and Mike Powell early one morning in January, 1992, during a major Nor'Easter. We were taking pictures (pre-digital cameras, unfortunately) of storm damage. It was an adventure.

I ran into Tony at the Dover Safeway one day recently. There's a decent salad bar in there and I often see colleagues wandering through at lunch time. Tony told me he'd started his own photo blog. He has been joining Kevin for early morning photography visits to area marshes. I think he's had pretty stunning results.

There are several other professional photographers with blogs. Laura Novak and Lance Lanagan both have studios and specialize in portraiture and weddings and such. There's also a blog for, by and about the Delaware Professional Photographers group.

And there are semi-pros.

Photodee blogs about her "adventures in knitting & photography." I don't know anything about knitting, but her photography is pretty cool.

Dave Wolanski has both a personal photoblog, Things I See, and a new Dave's Photo Tips blog where he offers advice and guidance on shooting with digital cameras.

And So That Happened... was a photo-a-day blog that was active from late 2004 through this past spring.

There are also bloggers who, like me, making photography a part of what they post, if not the main focus. These include, and I'm sure I'm leaving somebody out, Delmar Dustpan, Elbert (with an "E"), and The Happy Hippie.

And finally, many of us also post Delaware photography to one of several flickr groups focused on the first state or to the Delaware.gov collection of photo collections.

''Oh, my god, the fan fiction.''

StumpJumper, over at Denied Intervention, points us to a story in the New York Times about the sexual orientation of a major character in the Harry Potter books: J.K. Rowling Outs Hogwarts Character.

At a reading and Q&A session, author Rowling was asked by a young fan whether Albus Dumbledore, the powerful and positive grandfather figure who leads the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Magic, ever finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

I don't think Ms. Rowling intended to imply that being gay precludes finding true love. She went on to explain that the great wizard had had a tragic love affair earlier in life. I think that puts him into the "only one great love" category of fictional folk.

My take on elderly deus-ex-old-guy characters like Dumbledore is that they exist beyond the age of any romantic entanglement. And for the span of time covered by the Potter that seems to be the case.

Of course, any good writer will know the back-story of all of her characters. And given that a percentage of any group of humans is gay, it makes sense that there should be some gay folks in Harry Potter's world.

Banned Books Week

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathon Swift
Originally uploaded by hatcher.library

The week of September 29 through October 6 is Banned Books Week. This is a week when those of us who read should remember those books that folks, for a wide variety of reasons, have tried to take out of our hands.

The list is long and diverse. Would-be censors right, left and center have all challenged books. The urge to stifle thought that we don't agree with is universal; we all have a duty to combat that urge within ourselves.

It is interesting to note that more than "banned" books, we now speak of "challenged" books. These are books that someone is trying to keep us from reading, either by banning or by raising an un-holy stink about them.

The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom points to this quote from Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451):

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Thus we see campaigns that complain loudly about certain books. They may or may not call for book-banning, but they all can lead librarians, teachers, parents and readers to shy away from certain books. And that is not good.

Count Me in the "Reader" Column

The AP is reporting a poll that found that a quarter of US adults read no books in the last year.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year -- half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

That's not good. In an era in which we worry about our nation falling behind others economically, this slide away from knowledge and culture can only hurt us.

I am a reader. It is an activity that has given me joy, comfort, knowledge, and peace for almost 40 years now. (Assuming I date the start of my reading to around First Grade.) And I am probably ravenous reader. I probably average about one book each week.

It works for me.

This Makes Me Feel Good

There is an organization known as The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH). That makes me feel better about life.

I got an e-mail today asking for nominations for the 2008 AATH Book Awards. The awards are set up to honor authors of books that further the mission of AATH: "to advance the understanding and application of humor and laughter for their positive benefits."

I was tempted to scoff at this as simply self-evident. But, while laughter in itself is good for you, it is also the case that, with training, one can build therapies on that fact and enhance the power of the smile.

There is a similar therapeutic effect with music. The Lovely Karen is a trained and certified Music Therapist. Music Therapy appears to be a bit further along as a profession, but I see a role of Humor Therapy as well.

Our neighbors Charlie and Nancy were involved in humor therapy for many years. They volunteered around the community as the clowns Happy G and O Lucky; we would see them in parades and at street festivals. We always thought it was simply their way to have fun.

Colleen interviewed them for a school project one evening and they explained to us about the deeper work they were doing, visiting the sick and dying and bringing cheer into hospitals.

I think that's pretty cool.

Book Signing

I got to have an author sign his book for me this past week-end. Tom Starnes, a retired Methodist minister I know through Karen's church, has published a memoir, Through Fear to Faith. He held a book-signing down at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach on Saturday morning and I stopped by.

Tom filled-in at Epworth United Methodist in Rehoboth some years ago when they were between ministers. Karen enjoyed his sermons and I liked him the few times I attended. Since then, we've seen him around a fair amount; he's retired here. And I get to play golf with him every once in a while when the Methodists have a fellowship golf outing.

I've mentioned Tom here before. He writes occasional Community View columns for the News Journal that I always enjoy. I look forward to reading his memoir.

OK. That's Done.

The other day I finished reading Blue at the Mizzen by Patrick O'Brian. It's the 20th and final novel in the O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series.

This is a series of novels about Jack Aubrey, a ship captain in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars, and his "particular friend" Stephen Maturin, ship's doctor and intelligence agent. It's a great series of novels that combines action and adventure with a Jane Austin-like close observation of personality and social interaction in the 19th century.

I started working my way through the series back in May, somewhat by chance. I had read all of those books before, of course. My brother Matt turned me and our other brothers on to the series years ago and we traded the first several books back and forth within the family, eagerly awaiting each new title. Since then I've read a few of them several times more.

After reading Master and Commander this spring, I decided to make my way through the series again. For the first few I was interspersing O'Brian novels with other sorts of books. After a bit, though, I decided to just stick to O'Brian until I finished the series. I found I couldn't wait
to get back to that world.

In the end, it took almost exactly 5 months to read all 20 novels. It was great fun. In another 5 years or so, I think I'll do it again.

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Grumble, Grumble, Grumble.... A Book Meme

Annavenger says I gotta....

1. One book that changed your life: The Tin Drum. I've been thinking about this book again, perhaps because the author, Gunter Grass, has been in the news recently. I read this in high school, after my writing teacher suggested it. It opened up a new world of literature for me; bringing me to international writing and to writing that breaks the rules of reality.

2. One book that you've read more than once: A Soldier of the Great War. This is a wonderful book by Mark Helprin. I'’ve mentioned it here before. It follows a young Italian man through World War I. There are several books by Helprin that are worth owning and returning to.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: Any one of the Foxfire Books. These are folk-craft how-to books. They apply more to being lost in the Appalachian Mountains, but seem worth a try.

4. One book that made you laugh: Right Ho, Jeeves. Or almost anything by PG Wodehouse.

5. One book that made you cry: The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank. Maybe not when I first read it, as a young teen, but in retrospect.

6. One book that you wish had been written: Why I Stayed with Baseball and Gave Politics a Pass, by George W. Bush.

7. One book that you wish had never been written: I don't think there are any. I'’ve seen others answer this with Mein Kampf or the Qu'Ran. That just seems silly. Without Mein Kampf, how would we be able to study the madness that caused Hitler to do what he did? And to think that a holy book of any specific culture is at fault for a conflict we may have with that culture is jingoistically foolish.

8. One book you'’re currently reading: The Far Side of the World. I'’m still making my way through the Aubrey/Maturin series. Again.

9. One book you'’ve been meaning to read: Blue Shoes and Happiness, by Alexander McCall Smith. This was a Father's Day gift from Karen, but it keeps slipping to the bottom of my reading pile.

10. Tag five others. Well. Who to lay this on next? How about Del, Amanda, Paul, Howard and Fritz.

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• meme
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Imagine My Surprise

I just finished a novel that is set, in part, in my home town, only in the late 1800s.

I had not realized that it would be set here in Lewes when I pulled Tunnell's Boys off the library shelf. I just did what I always do, I wandered along the New Books shelf and, judging them entirely by their covers, picked two to bring home and read. That approach usually works just fine.

Tunnell's Boys is a historical novel by Tony Junker, a Philadelphia architect and sailor. It tells the story of two young men who meet as apprentice Delaware River and Bay Pilots. It is set partly in Philadelphia, partly in Lewes, and partly on the Delaware River and Bay and on the Atlantic Ocean.

The sail and steam-powered boating in the book is very well told. Mr. Junker knows his boats and the moods of deep and shallow waters. It works just fine as a sea-going adventure.

Thematically, this book is about war and responsibility and the duties of men and women in the world. Mr. Junker is a Quaker, and uses his story to examine some of the larger issues of life from the perspective of Quaker practice. The story turns on the US war with Spain over Cuba. It holds some parallels for our foreign policy predicament of today.

What fascinated me, though, was to read a novel set in Lewes, Delaware. I don't know our history quite well enough to know how much license Mr. Junker may have taken, but I know enough to say that he has painted a plausible past for the First Town.

Much of the action takes place on the waters of the Bay. The characters live and work on a schooner that anchors behind the breakwater off Lewes. They discuss the need for a second breakwater, to expand the anchorage. This would be built eventually. The old Cape Henlopen Lighthouse is there on the dunes, but a major storm erodes away the sand at the base, and characters worry that it may soon slide away. I recognized street names and places. It felt right; it felt like Lewes in the days of sail.

I do wonder about Mr. Junker's addition of a brothel, run and staffed by Cuban emigres, to 19th-century Lewes. I am not sure whether that might be accurate or not, and I'm not sure who to ask. Should I go up to one of the elderly ladies of the Lewes Historical Society and ask? I suppose they might surprise me.

I also found myself thinking of local "coastal conservative" Jud Bennett as I read this book. Jud is now working his way up in politics, and blogging. But he was once a Delaware River and Bay Pilot. I could see Jud, a big guy, bushy-bearded and commanding, climbing onto the deck of a three-masted ship and piloting her up from Lewes the Philadelphia.

In fact, I used Jud's face in my internal movie for one of the characters in the book.

I had thought to read another sea-story, fun and salty but nothing special. Instead, I found a sort of history machine, taking me back in my town's time.

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• Bay
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• Lewes

Returning to an Old Favorite

Sunday evening, I finished reading the novel I'd borrowed from the Lewes Public Library. This week is full enough that I won't have a chance to get back to the library again until the week-end, at the earliest.

So I found myself in front of the book shelves late that night, scanning the titles of books that I've read and thought enough of to own a copy. I was looking for a book I could comfortably revisit.

As is often the case, I eventually grabbed one of the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian. I keep coming back to these books. This time, it was the first in the series, Master and Commander. This book, by the way, does not tell the tale that was told in the movie of the same name; it gives an introduction to Captain Jack Aubrey and his pal Stephen Maturin.

At the start of the book, Jack is given a promotion and his first command, a "little small squat merchantman with two masts" as Stephen calls it when he first sees the Sophie.

Small, old, slow and not very powerful she may be, but a command is a command and Jack celebrates with too much food and too much drink. He wakes on his ship at dawn the next day, hug-over, sour and sick. But slowly, the sun comes up.

As his thoughts ranged on so the low cabin brightened steadily. A fishing boat passed under the Sophie's stern, laden with tunny and uttering the harsh roar of a conch; at almost the same time the sun popped up from behind St. Philip's fort -- it did, in fact, pop up, flattened like a sideways lemon in the morning haze and drawing its bottom free of the land with a distinct jerk. In little more than a minute the greyness of the cabin had utterly vanished: the deck-head was alive with light glancing from the rippling sea; and a single ray, reflected from some unmoving surface on the distant quay, darted through the cabin windows to light up Jacks coat and its blazing epaulette. The sun rose within his mind, obliging his dogged look to broaden into a smile, and he swung out of his cot.

I love the language in these stories, and I've always been a fan of seafaring stories. So what if this will be my eighth or ninth time through this book? I love these books.

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In Fifty Years, This May Require a Footnote of Its Own

I've just finished reading the latest Flashman installment from George Macdonald Fraser. The 12th in the series, Flashman on the March is a story of the Victorian British expedition (invasion?) into Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

The Flashman books feature an almost unbelievably amoral rogue named Harry Flashman, a minor character that Fraser liberated from the 19th Century novel Tom Brown's School Days. Fraser places Flashman, Zelig- or Gump-like, into a variety of major historical events of the Victorian age. He's a coward, but through luck and bluster always manages to emerge a hero. The books are great fun, and I recommend this latest as well.

My eye was caught by the end of the Explanatory Note, which included an interesting echo of today's history.

This section is part of the conceit that Fraser is simply editor of the recently discovered Flashman Papers. Fraser, a British writer, sets up the historic context of the story -- an apparently insane Abyssinian monarch has taken the British envoy hostage and is massacring his people. The British send in a limited force to free the hostages and depose the tyrant. Not to stay, not to create a new democracy. A limited mission.

All of which [Flashman] records with his customary shameless honesty, and it may be that along with the light he casts on a unique chapter of imperial history, he invites a comparison with a later and less glorious day.

For Flashman's story is about a British army sent out in a good and honest cause by a government who knew what honor meant. It was not sent without initial follies and hesitations, in high places, or until every hope of a peaceful issue was gone. It went with the doubt that it was right. It served no politician's vanity or interest. It went without messianic rhetoric. There were no false excuses, no deceits, no cover-ups or lies, just a decent resolve to do a government's first duty: to protect its people, whatever the cost. To quote Flashman again, those were the days.

To steal a phrase from characters in another set of favorite books (the Aubrey/Maturin series), he can't say clearer than that.

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I Have The Name, Now I Just Need The Rest of My New Band

I heard the phrase that will be the name of my famous rock band this week. I was listening to NPR's story, (The Secret Court of Terror Investigations) when the three words I've been waiting for my whole life were uttered, as part of this sentence: "While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from OIPR's failure to let us use the tools given to us."

"Radical Militant Librarians"

Just picture it. Me, backed by a band made up of slender, severe- looking women dressed in gray wool skirt-suits (with skirts reaching at least mid-calf), accented by combat boots and bandoleers bristling with books.

Now appearing, Mike and the Radical Militant Librarians.

Happy Birthday, Mike's Musings!

This blog started one year ago today. I began, as one does, with a test post. I also tested uploading a picture (this was well before I discovered Flickr), linked to an odd story I found out on the web, and late that night discovered that I’d chosen a name too much in haste.

Over the past year I’ve had a great deal of fun with this thing. I have reviewed books and movies and blogged about music. I have tracked and memorialized old friends. I have touched on issues, both local and national. I have lamented lamentable events such as the tsunami and the recent hurricane.

I’ve explored my family history. And reported on family present. I have given weather reports. I have given travelogues.

I have become a braggart.

I have bragged about my car, bragged about my kids and the neat things they do, and bragged about my work. I have (painfully) documented a year’s worth of health and dental woes. I find that bragging about forbearance helps me bear up in the face of things that otherwise scare me.

Behind all of it is the patience and love of my wonderful wife, Karen. It is her considered opinion that I spend too much time on line. She’s right of course, and I will try to mend my ways.

As soon as I finish this post!

A Book I Read: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

It has been a while since I've offered a book review/book report here. It's not that I haven't been reading; I just haven't run across anything remarkable enough to be worthy of mention here in a while. Or maybe I haven't done so at a time when I felt like writing at length. Besides, if all I posted about was the books I've read, this site could get boring. Quickly.

I've just finished reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. I think this one is worth a mention.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a novel set in present-day New York City. The protagonist is a nine-year-old boy who lost his father in the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11. The novel follows his quest to illuminate his father's memory and, although unwittingly, to discover his family history.

This is a wonderful book. Foer offers a free look at Chapter 1, as a PDF file, on his web site. Have a look, I think you'll see the charm.

I was struck by the echoes of The Tin Drum, a disturbing novel of World War Two published in 1959 by the German author Gunter Grass. There was also a movie version in 1979.

I read The Tin Drum a year or so before the movie came out, while I was in High School. It was one of the books that really conked me at that point in my life. It helped confirm me as a lifelong reader.

The echoes?

In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the boy's name is Oskar Schell. The child in The Tin Drum is Oskar Matzerath.

Oskar Schell obsessively plays a tambourine. Oskar Matzerath plays a child's tin drum. Both kids exhibit a variety of obsessive/compulsive behaviors.

In both books, the reader is witness to some of the major human tragedies of the 20th and 21st centuries. Both books tie tragedies in their present settings to tragedies in history and track families through human upheavals.

There are other echoes; these are the obvious, hit you over the head, ones.

At root, both books are about the effects of war and conflict on children, on families and on the innocent.

I recommend them both. I also think I will look for Foer's first book -- Everything Is Illuminated -- next time I'm in the library or bookstore.

For now, I'm just embarking on a pleasant trip to Botswana in the latest edition of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, by Alexander McCall Smith. Karen gave me a copy of In the Company of Cheerful Ladies for Father's Day.

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• safran