Well, I left the ARC languishing on my shelves for three years, and who's sorry now? Me, of course because I love a story about irascible old people. Well, I left the ARC languishing on my shelves for three years, and who's sorry now? Me, of course because I love a story about irascible old people. Crones for the win! Prior introduces us to the title crone, Veronica, who is every bit the cranky woman who hates everyone upon introduction. And to prove her point we get her view of the other characters throughout.
I enjoy a Scrooge, a Grinch, a man called Ove: mean people are fun. Penguins do not cause climate change and ate quite vulnerable to it. They are also fun, plus they have the power to save the lives of elderly Englishwomen, one of which I would enjoy being someday. Although probably not in England.
I was planning to link to a penguin charity here, but there are considerably more of them than there are penguin species, and my head hurts, and I don't have that kind of patience right now. I recall one group was putting tiny hand-knitted sweaters on penguin stuffed, as a donation thank you.
Part of my wants to just delete all of the following, but I'll leave it for now. If anyone noticed that my review didn't actuallEdited to add 06/02/19
Part of my wants to just delete all of the following, but I'll leave it for now. If anyone noticed that my review didn't actually include a review of the book, they were to kind to mention it.
Anyway, here's the thing: Clavel gives the reader a little bit of memoir of her own education, a bit of how she came to educate her own children as she did in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Palo Alto and New York.. There is quite a bit about the educational ideologies of different countries and schools and many helpful tips for parents who have the time and resources to pursue the best educational options for their children. There is quite a bit on how egregiously non-democratic the US public education funding scheme is, and some about how disorganized it all is with more than 13k public school systems. There is quite a bit about how Clavel is fortunate enough to be able to provide her own kids with the best possible education, but not in a gloating way: it is recognition of privilege that most American's don't have based on income, race, and the grossly unfair way our system works.
All of this is useful, insightful, and good. And then Clavel explains how knowing full and damn well that her kids are privileged and will do just fine regardless of their school, she registers each of them into a private school. That's where it all goes pear-shaped. Please understand, I don't blame her, exactly. Everything in modern American life places the utmost value on parents providing their children with the best possible education. there is a reason why parents are shelling out insane sums of cash to get their children into the best colleges, and while there is a distinction between legal and illegal means, it can be difficult to distinguish them. Morally is there a difference between paying someone to "prep" your child for the SAT versus paying someone to actually take the test? If Princeton Review can guarantee a score improvement from 1150 to 1400 isn't that an acknowledgement that the entire premise of the test is bogus?
So Clavel's personal decision is added to that of every other individual American parent and a horribly unjust system is perpetuated because no one who could make a difference has any stake in the game. The Republican and Democratic parties may speak to different constituencies, but both sides make sure to keep their own kids above the fray.
***
Clavel begins by setting out her personal education context in the introduction. This seems like a clever innovation that could profitably be broadly applied. So here is my educational context which will end in three asterisks if you'd prefer to skip it.
I was born into a career Air Force family, and so moved into my sixth home just after my seventh birthday. Military bases provided day care which my parents happily took advantage of, but which I don't recall. While my father was deployed to Viet Nam we lived off-base and I attended a private preschool in Fort Worth Texas while my mother worked part-time. The following year I was enrolled in public half-day kindergarten in Colorado Springs where I also attended first grade. Then public school in rural western North Carolina for second and third grades. Then private school for fifth through seventh grades (they didn't offer fourth). Another move took me back to public school in suburban Greensboro NC through high school graduation, with half of each day my senior year spent in a magnet city-eide theater program. Then UNC-Greensboro and UNC-School of the Arts in theater with, finally, a bachelor's degree in English from Georgia State University.
After years of high grades and good school performance, my grades became erratic starting in eighth grade and continuing through the changed majors and colleges, which should be attributed to my undiagnosed ADHD rather than those schools per se, but with a caveat. My performance was likely to diminish as I encountered increasing personal responsibility for time-management on longer-term projects, that's pretty common. Moving from a school with 100 student spread over 7 grades to a junior high with 1,000 students in 3 grades was incredibly hard. Everything was different: not least going from being only middle class at an affluent 97% white urban school where most parents had college degrees to being near the socioeconomic top in a school with a large rural farming population that was more like 65% white.
My education suffered from a distinctly USian problem: local school control. Whereas my best friend at my high school had never been outside North Carolina, it was my second country and fourth state. I have always known that education in this country is manifestly unequal, unfair, and undemocratic. It also has the distinction of being stupid in that there is no specific intention to teach anything, let alone rely on millenia of research on best practices. It is a jury-rigged system that exacerbates every problem of increasing inequality and demonstrates the worst excesses of unchecked capitalism. Parents who choose the home-schooling option are not actually compelled to demonstrate anything: there are guidelines that are meant to be followed, but no actual oversight or repercussions.
My educational record is a freaking mess.
Atria Books offered me an advance reading copy because I had reviewed The Smartest Kids in the World, a 2013 book discussing education in an international context....more
Once Upon a River - Diane Setterfield for Deadlands [10/05/18 Edited to add: I managed to upload a bad picture of my bingo card.]
This is such a gooOnce Upon a River - Diane Setterfield for Deadlands [10/05/18 Edited to add: I managed to upload a bad picture of my bingo card.]
This is such a good book I want to be a better writer to do it justice in my review. Waiting longer for inspiration is just not on though: my memory will let the details blur and the experience fade.
Setterfield is a writer who's greatest flaw is not being prolific. Actually, that may be the only flaw. She has once again crafted a work of fiction that has a convincing Victorian setting with a modern sensibility directing the reader's attention to characters and incidents that a true Victorian wouldn't, but logic suggests that they are all valid. She manages to tell quite a few stories and examples of the craft of storytelling within a greater story of amazing events. While many writers succeed at making a house a character within their fiction, Setterfield has made part of the Thames a character, nor was she stinting in permitting this character moods. Okay, on the winter solstice the usual group are sitting around drinking in the Swan, an inn distinguished by the storytelling within. The door opens, a man, his face a bloody mess staggers in clutching a large doll in his hands.
Over the course of one year we watch the repercussions of that moment: how it affects characters major and minor and also, this is the tricksy bit, we watch how those events become stories. Yes, many stories dependent on point of view, and skill, stories becoming more stories as that one event is observed (or not), in light of new events, and then, still later developments. The metaphor is well served: there is an attempt to trace the roots of the story back to the beginning, which you can't do any more than you can trace a river back, fractally there are always more branches feeding in.
There is so much: there are clever half-starved orphans, prosperous farmers, the family of innkeepers, the town midwife, the minister, servants and animals, wealthy distillery owners, thieves and blackguards, despite the extensive cast one never feels that the author is coasting by with stereotypes or with every character having the same voice. There is plot and pathos enough for Dickens, and despite the 21st century sensibility there's none of that business of giving a character clearly modern ideas.
There is, of course, a supernatural element as well as a few mysteries, dreadful crimes and moments of grace. Everything is here, told my a humanist in the Pratchett vein, but without the jokes and footnotes. It is a lovely, suspenseful book that I couldn't bear to put down in order to post updates. Read it soon: give it to yourself or someone you really like as a gift for one of the several solstice-adjacent holidays. Just the thing for long winter nights by the fire.
Copy on its way! can't wait! One of the best writing duos of all time.
***
I don't think of myself as being a fan of series in general, because so many Copy on its way! can't wait! One of the best writing duos of all time.
***
I don't think of myself as being a fan of series in general, because so many series that I started out loving became unreadable at some point. Maybe there will be a let down somewhere in the future, or maybe, as with Terry Pratchett, the books will just keep getting better. Fingers crossed.
Frieda is in trouble with powers that be, because she's such a maverick, but she also has more powerful powers that be, which are vague, and mysterious, and appreciate a clever woman. There's her whole extended family of people who mostly aren't related to her, and her cat, and her fire, and her walking. The mystery was fine, although that really isn't the point any more. Mostly now Freida has to deal with her own sort of celebrity, which is horrible for someone who never sought the limelight. And there's this other problem that won't go away...
At this point I wouldn't mind at all if the authors dropped the mystery plot convention altogether. As a means of addressing a topic it is fine, but they could just use a patient. I admit that I love seeing social injustice (and crime) being fought, even if Frieda didn't win.
Everfair - Nisi Shawl It's an alternate history in which a genocide doesn't happen. It's about a utopian society that isn't so cleverly set up as to avEverfair - Nisi Shawl It's an alternate history in which a genocide doesn't happen. It's about a utopian society that isn't so cleverly set up as to avoid all problems, but in which people work to find different, practical, solutions. It's steampunk that feels utterly plausible. It's a book that acknowledges the tremendous breadth and depth of people and cultures throughout Africa, although it focuses on one nation. It is a marvelous accomplishment in every sense of the word, and I'm sure it's going to be one of my top reads for the year, and probably every other reader's list, because it is a book that makes you go "ohhh" and "ahhh", that constantly delights and surprises, even though it is addressing many of the darkest aspects of colonialism. It's a book that reminded me of how new and appealing are the many voices in scifi these days, and actually makes me feel optimistic about humanity. Sweet, fancy Moses, it's just a great, sweeping Victorian "ills of society" novel, such as those of Charles Dickens, but with a light touch. It's just perfect.
Now goo, read it right away, unless you're devoting October to horror, in which case, okay, but then you have to start it on November first.
Fluffy Strikes Back (A P.U.R.S.T. Adventure) - Spires, Ashley I'm so excited to read this! Thank you, Kids Can Press.And also, thanks from my high schFluffy Strikes Back (A P.U.R.S.T. Adventure) - Spires, Ashley I'm so excited to read this! Thank you, Kids Can Press.And also, thanks from my high school freshmore, who adores Spires' cats as much as I do.Fluffy Vandermere looks like the cat a Bond villain would be holding. But Fluffy isn't a pet: he's the head of a secret agency protecting earth from aliens. Thankfully, he hasn't lost his old skills in his time as an administrator, and he still has what it takes to save his headquarters from an invasion.I'm giggling the whole time I'm typing this, because it is such an amusing parody of the genre, I can totally imagine Sean Connery providing the voice saying "Meow". You know what I've discovered? I don't mind potty humor when it's about cats: sandbox jokes are just fine. It's wonderfully goofy and the cats take themselves very seriously, and if Spires could write a million stories, I'd try to read every single one.
The internets just erased the review I'd been working on at length. This book is marvelous, for parents, for teachers, for policy makers. Christakis kThe internets just erased the review I'd been working on at length. This book is marvelous, for parents, for teachers, for policy makers. Christakis knows what she's talking about with young children, and she conveys that knowledge in a thoroughly documented, and entertaining, way. Read this book if you're at all interested in the topic.
If you don't have the time, watch the movie Daddy Day Care in which the previously fond-but-not-very-involved fathers of preschoolers become very involved, by letting the kids take the lead. It's brilliant, really.
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