Book Review: Black As He's Painted

Black as He's Painted by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My least favorite Marsh book so far.  Very dated and rather offensive to modern sensibilities.  That said, please don't rewrite it and remove all allusions to the negro race as Marsh describes them; that would be silly.  The exploration of prejudice itself is very instructive, even if the mystery wanders over into sensationalism in a very un-Marsh-like way.

As a secondary note, I read the Jove paperback, published in the 70s.  Very, very obvious what was selling then;  the back cover blurb talks about a murder that might start World War Three when there's not even a hint of something of that within the text of the book.  Marsh's name is written in a font that my son said looked "bloody and full of terror."  Marketed as a slasher novel.  Yet still a cozy;  a cozy set outside the typical confines of most books of this nature but still featuring the type of persnickety-yet-likeable main character more often found in St. Mary Meade.


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Book Review: George's Secret Key to the Universe

George's Secret Key to the Universe by Lucy Hawking
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The adventures of George as he explores the universe with an unlikely computer named Cosmos;  science lessons included.


I'm on the fence about this book.  Plainly, it is meant to clothe the miracle of physics into language that children can understand but the laws of physics themselves are blown off at almost every plot point.


Then there's the part where a person gets sucked into a black hole but the super-computer speeds up time and sucks him back out again, putting him back together, particle by particle, messing up only his eyeglasses.


I am not a physicist so I cannot speak to the accuracy of the science contained herein.  There were a few typos but I read a first edition and assume those mistakes were corrected in subsequent releases.


The story is engaging.  The hero brave.  The villain evil.   The enormity of space well-described (and, thusly, the ridiculousness of just about everything I'll ever do in my little life reiterated which made the book, in a sense, a little too scary for an adult to read ;)


I'll add to this review when my kid has read it.  We'll see what he thinks.


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Book Review: The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg

The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Surprised by the darkness of this book with the flippant title and the happy-go-lucky cover illustration.  People in Homer's world are mean.  If they are not mean, they are nice but with ulterior motives.  Then Homer gets to the war and, among other things, describes the sound a saw makes when it cuts a man's leg off.

Putting this one on the shelf for a while.  My kid might be ready for it when he's 11 or 12.


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Book Review: Words from the Myths

Words from the Myths by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book.

It's mannered.  It's old-fashioned.   The back-flap "about the author" blurb is charmingly cheeky.

But it is chock full of interesting tidbits about the parts of our language that originate in myth.  Chock.  Full.

We all know why the Achilles tendon is called that but who knew that the word "stentorian" comes from a minor character in Homer, Stentor, who was a herald who was able to rally the army effectively because he had a voice as loud as fifty men?  And who knew that there is a one-celled creature called "stentor" because it is shaped like a megaphone?

Why do we sometimes swear "By Jiminy?"  Well, because of Castor and Pollux, of course, the twins of Gemini.  The Romans respected them and often swore by them.  Apparently we still do, too.

This book is 220 pages of "Oh!  Really?  Wow!"  And it only makes it more readable that the style is so proper and mannered yet intimate, like a face-to-face conversation.

This is a book I should read again.  And again.  And then again once more.


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Book Review: Death and the Dancing Footman

Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ah, Ngaio Marsh.  What is it about you that I don't really care about whodunit?

I figured this one out.  Easily.  The mystery was thin and rather transparent.

But who cares?  Especially when one gets to relish in her characterizations and her way with words.  Descriptions like these make these cozies worth reading, even if you aren't a mystery buff;

"A popinjay," he muttered, "a stock figure of dubious gallantry."  And he pronounced the noise usually associated with the word "Pshaw."

"... [he's] bone from the eyes up if you try to talk about anything that's not quite his language."  

After a good deal of demurring, Jonathan finally rang the bell.  Caper answered it and accepted the news of sudden death and homicide with an aplomb which Mandrake had imagined to be at the command only of family servants in somewhat dated comedies."  


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Book Review: Peter and the Starcatchers

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I spent many moments while reading this book wondering how two people, who live in different cities and possess remarkably different writing styles, could possibly write a book together.

By the time I was finished, I decided they did it kind of like that parlour game where one person in the room starts a potboiler, spins it to a cliffhanger and then hands it to another person, who then continues the potboiler and spins it to yet another cliffhanger.  And so on.  The parlour-game-potboiler becomes, by design, overly long with too many needless cliffhangers.

Which kind of describes this book.  Not that it wasn't a fun read.  But I could have done without about half of the obstacles and cliffhangers.

Clever by half in explaining the genesis of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys and Captain Hook.  Oh, and Tinkerbell in the last two pages.

A tad too violent for my now almost seven year old but a good book for the "read-when-older" shelf.  An adventure he'll most likely enjoy.


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Book Review: The 39 Clues

The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Da Vinci Code for kids.  A longer version of the Westing Game.  It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in book form with slightly less slapstick.  Fiction infused with history presented in a meaningful way that might stick.  Heroine loves to read.  Hero good at math.  Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay about the possibility of  doing research that could result improving the odor of human flatulence and invented Sudoku.


Yeah, I'll read the whole set.  And my kid is going to love them.


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