Friday Lit Review: Wayside School

This week I decided to share a few books that I really enjoyed in elementary school, and which my teachers enjoyed sharing with me. They are the books about Wayside School by Louis Sachar, who also wrote Holes.

The first book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, introduces us to the horribly misbuilt Wayside School where there are 30 stories, one classroom on each, instead of 30 classrooms on one main floor.



The book has 30 chapters, each one dealing with one of the students of the 30th floor class, or their teacher (Mrs. Jewls) or one of the odd substitutes that show up when Mrs. Jewls isn't feeling well. Each chapter encapsulates a short story where one of the students has an experience where we get to know them better or more about the class.

The 2nd book, Wayside School is Falling Down, continues with more stories about our favorite class.



And I just recently have learned that there is a 3rd book, Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, which I need to check out.



There are also two books which are titled Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School and More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School, which don't really have much in the way of narrative, but are packed full of logic based puzzles, that for the most part are going to be for kids at a higher level of education than the stories are intended for, at least that was my experience.

Sorry for the shortness of this post, but I wanted to make sure I posted something this week, as I skipped last week's review, and am headed out for a camping trip here shortly.

Friday Lit Review: The Progress Paradox

For this week's lit review, I'm going to give you a review of the book that I just finished reading earlier this week, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Gregg Easterbrook, who you may or may not recognize as ESPN.com's Tuesday Morning Quarterback. (He also happens to be one of the editors of the New Republic.)

The basic premise of the book is that life continues to improve in most measurable ways: people live longer, have more resources, crime is down, democracy is up around the world, etc; meanwhile, people are not any happier, and in some cases are more unhappy.

In a sense, the book discusses the meaning of life and what things really make us happy, which sounds like a fairly religious topic, but the book manages to thoroughly discuss this theme in a fairly scientific/statistical manner, with only a few theological references.

A few reasons Easterbrook gives for people feeling worse is that much of today's media is geared around calling everything a "crisis" and focusing on the negative trends rather than the positive. Politicians also have a vested interested in pointing out problems that need solving. Also, our material wealth has gone way past satisfying needs, but wants unfortunately can almost never been satisfied.

But beyond these external influences, he also talks about how recent studies have shown that gratitude and forgiveness, in addition to be acts of graciousness, also tend to make people happier. And people who are happier tend to live longer, healthier lives and make more money. So even if you don't like other people, its in your own interest to forgive and give thanks. :)

Another point he made that I liked was that we see a lot of problems in society today that seem intractable, insolvable even; but we should realize that many problems that we have solved as a society (polio, smallpox, the cold war) were once viewed the same way. That we should trust in the ingenuity of man to solve problems that may seem unsolvable. We just haven't started working on solutions to those problems yet.

I found a lot of stuff here that were in accordance with my own personal beliefs and it was good to see an optimistic look at the present and the future, as opposed to all the doom and gloom that's out there right now.

Friday Lit Review: The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald

I'm going way back this week to some books that I read early on in my reading career. I had probably finished this series by the time I was in 2nd grade. I only know this because I remember choosing one of them as my favorite book when it was my turn to be the class spotlight. The Great Brain series was authored by John D. Fitzgerald and are told in first person by the author chronicling the adventures of him and his older brother Tom, "The Great Brain". Tom uses his "great intelligence and money-loving heart" to set up scams where he swindles local kids out of their money or just finds ways to earn money at little cost to him.

One thing I found interesting about the books was that they take place in Utah around the turn of the century (the last century, not this one). The Fitzgeralds were Catholics growing up in Utah, and the books are set in a fictional town called Adenville, although the wikipedia entry indicates a good guess for the actual location would be Price, which surprised me a bit, as I had always imagined it being more near St. George, but maybe that's just because it said southern Utah somewhere.

Anyway, there were 7 books in the series when I was growing up, although my research tells me that there is now an 8th book that was published post-humously that gets some pretty good reviews on Amazon. I'd post pictures of them all here, but I was unable to find cover photos for about half of them, so I decided against it. The books in the series are:

The Great Brain
More Adventures of the Great Brain
Me and My Little Brain
The Great Brain at the Academy
The Great Brain Reforms
The Return of the Great Brain
The Great Brain Does It Again

The Great Brain is Back

The last one being the one that I have not yet read. Of the original 7, I always liked "Me and My Little Brain" and "The Great Brain at the Academy" the best. In "My and My Little Brain", JD (all the boys in the family go by their first two initials), the author, steps into the role of conniver, as TD (Tom) has gone to Salt Lake City to attend high school (the academy). In "The Great Brain at the Academy", we get to learn about TD's adventures away at a Catholic school in Salt Lake.

I think these books are at a pretty low reading level, but are great stories for anyone who likes great stories about kids. My brother and I found them at my grandparents' house and took them home for ourselves, at least two of them. The rest all showed up shortly thereafter, although I don't know if my parents bought them for us, or if they were also at my grandparents' originally. Either way, I'm sure I read them all through a couple times growing up.

Friday Lit Review: Pretty much everything by John Bellairs

Once when I was growing up, my mother bought me a book titled "The Curse of the Blue Figurine" by John Bellairs. Not sure what inspired her to buy it for me, but I think she also bought one of his books for my older brother. Turns out, the books were pretty downright scary (at least for me, whose imagination tends to run a bit wild) for kids. He's written a whole slew of book where children are the heroes, and the villains, well they range from evil sorcerer's to witches to mummies to ghosts to killer robots and even to demons.

The books for the most part feature one of three teenaged heroes: Johnny Dixon (hero of the Curse of the Blue Figurine and many others), Anthony Monday (first appearing in The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn), and Lewis Barnavelt (who first appeared in the first of Bellairs' young adult books, "The House with the Clock in its Walls"). Each of the respective heroes has their share of adult mentors and child peers who play roles that grow and diminish from book to book.

The subject matter of the books often includes references to the occult and to religious imagery. There are usually supernatural powers at play and some pretty scary stuff tends to happen (in my opinion).

Sadly, I learned while researching for this entry that John Bellairs passed away in 1991, but another author, Brad Strickland, was hired to complete two unfinished manuscripts and to write novels based on some brief descriptions Bellairs left behind. Since completing those Strickland has been authorized to write books with the same characters and has continued to do so with the latest book being published this year. I haven't read any of the Strickland penned books, and on the surface, I hate the idea of someone writing books about characters they didn't invent. Feels too much like fan fiction. But as I haven't read any of them, I hesitate to decry them at this juncture.

A few of the books that stand out most to me from the collection are:


The Curse of the Blue Figurine


The House with the Clock in its Walls


The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn


The Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost


The Eyes of the Killer Robot

That said, I think I enjoyed pretty much all of Bellairs' works and highly recommend them for young adults and adults who don't mind reading a book written for young adults (Harry Potter, anyone?).

Good References:
Wikipedia: John Bellairs
Bellairsia

Friday Lit Review: The Dark is Rising Sequence

The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper


Over Sea, Under Stone


The Dark is Rising


Greenwitch


The Grey King


Silver on the Tree

The Dark is Rising Sequence is another 5 book series that like the Prydain Chronicles draws on English and Welsh mythology for some of its setting. This series describes the culmination of a ages-old struggle between good (The Light) and evil (The Dark). The Light must seek out and acquire 4 separate artifacts (The Things of Power) in order to defeat the Dark. The main characters in the series are mainly children (some teenagers) who under the guidance of Merriman Lyon (Merlin perhaps?) who helps them to acquire the Things of Power and prepare for the final showdown.

I read The Dark is Rising first, and strangely, though it is the namesake of the series, it is not the first book, although the first two books could probably survive being read in any order, as they occur fairly separately, with the heroes of each coming together in the third book.

I like the classic formula of seeking out some mystical objects and preparing for a final showdown. Feels kind of like the plot for the upcoming Harry Potter #7, no? Find the objects (the Horcruxes) in preparation for a showdown with evil. Its a time-tested formula. The Dark is Rising (the book, not the series) actually has a mini object-gathering quest plot in and of itself, as one of the Things of Power is a set of 6 signs that each must be sought out by Will Stanton and joined together.

Just thinking about these books makes me want to re-read them, and luckily my parents gave me the whole set for Christmas one year, so I think they must be on a shelf somewhere at home.

Also similar to the Prydain Chronicles, one of the books, The Dark is Rising was a Newberry Honor book, and a later one, The Grey King, won the Newberry Medal.

Friday Lit Review: The Chronicles of Prydain

The Chronicles of Prydain is a 5 book series by Lloyd Alexander that few people probably know by name, but many more will recognize the 2nd book in the series, The Black Cauldron.

The books in the series are:


The Book of Three


The Black Cauldron


The Castle of Llyr


Taran Wanderer


The High King

The main character in each of these books is Taran, Assistant Pig Keeper whose main task in live is taking care of a prophetic pig named Hen Wen. At least until one day the pig runs away and he sets off in search of her. So begins the tale of Taran who while young finds himself thrust into a battle between good and evil against the evil Arawn, possessor of the Black Cauldron that can create armies of the Undead.

Taran collects a crew of companions throughout his journey: Eilonwy, a girl with a few magical skills who tends to be the typical easily offended woman for the most part. Fflewddur Fflam, a bard with a harp whose strings break when he overexaggerates things, which is fairly common, and Gurgi, a hairy creature from the forest who is always eager to help out.

Taran's adventures provide a nice arc that include his growing up and seeking for the parents he never knew, along with the constant battle against the dark lord Arawn, all the while coming to know many of the magical and mystical peoples of Prydain. The High King, the culmination of the series won the 1969 Newberry Medal (given for the most outstanding book for children each year), and is a wonderful read, enhanced of course if you've taken the time to enjoy the first 4 books in the series. As you'll find is common with me, I was very sad to see this series come to an end.

The Book of Three and the Black Cauldron served as the basis for an animated Disney film titled the Black Cauldron.

The Friday Literature Review

As promised, today marks the beginning of a new Friday feature. I'm not sure that anyone actually cares about this or not, although if anyone is out there, you probably prefer that I write something as opposed to writing nothing, and if nothing else, having a weely feature helps me remember to keep writing.

The new feature will be a Friday Literature Review (FLitR?), and my original thought is to focus mainly on series of books that I've enjoyed over the years. I should mention that growing up I had a pretty voracious appetite for fiction and would plow through most books in a matter of days. Now that I'm older I can still find this happy place, but time constraints and a more developed set of social skills tend to limit my reading time. Also, its been harder for me to find books that I like as much these days, so feel free to recommend books I might enjoy as you begin to see the kinds of things I've enjoyed to date.

That said, I haven't put a lot of time this week into blog prep, so lamentably (for you the reader) I'm going to hold off on a review until next week. But I will leave you with this quick meme (one of the most common ones I see) as a bribe to keep you coming back:

4 Things About Me

4 jobs I have had in my life:
-McDonalds crew chief
-College of Pharmacy Receptionist
-Computer Science T.A.
-Programmer/Analyst 2 (my official title) in the Temple Department at the COB.

4 movies I would watch over and over:
-Oceans 11
-O Brother Where Art Thou?
-Dumb and Dumber
-Newsies

4 places I have lived
-New Orleans, LA
-Grantsville, UT
-A large portion of southern Argentina (Patagonia)
-Salt Lake City, UT

4 TV shows I watch
-The Office
-Lost
-Arrested Development (sniff)
-Umm...I don't have cable any more, so I don't watch much TV. Can I count Diggnation?

4 places I have been on vacation
-SoCal
-The Oregon Coast
-Washington D.C.
-Tempe, AZ (Fiesta Bowl, baby!)

4 websites I visit daily
-MyYahoo
-Flickr
-McSweeneys
-ESPN.com/Page2

4 favorite foods
-Steak
-Cafe Rio Pork Salad
-Ham and Cheese Empanadas (fried if I can get someone else to make them, otherwise baked cuz they're easier to make)
-Wendy's Monterrey Ranch Chicken Sandwich (only available as a specialty sandwich)

4 places I would rather be right now
-Eating lunch
-Playing with my niece
-Someplace cooler (temperature-wise. How could anywhere else be cooler than SLC?)
-Argentina