Man, but Amazon.com is dangerous. I’ve bought books there, occasionally, but I hadn’t previously looked at compact discs there. We used to go to the record store regularly, but that stopped when we started having kids, and we’ve more or less stopped buying music except on rare occasions. But I’d recently noticed that an album we used to have (and really liked) had gone missing; and another disc got damaged. Since I’d already been out once today, and since I wasn’t even sure they were still in print, I decided to check Amazon.

Oh, dear.

The one that had gone missing was Parcel of Rogues, by Steeleye Span, a British folk-rock band. Amazon had it. They also had six or seven Steeleye Span albums I’d never even heard of–in addition to the eight or nine we already have. Plus a bucket of albums by Maddy Prior, one of Steeleye Span’s singers, none of which we’d been aware of. Maddy Prior has the most gorgeous voice; I think she’s Jane’s favorite vocalist.

This is going to be expensive.

Years ago, I read a delightful little fantasy novel called
The Face in the Frost. It was quirky, whimsical, and scary
all at once, and it worked. It was by a man named
John Bellairs. I never saw anything else by him until
eventually I discovered that he’d taken to writing young adult novels.
Hmm, I thought, and passed on.

One of our local bookstores has a table of books for people who have
finished reading about Harry Potter. I was glancing at it the other day,
and found a volume called The Best of John Bellairs, which
contained three juvenile novels, all of them tales of gothic horror:
The House with a Clock in its Walls,
The Figure in the Shadows, and
The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring. The three novels form
a series; whether there are other books that follow the third one, I
don’t know.

Having recently been told by numerous literary snobs that liking Harry
Potter is childish and a sign of cultural infantilism, and remembering Bellairs’ name fondly, I was caught by a fit of rebelliousness and bought it.

Orphaned Lewis Barnavelt goes to live with his eccentric Uncle Jonathon,
who happens to be a mildly-skilled wizard
of the white variety. His Uncle’s next door neighbor and best friend,
Mrs. Zimmerman, is a skilled witch. Lewis likes them both very much,
and together with his friend Rose Rita they deal with mysterious noises,
long dead wizards, plots to bring about the end of the world, angry
witches, schoolyard bullies, and how to cope with always being picked last for baseball.

Bellairs has a flair for baroque description and gothic horror, but
The House with the Clock in its Walls was his first book for
young readers, and it shows. He talks down to the reader (something
J.K. Rowling never does), and the dialogue frequently made
me cringe. Ironically, though, this first book was also the best and
most interesting of the three. He’s resolved many of his technical
difficulties in the other two books, but they aren’t as much fun. I’d
consider re-reading the first one day, but most likely not the other two.

The illustrations, though, were fascinating. Each of the three tales
were illustrated, and by three different artists. The first book, the
best of the three, and the most horrific, is illustrated by Edward Gorey. What more could you want? The second book is
illustrated by Mercer Mayer. Now, I have great respect for Mayer; but
he always draws the same little mop-haired round-faced kid, and his work
has a warmth and joy that is simply out of place in what’s supposed to be
a scary story. And then for the third book they brought in somebody I’ve
never heard of named Richard Egielski. His drawings are suitably dark,
but they are also lumpy and ugly, and none of the characters look like
quite the same people from one picture to the next. It’s funny how the
quality of the artwork parallels the quality of the tale.

Bottom line…I really like The Face in the Frost.

Like The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which I
reviewed some time back, The Wee Free Men is a Discworld novel
slanted towards younger readers. It concerns a very young, very determined
dairy maid in oversized boots who’s the only one up to handling a bad case
of the Elves. Experienced Discworlders will know what that means, and
what kind of person it takes to handle it (and indeed, Granny Weatherwax
has brief cameo).

Terry Pratchett knows what it means to write for young readers.
The Wee Free Men is toned down a bit from his regular
Discworld books, but it isn’t dumbed down, and it doesn’t talk down. I
enjoyed it thoroughly. And in fact, it might be a remarkably good place
for you to start, if you’ve not encountered the Discworld before.

Hmmm. Reflections in d minor has been unavailable for several days now. I wonder what’s going on.

Update: Lynn Sislo’s been having trouble with her hosting service; she’ll be back up as soon as she can.

I am feeling sort of sad today after hearing the recent news the Robert
McCloskey died over the weekend. I read and reread Homer Price as a child
so many times I practically wore out the library copy. And then they got a
copy of Centerburg Tales and I read and reread that one.

When my son was born one of the first books I bought him was
Blueberries for Sal. He was probably a year old. We would
ponder the pictures and
shiver with anticipation when the Sal wanders off with the mother bear. We
would scream “Kerplink, Kerplank, Kerplunk” when Sal dropped her three
berries into the tin bucket and pretend we were eating her berries when we
had blueberry yogurt for lunch.

When he got a little older one of his favorite pretend games was called
“Buck’s Harbor.” We would build a small store out of blocks and legos, use
his plastic boat on a towel as the ocean to drive over to get supplies and
then have a pretend ice cream cone with Sal and Jane.

Of course, every spring when the ducks flew over we’d yell at the sky “Make
way for Ducklings!!”

My son remembers very little of this, of course. He was so young when I
spent my days with him and his little sister. The big yellow bus came and
took him away one day and somehow all that time disappeared. But I remember
the little boy who would snuggle next to me and listen intently and peer at
the pictures when I read him Robert McCloskey books. I miss him, too. Both
of them are gone now. I still have the books, tho.

This is the second book in the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series”,
and it feels very much like a continuation of the first book. As before,
the book concerns several investigations, some consecutive, some
simultaneous, and as before Mma Ramotswe goes beyond investigating to
meddling (for the client’s own good, of course). Her secretary, Mma
Makutsi, is promoted to Assistant Detective and given a case of her own;
this prompts several discussions of the moral issues involved in
detective work.

But the real focus is on Mma Ramotswe’s fiance, Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni,
proprietor of Tlakweng Road Speedy Motors–a man who is hard-working,
dignified, kind-hearted, generous to a fault, and not always particularly
observant. His kind nature leads him into several predicaments during the
book, including one particular case where he doesn’t know how to tell Mma
Ramotswe what he’s done but every hour he delays will make the revelation
more painful. I must award laurels to Smith here–some authors would have
stretched out the pain for most of the book, requiring Mr. J.L.B.
Maketoni to do progressively more idiotic things to keep Mma Ramotswe in
the dark. (I hate this.) (Except in P.G. Wodehouse, but
that’s farce, so it’s OK.) Instead, it’s resolved fairly quickly.

The Mitfordesque tone continues–indeed, strengthens. That said, I don’t
know whether Mitford fans will like these books. Being detective novels,
they must occasionally deal with the sordid…and Mma Ramotswe, for all
her goodness, frequently makes moral decisions that would raise even Fr.
Tim’s eyebrows. Mitford fans–if the Christian content is the primary
thing that draws you to Jan Karon’s books, be aware that though the tone is similar, these aren’t those.

Anyway, I liked this one too.

I’ve just posted Chapters 14 and 15 of my novel Through Darkest Zymurgia!.

For those who came in late: Zymurgia! is a ripping yarn, a fantasy adventure novel taking place in a world not so different from ours. It’s the tale of a scientific expedition to a remote and fabulous land, and those who have read it assure me that yes, it really is funny.

I’m publishing it here on the web in installments; a new installment is posted every Saturday.

As long-time readers know, Overlook Press (Everyman’s Library, in Great
Britain) is publishing a complete uniform hardcover edition of Wodehouse,
which is a great and glorious thing. Every so often four new books come
out, and I get them, and I read them with delight.

I’ve been a Wodehouse fan for years, and naturally I’ve read many of them
before. But once in a while they come up with something I’ve never seen.
Usually it’s a novel that doesn’t involve any of his regular characters.
And then I know I’m in for a treat.

Summer Moonshine is no exception. It takes place at stately
Walsingford Hall, where cash-strapped Baronet Sir Buckstone Abbott has
been reduced to taking in boarders–excuse me, “paying guests”–and has
therefore devoted his life to two things: avoiding his guests, and
attempting to sell the Hall.

Ironically, the same event that consumed the Abbott fortune also prevents
him from selling the Hall. It seems that the old family home burned down
in Victorian times, and was rebuilt at great expense by Sir Buckstone’s
progenitor, who exercised all of his ingenuity and eccentricity. The
resulting pile is perhaps one of the ugliest homes in England, and to
date only one person has expressed interest. The wealthy,
many-times-married American woman, the Princess von und zu Dwornitzchek.
The princess’ step-son Tubby is one of the paying guests at the Hall,
where he has conceived a passion for Prudence Whittaker, Sir Buckstone’s
secretary. Meanwhile, Sir Buckstone’s daughter Jane is engaged to
gold-digger Adrian Peake (can you have a male gold-digger?) who is also
engaged to the princess. And then the princess’ estranged step-son,
Tubby’s older brother Joe the playwright meets and falls for Jane. Stir
in Lady Buckstone’s brother Sam from America, and things get predictably
silly.

You get the idea. It’s one of those books where I kept having to stop
and read passages to Jane.

Deb English reviewed this some while back, and I was sufficiently intrigued
that I bought when I came across it in a bookstore in Pacific Grove.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is located in a small storefront at
the foot of Kgale Hill in Gabarone, the capitol of Botswana. It is owned by
Mma Ramotswe; she has precisely one employee, her secretary Mma Makutsi,
who got a grade of 97 out of 100 at secretarial school but had trouble
getting a job because she’s not slim and pretty.

This is not a typical murder mystery; it’s more the story of Mma
Ramotswe’s first cases, and how she came to be a detective to begin with.
Along the way we learn quite a bit about her childhood, and also about
her father’s life in the mines in South Africa. It’s got a dreamy,
detached feeling about it, as if to emphasize the distance between the
reader and Botswana. And for some odd reason, it keeps reminding me of
Jan Karon’s Mitford books.

Anyway, I liked it; it was charming, and I’ve already picked up the next
couple of books in the series.

Bigwig of Silflay Hraka has just started posting some WWII prison camp photos his father found in an army surplus filing cabinet. Go read the whole thing, and remember how evil the Nazis really were.