Review of Quintessence by David Walton

The book reviewer at Christianity Today recommended this book. I'm so glad I saw that and then bought the book.What a Ride! This alternate history/alternate physics!/adventure has everything: good writing, delightful dialogue, explorations of science and religion. There are hatreds, there are loves. There are puzzles galore. There are really fun animals.
The book opens with the sentence: By the time Lord Chelsey's ship reached the mouth of the Thames, only thirteen men were still alive.   You want to know more, yes?
If you like the works of China Mieville, you will like this book. If you like metaphysical and physical exploration, you should like this book. If you like the clash of grand personalities, you might like this book. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I'm looking forward to reading it again.

Driving Men Women

At one time my sister-in-law and I could not get our husbands to put gas in the car before the fuel gauge dropped below one quarter empty. They preferred to drive on empty or leave us the cars on empty since the gas gauges were liars and you can drive for miles with the gauge on empty. It took a few decades before the men could hear what the women were trying to tell them. The world for us women is a lot more dangerous than it is for men. I suppose a healthy, adult male could run out of gas and then some roving predator could rape him, but I'm fairly certain the odds of that are much, much lower than it is for women. It's not so much that the inconvenience in a hurried life of pumping gas trumped my safety, it's more that he simply did not think about what we women have to think about all the time. But he finally did get it, and now I almost never start out a trip with an empty tank. Sometimes I fill it, sometimes he fills.
He fills the car tank at the cheapest gas station that takes cash. I fill at the gas station three blocks from our house. The filling is more expensive because I opt to let the station attendant fill the car. I want that gas station to continue in business. That means that I and a lot more people need to patronize the business. So my supporting a local business trumps my husband's saving a few dollars. For him, frugality trumps patronizing a local business.
My husband will drive miles and miles out of the way to avoid red lights. He seems to find a red light holding him back a grave insult. He wants to choose when to stop and when to go.
I find the looking and calculating Can I go? Can I go? frustrating and tiresome. And I dislike merging; looking over my shoulder and calculating and looking and calculating all the while going forward at 60 miles/hr. I would much rather take a straight route, stop at the red light, go at the green light. Simple. I can think about things other than whether or not today I die in a car accident.
Of course, my husband knows that he will never be in an accident because he is a good driver.
I have no such delusions about myself.
There was the day we were taking all our adult children (except the wookie) to the beach to have a fun day while discussing family matters and I told my husband to not take hwy 26 because there were too many head on collisions from sleepy drivers coming back from the beach. He did not want to take the long way with red lights on it, but he said he would. Except he lied. I was reading the paper and so did not notice when he took 26 anyway, and I never saw the car with the sleepy driver that ran into our car. I just saw the air bag deflating through the tear in my newspaper. Years later, one of the kids still has a hurt spine. One kid had to delay boot camp for a year. All of us were sore for weeks. At the family meeting, he told the boys to listen to their wives. Yeah right. He still drives where and how he wants no matter what I have to say.
I dislike being stuck in stop and go traffic. My husband gets frantic about being trapped. He might characterize his attitude differently, but that's what it looks like on my side of the car. He gets irate at people who "cut him off". What cut? I say. The car got into our lane in front of us. So what? He had to get in front of some car. Why not ours? What difference does it make? Then he gets irate at me.
I'm not being fair here. The biggest factor in his traffic frustration is the pain he is in. He crushed his feet several years ago, and although he can walk (Thank God) simply being awake any period of time makes his feet hurt. He is always in a hurry to get home so he can put his feet up.
And that brings up another difference that I do not know is male vs. female or just him and I. He thinks that if he thinks about being careful, he is being careful. He went on the roof, two days after his mother died, to put on zinc to kill the moss, and he thought about being careful while he was up there. If I had been awake that early morning, I would have insisted that he place a board or ladder near the edge or tied a rope around him and some stay, because unless you put up physical barriers, you are not being careful. So, his mind drifted, and he stepped off the roof and fell 20 feet to the concrete driveway, crushing his feet and lower legs.
Odd thing: for decades before that happened I would often wake up from nightmares about me pleading with him to be careful while he worked on something, sometimes it was a tablesaw. He would ignore me, and then he would accidentally cut off his hands. Control issues much? Um, yeah.  Nightmares about the children involved my trying to call them back to shelter whilst they ran out into the path of tornadoes. Anyway..... after that incident I never had another nightmare like that.
So.... Driving, men have such different attitudes from women.  Or am I the only one who thinks that?

Some thoughts about reviews of The Hunger Games Trilogy

WARNING: SPOILERS  If you have not read The Hunger Games Trilogy, do not read the following. One: it has spoilers.    Two: you will have no idea what I am talking about.
Whenever I post a review of a book, I like to look at other people's reviews because we all can see things so differently. Sometimes I wonder if I and the other reviewers even read the same book. This was especially true of The Hunger Games Trilogy, which I gave five stars to.
I was astounded at the number of people who hated the third book after loving the first book in the trilogy. Since the third book was a natural outgrowth of the the first, this made no sense to me. One person complained that Katniss had no character arc; she started out a whiny 17 yr old and ended up a whiny 17 yr old.  Excuse me, but whiny is the person who walked the same city block as everyone else in the group and now has to share that their feet hurt, they're hot, they're hungry etc. Complaining about legitimate hardship and trauma is not whining. Another person complains that the kick-ass Katniss they love went away in the third book. So did she change or not?  And excuse me, but Katniss broke. When you are subjected to continuous pressure, you are liable to break. I had the comparatively minor pressure of raising a violent, destructive child and I broke. No, I don't suffer PTSD. All I have to show for it are some nearly invisible scars and a knowledge that I don't do well under pressure. I would like to wish that knowledge away, but there it is. I have sympathy for the policeman and soldier who breaks performing their duties. If adult men break under such pressure, why should a kick-ass 17 yr old girl not break?
Some reviewers complained that the writing was bad. Sometimes I wish that I had not become a writer, because bad writing I never noticed before now repels me. I could read only a few pages of Stephenie Meyer before I gave up in disgust, and two paragraphs in the Left Behind series. But what was wrong with the writing in The Hunger Games? I thought about that a long time before I finally decided that perhaps they meant that the book is not written in a literary style. Totally irrelevant. I like literary writing and if a fantasy or thriller are written in a literary style, so much the better, but that style is totally unnecessary for this type of story. The writing became invisible as one raced to the next page to find out what would happen next. I noticed that those who complained about the writing still had trouble putting the book down as they felt compelled to keep reading.
I find myself impatient with books that have the heroes never getting sick, the heroes fighting on despite broken bones, the heroes taking a day or week to recover, the heroes never being traumatized by the trauma they are undergoing. That's partly why be the end of The Scarred King, my hero is suffering from PTSD.
But apparently, most readers don't want to hear it, thus the almost universal dislike of the third book. So, if I want to sell a lot of books, which I do as I want to buy a glass kiln and support some friends in Africa, maybe I need the make the hero more durable and kick-ass. But then, what self-delusions am I feeding into?
Oh, and what did you think of the part where Katniss votes yes with President Coin to restart the Hunger Games using the surviving Capitol kids? Since Katniss had spent the year trying to stop the Hunger Games, I was shocked and thought, "No, this is where you kill the evil president." (I am not a pacifist. Sometimes the only way you can make evil people STOP is by killing them.) So then I thought, "Okay, this is a tactic. Why did she vote that way?" and a few pages later we find out.
One of the reviewers complained that Gale just disappeared. Did they miss the part where Gale figures out that Katniss will always blame him in part for the horrendous death of her sister? Even an idiot should be able to see that romantic love cannot survive that.
Another complaint: there was no foreshadowing in the books. I don't know what to say to such a blatantly wrong statement. Another complained that they felt like they were being beat over the head by mentions of the mockingjay pin. Which reviewer do you think was right?
Well, on and on. What did you think of The Hunger Games trilogy, and why?

Review of The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I spent this Memorial Day weekend reading The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. By the time I had finished the last book, I realized that I had made an appropriate choice because by the end, everybody, except a few sociopath villians, is struggling with PTSD.  One would think there would be some good treatment for PTSD so far in the future, but there does not seem to be.
My daughter-in-law, who loaned me the books, did not like the third book at all, though she loved the first and second books. I think what she missed was the spark of humor in the thinking of Katniss. In the third book, Katniss is so thoroughly broken by all the horror she has gone and continues to go through, that you do not know if she will ever recover. The breaking of Peeta was excruciating to read.
I thought the third book was the natural outgrowth of the first two, and followed a progression of events that made perfect sense. The third book breaks your heart over and over again. It shows what civil war is like, and what civil war does. It also shows that taking down an evil government does not guarantee a good government will take its place.
The thing I admire most in Katniss is her ability to retain her ability to do what must be done, no matter what. Of course, what must be done is defined by what the end goal is. Katniss never lost sight of the end. What astounded me most about Katniss was her ability to take the tiniest clues and then understand what was going on. Since I am perpetually clueless, the ability to understand from tiny clues looks like a superpower. She exemplified the saying: It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
I had expected the writing to be awful, but Collins is a good writer on many levels.
If your books must have a happily ever after ending to justify the time you spent reading it, these books are not for you. If you are willing to have a sorta happy ending with the hero limping for the rest of her life, this book will give you a lot to think about. If you want to know what PTSD feels like, this book will tell you even though the phrase is never used. Warning: a lot of people you really don't want to see die do die.
I liked the movie The Hunger Games when I saw it several months ago. It was interesting to see where the movie deviated from the book, simplifying the plot line and reducing some of the gore. I have no idea how the moviemakers are going to handle the third book.
I had very few quibbles with the book. I cannot understand how the woods did not get hunted out. Where was New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Russa? They ALL got wiped out? Well, never mind. Bringing them in would have interfered with the morality play.
All in all, I'm glad I read the trilogy.

Review of Someone To Blame by C.S. Lakin

Wow. I enjoyed this book. Maybe enjoy is the wrong word. I appreciated this book even though the story wrung some tears out of me. To feel as much grief as this book forces you to feel was hard, as grief is hard. I think it is important to know that life and grief are hard. I think we need to understand that when people hurt, they lash out at whatever they think is hurting them. Some of us are too quick to connect the dots and jump to conclusions, as did many in the book. You find yourself sympathizing with almost every character. And I found myself getting irritated at the nice sheriff in the cold town who really didn't want to be there. Because he would not do much of a job, the townspeople took things into their own hands.
There are several shocks in the story. Despite that, I think older teens could read this and maybe gain some insight into their parents. Parents of teens might find this book hard to read as parents' worst nightmares are vividly brought to life.
This book gave me a lot to think about. We all have push-all-the-wrong-button relationships, and it is good to think about ways to change the dynamic.
A good book that I thought was well-written.

Thoughts about the movie Star Trek: Into Darkness

I think this is easily the best Star Trek movie ever made. Some may think that is not saying much, but no, I loved the movie. I enjoyed the non-stop action. Everybody said what you wanted them to say. There were some really nice mirroring and inversions of previous episodes and movies. Lots of pretty people to look at. And, oh! Wasn't that cool when Scottie got to be a hero? He doesn't have that same sly look the old Scottie had, but he does have that beautiful Scot bur. Doesn't everybody love a Scottish accent? And the running fight on floating platforms: Yeehaw!
Another thing I loved: the theater provided tech glasses with dangling battery and mechanics box that let me put the captioning anywhere I wanted it. Yay! Since I understand, on average, three words per movie, most movies are confusing until we can rent the DVD and caption it. Captions are desperately needed for IronMan 3. Why did Tony Stark blow up all his Ironman suits, why oh why would he do that? But at home I miss the big screen and subsonics. Some young men laughed at me when I walked across the lobby of the theater wearing those glasses. I did not care. I was too delighted to understand the movie while watching it in a theater.
Did I have quibbles? Oh yeah. Why were they chasing down to keep alive a blood-donor for Kirk when they had 72 other donors that only needed to thawed?
I would have deleted the three seconds of Kirk in bed with lion-tailed, lovely ladies. I guess the director needed to remind those of us who don't know the ST universe that Kirk is a womanizer, the trait of his I like the least. I never did like Kirk. People like him who bluster and swagger and assume the universe will mold itself around their wills are dangerous and not good leaders. IRL they end up killing people.
So if I don't like Kirk and think most Star Trek plots are absurd, why do I like the franchise? Because I love the Star Trek universe. I love Spock. I love Worf. I love Uhuru and everybody with an interesting accent. I love that humans in this universe are wealthy and not killing each other for the most part. (Do I think Earth could ever be such a peaceful place? Uh, no. Not gonna happen.) I like that you can be a Spock or a Barkley or anybody and still have a place in society (unless you are a homicidal maniac.
Quibble:I will never understand how people are able to run off with ships or infiltrate ships with false identities in such a universe.
Big Quibble: the renegade has a sweet southern accent. Because, of course!, Hollywood knows all southern US military are war mongers. I think of the TV show, 24, and others, where over and over again the bad guy is someone in the US military and/or corporation. Sigh.
But despite quibbles that I thought of after the movie, the experience of watching the movie was delight. OK, not when people were flushed into space. Or when buildings were being crushed. Nooooooo!  But overall, the movie was a fun ride.

Review of Winter Haven by Athol Dickson

I enjoyed this book so much that I read it in one day. I found all the characters interesting and their dilemmas fascinating. The main character, Vera, has an interesting history with an overbearing faith-healer pastor father and an autistic brother who spoke using Scripture and herself with visions of her brother surrounded by white. Later she learned to call her times of vision and collapse epilepsy, but since her father refused to call doctors, she had to feel her own way through things. And she had to use his interpretation of his abuse and anger at her.
I loved the beautiful descriptions of the granite island fifty miles off the coast of Maine, where Vera must go to claim the body of her brother found on one of the island's beaches. But she cannot at first believe the body is her brother's as he has not aged in the thirteen years since he ran away from home. And he has on his body a Viking artifact.
The story grows spooky as Vera is chased by a ghost and showers of stones like the ones on the beach where her brother was found, and warnings from her angry landlord and the island sheriff. Who can she trust and believe on an island filled with hostile people and ghost stories?
In the end, she solves the mysteries and makes almost everyone tell the truth. And the truth sets her free.
I liked the descriptions of the autistic brother and the problems he created in church for his father. After I read an article about a research project involving siblings to autistic people when we were living in Alaska and attending a church where the people did not want to deal with our daughter's severe autism, I asked my oldest son  what it was like having an autistic sister. In the pause between my question and his answer, my daughter squealed and then groaned in the basement (she is still non-verbal, which does not mean quiet.) My son answered that it was like living with a wookie in the basement. We've called her Wookie, ever since, because if you tell her "No." she might rip your arm off. So we've had to come up with all sorts of new strategies to live with that.  When I see autistics described as Indigo Children or wise sages, I lose all patience. A high enough percentage of those of us on the spectrum are savant so that I can stand another literary description of a savant autistic, which we have here. Vera's brother has memorized the Bible in several languages. That turns out to be a useful savant skill (most aren't) though it is misused by the father as he tries to maintain his status as a healer.
Elegantly written with a satisfying puzzle and plot, I can recommend this book to anybody who likes good literature and is not scared by charismatic gifts.