Books I've Read

Very interesting book about how history textbooks, and the teaching of history, could be much better. Learned a lot of new stuff!

Very readable story for a very old book. Guy falls in water when ferry sinks, gets picked up by a seal-hunting ship, forced to join the crew under the tyrannical captain. By the end of the book he is quite the seaman.

SPOILER:Crazed chick wall-rat possessed by the spirit of a woman with Altzheimer's disease who was left to die in the Arabian desert (I think it was the Empty Quarter) cuts the rope of the woman's husband while climbing El Capitan in Yosemite. He dies.

The climbing technical stuff was interesting, the story, though, just kinda built into something weird.

"No toys in the fish tank" is one of the rules Catherine makes for her autistic brother to follow to get along in life.

Little Fearless is in some kind of juvenile hall/prison after she is taken away from her mother. A kind of 1984 sort of story. Good story, but the resolution kind of happens REALLY quickly!

San Diego Onion Tribunal columnist writes about his love, fly fishing. Meet all sorts of interesting people around the U.S. I personally think fishing is more boring than watching grass grow, but I enjoyed this book very much. .

Firefly, #1. Story concept by Nancy Holder. Serenity is on the planet Persephone, gets a badly-needed job from Badger. Things go very wrong.

Firefly, #2. Jayne is asked by a former lover to help her town repel a gang of thugs.

Betsy graduates from high school. A very nice story.

A biographical story of Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo who "discovered" California. A very 1958ish book for children.

In 1903 England, Petronella's uncle starts eating bugs, and she becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of Dame Carruthers and Generalissimo Reyes-Cardoza of Panama.

Anastasia Krupnik moves from her cherished Cambridge to the 'burbs.

She corresponds with a "Singles" advertiser, goes to a wedding and buys a sloop. Brings tear of laughter to my eyes!

Her aunt in California passes away, and she has trouble climbing the rope in gym class. Charming story.

She goes to modeling class and investigates becoming a book store owner. Wonderful stories.

Crippled Kira is lucky she has a valuable skill, else she would have been tossed on the trash heap, as it were, when her mother dies. Good story of a cruel world.

Village is changing, Forest is turning bad, Matty goes to fetch Kira. Moving, but seems incomplete.

Jonas is nearly Twelve, and he is going to find out assigned vocation. I like how the story builds, but I was disappointed by the ending.

An old woman tell about the events of a year when she was a young girl and the tragedy that ensued. Very good story. I like it when a charactor is a reader and the books she likes are mentioned, I become interested in reading those books too.

A parody of all those too-sweet orphan books. A splendidly useful glossary of words such as odious, obsequious, glutinous, and lugubrious is included, along with summaries of novels about "pitious but appealing orphans."