The Black Painting by Neil Olson

Eh. Not a must-read, but interesting enough to get me to finish it, albeit slowly.

I grabbed this on a whim on a trip to WHPL with my son.

Know that meme about crazy--something like "in this family we don't hide crazy, we invite it on the porch and offer it lemonade" or some such thing?  This family is that dysfunctional.

Old rich man, a widower (but who's been sleeping with the maid most of his marriage), thinks a painting by Goya has a magical dark powers.  The painting was stolen on the day of his wife's funeral.  His 2 sons and daughter are a disappointment to him and his 4 grandchildren worse.  In his will, the only way the grandkids get $250,000 each is to complete a self-fixing task (gay man has to marry and father a child, for example).  The rest of the money gets left to he housekeeper. 

It was pretty obvious who was sleeping with whom and the significance of a patched over spot in the wine cellar fairly early in the book.  It was also pretty obvious these spoiled, rich brats all need a good smack upside the head, which is probably why I didn't care for any of them anyway.

Not a recommend.

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Compound by S.A. Bodeen

Disturbing.  That's the best way to describe this middle grade novel.  Downright disturbing.

We have this at WHHS, courtesy of the Scholastic Warehouse Sale, which is where my son got it.  It was on his summer to-read list and suggested I read it when he had finished.  He knows I like creepy books, but this was outside my realm of tolerable.  Parents should never want, nor let, harm befall their children.

Eli, his twin brother Eddy, older sister Lexie, and younger sister Teresa seem to have it all, except their father's real love.  Rex is a multi-billionaire tech firm owner who, although giving his kids everything, doesn't seem to have time for emotional connection.  Adopted himself, we learn he and his wife adopted Lexie from the orphanage his millions helped found.  Rex is also obsessed with the nuclear apocalypse.  He pays for the construction of an elaborate bunker for his family in case of fallout. 

While on a camping trip, war starts.  The family heads for the bunker, but Eddy and the kids' grandmother get left behind.  Eli and his siblings believe their brother is dead, along with their Gram and dog Cocoa.

Six years pass and Eli is bored.  His mother has given birth to 3 other children and is pregnant with a fourth.  It seems though the family's food will run out before 15 years pass (when radiation levels will be normal).  The flour is tainted with mold.  Their livestock have all died from rat poison.  No more dairy or nuts.  It's then the reader realizes what the new kids are for.  They're going to be cannibalized if the older ones run out of food (or, perhaps the older ones will be the food for the youngers...)

So, yeah, disturbing.  It gets worse.

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And the Trees Crept In by Dawn Kurtagich

Weird, weird, weird, weird. weird.

That's the only way I can sum this up.

Anne, Pamela, and Catherine perform a voodoo doll like ritual in the woods outside their familial home to summon a protector.  Shortly thereafter, Anne dies in the woods.  Pam and Cathy believe their protector instead to be a demon, whom they call Creeper Man.

Fast forward to their adulthood.  Pam's two daughters, Nori and Silla, escape their abusive father in the middle of the night and head for Cathy, who is still living in her childhood home.  Pam insists Cathy is crazy, but the girls are certain she's got to be better than their father. 

Then things get strange.  There might have been an orphanage in the house.  The forest might be evil.  There might be a ghost boy with a crush on Silla.  The girls' father might be a demonic presence.  Creeper Man may or may not be evil.  World War III might happen at any moment. 

See my problem?

There was a ton of maybe this is really happening or maybe not.  With Cathy really crazy, Silla teetering on the edge, Nori mute, and Gowan the ghost boy who seems to be able to float between centuries, I had a hard time keeping straight what was reality and what was imagined/perceived/nightmare/projection. 

And then the ending was...ugh.  Then a double ugh. 

Not a fan.

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Legendary by Stephanie Garber

I absolutely loved Caraval, the first book in what seems to now be a trilogy.  It's reviewed here if you scroll back.  I eagerly awaited this sequel.  I'm so sad to say is was very disappointing!

First, there is way too much fluff.  Although about the same length as its predecessor, it moves. so. slowly.  It was downright boring in parts.  There is simply overkill in terms of extra information.

Second, Donatella is ANNOYING.  She should have been a strong female lead on a quest to save her mother.  Instead, she's a mushball whenever a man so much as smiles at her.  She read like a romance novella lead rather than the kick-butt lead she's supposed to be.

Third, it is way obvious way early who is who and what is what.  Caraval kept me guessing until the very end.  I was about 1/3 of the way in before it became painfully plain what was really going on.  It made Tella seems even more stupid in that she could not see it.

I have no desire to read book 3, although I will order it so that our collection has the set.

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Scrapbooks, An American History by Jessica Helfand

I found this when I was cleaning the Oversize section (it's most definitely not and will be moved).  It looked really interesting, so I added it to my summer reading pile.

After The Jazz of Physics, I felt like I needed a picture book.

This WAS really interesting.  The author collected and photographed/scanned actual scrapbooks, a dying art, and then researched the genealogy/local history of the former owner.  It is another way to access and view American history, via primary source documents and artifacts.

I'm a big fan of using primary sources in telling our history.  And no, not because I'm a librarian.  There is just SOMETHING about holding an actual piece of history, seeing the real handwriting, knowing the history behind the object or letter or photograph....all of which are disappearing in our increasingly digital word.  How many people handwrite letters now?  They're typed, or texted, or emojied.  Our photos are no longer physical.  They're facebooked, instagrammed, snapchatted, and sent to our Google or Apple photo storage clouds. 

Scrapbooks collected pictures, newspaper article clippings, ticket stubs, lists, etc. and put them together to tell a person or event's story.  Scrapbooks, An American History puts such together to tell our story by year, place, and societal realm.

I am definitely going to remind our U.S. History teachers we have this book in our collection!

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The Jazz of Physics by Stephon Alexander

This was requested by a faculty member.  If you know me at all, you know I am very vocal about arts and shop being STEM, and therefore needing to be part of the conversation about "future-ready" education. 

I could get on my soapbox right now and start ranting, but I shall refrain.

The reality is that music is math, a language, a science, and an art all rolled into one.  And it's been proven time and again that kids who can read music and/or play an instrument score better on standardized tests.  Because that's all we care...nevermind.  You know what I want to say without me having to say it.

For me, Band was my escape.  Taking all Honors level courses (WHHS only had 2 AP courses when I was a student; I did take AP Calculus my senior year) was intense.  It was hard.  The Bandroom was where I was embraced by kids from all levels, all races, all, well, pretty much everything.

So I get where Alexander is coming from when he talks about what music (specifically sax and jazz) means to him. 

Alexander is a world-renowned professor of physics.  He's a genius.  There have been several of those who love music, including this guy named Einstein.  Maybe you've heard of him?

Now, I'm not saying this was easy to read.  It's been twenty years, twenty-one actually, since I did anything related to the study of physics (still love you and that class Mr. Marsoli, and a lot of my kids love your successor Mr. Favale).  So some of this, I glossed over.

But on the whole, a nifty hybrid of memoir, physics, and jazz.  Oh, wait, that's language, science, and music, isn't it?

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The Unfortunates by Kim Liggett

Yes, another Kim Liggett book.

In fact, THIS IS HER BEST BOOK YET!!!!!!!!!!!

I was RIVETED to this.  Could not put it down.  I was almost late to pick my son up from camp because I had to finish it!

Grant is the son of a wealthy senator.  One night in early winter of his senior year, he leaves a party tipsy and upset.  He causes a car crash, resulting in the deaths of all the people in the car he hits.  Because of his father's connections, he gets off with few months of a suspended license and mandatory drug testing.  If he completes his final test and attends one last court date, the record gets wiped.  Off to George Washington University he'll go, a free man with a clean record.

But Grant can't handle the guilt.  Knowing he got off with "affluenza", he's decided to kill himself in retribution.  The weekend before his last court date, he heads to a hiking spot, one his father and other male relatives have hiked during their senior years as a "rite of passage", intending to cut the rope and fall to his death.  Fall he does, but it's due to a cave in. 

Grant finds himself trapped below with four other teens from a local public school.

Grants learns a lot about himself in meeting these kids, all from a world he doesn't know.  They are what his friends and family would call charity cases, but he comes to see them as the people they are.  All with hopes and dreams.

Unfortunately, something else is might be in the caves with the group.

That's where I am going to stop, because I don't want to spoil anything. 

This book does not have the same level of weird that her previous books have.  In fact, the "horror" level is pared way down.  This is a book about coming to grips with reality, making choices, facing the music, and ultimately, proving one's humanity. 

I'll be donating this once we return to school!

Oh, and P.S. I just read Liggett has a new book coming out.  Tagline: The Handmaid's Tale meets The Lord of Flies.

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Love, Janis by Laura Joplin

I guess I have always been a fan of Janis.  I grew up listening to her music, courtesy of my Dad.  I've read many of her biographies, including the one listed as a summer reading book by the State of CT.  I really wanted to see the play based on her life and influences, but it closed too early.  I did get to see Mary Bridget Davies, who played Janis, in concert. 
Her life was amazing, being at the forefront of a new music movement.  But it was her downfall as well.  As we face another heroin crisis, her death reminds us...
I honestly had no idea Janis Joplin was such a prolific letter writer.  A lost art today, Janis consistently wrote letters to her parents, her siblings, her friends, her lovers.  This biography retells her story, interjected with those letters, now belonging to her younger sister Laura.
This isn't easy to read.  You know the ending.  And reading her very own words as if nothing is wrong was heart-wrenching.
Look for this in Bio come autumn!
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