Things Not Seen

Things Not Seen is both a serious book and an amusing one. When fifteen-year-old Bobby steps out of the shower one Friday morning, he realizes that something significant has happened — he is invisible. He enlists his parent's help, but quickly becomes frustrated at their inability to come up with a solution to the problem. Bobby decides to head to the public library. While he can bundle up to walk to the library, he can't take off his gloves and scarf without someone noticing that his clothes apppear to be empty. So, he slips into the restroom and takes off all his clothes. He meets a girl around his own age who is blind and winds up telling her his story. Together, they take things into their own hands to solve the mystery of what caused him to disappear.

I didn't notice until I got home from the library, but I had picked up two books whose titles read together were quite humorous: Mine Eyes Have Seen Things Not Seen. It wasn't intentional, but it does catch your attention.

Mine Eyes Have Seen

Much like The Education of Mary which I finished earlier this month, Mine Eyes Have Seen is a novel about real people and real events. Ann Rinaldi sets her book along the Maryland-Virginia border in late 1859 as John Brown gathers a private army and plans his raid on Harper's Ferry. Annie Brown, his 15-year-old daughter, joined Brown and two of her brothers to provide a semblance of normality and help conceal the covert activities of the men. The story is told through Annie's eyes, in the style of a journal.

Over Sea, Under Stone

Upon recommendation, I purchased all five books of the Dark is Rising sequence as a boxed set just after Thanksgiving. Susan Cooper's fantasy series draws upon Celtic myths and British locales to spin the tale of struggle between good and evil, between dark and light.

Over Sea, Under Stone is the first book in which we meet the three Drew children: Simon, Jane, and Barney. Together they follow the clues in an ancient manuscript in search of a grail hidden away by an Arthurian knight. Of course, the forces of evil known as the Dark are also seeking the grail and the children find themselves in peril.

Baen Free Library

Another site that has been brought to my attention is the Baen Free Library of science fiction and fantasy. I downloaded a book by Mercedes Lackey. There are several authors here in the free library that I've been wanting to check out. And, there are even more electronic books available for purchase. It's too difficult to read in bed with an electronic book, but it is an easy way to take lots of books with no additional weight. I could even drop several onto a memory stick.

ReadingGroupGuides.com

A posting at the Purple Ink group at Yahoo! led me to ReadingGroupGuides.com. Pseudo said, "So imagine my delight when I found readinggroupguides.com. They have thousands of books listed, and each has a series of questions designed to stimulate conversation in reading groups. While I don't belong to one (a somewhat private obsession, mine), I use the questions to cement in my mind the plot and details, then file it away." So, I visited the site and found that it was indeed wonderful.

I'm continually on the lookout for good books. I pay attention to what people are reading in the airport. I read other people's lists of favorite books. And now, I have another resource to help me locate a good read.

The Education of Mary: A Little Miss of Color, 1832

This is one of the audio books that I "read" while commuting to and from the office over the past couple of weeks. I reached the end of the story just as I arrived in Grapevine this morning, so I returned it to the Grapevine Public Library.

Like the majority of Ann Rinaldi's historical fiction, this book stars characters who participated in the actual events told in the story. In 1832, Prudence Crandall decided to admit Sarah Harris as the first African American student in the boarding academy she ran in Canterbury, Connecticut. When the parents of the other students threatened to remove their daughters, Miss Crandall decided to close the school and reopen it as an academy for "young women and little misses of color". The Mary in the title is Sarah's younger sister who also attended the school, and the tale of the downfall of Miss Crandall's academy is told through her eyes.

Reading in 2004, Part 5 (Finis)

150 books read in 2004! Wow. I had no idea how many I would read when I started out. My only objective was to just keep a record of every book; I had no goal at all. In August I added a goal to read 50 more books by the end of the year when I joined the 50 Book Challenge community at LiveJournal.com

Books read in 4Q:

• October - 12
• Angel-Seeker
• The Girl Next Door
• The Dig
• "O" is for Outlaw
• "P" is for Peril
• Broken Dishes
• Killjoy
• An Accidental Woman
• One for the Money
• Two for the Dough
• The Companions
• The Sinister Pig
• November - 11
• "R" is for Ricochet
• Reefsong
• The Stone Prince
• Lake News
• Protector of the Small: First Test
• Skipping Christmas
• The Sunday Philosophy Club
• Protector of the Small: Page
• The Shadow of Venus
• Trace
• Protector of the Small: Squire
• December - 20
• Protector of the Small: Lady Knight
• Alanna: The First Adventure
• In the Hand of the Goddess
• The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
• Lioness Rampant
• Visions in Death
• Wild Magic
• Wolf-Speaker
• Emperor Mage
• The Realms of the Gods
• Split Second
• Three to Get Deadly
• The School Story
• Wise Child
• Ruby Holler
• Custard's Last Stand
• Other People's Children
• Tallahassee Higgins
• Artemis Fowl
• Four to Score

Instead of looking for the previous posts for parts 1-4, just review the entire year. I also plan to move all of the reviews from the LiveJournal community web site over to my own server for backup.