Operation Red Jericho by Joshua Mowll is a fun read - lots of action, lots of explosions and nasty bad guys. But the best thing about the book is its design. Mowll is a graphic designer by education and the book looks like an old-fashioned travel journal - red cloth binding with a thick black elastic band to keep it shut. There are all kinds of fold out pages, maps and drawings and old photographs - the book takes place in 1920 in the China Sea. There are schematics of ships and machines, sidebars with info on scientists of the period. Just paging through the book is a treat. This is the first in a planned trilogy so I will keep you posted about the next one.
I still haven't got my hands on Under the Jolly Roger by Louis Meyer. Someday soon I hope.
I have a program tonight and another one tomorrow night so I will sign off here. Keep reading and let me know what you've read.

Big Doings at Parkland Community Library!!!
Tomorrow, Feb. 25, 2006, Steve Abrams does a program entitled Masks, Makeup and Mystery at 2 p.m. Steve is an excellent presenter and he's bringing slides and maybe a mask or two from the University of Pennsylvania Museum. This is a Commonwealth of PA Lecture series thingy. (I have to say that.)
On Wednesday - March 1 at 7 p.m. - Susan Bartoletti is here to talk about her Newbery Honor book Hitler Youth. I read the book and it was amazing! I find it hard to believe what people will believe and what they will go along with. The way Hitler and his propaganda machine used the children of Germany is just another reprehensible part of their legacy. Anyway, try to make it if you can.

Now on to books. I just catalogued a picture book called Tadpole's Promise by Jeanne Willis. I'm wondering what kind of response I'm going to get to this book. OK, a rainbow colored caterpillar falls in love with a tadpole and vice versa. The caterpillar makes the tadpole promise that he will never change. The tadpole promises but of course he does change and the caterpillar crawls off and cries herself to sleep. She wakes up as a butterfly. The tadpole is now a big frog. The butterfly returns to look for her love, the tadpole, and the frog...Well, what do you think the frog does? Yup. Then, the frog wonders whatever happened to his love the rainbow colored caterpillar. There, now you don't have to read it.
What do you think parents will say about this book? Hmmmm?
I also catalogued Dear Miss Breed by Joanne Oppenheim about a librarian who corresponded with students who were sent to the internment camps for Japanese Americans during WWII. I haven't read the whole book but just paging through it touched my heart. This is a TRUE story with actual photographs and transcripts of letters. The story is as much about the kids as it is about Miss Breed.

Oh and I have to apologize. Fray, mentioned by Okuni in an earlier post, is a GRAPHIC NOVEL not manga as I so ignorantly mispoke. What was I thinking? I know better than that!!
I'll just chalk it up to old age.

Fiction should be properly represented!
This is partof the basic spiritual contract between the writer-for-publication and the individual-who-reads-for-whatever-reason. This is why I find the "we were just pretending to pretend" pose of recent writers is obnoxious, and borders on evil. The public needs to take a deep breath, think about the recent "literary" creations, and think about MARKETING. How much marketing are they going to allow to warp the relationship that develops between the writer and the reader? So, stop buying from publishers who have little on no commitment to the public (slipping over the line into print prostitution.) When I read fiction, I want to completely invest my attention in non-everyday things.
I love to read, I love people who read, I feel everybody needs to make well informed decisions.
Dustjackets and Kisses to you all, over and out.

Reality is skewed into shades of gray. I doubt many of us can recollect every moment of our day yesterday without some embellishment or some omittion. However, I do believe it is wrong to sell something as fact when it is indeed fiction. A story that relates brutal human tragedies and marked as actual events encites stronger emotions in its audience than a work of fiction. It is not fair to make people invest a portion of their soul only to have the author state that "oops, I...um...that's not really the truth." It would certainly annoy me if I believed something was real, identified with it, cried tears, then found out that it wasn't real. I'd feel a little jilted and I believe there are others out there that would feel the same way too.
However, I do not remember where I heard or saw this, but it is possible for a person to believe a lie so much that the lie becomes truth within that person and would register as a truth on a lie dector. Also we all will recollect the same event differently since we would each hone in on different details. I suppose the whole truth and nothing but truth is subjected to point of view.
Anyway enough of that. I find it fun to read about ancient cultures. Some of them seem so fantastic it is as if you are in a fantasy novel. That's always fun. I'll stick with my fantasy except for class which kind of makes you deal with reality.

To be honest, I don't normally read biographies. When I read, I read to escape the real world and all of the problems I seem to have with it. I normally don't want to read about someone else's problems. If I do pick up some non-fiction, it is normally historical or something mythological. I actually once read The Science of Jurassic Park and the Lost World. All kinds of DNA information with a lot of BIG words that I'm still not sure if I understand.
In any case, when I read I want to KNOW everything is fictional, even if the story is about most of the world going crazy because of cell phones.
And just to let you know what I'm reading now: currently I'm reading The Library Policeman, a short novel in the book Four Past Midnight by Stephen King. Yes another novel by Mr. King. I tend to get on author kicks and read a few things by the same author in a row. Although, after this one I think I will read Arrow's Fall, book 3 in the Heralds of Valdemar series, by Mercedes Lackey.
I need something a little more cheerful after all the blood and gore.

John Grogan wrote a very funny column on fake memoirs arguing that his own best-selling memoir Marley & Me was actually faked. This made me wonder what everyone else thinks of faking memoirs and/or biographies in publishing.
If you have been busy studying you may have missed the Oprah show where she praised James Frey and his "memoir" A Million Little Pieces and then the show where she lambasted him for lying about events in his memoir - making some things up or vastly exaggerating others.
About a month ago the New York Times had an article about J. T. LeRoy. LeRoy sold himself as a former child abuse victim (I don't know how young my readership is so I will leave it at that. The description of the abuse he allegedly suffered was very graphic.) who only managed to survive through the kindness of a couple, Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop. (Knoop's first name may be something else.) The novels that LeRoy wrote were gritty and the publisher claimed that they were "semi-autobiographical." Well, the NYTimes article said that J.T. LeRoy does not exist. The novels were written by Laura Albert and Knoop's younger sister wore a disguise to appear as LeRoy at book signings.
Here are some questions to think about.
Would these books have sold if there was not a suffering author attached to them? Would they ever have made it out of the slush pile? What does that say about the publishing world? What does it say about American readers?
Since the LeRoy books are fiction, does it matter whether we believe the personna the author has created for herself?
Author's have written under pen names for centuries. What's the difference here?
Can you think of other books with authors who made fraudulent claims about themselves?
And how would you feel after reading a book that was supposed to be true if you found out it was mostly a lie?
Does Lemony Snicket fit in here?
I'd like to read any comments you might have about this.

Also, if you could make up a persona, what would it be? This one is strictly for fun.

Oh goodie I am not the only manga reading person in the group!! There are also two other series that I am really into.
The First is Immortal Rain in which Rain is much like Trigun's Vash. The story is that of a tragic hero doomed by their own actions, in this case Rain is condemed to live forever. Like Vash he ends up having a bounty on his head and everyone wants to bring him in dead..or alive. Except he always seems to escape. Of course I have only read three books so far.
The second is Louie the Rune Soldier which is a riot. This guy is the totally opposite of the everyday hero. He's a mage that prefers fist fights and street brawls to magic. He can be a complete moron and one perverted, beer drinking son of gun, but watching him fumble down the path of a would be hero is hilarious.

And for sights to add links too Tamora Pierce's website is pretty awesome. She has some really interesting reading lists availiable to browse through. Also there is this Potter sight that can basically tell you almost everything there is to know about the Potter Universe created by J.K. Rowling. Of course at the moment I am having dinner, thus I too lazy to find and post them here. I'll give them to our wonderful blogmaster about the same time I remember to show her Kenshin.
TTFN

Edited: Okay, I thought I would try to put them on the side bar, but I don't have those magical powers so I am sticking them in here.
http://www.tamora-pierce.com/ This is Tamora Pierce's site
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/index-2.html This is the Potter Site