My poor neglected book blog

I'm embarrassed that I haven't updated this poor blog since May. It's not because I haven't been reading, because I have been. I just haven't been able to find the time to sit down and write about the books. If you read my other blog, The Days are Just Packed, you'll know why.

But I'm going to try to be better about writing over here, too.

I've just finished a slew of books including some P. G. Wodehouse "Bertie and Jeeves" collections; a new biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, which was fascinating; a book by a former FBI hostage negotiator called Stalling for Time that made me want to start a new career as a negotiator; and two books by Mary Roach - Packing for Mars and Spook.

Right now I'm in the middle of Edmund Morris's third volume about Theodore Roosevelt, and I'm loving it. I'm also reading a biography about Frank Lloyd Wright, which is interested but slow going because I keep stopping to look at pictures of the houses and buildings online. The book could use some more photos. I'm also reading a biography of Cleopatra, but I'm having a hard time staying focussed on it. So little is really known about her, and there are so few contemporary records of her life and words, that much of the book seems like pure speculation.

What else is there? Oh yes, I read Dan Brown's latest pulp during my trip to New York City in November. It was perfect airplane reading.

I also read The New Yorker cover to cover each week, and I now get the Christian Science Monitor every week. And I think there have been a few books I've abandoned along the way, like The Help. I just couldn't get into it.

More updates soon, I promise.

A Clearing in the Distance

Even though this book was a biography of Frederick Law Olmstead, I found it as interesting as any work of fiction I've read in a long time. Olmstead, whose most famous projects include Central Park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the park system in Buffalo, Mount Royal in Montreal, the grounds of the Chicago World's Fair, and the grounds at the Biltmore Estate, was a fascinating man.

He didn't start designing parks and public spaces until he was in his 30s. Prior to that he owned several farms and studied "scientific farming," travelled throughout the south and sent back articles on the south and slavery, and during the Civil War served as head of the pre-cursor to the Red Cross. He was also ran the Mariposa Gold Mine out in California and sat on the board that went on to form Yosemite National Park. In addition to all of this, he was a publisher and successful author. He was involved in so many projects, big and small, that the book couldn't detail all of them.

It is hard to believe that one man could do so much, and yet he did. His landscape design firm, headed up by his son after Olmstead died, went on to become one of the top firms in the country. Olmstead's influence is seen in parks and colleges and cities around the world.

The Battle of the Labyrinth

This is the fourth in Percy Jackson series, and it was my favorite of the books so far. The characters, especially Percy, seemed a little too precoscious in the first books. But now it's like the characters have caught up with their true ages.

This book has Percy and his friends setting off into the Labyrinth in an effort to stop Kronos and his army from gaining access to Camp Half Blood. The adventures are a lot of fun, and the dangers are written well enough to keep you turning the pages.

Ella and I have one book left in the series, and then we'll probably be moving on to Riordan's next series, which deals with ancient Egypt.

The Mysterious Benedict Society

Ella got the first book for Christmas, and she was completely absorbed in it. I had to pry it out of her hands each night to get her to go to sleep. Once she finished it, I decided to read the book to see what it was all about.

Ella and I have now read the first two books and are waiting for the third to come out in paperback.

With the exception of the Harry Potter series, I think this is probably the best youth fiction series I've read yet. The plots are dense and challenging, and the vocabulary had Ella asking me to define words, which I liked.

The books center around four exceptional children who come from not-normal backgrounds. They go through several challenges at the beginning of the first book, which is how they end up living with the mysterious Mr. Benedict, who immediately sends them off on a mission to save the world. The second book is about the four kids heading off to rescue Mr. Benedict on their own.

The characters are very well written, and the stories are griping. I couldn't put the books down, either.

Ella and I are waiting with baited breath to get our hands on the third volume.

The Girl Who Played with Fire

This is the second of Stieg Larsson's series, and I liked it a lot more than the first, which I really liked. I was glad he spent more time on Salander's backstory and less time of Blumkvist, who just isn't as interesting.

I am looking forward to the third book coming out, so much so that I may splurge for the hardcover edition.

Flawless

I read a review of this on Salon.com, and then I read the Wired.com story, which the authors of this book spend a lot of time addressing, and decided to splurge on the book. It tells the story of the world's largest diamond heist, which was committed in 2003 in Antwerp, Belgium, the home of the world's diamond market. The heist, pulled off by at least 6 master thieves from Italy, rivals that in any movie for its daring and complexity.

The thieves managed to break into a secure building and into a vault that should have been impregnable and make off with somewhere between $100 and $400 million worth of diamonds, cash, jewelry and pure gold.

The authors, Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell, have written a nearly perfect book. It covers not only the planning of the heist and the theft themselves, but the history of diamond mining and the DeBeers Company, as well as the diamond industry and how it works. Greg Campbell knows his stuff; he also wrote the book Blood Diamonds, which traces the history of conflict diamonds. It's next on my to-read list.

The only way the book could have been better is if the authors had included pictures. Instead, I had to be happy with the shots included in the Wired.com article, which turns out to be mostly a fabrication created by the ringleader, Leonardo Notarbartolo. I recomend reading the Wired article only after you read the book.

Excellent stuff!

Percy Jackson

I finished the second and third books in the series - The Sea of Monsters and The Titan's Curse - and they were a lot of fun. But as I read them, I kept thinking about how much the youth publishing industry owes to J.K. Rowling. Her books proved that you can write smart books for kids - books with challenging plot lines and topics and with stories that stretch out over a whole series.

When I was growing up, we didn't have the wealth of fiction that the kids do now. We had the Little House books, which I loved, don't get me wrong, and the Anne of Green Gables series, which I read enough to just about memorize. But there was nothing along the lines of what is in the book stores now.

I'm thrilled that Ella loves reading so much, and I'm looking forward to sharing more of her books. Right now we're fighting over the fourth book in the series.