At Home This Week

Weekend Google Doodle

I loved learning about the history of kayaks on a trip to Greenland, so this Google Doodle celebrating the kayak was pleasing to see. The reason for this Doodle: 

“In honor of Native American Heritage Month, today's Doodle celebrates the kayak, a narrow watercraft originally created by Arctic tribes 5,000 years ago.” 

About the artist: 

“This Doodle was illustrated by Inuit Nunangat guest artist, Natashia Allakariallak.”   

We have enjoyed our own inflatable kayak as well as opportunities to go kayaking in several places. Kayaks of the more stable and recreational variety are offered on many of the National Geographic trips we have done, so we’ve seen lots of beautiful sights from a kayak. For the last few years, we have also owned an inflatable kayak, which gets us out on the very tame local lakes and rivers — nothing to compare to the incredibly dangerous conditions in which the Inuit kayakers hunted for large marine mammals in unbelievably cold Arctic seas!

On our trip to Alaska in 2013, we watched a bear fishing while we were in a kayak.

Watching a kayak demo in Greenland in 2022. The Inuit of Greenland contributed much to the development of kayaking.

A “Psychological Thriller”

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell portrays a pathological woman who deceives everyone. Her victims may become suspicious, but she manipulates them to an uncanny extent, and the reader also doesn’t know where her fabrications begin and where the truth ends. A friend of mine recommended this book as a “psychological thriller.” The book definitely embodies a lot of tension, suspicion of coming bad things, cruelty, and growing horror at the layered revelations.

Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything like this book, and it’s not my usual type of reading. While I wouldn’t call it a supreme work of literary genius (it’s not), I think it’s unusual and very suspenseful.

Question: What is Consciousness?

Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith explores two main topics: the working of our human minds and of the minds of the octopus and closely related species (the cephalopods). The author reviews the evolution that created both humans and cephalopods. He says:

“Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.” (p. 9)

In attempting to compare the minds of these divers creatures, he probes the question of consciousness, a question that’s often asked and never really answered. He describes the early steps taken by these animals:

“Later … an integrated perspective on the world arises and a more definite sense of self. We then reach something closer to consciousness. I don’t see that as a single definite step. Instead, I see “consciousness” as a mixed-up and overused but useful term for forms of subjective experience that are unified and coherent in various ways. Here, too, it is likely that experience of this kind arose several times on different evolutionary paths: from white noise, through old and simple forms of experience, to consciousness.” (p. 97)

I reviewed this book in some detail in 2018 in a post titled Invertebrate Intelligence and decided to reread it during the past week. 

Stories for Our Time

A purely evil political leader appeals to the masses through his dramatic speeches. The large crowds of his followers go wild, howling with adoration and loyalty. He convinces them that they are superior beings, and that they should show no tolerance for those who differ from them. He promises that once empowered, he will expel or even exterminate their inferiors. His overwhelming appeal almost enables him to become the supreme ruler of the Wizard World. Luckily, a few brave opponents, especially Newt Scamander and Albus Dumbledore, prevent the deceptive and charismatic Grindlewald from achieving his evil plan. 

As we binge-watched the three recent Fantastic Beasts films (prequel to the Harry Potter story) I was overcome with dread because of the parallel to recent real life. Unfortunately, no one stopped the onslaught of our new dictator, and as he rapidly announces his coming regime, I fear that no one will stand up to his evil plan.

Not only are we without a magical hero to save us, we don’t even have adorable magical pets to cheer us up. However, these films are a good escape if you don’t take their political situation too seriously. Here are Newt Scamander’s two adorable pets:

A Niffler

A Bowtruckle

Blog post and original photos © 2013, 2022, 2024 mae sander. 

Movie images from Warner Brothers

Credible Threat

 

Recent Reading

 Some Short Genre Fiction

A nice short story by Silvia Moreno Garcia.
Although I usually am not a fan of this genre, I enjoy her work.
As suggested by the cover, there’s a wolf in the story.

First sentence of this book: “She’d always known her lover would come from beyond the forest. It was foretold when she cast a divination spell. It was a game she played with the other village girls—quaint superstitions passed from one generation to the next.”

I’m always vowing to read Sci-Fi, but I never really like it.

The last sentence of the book: “ We go forth to find this city’s singer, and hopefully to hear the greatness of its birthing song.” — From N. K. Jemisin "The City Born Great"

And One VERY Long Detective Story

The Running Grave

Writing as Robert Galbraith, author J.K.Rowling has produced another massive suspenseful detective story. Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot, partners in a private detective agency, are working on several commissions, most dramatically the case of a purely evil cult involving a self-proclaimed prophet (nearly a deity to his followers) and numerous offensive and manipulative activities. The abuses of the brain-washed, imprisoned followers are revealed as Robin bravely endangers herself by embedding in the headquarters of the cult somewhere in the wilds of the English countryside. 

The Perils of Robin in cult captivity are almost (but not quite) overdone in the style of an old movie serial, or maybe like the classic perils of Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela (published 1740 as Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, and considered to be the first ever example of the modern novel). I couldn’t stop reading!

The strength of this long book is that as Robin subjects herself to the horrors of this cult, the depths of evil that a single person can do are laid bare. I remembered, as I read about the cult leader and his willing victims, about Voldemort and the Death Eaters. All right, I still admire the Harry Potter books. I also admire the extremely pointed and well-observed criticism of cults and their exploitation of weak human beings expressed in this novel. 

As usual, there is plenty of personal detail about the two detectives, especially the struggle Cormoran Strike is waging to get his weight under control in order to reduce stress on his missing leg. His unwilling but disciplined choices, such as fish rather than steak, and his strenuous resistance against his craving for hamburgers and chips, as they are called in London, are very painfully familiar — as well as the circumstances where his will-power crumbles and he eats (in Robin’s estimation) 5000 calories worth of McDonald's. An example of his giving in:

“While Robin was in Kensington, Strike was back in the Denmark Street office, eating his second Chinese meal in two weeks, this time a takeaway. He was finding the last stone to go before hitting his target weight very hard to shift, and while he supposed a nutritionist might tell him the reappearance of takeaways and pub food in his diet might have something to do with that, the lure of sweet and sour chicken and fried rice had proved too strong for him this evening.” (p. 767) 

I was amused by one lunch: Strike is treated by a wealthy client at Rules restaurant in Covent Garden, an old restaurant with “comfortable glamour.” In fact, our friends in London, who are super knowledgeable about the city, took us there, and indeed we enjoyed the tradition and glamor of the place. Our visit was the same year as in the novel, 2016. Here are my photos of this experience:

After I found a couple of novels in the Cormoran Strike series to be grotesquely violent, I had decided not to read any more of them. However, a couple of people I trust (including our London friend in the photo!) said this one was better, and they were right. I’m glad I read it.

Reviews © 2023 mae sander

Shared with Eileen’s Saturday Critters and with Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz

Halloween Classics

From the Food Network: A Black Light Cocktail (source)

My neighbors have started decorating their houses and lawns for Halloween, and everywhere I shop has Halloween candy. It’s time to think about the holiday, so I’ve been trying to make a list of classic literature for Halloween reading. Here are my favorites. I’ve read them all, mostly more than once, and enjoyed them, though some of them frightened me!

• Dracula — Bram Stoker, 1897
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow— Washington Irving, 1820
• “The Raven” — Edgar Allan Poe, 1845
• Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus — Mary Shelley, 1818
• Macbeth— Shakespeare, 1606
• All the Harry Potter books —- J.K.Rowling, 1997 - 2011
• Halloween Party — Agatha Christie, 1969
• The Graveyard Book — Neil Gaiman, 2008
• Mexican Gothic — Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 2020 (reviewed here: Cthulhu Comes to Mexico)
• Anything by H.P.Lovecraft (lived 1890-1937) — If his creepy characters don’t scare you, his racism will.

I’m concentrating here on literary works. I know there are many others that I am less familiar with, notably Stephen King. Of course, tons of movies and TV specials also have Halloween or otherwise supernatural and spooky themes! And most of the classics that I named have been made into films, sometimes over and over again. Like there seem to be at least 60 versions of Dracula.

Blog post © 2022 mae sander. Images as credited.

Regrets about The Ink Black Heart by J.K.Rowling

 

The newest Cormoran Strike detective novel by Robert Galbraith (pseudonym of J.K.Rowling) is The Ink Black Heart. I didn't like it at all. I forced myself to read all 1278 tedious pages, including endless quotations of complicated online interchanges between fictitious avatars in an online game and on Twitter. These were reproduced in minuscule typefaces that had to be enlarged in painful ways on my Kindle reader. Obviously, I don't know if the hardcopy version of the book was easier to read. 

I'm really not inclined to write much about this book. It's the sixth in a series of which I liked the first four, with reservations about one that was too violent. What I wrote about the fifth book, in a review titled A Very Long Book, wasn't very positive: I mentioned my sense that Troubled Blood, book number five, was much too long and involved. 

I liked The Ink Black Heart even less, and the plot and characters -- while sometimes pretty well-portrayed -- are really getting less interesting than in the earlier books. The long relationship of the two main characters, Cormoran Strike and his detective agency partner Robin Ellacot continues throughout this book. After five years they are still pretty much in the same place they started, and at this point I am losing patience and losing interest.

I suspect that many of the situations, character flaws, bad motives, pettiness, internet trolling, male chauvinism and violence, name-calling, nastiness, and other similar parts of the novel are payback for the internet abuse that J.K.Rowling has recently endured. I do feel sorry for her for being castigated in such nasty ways, but I didn't really want to share all this agony. 

I haven't read any reviews of this novel, so I don't know if anyone else shares my chagrin at missing the humor, skillful observation of human relations, great characterizations, and overall delightfulness of J.K.Rowling at her best.

Review © 2022 mae sander

Sequels

Recently, I've been reading sequels from a variety of mystery authors. Writing a full review post of every sequel seems a bit redundant, but here's a quick report on some recent ones. As I often do, I'm notably interested in the way these authors use food to tell their stories.

Sujata Massey's Rei Shimura

The second in the Rei Shimura series is titled Zen Attitude (published in 1997). I enjoyed it very much, for its many Japanese scenes set in several Japanese cities. Rei Shimura, the amateur detective who just happens to be around when murderers are busy, has become an antique dealer, with customers whom she must handle with Japanese tact despite her American upbringing. There's plenty of suspenseful detecting and escapes from dangers, as one would expect.

I particularly enjoyed references to special Japanese food and drink; for example, a woman customer asked:

"You drink mugi-cha, don’t you?” My hostess poured cool barley tea for me into a dark earthen-ware cup. (p. 41). 

Or another occasion when she slept at a friend's house:

"She showed me a thermos of green tea and a tiered basket filled with pickled vegetables and onigiri, fresh rice balls stuffed with pickled plums that I loved. I must have smelled them when she walked in and woke me up." (p. 166). 

If anything, I liked the second in the series better than the first one. I'm surely expecting to read more! 

Cara Black's Aimee Leduc

Black's Murder in Belleville is the second detective tale in the Aimee Leduc series (published in 2000). It's every bit as over-the-top violent and exciting as the first in the series, maybe more so. By the end of the first chapter, Aimee has been a witness to a fatal car bombing, has picked up the survivor (a friend who had phoned her for help), stolen a moped, dragged her injured friend onto the moped, and avoided an unknown but clearly evil-intending pursuer. She rides the moped down the steps of a Metro station, with her friend somehow on her back, avoids the enemy, and gets away. That's just the first chapter. Oh, yes, she also is always dressed perfectly for every scene. 

Not much more about this that I would want to say. Lots of bad guys! Really bad ones! Will I read another? Probably. Will I read all 20 of them? Probably not.

Tana French's Dublin Murder Detectives

The Secret Place (published 2014) is very readable despite its substantial length. It's well-crafted: the major action in the book, from the start of a new clue in a cold case until full explanation, takes place in less than 24 hours. Alternate chapters describe the events leading up to the murder that's under investigation. The scene is in a girls' school in Dublin, which is very well portrayed, although I think some of the teenage slang dialog may be a little forced and too much like TV.

I enjoyed the way that food is used to show emotional states, especially the food in the school dining room and the snacks the girls buy at a mall near the school. For example:

"Becca digs her heels into the ground, stares at her beef casserole and refuses to get pulled in. If they want to act like idiots, that’s their problem; they can fix it themselves."(p. 427). 

"A heavy girl with her back to me looked like she was lashing into her food, but over her shoulder I caught a full plate of chicken pie chopped into tiny perfect squares, getting tinier with each vicious cut." (pp. 232-233).  

Each of French's novels introduces a new detective in the Dublin police, except for The Witch Elm, which has an amateur detective. I have liked them all.

More Sequels

Quite a few other series that I've read in the past have new books available, such as the Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny and the Inspector Brunetti series by Donna Leon. I think I've missed several Inspector Montalbano novels in the series by Andrea Camilleri, who died last year but I think left some unpublished work. And I did recently write a full post on the recent sequel in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacot series by J.K.Rowling. As there are several authors that I intend to try for the first time as well, I guess I'll have plenty to do!

Review © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

Briefly Noted

Recent reading and TV: a few more books and series from BBC TV. I don't feel like doing a full review of these: I want to move on and read and blog other things. So here's a little bit about each one:

Another book that found me because it
was in a Little Free Library!

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (published 2016).

Here is a quote that I feel captures the spirit of the character Lucy Barton, a fragile woman who can't believe she's worth anything:

"This is not the story of my marriage; I have said that I cannot write the story of my marriage. But sometimes I think about what first husbands know. I married William when I was twenty years old. I wanted to cook him meals. I bought a magazine that had fancy recipes, and I gathered the ingredients. William passed through the kitchen one evening and looked at what was in the frying pan on the stove, then he came through the kitchen again. "Button," he said, "what's this?" I said it was garlic. I said the recipe called for a clove of garlic to be sautéed in olive oil. With gentleness he explained that this was a bulb of garlic, and that it needed to be peeled and opened into the cloves. I can picture the unpeeled big bulb of garlic now -- so clearly -- sitting in the middle of the olive oil in the frying pan." (p. 172-173)  

The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It by Tilar J. Mazzeo (published 2008). 

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin was born in 1777, and thus came of age during the French Revolution. With her husband François, she started a champagne business in Rheims, France. When he died, she became known as Veuve Clicquot, or the Widow Clicquot. With force and initiative she figured out how to improve the methods of making champagne, to find markets, and to create brand identity for her product, making it wildly successful. Her name still is on bottles of Veuve Clicquot Champagne.

Author Tilar J. Mazzeo, using the scant information available about the early life of Barbe-Nicole, and researching the archives of the business from later in her life, creates an amazing biography, though sometimes a bit gushing in describing Barbe-Nicole's imagined emotions.

"We know this wine as champagne. François and Barbe-Nicole would have called it just vin mousseux— sparkling wine. It wasn’t regularly called champagne even in France until the 1860s, when it had all become big business. What is most surprising is how different champagne looked and tasted at the end of the eighteenth century. It would have been virtually unrecognizable to most of us." (p. 25). 

A remarkable woman, a workaholic to the end of her life:

"Years later, the traveler Robert Tomes remembered 'Madame Clicquot [as] a dwarfish, withered old woman of eighty-nine years, whose whole soul was in business, scanning over each day to her last the ledger of the commercial house to which she had given her name." (p. 160). 

This book is labeled by amazon.com as an "oenobiography" -- a wonderful word! Remember, the prefix oeno- means wine! As in oenophile, a lover of wine. Or my made-up word oenophony, a wine poseur.

If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes (published 1945).

An NPR review describes this novel:

"In 1945, Himes' novel If He Hollers Let Him Go was published — both his first, and the first in the vein of what some contemporaries would deride as protest novels. And they were. Himes never soft-pedaled his disdain for the systemic racism of the day or for black integrationists, whom he referred to as 'whining beggars.'" (source)

If He Hollers is a very powerful book. As I read, I was amazed at how well it holds up to the test of time, how completely Himes' sentiments about racism and alienation are in tune with the attitudes and problems our society, sadly, continues to harbor. Its almost unbearable to read it and know that we are in fact losing the tiny advances that we may have made for a while.

Himes is more famous for his series of hard-boiled detective fiction, the Harlem Cycle, featuring NYPD Detectives "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Grave Digger" Jones. I've read some of these, but was curious about this one, which conveniently turned up in the Little Free Library.

The Muralist by B.A.Shapiro (published 2015).

I only read half of this. With what's happening in the world, especially in Pittsburgh, I couldn't read another word of a Holocaust novel. The following quote illustrates what type of book it is.

"Grand-mère was sitting in a chair in the communal living room, sun brushing her right shoulder, the rest of her in dusk. When I was a child, my favorite thing was to bake with her. She taught me how to make pain d’amande and challah; dripping the melted butter over the braided loaf is one of my sweetest memories. I still bake the cookies, often when I’m feeling a little lonely; the intoxicating aroma of almonds and butter never fails to lift my spirits. It hurt to see Grand so small, so pulled inward, so vacant. I wondered if the large woman who made potato latkes so rich and crisp they melted and crunched in your mouth at the same time, who beat the pants off her friends at the poker table, who loved her family with a fierceness that was scary at times, was somewhere inside this tiny husk of a woman. If she still existed at all." (p. 66). 

Strike and Ellacott as the BBC casts them.  

Galbraith's Cormoran Strike on BBC TV.

Also recently, we watched the BBC dramatization of the first three Cormoran Strike novels by Robert Galbraith. The executive producer is J.K.Rowling, who also admits to having written the books under the name Robert Galbraith.

The series stars Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike and Holliday Grainger as Robin Ellacott, the two main characters from the books. They and all the rest of the cast seem perfect to me, and sometimes I had the feeling that I had already "seen" the sets when I read the books. And yes, they do show the two partners in detection eating Pad Thai or the like, and drinking wine or beer at many bars with lots of English pub atmosphere.

I'm now looking forward to the next in the BBC series: four promised episodes of Lethal White, the new Cormoran Strike book which I read in September (review here). After reading Lethal White I reread the first two novels in the series as well. I guess I'm really hooked. Can't wait for the fifth novel!

J.K.Rowling Strikes Again

I finished reading the latest Cormoran Strike detective tale by Robert Galbraith yesterday. Galbraith, as most people know, is the alter ego of J.K.Rowling, who wanted to start over by using a pseudonym after Harry Potter. She has now published four novels in this series, and I've quite enjoyed them. Dozens of reviews will no doubt be added to those that had already been written before publication, so I'm just going to explore a few things that I really enjoyed in the book.

Lethal White: published last Tuesday.

I love Rowling's sharp eye for detail, for irony, for human weaknesses, and her awareness of how class privilege can create terrible human beings. I love her ear for speech variations, for music (at least in this book where she offers thoughts on listening to pieces as diverse as a Brahms symphony and "Black Trombone" by Serge Gainsbourg), and especially for very odd and wonderfully chosen names of people and places.

Pratt's gentleman's club? Surely, I thought, she made up this wonderful name. No she did not! It's real, and in the acknowledgements, Rowling acknowledges who took her there. However, when Cormoran Strike, in a phone conversation, is invited to meet a client there, his trusty partner Robin says roughly the same thing:

He hung up and returned to the office where Robin was opening and sorting mail. When he told her the upshot of the conversation, she Googled Pratt’s for him.

“I didn’t think places like this still existed,” she said in disbelief, after a minute’s reading off the monitor.  

“Places like what?”  

“It’s a gentleman’s club… very Tory… no women allowed, except as guests of club members at lunchtime… and ‘to avoid confusion,’” Robin read from the Wikipedia page, “‘all male staff members are called George.’”  

“What if they hire a woman?” 

“Apparently they did in the eighties,” said Robin, her expression midway between amusement and disapproval. “They called her Georgina.” (Kindle Locations 1465-1471). 

When he gets to Pratt's (which I Googled too!) he's shown to a dining room by a motherly woman. Through a pass-through he can see a chef carving cold roast beef, and around him:

Here was the very antithesis of the smart restaurants where Strike tailed errant husbands and wives, where the lighting was chosen to complement glass and granite, and sharp-tongued restaurant critics sat like stylish vultures on uncomfortable modern chairs. Pratt’s was dimly lit. Brass picture lights dotted walls papered in dark red, which was largely obscured by stuffed fish in glass cases, hunting prints and political cartoons. In a blue and white tiled niche along one side of the room sat an ancient iron stove. The china plates, the threadbare carpet, the table bearing its homely load of ketchup and mustard all contributed to an ambience of cozy informality, as though a bunch of aristocratic boys had dragged all the things they liked about the grown-up world— its games, its drink and its trophies— down into the basement where Nanny would dole out smiles, comfort and praise." (Kindle Locations 1519-1525). 

His client, Chiswell, a cabinet minister, arrives, a bit late of course:

Once they were seated at the table, which had a stiff, snowy-white tablecloth ... Georgina brought them thick slices of cold roast beef and boiled potatoes. It was English nursery food, plain and unfussy, and none the worse for it. Only when the stewardess had left them in peace, in the dim dining room full of oil paintings and more dead fish, did Chiswell speak again. (Kindle Locations 1552-1555). 

Throughout most of the novel, Strike drinks coffee and beer, eats bacon or deep-fried food -- or tries to abstain in order to control his weight -- and joins friends for Chinese takeout food or a curry. Or this:

Having left in plenty of time, Strike made a detour to a handy McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin and a large coffee, which he consumed at an unwiped table, surrounded by other early Saturday risers. A young man with a boil on the back of his neck was reading the Independent right ahead of Strike.... (Kindle Locations 5068-5071). 

But the wonderfully named (and completely not made-up) Pratt's sets the scene for the novel where Strike and Robin have to deal with many unbearable aristocrats and their vast sense of entitlement. In fact, everything in the book revolves around how their entitlement forms their attitudes and leads them to the crimes that are being detected. In the Harry Potter books, there are wizard families with the same sense of overpowering aristocratic superiority to the more common wizards. Rowling really knows how to use her powers of observation on these rather deficient human specimens, and it makes for very good reading!

"The Lightning Thief"

The ancient Greek gods live among us, continuing their ancient rivalries and pettiness and breeding with mortals. As in the legends, their half-blood offspring have the potential to become heroic figures in the continuing struggles among the various gods, but first they have to come to terms with their unusual identity. That's the premise of Rick Riordan's very popular kids' series about Percy Jackson, full name, Perseus.

In this, the first of these books, Percy, son of Poseidon, goes on a quest with a satyr and another half-blood, the daughter of Athena. They travel from New York to Los Angeles where, among other things, they discover the entrance to Hades. In their heroic adventures they encounter gods, monsters, furies, heroes: the full mythological treatment. They reprise many of the legends about the original Perseus.

I found that the most interesting elements of the characters are those borrowed from Greek mythology -- the arrogance and abrasiveness of Ares, Athena's jealousies, Posidon's son's ability to gain strength from water and even breathe when under the sea, the desire of the satyr to find where Pan may still live, the dedication of a Centuar who has been a teacher for 3,000 years, the brutal strength of the Minotaur, the spookiness of the River Styx. The half-blooded children were often threatened by the other gods; a summer camp in New England offered them a safe haven and place to discover their heritage. But for the most part, they were reliving myths.

The caretakers at camp fed Percy ambrosia and nectar, which tasted like popcorn and chocolate, to help him recover from injuries he suffered in fighting the Minotaur. Corn and chocolate: new-world foods to underscore how the old gods are now embedded in America. Maybe so. For camp meals, the staff served barbecued meat and burned a bit as a sacrifice to the gods. Percy also liked fast food, and often fell for it when offered by someone like the Medusa.

Percy's realization of how his heroic fighting capabilities was dramatic. His diagnosed ADHD makes him a better sword fighter. Campers' lives included other ironies, as well. They weren't able to adjust to life in modern American schools, and most couldn't learn to read English, because they were "programmed" to read ancient Greek (maybe the least plausible of the implausible things of the book). Some details are amusing. But I found the adventures a bit mechanically done.

The Lightning Thief is readable, but Neil Gaiman's American Gods contained many more original ideas and clever characterizations in using more or less the same premise. I'm a fan of young adult and even kids books, but The Lightning Thief isn't quite complex enough for my taste. I prefer the works of Gaiman, Lewis Carroll, or J.K.Rowling. I'm glad Riordan has found a way to get modern kids to learn the myths, though.

Update on the movie of this book: "The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips says that 'this could be the start of something adequate.'" Great movie recommendation, no?

And another update: my discussion questions for book club:

1. This question is for the parents/grandparents of kids who like the book. What appealed to the kids? Assuming that they have little or no prior knowledge of Greek myths, how did they react to the embedded tales of heroes, gods, and monsters?
2. Riordan himself refers to "archetypes" or "primal forces" (p. 86). They've been used in Western lit over and over, high and low (example: French playwright Racine is as high as you can imagine, the TV series on the Labors of Hercules was farce, Neil Gaiman's uses are playful, Ovid's retelling of myths was maybe in the middle.) Riordan uses the Greek gods along with Centaurs, the Minotaur, the Fates, the Furies, the Hellhound, Medusa, the Satyr's search for the Great God Pan, the Oracle, etc. What is so powerful about these? How does he borrow their power for telling a good story? What does he do that's original? Does he add more than a few jokes like Hades being in LA or Ares being a biker? Are there any other treatments of mythological themes you want to compare?
   
3. The half-blood kids in the special camp in The Lightning Thief believe that their dyslexia, ADHD, and other "disabilities" are caused by their godly nature. They can't read English because they are "hard wired" for ancient Greek. They fidget because they are always ready for battle and always watching out for whatever. Percy the hero feels completely vindicated when he learns this interpretation of his problems. First, how do you react to this claim? Does it ring true? Second, what about kids reading the book?
4. Aside from the mythology, this book to some extent follows the format of a road book: characters on the road being followed by bad guys and seeking something. Is this successful? How does it merge into the mythology part?
   
5. If you could have a Greek god as a parent which one would you pick?