Why Gender Matters

by Dr. Leonard Sax

Grade: 3 stars

Thoughts: For the most part, this was excellent and informative. Many of the biological differences between boys and girls which result in behavioural differences have been observed by me many times. It's especially noticeable in a large family like mine, where all the boys and all the girls have some key similarities, despite the fact that some of the girls are more tomboy-ish and some of the boys are less stereotypically boyish. And because we were homeschooled, we had none of the peer pressure to be more feminine or masculine. I, for instance, had no qualms about going into computer science in university. I don't think I thought that it was a particularly male thing to do. It's just what I wanted to do.
Which is similar to an interesting point he made. Apparently in most school bands, the flute players tend to be girls and the trumpet players tend to be boys. Similarly with the lack of girls in physics, math, and computer science. But this lessens dramatically in non co-ed schools.

However, there were a couple oddities about this book, especially some instances where he stopped talking about the scientific evidence for gender differences, and instead talked about how to deal with people who don't follow the normal pattern. I'm specifically thinking about his bit on anomalous males here. He basically said you had to get rid of all their anomalous qualities, and force them to participate in organized sports. Which seems quite a stupid generalization to me, although it might be appropriate in a few cases. For some reason he didn't have the same issues with anomalous females, although he didn't really explain why.

The Sorcerer's House

by Gene Wolfe

Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Story: Baxter Dunn just got out of prison, and he's destitute. But it just so happens that someone left him a very big, very strange house. And then he meets lots of ladies who help him, and finds a mysterious device which finds fish and money for him. And it gets weirder and weirder until the end.

Thoughts: This was a very strange book, and in the end, I'm not sure that I quite liked it. I kept waiting for some of the random threads to show up again. They mostly did all came together in the end, I suppose, but I still wish it had delved more into the characters and magic system. (For a somewhat spoilery example: Emlyn, Ieuan, and the triannulus--they never really showed up again after the first half of the book. I mean, the first two were important because of the fact that they were identical twins, but that's really it. And the last one never really showed up again at all, and had no real purpose in the story.)

However it really was a clever book, despite all that. I generally like a bit of strangeness in my books (The Man Who Was Thursday is one of my favourites ever, for example), and this really was close to being awesome. So close that I am definitely going to check out a lot of Wolfe's other books. Apparently one of his common attributes is unreliable narrators, which is a trope I love. (He wrote a series about a Roman soldier who has no short-term memory. It reminds me of the movie Memento, which was awesome.)

A Greyhound of a Girl

by Roddy Doyle

Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Story: Mary lives in Dublin and her grandmother is slowly dying in the hospital. Then she meets the ghost of her dead great-grandmother, and all of them (with Mary's mother as well) take a journey together into the past (metaphorically speaking).

Thoughts: This is a very real sort of book (excluding, of course, the ghost...). Mary talks, thinks, and feels like girl of that age (12, maybe? I forget--also, assuming that the Irish part is correct--I've never been to Ireland so I don't know). The plot events--though not very...plotful...exactly--seem to be to be very much would happen if four generations of women all got together for the first time in those circumstances.

I'm not sure what else to say about this one exactly. Partly because it's not really my type of book, and so I don't feel qualified to critique it. Partly because I think it is really well written, but it's also very short, so nothing jumps out at me bad or good.

The Mother Tongue

by Bill Bryson

Grade: 4 1/2 stars

Thoughts: This is a book on the English language and on language in general, written by Bill Bryson, so it was pretty much a given that I'd love it. And I did indeed.
In fact, I liked it so much, and it was so chockerblock full of interesting tidbits and stories and observations, that I don't know where to start, exactly. So...let's start with page 60.

--On page 60, Bryson some words which really ought to be used more. They are so useful and specific. I am going to start using a few of them immediately:

aposiopesis: Wikipedia describes it as "a figure of speech wherein a sentence is deliberately broken off and left unfinished, the ending to be supplied by the imagination, giving an impression of unwillingness or inability to continue"; Bryson simply describes it "a sudden breaking off of thought".

crytoscopophilia: "The urge to look through peoples [sic] windows as you pass by their houses." (from the Urban Dictionary)

velleity: Bryson describes it as "a mild desire, a wish or urge too slight to lead to action". (This one I like especially. I am full of velleities all the time.)

--On page 72, he talks about the history of change concerning the word "nice". Now, I knew that it had changed a lot over the ages, but not quite this much.

"A word that shows just how wide-ranging these changes can be is nice, which is first recorded in 1290 with the meaning of stupid and foolish. Seventy-five years later Chaucer was using it to mean lascivious and wanton. Then at various times over the next 400 years it came to mean extravagant, elegant, strange, slothful, unmanly, luxurious, modest, slight, precise, thin, shy, discriminating, dainty, and - by 1769 - pleasant and agreeable. The meaning shifted so frequently and radically that it is now often impossible to tell in what sense it was intended, as when Jane Austen wrote to a friend, 'You scold me so much in a nice long letter ... which I have received from you.'"

--On page 171, he lists a bunch of words which are used differently in America vs. Britain. For instance, cotton candy vs. candy floss, and downspout vs. drainpipe. What I found interesting, and not really surprising if you think about it, was that I used about half of the American words and half of the British words. Being Canadian, this seems to generally be the case, whether it be for pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, etc.

And there's tons of other stuff, but I can't very well quote the whole book, can I?

I don't really have any criticisms, although it would be interesting to see an updated version. This book is as old as I am, and I'd be interested to know his opinion on some more modern developments.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

by Brian Selznick

Grade: 3 stars
Story: Hugo is a orphaned thief living in a train station, who fixes the clocks there, and steals parts to fix the clockwork man which he got from his father.

Thoughts: This is the second book I've read in three days which is notable for its gorgeous illustrations. But unlike The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, this one is more than half illustrations. It is a unique format, different than a graphic novel or a normal children's illustrated book. And for this book, it worked very well indeed. It gave it a very visual and mysterious atmosphere, which fit in very well with the themes of early silent film and secretive automatons.

The fairly new movie called Hugo is based on this book. I haven't seen it yet, but what I've heard of it seems good. It think if done well, this could make a very good movie indeed, seeing as the visual aspect is so strong.

The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

by Christopher Healy

Grade: 4 1/2 stars
Story: Frederic the dandy, Gustav the gruff, Liam the heroic, and Duncan the insane. Four princes from neighbouring kingdoms all manage to lose their princesses somehow, and as they set out to rescue/run away from them, they somehow stumble into each other and also an evil plot. And then there's chaos! And dragons! And evil child ruffians! And unlikely friendships! And multiple sets of octuplets! Plus, of course, plenty of battles and fights and squabbles and arguments and daring rescues and ungainly captures and adventure.

Thoughts: This was one of the most delightful books I've read in ages.

I'm going to quote the first two paragraphs for you. Because they captured well the feeling of the book, and they're funny.

    Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies. Didn't know that, did you?
    Don't worry. There's a lot you don't know about Prince Charming: Prince Charming has no idea how to use a sword; Prince Charming has no patience for dwarfs; Prince Charming has an irrational hatred of capes.

And it goes on. It's funny and clever and fully of great characters. It has a good ending, with the possibility for a sequel. What more could you ask?

And the chapter titles!
From "Prince Charming Defends Some Vegetables" to "Prince Charming is Completely Unnecessary" to "Prince Charming Has No Idea What's Going On". They remind me of the awesome chapter titles in the Percy Jackson series--they perfectly encapsulate the chapter without giving away anything, and are funny as anything to boot.

And the illustrations!
I wouldn't like this book half so much if it weren't for the illustrations. They capture the characters perfectly. It reminds me of the importance that illustrations have in the Lemony Snicket books, except I actually like the style of these drawings.

But as with the last book I reviewed, I am still slightly torn about this grading. As awesome as it was, it wasn't perfect. I'm just not sure how to describe the main criticism I have. It's something about the writing style, though. I once heard a friend of mine (CJ, I think) talk about a book she was reading that she didn't quite like. She said it was great and really well done, but it somehow reminded her too much of her own writing, except more professionally done. This book had that feeling somehow. The writing was too much like something I would have written, and thus something I would have criticized a lot and not liked all that much. It's something like that, at least. Again, I'm not totally sure how to describe this. But whatever it is, it kept pulling me out of the book.
Plus, as much as I hate to say this, I think it was a little too long--just a tiny bit! It could have skipped some bits and been a bit tighter, that's all. (Especially near the end of the middle, sometime after the famed Chapter 20.)

But I'm sticking with "To Own": because a) I actually already own it (a rare thing with me, to buy a book without having read it); b) I LOVE groups of unique characters saving the world together (again like the previous review); c) I've haven't had a "To Own" grading in a while, and I may as well have one now.

P.S. I think it's obligatory for this kind of book to tell your favourite prince. Unfortunately, this proves to be immensely hard, as they are all awesome and hilarious. So I'm just going to have to pick one. And I pick...
Gustav! Or maybe Frederic? I don't know. I think it's one of those two, at any rate. Frederic is the one I personally find the funniest, but Gustav is all mopey and unable to show his emotions. Plus I like huge guys in books (Flambeau, Porthos, etc.)

P.P.S. See also the sequel, The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle.

Fly Into Fire

by Susan Jane Bigelow

Grade: 3 stars
Story: Sequel to Broken and prequel to The Spark. (Story summary has spoilers for Broken. So be warned.) Sky Ranger has just committed treason and lost all his fellow extrahumans (i.e. superheros), all in one fell swoop. Now he's stranded in the middle of the desert, on the run from an evil government, and everybody hates his guts.


Thoughts: This series has this strange prevalence of polyamory. I don't quite like this, and it's not only because of the moral aspect of it. I really do find that, in stories, any romantic tension or excitement goes way down when people randomly sleep together. Even platonic tensions goes down, if that makes sense. I mean, a lot of this story consists of a largish group of non-related, unique people saving the world together. I love stories like that. They are almost always my favourite. But this time, I didn't have the same intensity of love for this group, even though I liked a lot of the characters quite a lot individually (especially Dee, Felipe, and Roger, although the latter never redeemed himself as much as I had hoped). I'm attributing this partly to this concept of polyamory.

But...maybe I'm misunderstanding something here? Because there are groups like the Study Group from Community that I love half to death, who nonetheless have some small elements of this too. But yet there is a huge difference between the two, which is that in Community, it's only a possibility. You can ship pretty much any particular couple and actually have some real live hope they'll get together. But everybody doesn't actually sleep together all the time. And it really is what you do, not what you feel, that counts for everything, even in stories. Anyhow, an analysis like this always takes a lot of subconscious thought on my part, so I'm going to have to let this percolate.

So this disconnect to the characters meant that the grade was very hard to determine. On the one hand, I read it quickly in a period where I hardly seem able to read anything. And it's a superhero story. I love superheros. And these superheros are all complex and broken, which makes it all the better. But on the other hand, there's the issue I talked about above, which makes the romantic dynamics so much less enjoyable. And I find it hard enough to like Romance as it is. And I was rather disappointed that it didn't delve more deeply into some of the secondary characters some more.