The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a book club selection for my "other" book club. I didn't want to read this book..."Not another circus book (groan)." I had read Water for Elephants a few months ago, and I didn't think I was ready for another story about elephants, tigers and trains. Besides, I wanted to introduce some of my "other" friends to black authors.

But once I started reading, I realized, this is not another circus book. It's more about magic and illusion, and a contest between two old dudes. Prospero the Enchanter, and his old nemesis "The Man in the Grey Suit," begin another challenge involving Prospero's newly discovered daughter and a young man plucked out of an orphanage by the mysterious Mr. H. Neither child knows who their opponent is, and it is never said what exactly the challenge is. Some reviewers have likened Marco and Celia to Romeo and Juliet, two star-crossed lovers. On the contrary, I think of them more like Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in the old "Trading Places" movie. When Murphy and Aykroyd's characters discover how their lives have been manipulated for a contest, they get even with their old dudes. Just as in The Hunger Games, Katniss and Peetah suddenly remember who the enemy is.

The circus is the playing field, a chess game where most of the other characters are merely pawns. It's a quirky story with performers who cross the line from illusion to real magic, or is it witchcraft. And a movie is in the works. I give the book four stars.



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November is a hard month!!

Yes, I will be doing the Nano-thing again this year. NaNoWriMo. (The National Novel Writing Month)

I did it for the first time in 2009, churning out 7000 words. I thought that was pretty good for a first timer, considering that November is hard. The last two years we have done a cruise in November, and then there is Thanksgiving. Last November I wrote about 2000 more words on the same novel. That's no better than I do without Nano to prod me on. I won't volunteer to do Thanksgiving this year. Last year we had 25 family members with us for dinner. This year the cruise will be in December.

Once you sign up, Nano sends regular emails to nag you into doing that thing. Last year I deleted a bunch without reading them. I promise myself I'll do better this year. With my declining memory, I need to finish before I forget where this story is going. It's an old people's internet romance. You know...old boy meets old girl, somebody has a heart attack, somebody winds up in the hospital. Old boy loses old girl to a middle-aged guy. Old girl forgets her meds. And have you noticed this year how many stories lead to Brazil? Somehow there will be a happy ending.

I'll have to appoint a designated nagger to get me moving. Any volunteers? Can I do 1000 words for each of 20 days in November? I would have to stay away from Facebook. That would get me to the finish line.

Sugar in a Shoebox

Sugar in a Shoebox by Joyce McFarland

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have known Joyce McFarland since our sons were good friends in middle school. She was always a person who could light up a room with her smiles and laughter.

In her book Sugar in a Shoebox she tells stories of growing up poor in rural North Carolina in the 1950's. She was born three months prematurely to teenaged parents, then raised by her Grandmother who became Mama. She was so tiny the doctor sent her home to die. Mama had other plans for the tiny baby. She fashioned a home-made incubator out of a shoebox with a mason jar filled with hot water which she changed every hour.

That baby in a shoebox grew up in a house full of family, full of love. Even in hard times she could remember a humorous episode. At the end of each story she has a list of humorous adages.

* * *
If you get a whipping for something you didn't do, take it in stride. You more than likely deserve it for something you had already done.

What is a freak? What is a human oddity? SOMEBODY'S CHILD.

When the "saints go marching in," some of them will have switch marks on them.

And my favorite:

And on the sixth day God created bacon; let us rejoice and be glad in it.



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My Soul to Take

My Soul to Take by Tananarive Due

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The fourth book in Tananarive Due's African Immortals series takes us to the next generation of The Blood. Fana is the first child born to the blood of the Lalibela Colony of Immortals and must deal with the prophecy that she must join with another Blood Born of the Sanctus Cruor sect. The Sanctus Cruor sect had claimed the Blood was theirs alone.

I have read the other books in the series, and see in this one the development and maturing of Fana's parents, Jessica and Dawit, their love for her and desire to protect her from losing herself to Sanctus Cruor, forgetting her mission to heal the world with a serum made from the blood.

I was surprised to see Phoenix Smalls, a character from Joplin's Ghost in this story. But she is a perfect fit with her past of a telepathic relationship with a ghost. Fana is a fan of Phoenix's music, and it is through the music that Fana stays grounded to who she is.

The telepathic joining and mingling of the courses of Fana and Michel her intended, invaded my own night dreams, combining with visions of telepathic X-men. (I shouldn't read before bed)

Is there more for Fana to accomplish? Will Jessica and Dawit have another child? How long must we wait for the next in the series?

But I'm thinking of the child's prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

That was the point when my babies did their God Bless-ing everybody. Did Fana do that already?




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