Alright, I'm reviewing yet another book that I read as a kid and have recently reread: Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I become convinced that the best books (and the ones that I reread, again and again) are the ones I loved as a kid, but that I love even more now, books that are chock full of adult themes, but not so at the expense of the plot: the themes are skillfully maneuvered to the background, leaving the pure fun of the story intact and pretty nearly uninterrupted. TOM SAWYER is definately one of these.

All my favorites scenes were just as I remembered them, but this running commentary on the more upright citizens of St. Petersburg appeared upon rereading the book that I hadn't remembered reading as a kid--and I loved it. Of course I remembered the white-washing scene, but I'd never caught on to the narrator's aside on the nature of Work, just as I'd previously breezed through the hysterical church scene, without noticing the liberties the narrator takes in describing the minister's prayer and the congregation's reception of his sermon.

In college, I took a class on the history of satire, and when my professor (the previously-reviewed Michael Collins) introduced Twain as one of the great American satirists, I nearly laughed out loud. Even though I'd read both TOM SAWYER and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a kid, and even though I'd picked up on the presentation of racism in Huck Finn (it's more subtle in TOM SAWYER, but it's still there), I couldn't see the satire in either one: I mean, the guy wrote kids' books, right?

And, actually, I was right on that count--Twain did write kids' books, but the books were every bit for adults, as well. When I reread Huck Finn this past summer, I was surprised that I'd even liked the book when I'd read it before, it was so serious, and so troubling, but the sense of adventure and the fascinating characters had held my attention well enough when I was a kid to bring me back to the book as an adult. I have to say that I do prefer Huck Finn over TOM SAWYER, and I always have, though that's no strike against THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER--Huck Finn is just an incredible book, and it's almost not fair to compare them. But I'm reviewing TOM SAWYER. Right.

As for Twain himself, I've not read anything else by him, save a few short stories, but I do have a huge volume of his collected articles and essays that I'm itching to break in. He's brilliant, as a satirist and as a writer--witty and snide, not the sort of guy I'd feel easy about making conversation with, but he's an absolute riot to read. THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, adult themes and all, is more fun than I thought possible in a book, really. I laughed out loud, quite a few times.

Ordinarily, I'm not big on murder-mysteries, but LOST SOULS is a bit different. Though the book doesn't vary much on the mysterious plot (small girl found dead on Halloween--small Midwestern town wonders Who? and Why?), the murder is pretty much solved by the second chapter, leaving Collins with plenty of time to examine the downfall of a failing town and then draw certain parallels between this town and the fall of industry in America--which is interesting, but it's also an awful lot like what he did in his last two books, The Resurrectionists and The Keepers of Truth.

So, it's satire in disguise as mystery, which I'm all for, but I worry when I see three books by the same author attack essentially the same subject--especially when the author has already done it quite successfully in The Resurrectionists. It pains me to see this happen, because Collins is very good--his details create an almost overbearing atmosphere, and he's excellent at capturing gestures and quirky mannerisms. He tends toward melancholy characters and depressing stories, but he says a lot with a little bit of material. I just think it might be time to try a fresh angle.

I know Keepers was short-listed for the Booker Prize and all, but I liked The Resurrectionists best, and if you're ready for a dose of gloomy Midwestern mystery-satire, I'd recommend you start with that one.

Since we're on the subject of children's books, I present you with Joan Aiken's THE WOLVES OF WILLOUGHBY CHASE (that looks extra dramatic in all caps, no?). This is a fun "orphaned children held captive by evil, conniving governess" story, with some lovely scenes on frozen rivers and in train compartments thrown in. I must say that I loved the wolves most, though I did fall a bit for Simon.

Perhaps the only bone I could pick with WOLVES is that it leans toward the coincidental--as in, what's that? You need a clever means of escape? Behold! If you accidentally tap on the second stone above the bannister, you'll find yourself peering down a hidden passageway! That sort of thing. But, eh, it's a kid's book, and that's part of the fun. Something tells me that Lemony Snicket read this one, and very much enjoyed it.

More Narnia! Hizzah! PRINCE CASPIAN, the swashbuckling second book (or fourth, depending on how old your edition is) of The Chronicles of Narnia, features usurping uncles, a rightful king, a fresh breath or two of the Narnian air, all four Pevensie children, and, you guessed it, talking animals. If you're reading this one, you probably already read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, so there's no sense in me going on and on about it.

I don't know that I've heard CASPIAN called anybody's favorite chronicle (most people seem to weigh in with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I agree with heartily, though I'm also partial to The Magician's Nephew, and rather intrigued by The Last Battle), but that doesn't mean you should skip it--heavens, no! You should skip not a single Chronicle. PRINCE CASPIAN is chockfull of Narnian battle tactics, plus it's the last time you see all four Pevensie kids being Narnian royalty together.

(Quick: how many times have I said the word "swashbuckling" in regards to The Chronicles of Narnia? I think I'm about to stop, though. I'll come up with some other really good silly word.)

[The Little Bird reviews: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe]

I'm on such a fantasy binge right now, but I can't help it--I need evil empires, odd creatures, magical swords, sacred quests and archery (lots and lots of archery) to be a truly happy girl. To keep up my fantastic spirits, I present you with a review of DUNE: another one of those books that compells all manner of people to stop by your table at the Bagelry and point out what a great book it is that you're reading, and proceed from there to list all the fantasy books that you absolutely have to read before you die.

Published in 1965, I think we can probably credit DUNE for the unfailing popularity of the name Jessica, and for all the cool(ish) space movies/books/TV shows to come after, because, even forty years later, the book still smacks of absolute originality. It is to the future what The Lord of the Rings is to the past.

I won't lie, though: DUNE is one of the most un-funny books I've ever read. Looking back, I can't think of a single joke, a single witty exchange between characters, a single moment where a character smiled because, hey! something mildly amusing just happened. Also, it's chock full of politics and scenes of subtle devilry, where various Barons, Counts and Dukes sit around conference tables in suspensor chairs and try to out-betray each other. These scenes are usually paced a bit like this:

Jessica watched the play of emotion on his face. He masks himself well, she thought, but she had him registered now and read that he regretted his words.

"Is there enough water?" the Duke demanded.

"There...may be," Kynes said.

He's faking uncertainty! Jessica thought.

With his deeper truthsense, Paul caught the underlying motive, had to use every ounce of his training to mask his excitement. There is enough water! But Kynes doesn't wish it to be known.

You get the idea. Herbert makes sure we know exactly what each character is thinking: who's faking, and who's not, who's a big fat liar-pants, and so on. Sometimes, in the scenes of devious politics, this can be boring as all get out, but Herbert more than makes up for it when stuff actually starts happening. His planet of Arrakis is a strange, deadly and beautiful place, inhabited by the strange, deadly and beautiful Fremen--who won't be oppressed by any silly Baron--and by the terrifying and mysterious Worms. Paul, our hero, is a complicated young lad with a big time calling that gets simultaneously clearer and darker as the book progresses.

DUNE is a strange and beautiful book (but not so deadly), and I recommend it to people who crave well-thought-out and articulated fantasy lands, who dream of spaceships and futuristic royalty and societies at once brutal and beautifully simple; who think laser-guns overrated and would rather see a good swordfight anytime; who don't feel like laughing for a few weeks, but do feel like getting very, very deep inside the brains of their favorite characters. Or who would like to meet the sort of people who have read, and obsessed over, DUNE. This one's for you.

I sort of fell out of the habit of memoirs after analyzing the joy right out of a few good ones in college, but THE LIAR'S CLUB was a book club assignment (and it was a whole heck of a lot better than the last one), so I had a deadline to get me reading. This turned out for the best, because THE LIAR'S CLUB is brutally good.

I say "brutal" because Karr's childhood is exactly that, and the way she tells of growing up in Leechfield, Texas, with a famiy as dysfunctional as they come, is brutally honest and quite discerning--not "disturbing", but "discerning", because she knew what to put in, and what to leave out. Her telling isn't steeped in bitterness--instead, she uses the best edge of humor to separate herself from the story's events, but also to retain a certain child-like sense of awe and unflinching love.

THE LIAR'S CLUB is sort of the polar opposite of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood: though there are some similarities (the peppery smell of gumbo cooking is enough to make my eyes water, and the sticky heat of the bayou makes the sweat bead up on my upper lip, no matter that I've never seen a swamp, nor spent a night tossing in that oppressive damp), there is not a Southern belle to be seen in Karr's memoir. I give her two thumbs up.

That's right, the full title of EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES is Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Guide to Puncuation. Zero Tolerance. I love it. And if you're wondering where the "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" part comes in, the back of the book makes it perfectly clear:

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relative entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Truss's approach to punctuation education is witty and grand: she attacks misplaced apostrophe's; sticks up for the under-appreciated colons and semi-colons; bemoans the loss of proper grammar and puncuation in this age of txt msgs and email, all the while remaining funny and chipper and optimistic that people can still grasp the concept of a rightly-placed comma. EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES is the most readable guide to puncuation I've encountered--though normally I don't so much read them as run to them when I have a question--and she includes small, fascinating histories of each mark alongside the rules of the individual mark's proper usage (fortified with amusing examples of punctuation at work).

Her battle cry of "Sticklers unite!" brings joy into my snobbish little heart. After reading EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES, I feel both justified in my rejection of all-small-caps and emoticons, and slightly paranoid about my overly heavy use of --dashes-- and (parenthese). I pay entirely too much attention to each comma now, but I am also grateful for each comma, as they work tirelessly to keep my sloppy sentences in line. I highly recommend this "runaway #1 British bestseller" for everyone. A quick read, and very informative. Also full of funny British slang. I like British slang.

Some other excellent grammar/punctuation guides:

Strunk and White's classic, The Elements of Style,
and my personal favorites:
Karen Elizabeth Gordon's The Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed, and
The Transitive Vampire: A Guide to Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed.
They're illustrated, and full of absolutely hysterical examples (though it was recently brought to my attention that The Well-Tempered Sentence says naught about the apostrophe. How odd).

Considering that THE HOBBIT is the prequel to Tolkien's many-paged masterpiece The Lord of the Rings, it's odd that this book makes a little more sense when read after LOTR. I liked Bilbo better this time through--because I knew what came of him later, it was fun to watch his transformation from a silly, proper little hobbit to a brave, wise, old one over the course of the series, and this was an improvement, because I didn't care for Bilbo much at all when I first read THE HOBBIT (I know, I know! Don't shun me, please!).

But the most interesting thing to me is the difference in tone between THE HOBBIT and The Lord of the Rings. LOTR is long-winded and elegant, reading like a passage out of some ancient text ("And so it was that he, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, first beheld Éowyn, daughter of Rohan, in full daylight and as he looked, he thought her cold" and so on), while THE HOBBIT is playful, reminiscent of The Chronicles of Narnia or of George MacDonald*, and I love that--Gandalf is not a stern forteller of doom in THE HOBBIT, but a mischievious wizard who eats the most, drinks the most and laughs the most out of all twelve dwarves (and a hobbit!). This is an aspect of Gandalf that is hinted at in LOTR, and in a few wonderful scenes, realized, but mostly the tension and drama of the story require Gandalf to be close and focused, with little time for laughter and mischief.

Ultimately, I appreciated THE HOBBIT much more the second time through, with all the lovely tales of The Lord of the Rings as a backdrop, and it impressed me as one piece of Tolkien's incredible work--a merrier adventure, though still dangerous and tense, full of drama and intrigue and fascinating characters.

*Which brings me to an interesting point. If you love C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, I advise you--strongly, and urgently--to go out right now and borrow, purchase or order a copy of George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin. MacDonald influenced Lewis to the point of being granted an appearance in The Great Divorce, as the ghost who comes to fetch the unnamed narrator at the gates of heaven, and his wonderful storytelling voice is present in both Lewis and Tolkien's writing--mostly in The Chronicles of Narnia and THE HOBBIT, but also in Tolkien's Roverandom. Ready set go!

I have started this book maybe three separate times, and not finished it. I've never gotten past the first twenty pages without losing interest, actually, because I can't figure out what the crap's going on, but I won't give up (not yet)--I hear it's a great book, and I also hear, from several figures of literary authority in my life, that I'll like it.

And it's short. That helps.