Death of a Chimney Sweep: A Hamish MacBeth Mystery by M. C. Beaton

A chimney sweep was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is unclear whether he was the first to die in this entertaining mystery set in Scotland, but he gets top billing on its book cover. The mystery to solve is who is responsible for a series of murders that take place across the Scottish countryside and as far away as Latin America. With incompetence in the higher ranks of the police, it is up to local constable Hamish Macbeth to identify the murderer.

Hamish is supported in his effort by a colorful group of townsfolk and former fiancees and is hampered by a chief inspector who tries to keep him off the case. He is often accompanied by his faithful dog and cat. Keep an eye on that cat.

I enjoyed the interplay of the entertaining characters and how the plot turned unexpectedly at several points. I also liked how the story went well beyond the solving of the mystery to inform readers of what became of the players. Finally, I enjoyed the Scottish-toned narration by Graeme Malcolm. I have a new series for my gardening-time audiobooks.

Beaton, M. C. Death of a Chimney Sweep: A Hamish MacBeth Mystery. Audio Go, 2010, 2011. 5 compact discs. ISBN 9781602839311.

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

In her comments after writing The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Rachel Joyce said that she resisted writing this companion book to her wildly popular The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. She thought there was nothing more to be said, but people kept asking about Miss Hennessy. Years passed and suddenly one evening at dinner with her family the author had an idea that brought the story of the woman dying of cancer to life in her mind. She paused her other projects and returned Harold Fry's world, for which many readers are now grateful.

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy is not a sequel or a prequel. It stands well alone, which is good, for I had forgotten so much of what happened in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. I had retained the story of the walk across England and the public reaction but had specifically forgotten the sad bits. The sad bits return in this new book, and some are really heartbreaking. As a reader, I sometimes wanted the painful episodes to end, but I realize they gave the comic bits depth. In that way, the story is very real.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry has proved to be an excellent choice for book discussion groups. I believe The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy is its equal in this regard, but do not wait to have your group assign it to read it.

Joyce, Rachel. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Random House, 2014. 366p. ISBN 9780812996678.

Audiobook: Random House, 2014. 9 compact discs. ISBN 9780553410105.

The Beautiful Mystery: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny

The tension between sacred chant and vows of silence is just one of many factors in Louise Penny's unusual mystery The Beautiful Mystery: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel. Other struggles are between isolation from and access to the world and between loving tradition and needing to be modern. Some struggles are personality based. How can the monks of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups restore tranquil balance?

In The Beautiful Mystery, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his detective Jean Guy Beauvoir of Sûreté du Québec find themselves away from the village of Three Pines. Instead they are surrounded by monks in a monastery in the deep woods because one of the usually silent men has murdered another. With the police in their midst, however, they have to speak, and some of them can hardly hold back once their vows of silence are suspended. Gamache and Beauvoir hear many strange stories. What should the detectives believe? Could monks lie?

Penny researched her topic well before writing, but like any novelist, she used artistic license for dramatic effect. Lead by our choir director, we learned a slightly different history of chant at our St. Luke book group discussion of The Beautiful Mystery in May. I discovered also that Penny's description of the Gilbertine monks' robes was accurate but the monks were never hounded by the Spanish Inquisition. The continuing story of Inspector Gamache, not history is, of course, Penny's main concern.

We had a great discussion with most but not all of our members liking the book. Several have already begun reading other books in the series to see what came before and after. If your group is interested in discussing any of the novels of Louise Penny, look over the questions she prepared from the bottom of the FAQ page of her website.

Penny, Louise. The Beautiful Mystery: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel. Minotaur, 2012. 373p. ISBN 9780312655464.

Audiobook: Macmillan Audio, 2012. 11 compact discs. ISBN 9781427226099.

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Several weeks before our trip to Florence and Rome, I was in Anderson's Bookstore in Downers Grove to look at the travel books. Walking past the fiction shelves, I spotted an inexpensive edition of A Room with a View by E. M. Forster. It was light and would take little room in my backpack. I bought it to read in Florence where the story opens and ends.

I read the novel in 2004 and have seen the faithfully adapted film by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory several times, so I knew it would be a quick read. It still took me most of a week as we were busy visiting museums, churches, and historical sites all day and going out to eat at night. In the hotel, I wrote up the daily journal while Bonnie double checked all of the next day's touring. It was late by the time I settled into bed with the book, occasionally giving Bonnie updates, such as "They are looking at the Giottos," "Miss Honeychurch just witnessed the fight by the Loggia," or "The boys are running naked in the woods."

As I read, I saw scenes from the film in my head. Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Simon Callow were the characters. Much was familiar and a pleasure to read again. I was struck on this reading how big a role is played by the Reverend Mr. Beebe. He always seems to be present at key points, providing advice or observations. He is a mixture of sage and buffoon tilted toward the sage end of the scale.

We were in Rome by the time I finished the book, but a piece of Florence had come along. Now Florence can be found on our bookshelves in A Room with a View and the books we brought home from Italy. More about them next week.

Forster, E. M. A Room with a View. Bantam Classic, 2007. ISBN 9780553213232.

All the Stories of Muriel Spark

In late December, I noticed on the old librarian's desk that we use for displays several complete-short-stories-of-an-author-in-one-volume books. Several tempted me, but I chose All the Stories of Muriel Spark, having had a personal Muriel Spark reading phase between 2004 and 2005. I had then intended to read much more of her work, but other books and authors were also calling to me. I read Spark's autobiography Curriculum Vitae in 2005 and the wickedly funny The Abbess of Crewe in 2008, but I had not really gotten back on track to reading the whole oeuvre. Reading all of the short stories was an important step toward my goal, so I borrowed the volume.

It took me nearly a month to finish, having other reading commitments as well as other reading opportunities. Spacing the reading of the 41 stories has let Spark's writing style and wit sink in deeper than if I had whipped quickly through them. It also seemed more polite to take time. It took the author most of her writing career to write the collection. I could surely give her a month of my attention.

The month was time well spent. All the Stories of Muriel Spark is an entertaining collection with great variety. I especially like the stories set in Africa drawn from Spark's experience in Southern Rhodesia in the late 1930s and early 1940s. These include the story that she wrote to get prize money "The Seraph and the Zambesi," which launched her career in fiction, and my favorite "The Go-Away Bird." The latter, the longest story in the book at 52 pages, tells the tragic story of Daphne du Toit, an orphaned daughter of Afrikaner and British parents, who fails to escape a fate that the reader foresees. One of Spark's great talents was to tell readers how a story will end in her opening sentences and charm into reading every word.

All the Stories of Muriel Spark is a great companion to Curriculum Vitae, the autobiography mentioned above, as she wrote stories that reflect every stage of her life. The fun is then in trying to decide how much of her fiction was about her long and unconventional life. Ask for a renewal if the book is due before you finish.

Spark, Muriel. All the Stories of Muriel Spark. New Directions, 2001. 398p. ISBN 081121494X.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

When I borrowed The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark to read for a book discussion, I thought that I had not read it, despite having read a lot of Spark's books between 2004 and 2005. As I read and got halfway through the book, my memory had not changed, but I did go to my reading spreadsheet to remind myself what Spark's titles I had read. I discovered that I had read this book about the flamboyant teacher at a private girls school in 1930s Edinburgh. To the end, I still had no recall, which is strange because I think now that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is such a strikingly memorable book.

This short novel about Miss Brodie and her girls proved to be a great choice for a book discussion. We shared a great variety of interpretations and feelings about the teacher who was determined to shape the lives of her chosen girls. No one considered her simply well-meaning, but the degrees to which we judged her self-centered and sinister differed. She is a complex character, as is her student Susan Stranger (Spark was known for picking indicative surnames).

An interesting part of the discussion was comparing the book to the 1969 movie, which won an Oscar for Maggie Smith in 1970. The six girls were reduced to four, some of Miss Brodie's characteristics were exaggerated, and key facts were changed. If you have only seen the movie, you will be surprised how different the book is.

If you have not read any works by Muriel Spark, I recommend starting with a different book, either Memento Mori, The Girls of Slender Means, or one of the short story collections. I will review her short stories in my next post. As good as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is, many readers will find more to like in other titles.

Spark, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. J. B. Lippincott, 1962. 187p.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

I recently saw a review of the seventh Flavia De Luce mystery by Alan Bradley, which I later found Bonnie reading (the book not the review) at home, just as I came home with book one The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Bonnie was surprised I had not read it. She has read all the books in Bradley's mystery series and encouraged me to get started. I did that night.

With heightened expectations I opened the book to the first chapter to discover eleven-year-old Flavia describing how dark it was in the closet where her two older sisters had tied her and presumably left her to die of starvation. Knowing escape tricks, she was already plotting her revenge, a plan involving her great knowledge of chemistry. I could see right away that Flavia was not a typical child.

In The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, set in 1950s rural England, Flavia vividly recounts how she solves the mystery of why a tall red-headed man died in her family's cucumber patch. Her efforts required a lot of bicycle riding, reading stacks of old newspapers in the village library (housed in an outbuilding of an old garage), and interviewing elderly neighbors. She also meets a police inspector who is willing to bend a few rules.

With an eleven-year-old sleuth, you might think The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie would be a juvenile title, but it is marketed to adults and shelved with adult mysteries in public libraries. I do not see any reason a good younger reader willing to take on a few Latin phrases and quotes from Shakespeare could not tackle it. Flavia's spunky attitude and the fact that adults are trying to hog the book might make it even more attractive to youth.

Bradley, Alan. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Delacorte Press, 2009. 373p. ISBN 9780385342308.

Catching Up with Alexander McCall Smith Books

Over the holidays, some people borrowed our television series on DVD to have viewing marathons. Instead of devoting myself night and day to episodes of Dexter, Gilmore Girls, Lost, Mad Men, or Downton Abbey, I borrowed six books or audiobooks written by Scotland's Alexander McCall Smith in December and had my own little read-a-thon.

If you like light serialized fiction and are not familiar with McCall Smith, you should be. He is the prolific author of several series, including No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Sunday Philosophy Club, 44 Scotland Street, Corduroy Mansions, and Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. Each is different. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and the Sunday Philosophy Club series can both be classified as cozy mysteries, but they are set in very different places, Botswana and Scotland. 44 Scotland Street and Corduroy Mansions are domestic comedies (similar to sit-coms) that focus on the residents of apartment buildings. The first is set in Edinburgh and the latter in London. Both were first published in daily installments in British newspapers, in much the way the novels of Charles Dickens were released in the 19th century. Portuguese Irregular Verbs is an academic farce featuring a very silly linguistics professor.

I read three No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books and now have only The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe to read to catch up with all the stories of Ma Precious Ramotswe. I listened to two 44 Scotland Street audiobooks and know everything that has happened with entertaining cast, including the painter Angus Lordie, the narcissist Bruce Anderson, and the beleaguered six-year-old Bertie Pollack. I also read A Conspiracy of Friends to finish what I think may stop as a trilogy. The last Corduroy Mansions title came out in 2011 and the author seems to have resolved its story lines. Life goes on, however, so McCall Smith could return to these characters in the future. The latest Portuguese Irregular Verbs title appeared about nine years after the original three. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Sunday Philosophy Club, and 44 Scotland Street come out annually. There are now fifteen books featuring Ma Ramotswe.

I have enjoyed December but am now bringing my McCall Smith marathon to a close. There are so many other books to read.

The Loved One: an Anglo-American Tragedy by Evelyn Waugh

I am not sure whether I ever read fiction by Evelyn Waugh before reading The Loved One: an Anglo-American Tragedy, a short black comedy set in Hollywood and Beverly Hills, California. I may have read Brideshead Revisited before I started keeping a reading log in 1989. I know that I watched the Masterpiece Theater showing of Brideshead Revisited with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews at least twice, and I saw another production a few years ago. It may be my imagination that I read the book, but I know the story well.

The Loved One is something completely different than Waugh's masterpiece, though it does have a tragic trio of two men and a woman. The woman, funeral makeup artist Aimee Thanatogenos, does not really want to become involved with the protagonist Dennis Barlow but then changes her mind, and it does not end well. Maybe the short book is slightly like Brideshead.

The supporting cast is much smaller, though there is a sort of British paternal figure in the character of Sir Ambrose Abercrombie, head of the cricket club, whose membership is British men working in Hollywood. Sir Ambrose demands good behavior of his countrymen, and he is especially disappointed by Barlow. Maybe The Loved One is more like Brideshead than I thought.

The similarities definitely end there. The Loved One is short and wickedly comic. Readers will not equate the failures of Dennis Barlow with the disappointments of Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte. Or will they?

Waugh, Evelyn. The Loved One: an Anglo-American Tragedy. Little Brown, 1948, 2012. 146p. ISBN 9780316216463.

One More Thing: Stories and More Stories by B. J. Novak

B. J. Novak is a contemporary comedian who has been seen on television and in the movies. With his recent book One More Thing: Stories and More Stories, he shows us that comedians are storytellers. They spin stories to make listeners laugh. Novak likes to make us laugh, but in tradition of George Carlin and Dick Gregory, he challenges us to consider subjects that make us uncomfortable.

Novak is bound to offend some readers. I winced several times as I listened to the audiobook as Novak and a cast of actors and actresses read his mostly comic stories. I started to write that he is of the Say Anything School, but I do not believe that is true. Novak sounds spontaneous, but his words are very well chosen.

A part of me thinks Novak's vulgarity is unnecessary in some stories, but another part believes that he depicts a segment of contemporary society as it is. With offensive words, he creates an atmosphere in which his stories seem to have more authority than if he used sanitized language. At least, I imagine it is that way for some readers.

Uncertain whether you want to read One More Thing? Try the first story "The Rematch" which is about the hare wanting the tortoise to give him another chance to race. It is a clever piece that points out that stories never really end, that there is always something next. Novak shows a bit of what he will dish out in heavier doses in later stories.

Novak, B. J. One More Thing: Stories and More Stories. Knopf, 2014. 276p. ISBN 9780385351836.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

I tend to be like A. J. Fikry. I often dismiss many new books as just something somebody made up, and I avoid bestsellers. There are just so many redundant romances, zombie stories, suspense novels, depressing memoirs, and such. So, you would not expect that I would try and like the bestseller The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel, but I did and do. It is witty, unpredictable, and speaks to me about what I have seen in the world of books from my role as a librarian. Plus, Fikry is a lovable character behind an antisocial mask.

I am better-behaved and less eccentric than Fikry. If you know me, you might say I nothing like the bookseller. But I identify with him anyway. And I can imagine being just as cranky if publishers' sales reps dropped in to promote all their new books. Like most people I know, I dislike telephone calls from anyone trying to sell to me, and I am not the model of hospitality when salespeople show up uninvited.

Like many of us, Fikry is much nicer once you get to know him. In fact, he is incredibly generous to the people who fill his life. That's what the book is about. I bet we can identify some A. J. Fikrys in our own neighborhoods if we try.

Zevin, Gabrielle. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2014. 260p. ISBN 9781616203214.

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Upon hearing an interview with Julie Schumacher on an NPR Books podcast, I knew that I wanted to read Dear Committee Members. I like offbeat academic satires, such as Moo by Jane Smiley and Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith. I was not disappointed. Schumacher is an inventive and witty storyteller.

Dear Committee Members is not your common comic narrative. Schumacher has instead written a long series of letters of recommendation from unpredictable English professor Jay Fitger of Payne University. Many are written for students of his creative writing classes who are seeking employment to either pay for their educations or to get their first full time jobs. Some are aimed at getting grants or scholarships. Not all are for the benefit of students, as he writes LORs for his colleagues trying to escape the underfunded and disrespected English Department. What makes these letters funny is Fitger's total lack of tact and over-sharing.

About five letters into the book, I was not sure if I was going to like it much. There were many characters, and I had not yet seen who mattered. I am happy that I continued because several story lines became clear and I became very interested in Fitger, who is a very complicated man.

After reading Dear Committee Members, you may wonder whether anyone will ever again ask the author Schumacher, who teaches at the University of Minnesota, for a letter of recommendation. She told NPR that her students know about the book but they still ask for letters
.

Schumacher, Julie. Dear Committee Members. Doubleday, 2014. 180p. ISBN 9780385538138.

Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means by P. G. Wodehouse

At the same time that a new author is taking up P. G. Wodehouse's characters (see Jeeves and the Wedding Bells), early Wodehouse works are being republished. In 2013, the Overlook Press put together Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means, joining into one volume stories about two unlikely men, a street boy who becomes a champion boxer and a lowly bank clerk who becomes a multi-millionaire. These stories were all published in periodicals and later collected in books in 1907 and 1914. Together in a new volume, they humorously show us an Englishman's take on American initiative and social mobility.

The boy who becomes internationally known as boxer Kid Brady got his start as a errand boy at a gymnasium. When the proprietor asked what he could do, he answered "Anything," the properly optimistic American verbally-delivered resume. He made good on his promise in stories that must have drawn inspiration from dime-store novels of the time. Thankfully, Wodehouse supplied better than dime-store dialogue and description in his quickly-read stories.

Roland Bleke was a shy young man who seemed to get himself into situations by not being assertive. Readers first learn of him asking his employer to reduce his pay. If his slight savings declined, he hoped to discourage the young woman who had designs on marrying him. How he became wealthy without intention is quite comic. In the last story "The Hired Past," he hired a man-servant to help him escape another romantic entanglement, foreshadowing the later Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories.

Wodehouse reflected the society of his time in racial and gender attitudes. Still, Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means is good fun for Wodehouse fans and anyone interested the comic writings of early 20th century America.

Wodehouse, P. G. Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means. Overlook Press, 2013. 206p. ISBN 9781468308334.

Something Out There: Stories by Nadine Gordimer

The late author Nadine Gordimer was thorn in the side of the apartheid government of South Africa for decades. It banned three of her novels about the daily lives of people on both sides of the color bar from publication. Known and respected internationally, however, she was difficult to silence. The world read Gordimer, and she was award a Nobel Prize for Literature.

During the apartheid years, Gordimer produced a constant stream of short stories. Among the best was "Something Out There," a 1980s tale of a Johannesburg suburb living with the knowledge that a wild animal is stalking its pets and raiding its gardens at night. Is it a big cat or some sort of ape? A boy takes a picture of something in a tree that may be the long-toothed creature. everyone is nervous, including a cell of rebels planning an operation against the government. At 86 pages, the tension-filled "Something Out There" could almost be called a novella and may take a couple of sittings to read.

In contrast, most of the other stories in her collection Something Out There: Stories are short and quickly read. Not all are set in South Africa, but most are. Collectively, they paint a stark picture of the cities, townships, and outback of the country that was boycotted by so many individuals and other countries during the 1970s and 1980s. The stories give readers born in the 1980s and later a look at the world before the fall of the Berlin Wall, breakup of the Soviet Union, and release from prison of Nelson Mandela.

Gordimer, Nadine. Something Out There: Stories. Viking, 1984. 203p. ISBN 0670656607.

Bark: Stories

"A maternal vertigo beset her, the room circled, and the cutting scars on her son's arms sometimes seemed to spell out Pete's name in the thin lines there, the loss of fathers etched primitively in the algebra of skin."

Author Lorrie Moore is noted for her eloquent writing. In the sentence above from the third page of the short story "Referential," she sums up what she has described in the first two pages of the story. A widow's son has become self-destructive and been institutionalized. In her mourning for all that is lost, she had denied herself what she still has.

Leaving the facility, the mother and her fading boyfriend are caught in a surprising springtime snowstorms. The wipers struggle to clear the glass. How can they see a way ahead.

In her recent collection Bark: Stories, Moore portrays many people finding reasons to be unhappy. Some of them are good reasons, most of which seem to radiate from making bad relationship choices. What these characters seem to lack are abilities to extract themselves. It is almost painful to read, but Moore draws us in, tapping out interest that precedes our willingness to help. But these are only characters in a book, so we can only observe. Maybe we can help those who are really around us.

Moore, Lorrie. Bark: Stories. Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 192p. ISBN 9780307594136.

The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenegger

I must return the The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenegger today - right away. I checked it out a week ago but just now read it. If I had known how magical and moving it is, I would have read it right away so I could get it back on the graphics novel display quickly. I want others to have a chance to read it.

The act of reading and discovering your books is what The Night Bookmobile is all about. Its central character is Alexandra, a young woman whose difficult relationship with a young man sometimes compels her to walk the streets of Chicago after midnight. On one such evening she discovers a bookmobile in a Winnebago. The wise librarian invites her in, and she stays until dawn longingly scanning a collection that she has already read.

Though I want to get The Night Bookmobile back onto the graphic "novel" display, it is really a short story. Niffenegger first published it in 2004 in the journal Zoetrope All Story, she illustrated it for The Guardian in 2008 and Abrams Comicarts put into book form in 2010. While it creates a dream-like mood and is a bit sad, its existence is a happy fact for my library, which is promoting graphic novels in its adult summer reading program and short stories as this year's feature genre on its reading blog Thommy Ford Reads.

People who enjoy this book by Niffegegger, might also enjoy books by Neil Gaiman. He wrote the promotional paragraph on the back cover for The Night Bookmobile.

Niffenegger, Audrey. The Night Bookmobile. Abrams, 2010. ISBN 9780810996175.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

How do you feel about Lily Bart, the central character in The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton? What kind of person do you think she was? I use the past tense in referring to her (spoiler alert!) as she dies at the end of The House of Mirth. What did Wharton intend by having Lily die? Our book group found much to discuss when we tackled the novel last week. I felt it was one of our more focused discussions.

While Wharton's second novel, the one that earned her initial fame, can be called a classic, it is not guaranteed to be liked by readers. At least two of our group thought Lily was irredeemable. Most of us thought that there were very few characters to like in the book. Readers have to look hard to find good points for many of the men and women in this society novel, but I think they are there, especially for Lily. I think her failure to carry through on some of her schemes to land a wealthy husband were subconsciously conscience-driven. Sadly, she never achieved anything good for herself.

While reading I realized that The House of Mirth can be cast as a prequel to The Great Gatsby. There were more self-made millionaires invading society by the time of Gatsby, and Wharton heralded their coming twenty years earlier. By the time of Gatsby and the Jazz Age, the refined cover over the emptiness and cruelty of high society had been removed.

The characters, the story, the historical setting, and the life of the author all led to a lively discussions. Keep The House of Mirth in mind for the classic fiction slot in your book club's schedule. If you do choose it, suggest your members keep their own scorecard of characters. There are many of them. 

Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905.

The Giver by Lois Lowry and Messenger by Lois Lowry

On the recommendation of my eleven-year-old daughter Laura, years ago, I read The Giver by Lois Lowry. I remember liking it very much, but I had forgotten much about it until this week. I wanted an audiobook and was striking out in my search for a downloadable nonfiction title from our consortium that I hadn't already read that I wanted to read (we've got far too many books about war!). Just looking at what was recently returned to see if anything would interest me (maybe a classic mystery?), I noticed Messenger by Lois Lowry, book 3 in the series. Not sure whether it made sense to skip book 2, I went ahead and borrowed and downloaded Messenger.

To complicate matters, I then borrowed print copies of The Giver and the second book in the series, Gathering Blue. I thought I might delay listening to the audiobook to read the print books. I really wanted an audiobook, however, when it came time to work in the garden a few days later, and I went ahead and started Messenger. Then in bed the same night, I started The Giver.

Reading two books in a series at the same time, I thought that I might mix details from the stories, but I should not have worried. The settings, characters, and plots are so clear and different that I had no problem. I soon recognized one common character, and it was interesting observing him at two points in his life. Maybe that makes me the Watcher. Naming is important in both books.

Neither utopia-gone-wrong story took me long to finish. The Giver was as good as I remembered, and Messenger its equal. Now I need to fill the gap.

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Houghton Mifflin, 1993. 180p. ISBN 0395645662.

Lowry, Lois. Messenger. Houghton Mifflin, 2004. 169p. ISBN 0681404414.

The Swoop! and The Military Invasion of America by P. G. Wodehouse

From her library, Bonnie brought home a thin volume of early P. G. Wodehouse fiction that at first glance seemed particularly silly to me. It is a 2013 republishing of two early Wodehouse stories, The Swoop! and The Military Invasion of America. I say "two stories" because both have titles and both take up part of the volume. In fact, they are one story, which I will explain in a moment.

"The Swoop!" is an illustrated satire about British public nonchalance about national security. Published in Great Britain in 1908, about six years before the start of World War I, Wodehouse portrays his country's citizens as much more concerned about cricket, tennis, and football than about the movements of foreign armies. When the island country is invaded by nine other nations, the news is buried below the sports scores. I do not want to give away too much of the plot, but only the Boy Scouts have the resolve to rid the country of its foreign invaders.

Having finished "Swoop!", I began to read "The Military Invasion of America," a story published in the United States in 1915, before the Americans entered World War I. To my surprise, I found it was essentially the same story relocated across the Atlantic Ocean. Wodehouse reduced the invading armies to two, set much of the action in New York, and left out the comic illustrations, but the plot, main character, and many of the punch lines are exactly the same. Again, the unconcerned public relies on the Boy Scouts to defend the nation.

Even a hundred years later, these stories by the English author who later became an American citizen are enjoyable light comedy that should make readers of British comedy smile. Most readers will finish the two stories in an evening or less easily. Then they should read some Bertie and Jeeves stories until bedtime.

Curiously, people may be just as intent on their sports and other entertainment in 2014. What dangers do we ignore?

Wodehouse, P. G. The Swoop! and The Military Invasion of America. Overlook Press, 2013. 138p. ISBN 9781468308341.

The Last of Mr. Norris by Christopher Isherwood

In a bizarre way, the short novel The Last of Mr. Norris by Christopher Isherwood seems like a 1930s German take on The Great Gatsby. A young man arrives in Berlin by train and is invited by a well-to-do resident to frequently visit him and go out on the town. The older Arthur Norris seems at first to have wealth and friends, and he introduces the young British embassy worker William Bradshaw to a sort of jazz society filled with suspect characters. Much of the book is the young man studying the older.

Norris, however, is not really a Gatsby and is not in control of even his secretary, the evil Mr. Schmidt. While Norris has some minor success as a fringe member of the Communist party and is sent around Europe as a spy, creditors are also trying to repossess his furniture and his beloved collection of pornography. Bradshaw eventually sees the older man's failings but still likes him. Bradshaw becomes concerned about his friend's survival in 1931 Berlin, a city filled with criminals and Nazi agitators.

When written in the 1930s, The Last of Mr. Norris was contemporary literature, but it now serves as a historical novel for 21st century readers looking to understand Germany before the Nazis took power. It is often bound with Goodbye to Berlin, a semi-autobiographical account of the author's 1930s experiences. Together the novels are called Berlin Stories.

Isherwood, Christopher. The Last of Mr. Norris. Avon, 1952.