Tag: New York Erratic

Reluctant, late BOOK REVIEW: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library

The premise of the book is that the town had lost its library, and that the 12-year-olds had gone their entire lives without ANY library.

The intrepid New York Erratic asks:

What’s the most recent fiction book you’ve read?

You ask a simple question, and I have a simple, then complicated, answer.

The book was Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein, which became a New York Times Bestseller.

Lucky Kyle wins a spot as one of the first twelve kids invited to a gala, overnight library lock-in filled with of fun and games. But the next morning, when the lock-in is supposed to be over, the doors remain locked. Kyle and the others must follow book-related clues and unravel all sorts of secret puzzles to find the hidden escape route if they want to win Mr. Lemoncello’s most fabulous prize ever.

Which I’m not sure is quite accurate, from the book I read, but no matter.

It’s gotten good press.

I received a review copy of this book in February of 2013 and read it in a couple of weeks. Then I was trying to write that assessment of the book, but I just couldn’t. The reason was that there were elements of the book that just irritated the heck out of me, and I didn’t know if I were being overly critical, or that Young Adult fiction just wasn’t my genre. Nah, I’ve read other YA books and didn’t have that reaction.

OK, the things that bugged me:

1. The premise of the book is that the town had lost its library and that the 12-year-olds had gone their entire lives without ANY library, but then the benefactor, the toy guru, builds this beyond state-of-the-art structure. I know it’s pretending, but could not this guy had SOME temporary structure operational in the interim?

2. For young people without a library, they know astonishing detail about the Dewey Decimal system, far more than this librarian could glean off the top of my head.

3. The conflict that Kyle had at home was actually quite appealing, but once he got into the library, he wasn’t that interesting a character to me.

4. A minor point, but this was supposed to be a game designed by a toy and game guru. Yet there was a reference to the real game SORRY, with a character going back three spaces. There’s no such card in SORRY; one can go back four spaces with a 4, or one space with a 10. Took me right out of the match.

5. The relationship of one of the other 12-year-olds with a famous librarian was just too convenient for me.

6. There were rebus puzzles that I simply did not understand; it may have been rectified in the actual store printing, but what I saw confounded me.

This obligation to write this review hung over me for months, with the publisher’s representative periodically nudging me, and me trying to write it without finding a satisfactory angle that wasn’t negative.

It wasn’t that it was all bad, though a tad convoluted, but it just didn’t engage me enough, and I couldn’t tell if it were the book or me. And the review hanging over my head prevented me from reading ANY book for three months, figuring if I started reading something else, I’d NEVER write the review. Finally, I gave up.

When there is a nonfiction book for general audiences, or a music album, or a movie, or any number of other items I could be asked to review, I could do it. And if I had LOVED this book, I probably could have written something about it, too. Dissing it, though, when I didn’t feel versed enough in the genre was just not something I was comfortable with.

And, NYE, if you hadn’t forced the issue, I STILL would not have written about it. (The pain and pleasure of Ask Roger Anything.)

Beard, or no beard: that is the question

This picture from the May 2010 does not look like me to ME.


Jendy, who I’ve only known since 1987, asked:

If you were to shave your beard, would Lydia recognize you? Would I? ([Paul [her husband] says his kids would do a double take every spring when he used to shave his off!)

I don’t get to see Jendy as often, now that she has a new job. When she worked in a public setting, I’d see her once or twice a month. So she didn’t know that, in fact, I DID have my beard shaved off, on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It had become a scruffy mess, and I needed to get it trimmed. But once in the chair of a new barbershop, I let the whimsy of the moment carry me off, and had all the facial hair, save for the mustache, removed. Lydia seemed to recognize me, and I’m sure you would too.

Know who didn’t recognize me? I didn’t. Back in 2004, and before, I had a medium-dark complexion. (That’s me on the left in a picture taken in April 1997 for Bill and Orchid Anderson’s wedding.) Then I got the vitiligo, which, not only created lighter patches on my arms, hands, legs and elsewhere but generally lightened the skin on my face. And because I am afraid of sunburn, or skin cancer, even with sunscreen, I tended to avoid direct sunlight whenever I could. This made my face considerably lighter, to a point that I did not even recognize myself in photos. There’s one in my church newsletter from three or four years ago, in which the only way I knew it was me was seeing the outfit I was wearing. This picture from May 2010’s Free Comic Book Day does not look like me to ME.

It’s not just that I think I look better darker, it’s that it’s how I see myself in my mind’s eye. It’s not like realizing I’m grayer or heavier; it’s something much more fundamental that I cannot describe except that it was my SELF-IDENTITY.

Then, either I stopped worrying as much or something, because I guess I spent less time hiding under umbrellas in the summers, and some of the color has returned to my face, as you kinda can see in the picture below, taken in early February 2013. When I got the shave in November, I could see this odd streak of skin where my beard had been, lighter than my skin color in the 2010 pic. It looked WEIRD, freakish. I almost took a selfie, except that I actually had no idea where my cellphone was. So now the beard has returned, and while I’ll trim it, I doubt I will cut it off any time, certainly not in the near future.

This ties in nicely with a question by New York Erratic:

What’s your favorite weather?

Partly sunny, or partly cloudy, with high clouds filtering the sun. Never liked the direct sun, even as a kid. The heat index, that combo of temperature and humidity, starts bothering me at about 90F.

Not crazy about the cold at the post when the condensation on my mustache freezes. Don’t mind the rain, though I’d rather be indoors. Some snow is fine. I’d find San Diego weather boring.

Facebook and the shutdown

If no one’s is talking about the shutdown in YOUR Facebook circle, maybe it’s because it’s SO toxic.

In the Ask Roger Anything tradition, New York Erratic recently wondered:

Why do you think almost no one is discussing the shutdown and debt on Facebook? Usually, when something even vaguely political happens (e.g. an election, a school shooting, the Supreme Court decided something that made it to the national news), people are posting like crazy. So why virtually nothing?

OK, two contradictory answers about the shutdown:

1) It is not MY experience on Facebook that people aren’t talking about the shutdown. I see stuff every single day.

Here’s a couple on my timeline, from the last 36 hours, none from me:
“I think it’s time to start a revolution, friends. It only takes one! Imagine if one percent of Americans marched on Washington DC and demanded a new government. We could change the world!”

“REMOVE THE RADICALS IN DC ASAP. Ruining this country.”

“Gov. Andrew Cuomo announces that the state will pay the roughly $61,000 a day to reopen the Statue of Liberty. On the one hand, it’s a nice thing to do (and it no doubt helps tourism), on the other, these little tweaks to take the sting out of the shutdown just take the heat off the House of Representatives. ‘Hey, the parks and monuments are open, so what’s the big deal with the shutdown, right? Maybe those tea party folks are right that we don’t need the gubmint.'”

Plus LOTS of links to articles about the causes of the shutdown, like this one. People I know on FB are ticked off that “the Republican shutdown has now cost American taxpayers more than $3.3 billion and continues to sap our economy every day the government’s doors are closed.” I mean the shutdown doesn’t even save money!

Also, several data users are pointing out alternative sources for information, now that some of the core tools are not currently available.

In other words, NYE, I haven’t sensed that no one on Facebook is talking about the shutdown.

And, BTW, I totally disagree with the person on your FB timeline who wrote: “I think the main reason is that the ‘shutdown’ is not directly messing up anybody’s day.” I know people who have been furloughed. I AM one of those people without some resources I’m used to. People who plan their vacations to a national park all year and find a padlock on the doors aren’t inconvenienced?

2) If, in fact, no one’s is talking about the shutdown in YOUR Facebook circle, maybe it’s because it’s SO toxic. A SCOTUS ruling is announced, an election happens, and though the events have consequences, often long-term, they may not be immediately apparent. Whereas every day, we are reminded of the range of services not being provided by our government: sick people not in clinical trials, accidents and disease outbreaks not investigated, real life-and-death stuff.

We’ve become aware at a level not previously known that our government isn’t working, or at least is not working for the citizenry. When things like that happen, some people yell and holler, but others just want to cry in dismay. It’s what I linked to yesterday about us giving up, which is what some of them want; a discouraged citizenry that has surrendered, leaving THEM even more in control.

3) Re: the debt limit: When individual people weren’t paying their mortgages four or five years ago, it was painted by some as personal irresponsibility, and terms such as “moral hazard” were thrown around. THOSE people – J’accuse!

But the debt ceiling is such an amorphous concept, it’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around it. Many people believe/hope/pray that it won’t come. We’ve been threatened with it before, and we expect that, because the political fallout has been so fierce, they’ll fix it, maybe as early as tomorrow.

But I also subscribe to the “I’m used to it” theory. Remember when the price of gas first broke the $3 barrier and there was great gnashing of teeth? Likewise, when it went over $4. So now, with gas prices generally down, but still, over $3 for a very long time, it’s just not the issue it was. We get used to the “new normal” and shrug.

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