#16 and #17

After the witty banter of Pratchett and the beautiful descriptions of LeGuin, the next two books seemed a bit of a let down. 

Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan was a cute tale of a delinquent kid coming to live with an offbeat family of artists to be home schooled after being kicked out of every school in the region. It was a good premise for a young reader and an entertaining read but certainly not a classic. I grew up on Enid Blyton (Famous Five, Mallory Towers), C.S. Lewis (Narnia), L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables), Edith Nesbitt (The Railway Children), Astrid Lingred (Pippi Longstocking), Jean Webster (Daddy-Long-Legs),  and other writers that have developed their central characters much better. Take Edmund from Narnia or a myriad of naughty schoolchildren in Enid Blyton's books: the trajectory of unruly, selfish, self-centred troublesome kids to thoughtful and kind and "jolly" (jolly seeming to be a common British value) is represented well and you can see the characters develop and grow. I found Jake Semple a very unrealistic "bad boy" with no real explanation of how is moral character developed except that his bad deeds were ignored so he stopped doing them. I did however, like the character of E.D: the only non-artistic one of the family who often feels left out, misunderstood, and in the midst of chaos created by free thinking family of singers, dancers, hippies, painters, and actors, just longs for order and neatness which she accomplishes through creating lists for herself. It's kind of like being in the middle of a hipster-obsessed city. 

If Surviving the Applewhites had some redeeming factors, The Alto Wore Tweed has none. It's a half Agatha Christie mystery and half Mitford series, with the worst of both. The characters managed to be insipid and exaggerated and undeveloped all at the same time. The flawed hero is egotistical, misogynist and a bit of a womaniser; and the plot was boring. A choir director/detective who tries to write a novel while having a nice, peaceful small town life sounds like a book that would be right up my alley. It was not. The only thing I liked was a politically correct directive from the bishop that dictated that  "all  whole and half notes will from now on be referred to as "pigmentally impoverished," that 50% of all compositions will be made up of "notes of color," and no reference will be made to the stereotype that notes of color move faster and generally jump higher."

The other day on a walk, we stumbled across this delightful, free, community library! I just love the idea!!!