Correspondents' Choice: Books for February

February is a short month...not short enough, or do I mean not long enough, for all the different things that had deadlines today. About 3 p.m. yesterday someone invited me to go somewhere today, as well, and I would have liked to go if all these other little things...including a short story that, although set in a peaceful world, has guns in it...

Anyway, here are some books correspondents have commended to my attention that I'd like to read; if you've read them, feel free to send them to this web site. Yes, this web site does occasionally feature a New Book Review. In alphabetical order...

Isabel Allende is best known for books that aren't generally recommended for teenagers, that are rich in the kind of "adult content" that adults like to imagine can be kept away from teenagers. So, how parent-annoying would a book she wrote for teenagers be? I've not read it. All I know about this novel, at the time of posting, is that the main character is fifteen...and the author can bring fiction to vivid imaginary life, for me, whether I read her books first in English or Spanish, better than most novelists can do in either language. She has a gift.



David Bahnsen promises fresh facts about our "fiscal cliff" and "economy in crisis" woes:




John Cage became famous, or notorious, for composing music in wacky ways--among other things he "composed" a piece called "Silence" to be performed by sitting silently on the stage for a few minutes, and also crafted actual tunes by selecting notes at random and patching them together. Not exactly a new book, but one some correspondents still find way cool, is Notations, in which he wrote about other people's music, or drew scores for it, in equally wacky ways...This 1969 book contains lots of graphics (drawings) and has always been a collector's item.



The struggle to abolish slavery...in Cuba:



Neil Gaiman's new novel:



M.J. Harrington is witty enough on Live Journal to make me curious about his book...



Have our foul-ups made us feel like bad humans? A writing career ago, Liz Curtis Higgs stumbled across a successful brand with her trademark studies of the "Bad Girls of the Bible." That's not news. News is that one volume of what became a top-of-the-field selling series, Really Bad Girls of the Bible, is now available on Vimeo as well as in the standard book forms. (Despite their girl-talk tone, I'd consider reading, watching, or listening even if I were male; Really Bad Girls is the volume that addresses temptations to exploit the ignorant like the Medium of Endor, attack those who make us feel guilty like Herodias, commit adultery like Bathsheba, or even "kill" those who get in our way like Athaliah, who literally did have her grandsons--grandsons!--murdered outright. It's thoroughly Christian, and Higgs is known for writing like an aunt addressing her nieces, but these stories ought to keep the nephews awake too.)



Gregory Maguire's new novel:



This one seems more fortuitously timed than some books about which publishers have e-mailed this site, notably Henry Gates' latest gift to Scholastic; you can order Rocking the System in time for Women's History Month and Irish Pride Day. Leftist bias is anticipated, because modern Ireland...I'm wondering whether they'll count U.S.-born, Irish re-immigrant Anne McCaffrey? The publisher guarantees that these twenty short biographies are of interesting women from Ireland's past whose careers can be summarized, starting with Queen Medb (Meadhbh, Maeve).



Thanks to Heather Wilhelm for reviewing Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life:



This one's a classic: Miss Jean Brodie is an admirable older lady who makes a few major mistakes, and her students adore her but one of them turns against her...but what stands out in memory, afterward, is likely to be her saying that she's not old but "in my Prime." If you have trouble recognizing the humanity in people who disagree with you, Miss Brodie may help.



It's hard to guarantee whether Grandma Bonnie Peters will be able to read a new book or not, but here's one she would love to preview. (Do you really want to lose 14 pounds in 14 days? GBP and I would have some things to say about that. Much depends on where you are! Mileage certainly will vary! If you're a large person and have gained a lot of weight from edema due to metabolic disorders, I can imagine its being healthy to flush away 14 pounds, although the first few days would be a rough transition. If you're a thin, flabby, sickly person in your early twenties, successfully boosting your metabolism might actually cause you to gain a pound or two--in bone and muscle--at the same time you'd be melting away flab.)