The Boy Sherlock Holmes Series

We will meet on the fourth Friday this month to discuss the first of four books in The Boy Sherlock Holmes series.   So far all the book-clubbers have enjoyed Eye of the Crow, the first case, and some have moved on to Death in the Air.  We do not exclude the Young Adult category from our list of books to discuss. Read an excerpt of Eye of the Crow here. 

RITA 2011

The award winning novel for category of "Novel with Strong Romantic Elements" is: Welcome to Harmony by Jodi Thomas (Berkley: Penguin Group [USA]).  It sounds like a novel I would actually like to read.  This was rated 4 and 5 stars by amazon readers.  It's part of a trilogy, the Harmony series, which includes  "Welcome to Harmony"  and the sequel, "Somewhere Along the Way."  Jodi has won several other awards for the novels in the series.  If you're a romance novel lover, this is the series to check out.

Romance Writers Awards

I am not a big  fan of romance novels but some of you may be interested in knowing which ones were the best romance award winning books for 2010.  As you probably know, the Romance genre comes in different subgenres.  Well, there were 12 categories for these RITA awards which included.... (drumroll) .... "Novel with Strong Romantic Elements".

Full Circle with Kei Miller

Finished The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller on Sunday.  Wonderful story ... 41/2 star rating in my opinion.  This was actually a story about several variations of the same story. It was a story about storytelling. Made me sad. Made me laugh.

Loved how the story came full circle.  Original Pearline Portious gave birth in a home for lepers.  Her daughter, Adamine,  in turn gave birth in a home for the mentally disturbed.  Loved the characters.  Mother Lazarus turned out not to be a composite of the nuns who cared for the lepers in the real life leprosarium in Jamaica. She was an atheist who ironically tried to pray life into Pearline.

There were so many themes in the story: time, truth, madness, power of the spoken word, physical abuse.  Loved the theme of "time"; that  everything had a season.  The sentence, "It is time" was repeated frequently. Loved the theme of truth telling. Liked that the writer made Adamine whisper her truth to the universe, the wind, and told the universe to hush; shhhhh. Everyone had a different version of the truth but readers finally get to it in the end.  As the writer says, "In the end every story is edited, brought down to some essence...."

Some readers won't like the repetition, the constant flashbacks with the different outcomes but I loved it.  Then again I liked those movies that have flash forwards with different outcomes such as Deja Vu with Denzel Washington. Something about the twists and turns of the story reminded me of the wonderful, mystical world portrayed in Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

Eva's Memoir

Eva Gabrielsson, Stieg Larsson's partner, finally wrote her own book. It's a memoir of her life with him.  Link here to read a review of the memoir.  Stieg, you may remember, is the Swedish writer of the exciting Millennium trilogy of thrillers.  Those books also inspired Swedish and American movies.

Movies Inspired by Books

Books that inspired Movies were featured on Oprah's website.

The Help we read for our book club discussion but I have not read the other books on the list, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan or One Day or the Harry Potter book.

Right now I am still reading and enjoying The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller.  I think this would make an interesting movie.  Instead of the flash forward genre of movies with different outcomes.  This would be a flash backward with different outcomes.  Adamine's story and Mr. Writer Man's story are two different versions of the same story.  Fascinating!

Leprosarium in Jamaica

I thought the setting of The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller was fictional.  A quick google search revealed that there really was a leprosarium in Jamaica. There is an autobiographical book on amazon called, Once Over and Lightly, and the co-writer was sister Mary Augustine who was stationed at the leprosarium in Spanish Town, Jamaica. "Two Hearts, One Fire", another book, is actually about Sister Mary Augustine's experience in Jamaica. I found a Sister Judith who was stationed in 1965 at the leprosarium in Jamaica called Hansen Home. Mother Lazarus could be based on a composite of the nuns who were assigned to the Home. Actually, now that I have written the name Hansen Home, I do have a vague recollection of its existence.  It closed in the 1980s since there was no more need for it.

FYI:  Hansen's disease is another name for leprosy.

I am reading The Last Warner Woman

I have just started reading this novel by Jamaican writer and poet Kei Miller It was recommended to me by friend via Facbook.  The setting of the story, up to the point that I have read, is Jamaica in 1941.

I know what a warner woman is.  I used to take the bus in Kingston, Jamaica way back when.  From time to time, someone would come on with the warning to repent or else.  It was annoying to be going home from school and to be forced to listen to the loud warnings.  I think most of us passengers would lump all these clap-hand-jump-up-shout-out Christians as a little crazy prior to the dawn of the charismatic movement in the "regular" churches.   Once middle class people, including myself, in "regular" churches embraced "clap-hand-jump-up-shout-out", the warners didn't sound so crazy.

I am only on page 30 and so far there is a little craziness going on in this story.  I have met these characters: the original Pearline Portious, Monsignor Dennis and Mother Lazarus. 

Pearline likes to crochet using colored yarn and is having difficulty selling the colored crochet doilies yet refuses to crochet white doilies. Sixty-five year old Monsignor Dennis is in charge of a leprosarium and  finally buys a purple crochet doily from Pearline plus he orders additional crocheted items; still not clear what the items are or for what they are used. Agatha, over 85years old known as Mother Lazarus, works and lives at the leprosarium; she gives the injections to the patients and rubs their skin with chaulmoogra oil.  She is recruiting the "sweet- spirited"  Pearline to live and work with the lepers. By page 18, I am introduced briefly to another Pearline Portious who is known as Adamine Bustamante.  Adamine was born at the lepreosarium. She reveals in pages 18 to 22 that the story I read in the first seventeen pages is Mr. Writer Man's version of Adamine's story. Stay with me now. Parts of the story told were inaccurate. Have I lost you yet?  The location of the leprosarium, for example, is Writer Man's invention. This is a story within a story.

I like the flow of the language so far.  This would be by dream job: to read this book for the audio-book version.  Let me put it out in the universe.

23 Things for Library Professional Development

I officially signed up to participate in "23 Things".  I want to be an Awesome 2.0 Librarian so I am learning everything I need to know about the web 2.0 world.  Thing 1 was to create a blog. Thing 2 was to explore other blogs and post a comment on them.  I did that a few days ago.   I posted a comment at BookMates, a project of two Seattle-based  readers, because it seemed similar to this blog in that it was about selecting and recommending books.  I also commented on 23 Things: The Way Forward by an Irish blogger interested in professional development.

Today I explored one more blog and the blogger was based in London and in fact used to be in New York.  This blogger has educated me a little about librarianship in the UK. Chartership is a professional qualification earned by practicing librarians in the UK.   Reflective writing is a requirement of Chartership and blogging for this Librarian is one approach to meet that requirement.

I look forward to continuing with Thing 3 and of course I am going to finish reading my book, The Eye of the Crow.

Sherlock Holmes heart Crows

So it is 1867. London.  Poverty is in abundance. Bigotry and bullying is the order of the day.  Thirteen year old Sherlock Holmes is half Jewish, smart, very analytical and is bullied at school and harassed by a gang of misfits known as The Irregulars; a gang led by a teen called Malefactor. The Irregulars are petty thieves, thugs and include two Jewish boys so their harassment of Holmes is not based on racial prejudice. 

There is the discovery of a dead young woman.  An Arab man, Mohammed Adalji, has been arrested for her murder and for robbery. He singles out the boy Holmes in a crowd to shout to him that he is innocent.  Soon, Holmes is arrested and placed in a cell beside Mohammed.  Holmes was seen going to the murder scene twice.  He was just following his friends, the crows, to the murder scene but he can't confess that to the police. The police believe Holmes and Mohammed are associates.  They can't find the woman's purse so they are hoping that by putting the two misfits next to each other they will get a confession or at least some revelation about the missing purse.

Crows; symbol of evil but also known to be smart birds, lovers of shiny things.  The reader can tell by page 48 that the crows are key to the mystery somehow. Other birds are mentioned magpies, jays, ravens but all belong to the crow family; the corvid family.  Fascinating story, Eye of the Crow, Sherlock Holmes first mystery by a writer who was himself fascinated by the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and all things "Sherlockian". 

The Birds and Young Sherlock Holmes

Just started The Eye of the Crow.  Abundant use of bird symbolism in the few pages that I have read.  Crows are usually symbols of death and magic.  The teen aged Sherlock is quite fond of these carrion eating crows.  In this story they follow him around as he plays hooky from school.  In the first few pages of the story, Sherlock reads a newspaper article about a murder of an attractive young lady.  Sherlock spots a crow in the newspaper's photo of the deceased girl.  Sherlock's Dad just happens to have an interest in ornithology and works with doves, symbolic of peace.   I will see in the next few days how this story develops.

Personal note: I first started this blog some years ago for my book club so that I could be more proficient with the new social media.  More recently, I started a twitter account for the Okefenokee Toastmasters Club (#oketoast) for the same reason.  Today I came across this blog,  23 Things For Professional Development.   I have read about 23 Things before but this seems to be an updated version and I am going to try to participate as much as I can.  Already, I posted comments on two blogs to spread my online wings and in accordance with "Thing 2" - Establish an online presence.