The Etymologicon ~ Mark Forsyth
Hardcover: 288 pages ISBN-10: 1848313071 ISBN-13: 978-1848313071
 
The subtitle sums it up pretty nicely: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language. Forsyth, the man behind the blog Inky Fool, is obsessed with where words come from and with wit takes you on a roundabout journey through his obsession. I started reading this fully thinking, that I'd pick it up here and there when I needed a break from my current fiction in progress. But I pretty much read this book straight through and enjoyed it very much. The target audience is definitely word nerds, though. One chapter I enjoyed was titled "Concealed Farts." In a nineteenth-century dictionary, the author found this definition for fice:

A small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged [blamed] on their lap-dogs.

He continues:

And fice itself comes from the Old English fist, which likewise meant fart. In Elizabethan times a smelly dog was called a fisting cur, and by the eighteenth century any little dog was called a feist, and that's where we get the word feisty from. Little dogs are so prone to bark at anything that an uppity girl was called fiesty, straight from the flatulent dogs of yore. This is a point well worth remembering when you're next reading a film review about a 'feisty heroine.'

You can also find some corrections at this link.

[started 25 dec 2011, finished 1 jan 2012] [book depository] [amazon]

The Willoughbys ~ Lois Lowry
Paperback: 176 pages ISBN-10: 0385737769 ISBN-13: 978-0385737760
 
Some weeks ago I bought four books to read to the kids. This is the second of them. It's a lot shorter than the previous one, we read the whole thing over a span of nine evenings. It's pretty cute and has a nice sense of humor running throughout. It also does some shout-outs to some classics of young adult literature. When it mentioned The Secret Garden, for example, my two kids immediately understood the reference as we'd that one about a month and a half ago. This story is about four kids (of the title) whose parents are awful people who want to get rid of them. It's a bit short on conflict and the story resolves itself very neatly albeit fairly quickly. But what it lacks in plotting it makes up for in sly humor. It wasn't as rabidly received as The Mysterious Benedict Society, but the kids gave this story glowing reviews. [amazon]

The Mysterious Benedict Society ~ Trenton Lee Stewart
Paperback: 512 pages ISBN-10: 0316003956 ISBN-13: 978-0316003957
 
I was fishing around for another book to read to the kids and this one had many glowing reviews. They were pretty much hooked from the get-go. In this story four young kids answer an newspaper ad that proclaims "Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?" All four are in various circumstances in which they don't have parents around. There are two boys and two girls and they become secret agents for the kindly Mr. Benedict. Both of my kids (Luke, 9, and Kajsa, 7) would beg me to read more when it came time to wish them a good night. Luke begged to read ahead but I refused since this was our chosen read-aloud book. So, over the course of a month, I read from this nearly every night. They loved it. And at certain passages they would laugh aloud. When I finished it the other night they wanted to know if we could get the next in this series. They said we should read all of them. High praise.
[amazon]

Rise of the Huntress (The Last Apprentice, book 7) ~ Joseph Delaney
Paperback: 464 pages (August 23, 2011) ISBN-10: 0061715123 ISBN-13: 978-0061715129
 
This series doesn't disappoint. Here we are with the seventh book in the series and the stories keep getting better. They are chock-full of scary Spook business, dangerous opponents, narrow escapes, and surprising developments. I started reading this series aloud to Luke at the beginning of the year. But I was only about 50 pages into this one when he demanded to be able to read it on his own. (He didn't want to wait the glacial pace it would take to have to wait for me to read it. Besides, it's too scary for his younger sister -- creeps out his mother a bit too!). Luke polished this off in a matter of days and wanted to tell me all about it. I wasn't having that! I wanted to read this fresh myself! I really like this series. We'll wait for book #8 to come out in paperback before continuing. One of the things that makes this series so good is that the main characters are so interesting. Young Tom Ward is the apprentice; the Spook, his master, is crusty old John Gregory; and his good friend Alice is the daughter of a witch (Gregory doesn't trust her but she proves her worth time and again.) And the villains are equally varied, from the various beasts, abhumans, boggarts, and numerous witches of every stripe. Great stories.
[amazon]

Norse Code ~ Greg Van Eekhout
Mass Market Paperback 292 pages  ISBN-10: 0553592130 ISBN-13: 978-0553592139 

I bought this one a couple years ago when it first came out and figured it would be a good one to read since I'm currently in Sweden and Norse mythology takes a big role in this story. I have a passing familiarity with Norse mythology (which I enjoy more than Greek) since I've read D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Gods and Giants several times to my kids and I've also started a grown-up book about Norse mythology. So I actually recognized some of the lesser known Norse gods' names. (Beyond Thor, Odin, and Loki, can you name some?) Anyway, this story uses a murdered woman who becomes a Valkyrie as its protagonist as she joins forces with some of the gods to prevent Ragnarok (a Norse end-of-the-world scenario featuring deaths of gods, natural disasters, and rebirth). But I didn't get a good sense of the main character (christened Mist) and couldn't figure out which gods were one which side of the fighting. I was also frequently lost as to many of the characters motives and didn't really understand what was happening. Perhaps you can tell where this review is heading? Either I'm not that smart, wasn't paying close enough attention, or things were clear as mud. But at only 292 pages, I finished it anyway.
 [started 23 Oct 2011, finished 9 Nov 2011] [amazon]

The Secret Garden ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
Hardcover, 331 pages (first published 1911) ISBN-10: 0517189607 ISBN-13: 9780517189603
 
Having found myself with nothing at hand to read to the kids some weeks ago, the missus suggested this one which she had available on her tablet. It's an old story, 100 years old actually, and I'd never read it so I plunged in. The story is a bit dry and a little dreary but the kids were into it. On the plus side, it got more interesting as it progressed and the kids enjoyed the characters of Mary, Martha, Dickon, and Colin. The story brought forth a number of questions and discussions with the kids. That was fun. But as I got near the end, I was eager to just finish it. The kids gave it good marks. I found the business with Dickon's facility with animals to be fanciful to say the least. Our next book will be a more modern tale.

[finished 4 Nov 2011]

The Passage ~ Justin Cronin [abandoned]
Mass Market Paperback: 896 pages ISBN-10: 0345525221 ISBN-13: 978-0345525222
[started 2oct2011, abandoned 23oct2011 on page 500]

Succumbing to the hype, I picked this up and got hooked from the get-go. The first 243 pages of this tome are great. Interesting characters are introduced, mysteries deepen, tension builds, things are set in motion. But then after 243 pages the story takes an abrupt turn. Suddenly, all new characters are introduced and the story loses all its momentum and limps along. Reading the next 250-odd pages took forever. Around page 450 I began to wonder if this was worth pursuing. I gave it another 50 pages. Now I can't bring myself to continue. It has become a book I'm not interested in getting back to. But the real nail in the coffin is that at the very end there's a page that says, "The story of Amy continues in ...". So, there's really not even a promise of things being wrapped up. Ugh. I think all the blurbs are from people who only read the first part. Bastards.