Books Read in April

This is going to look a little skimpy. And that is because I have spent all my reading time this month worrying about wildlife.

Not really.

But I have been writing. And critiquing (which is more fun than it sounds, and takes much, much time). And teaching. And doing some fun service-y things. All of which leaves little time for reading. Having said that, here’s what I managed to finish, and also love:

* COSMIC by Frank Cottrell Boyce. Middle-grade adventure fabulosity. Oh, I loved this so much. In fact, it should make another appearance on my next Books Read post, because I started reading it to the Kids last night. The voice was PERFECT and must be read with British accent. Listen to this: “I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last time. This time I was going to skill up before leveling up. In World of Warcraft you can have weapon skills, gathering skills or trade skills. You can have mining skills too, but they’re a bit rubbish and you have to buy a pickaxe. If I was going on a quest disguised as Florida’s dad, I would need dad skills.” Or this: “…he’d been trying all the time — that’s what dads do. I had to look out for the children, like Dad looked out for me and his dad had for him, right back through time. Dadliness was out there among the stars, a force like gravity, and I was part of it.” An excellent story of Dadliness. Like really good ice cream for the soul.

* SOLOMON SNOW AND THE SILVER SPOON by Kaye Umansky. Oh, joyful Dickens bug. I love when really handy writers catch it. This is a great orphan-seeks-his-fortune story, told with tongue firmly in cheek. Solomon has a companion on his journey, a novelist with an unfortunate nose. Her name is Prudence, naturally.

“I’m sorry about all this, Prudence,” said Solly. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be at the publishers getting paid right now.”
“Well, not right now. Right now, it’s after midnight.”
“You know what I mean. All that work.”
“That’s all right,” said Prudence. “It’s not your fault. I’ll write it again — that’s all.”

* FISH by Gregory Mone. Such a fun, bucaneer-ish pirate story. I kind of can’t get enough of a great story that  — okay, I know who the bad guy is by chapter 2, and I simply don’t care, I just want to see the good guy overcome him. Cute, cute, cute.

* A(NOTHER) WHOLE NOTHER STORY by Dr. Cuthbert Soup. More adventures of the smart, polite, and relatively odor-free Cheeseman family. The second we finished this one (out loud, natch) we hopped on line to find the release date of the next book. It wasn’t listed. So we wrote an email to Dr. Soup himself. He wrote back the next morning. And told us we’d have to wait until next spring. We shall try. We adore him now, by the way, because his email was just exactly what we expected from the president of the National Center for Unsolicited Advice. Good, solid words of wisdom like this: “The pen is mightier than the sword, though both can ruin a good shirt.”

* THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK by… St. Mark. Right. From the Bible. If you need a recommendation to read the Bible, contact me right away. We’ll speak privately.