38. The Matchstick Castle by Keir Graff

read the book from Bosler Library
2017, G. P. Putnam's Sons
277 pgs.
Middle Grades Realistic Fantasy
Finished 7-4-17
Goodreads rating: 3.59 - 138 ratings
My rating:  Probably, personally, a 2, but please read below
Setting:  Contemporary Boring, Illinois

First line/s:  "It was supposed to be the perfect summer.  I was going to camp out, build forts, have adventures, and score the championship-winning goal in the New England All-Star Under-12 Soccer Tournament.  When I wasn't doing those things, I was going to stay up late with my friends, eat as much junk food as I wanted, and pretty much do whatever I felt like until sixth grade started in September.  It was going to be epic:  the all-time, best summer ever."

My comments:  This book reminded me somewhat of the books I read and loved as a kid - Gone Away Lake and The Lemonade Trick, The Four Story Mistake and Half Magic.  I can't remember anything at all about those books except that I loved them.  This gave me the same feel.  Except....now I'm old.  And I didn't like it at all, it was just too far-fetched and ridiculous.  So I'm betting there's lots and lots of youngish kids out there that are going to love it like I loved those old titles of long ago.  So I can't rate it, really. Or I shouldn't.   I'd rate it a 2, but that's an old fogey's rating.  I'll leave this to the experts ... and the kids.

Goodreads synopsis: Brian can think of a few places he'd rather spend his summer than with his aunt and uncle in Boring, Illinois. Jail, for example. Or an earplug factory. Anything would be better than doing summer school on a computer while his scientist dad is stationed at the South Pole. 
Boring lives up to its name until Brian and his cousin Nora have a fight, get lost, and discover a huge, wooden house in the forest. With balconies, turrets, and windows seemingly stuck on at random, it looks ready to fall over in the next stiff breeze. To the madcap, eccentric family that lives inside, it's not just a home--it's a castle. 
          Suddenly, summer gets a lot more exciting. With their new friends, Brian and Nora tangle with giant wasps, sharp-tusked wild boars, and a crazed bureaucrat intent on bringing the dangerously dilapidated old house down with a wrecking ball.

MOVIE - Baby Driver

(R) 1:53

Wide/Limited release

Viewed Monday, 7/3/17 after work
IMBd: 8.4/10

RT Critic:  98  Audience:  91
Critic's Consensus:  Stylish, exciting, and fueled by a killer soundtrack, Baby Driver hits the road and it's gone -- proving fast-paced action movies can be smartly written without sacrificing thrills.

Cag:  4.5 Liked it a whole lot

Directed by Edgar Wright

Sony Pictures

Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Kevin Spacey, Ansel Elgort

My comments:  I knew nothing about this movie before I went other than hearing people say that it was surprisingly good.  And it was.  There were a few places I had to roll my eyes a bit, but I think it was probably made purposely that way.  Most of it was actually a lot of fun to watch and to think about.  Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm playing bad, bad guys was worth it by itself!  And the young man, Ansel Elgort, who played the part of Baby was just terrific.  Yes, I've got to say I liked this movie a lot.  Great acting, great music, interesting storyline, adorable love story - recommended highly.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  A talented, young getaway driver relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. When he meets the girl of his dreams, Baby sees a chance to ditch his criminal life and make a clean getaway. But after being coerced into working for a crime boss (Kevin Spacey), he must face the music when a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom.

37. Zenn Diagram by Wendy Brant

read on my iPhone
2017 Kids Can Press
328 pgs.
YA CRF w/a touch of fantasy....and a little sex....
Finished Monday, 7/3/17
Goodreads rating:  3.73 - 1033 ratings
My rating: 3.5
Setting: Contemporary ...ummm....Wisconsin?  Midwest, I'm pretty sure
Very cool cover.

First line/s:  "I hold Josh's TI-84 in my left hand, press a few buttons just for show and wait for the vision to come."

My comments:  3.5 Every now and then you MUST read something light and fun and eye-rolling.  That was Zenn Diagram for me.  Yes, there were some (very) irritating things about Eva, but most of the story was fresh and cute and ... innocent.  I'm getting caught up on my YA reading, yippee!

Goodreads synopsis  The more I touch someone, the more I can see and understand, and the more I think I can help. But that’s my mistake. I can’t help. You can’t fix people like you can solve a math problem.
          Math genius. Freak of nature. Loner.     Eva Walker has literally one friend—if you don’t count her quadruplet three-year-old-siblings—and it’s not even because she’s a math nerd. No, Eva is a loner out of necessity, because everyone and everything around her is an emotional minefield. All she has to do is touch someone, or their shirt, or their cell phone, and she can read all their secrets, their insecurities, their fears.
          Sure, Eva’s “gift” comes in handy when she’s tutoring math and she can learn where people are struggling just by touching their calculators. For the most part, though, it’s safer to keep her hands to herself. Until she meets six-foot-three, cute-without-trying Zenn Bennett, who makes that nearly impossible.
          Zenn’s jacket gives Eva such a dark and violent vision that you’d think not touching him would be easy. But sometimes you have to take a risk…

PICTURE BOOK - Apples and Robins by Lucie Felix

Illustrated by the author

2016, Chronicle Books (2013 in France)

48 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.02 - 257 ratings

My rating:  4

Endpapers: none

1^st line/s:  "All you need for apples are circles and the color red."

My comments:  This story tells of a backyard of robins and apple trees and how the two thrive together.  Shapes are cut from the pages of the book, and when overlayed onto drawn, brightly colorful shapes, create a new image.  Pretty cool and wonderful!

Goodreads:  In this extraordinary book, one thing transforms into another as each page turns—a circle becomes an apple, an oval becomes a bird, winter becomes spring. Constantly surprising and brilliantly constructed, Lucie Félix's Apples and Robins is full of the magic of shape, color, and imagination. All you need to do . . . is turn the page.

Recent Postcards That Fit Nicely into My Collection

783.  Tulda, Germany

Clementine-Helene Dufau (1869 - 1937 "Lady Reading at an Open Window", Gavin Graham
Gallery, London

Greetings from Tulda.  My name is Wolfgang.  I like to read, travel, and run.  I became retired two years ago, after 41 years in the German Army.  I don't leave my home without a book.  My famouse country to travel is Israel.  I was there about 25 times.  Las weekend I ran a half marathon in Munich and next week I will run a marathon is St. Petersburg (Russia). 

782.  Wuppurtal, Germany

Tomi Ungerer, Book Cover for Joan Aiken's Die Kristallkrahe (The Crystal Crow)

Hi chris, My name is Lothar and I'm from Wuppurtal, a town of 350,000.  It's situated in a green area with several artificial lakes and well know for the unique suspension railway.  Best wishes, Hepman

781.  Ukranian Doorways

Hello!  Greetings from Belarus!  My name is Marina, I'm from Minsk.  Few days ago I came back from Lriv (Ukraine) - I like this homely, cozy, lovely town so much!  I bought this card there.  I though that it is perfect for you.  Hope you like it as well as me. :)  Make only love.

780.  Poland

Self-portrait: Karolina Pieton

I want to tell you about my favourite Polish series of books:  The Witcher by Andrej Sapkowski.  He has creted a cycle of tales based on the world of the Witcher, which was published in fantasy literary magazine "Fantastylia", comprising 3 collections of short stories and 5 novels.  The main character is Geralt, a mutant who has been trained since childhood to hunt down an destroy monsters for the moneyh.  Agaionst all appearances he's very sensitive and governed by knightly code.  Computer games of The Witcher created by CD Project Red are based on this series.  I'm so happy that these books have been adapted by Netflix.  Have you read this series of books?  With best wishes.  7/5/17

777.  ICELAND

card sent from Malaysia!

Greetings from Ipoh, a small city in Malaysia!  My name is Ivy Fan.  I'm a housewife.  I love reading novels, watching TV drama, and writing journals.  Her's a card of Iceland Map.  Hope you will like it.  Have a nice day!

776.  Cork, IRELAND

Greetings from a beautiful and green Ireland.  My name is Ivone.  I am Polish but over 11 years live in Ireland.  I love this fantastic island but miss for my home in Poland.  I love to travel, make pictures, read books and postcards.  Ivone.

775.  Plzen (Pilsen) Czech Republic

I had many years this postcard, I didn't think I will find recipient.  :) Plzen (Pilsen) town, where was printed oldest Czech book (maybe) - Historia Troiana, incanabulis by Johannes Gutenberg's followers.  

Today we are with our children on mountain bike race in a near twon Prestice and I hope they will run.

772.  China

Greeting from China.  Nice to meet you.  This is a postcard of Dr. Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (cemetery).  Sun is the father of the country Hope you enjoy it.

NOTE:  Dr. Sun Yet-san (1866 - 1925) was the founding father and 1st president of the Republic of China.

769.  Ipoh, MALAYSIA

Hello!  Greetings from Malaysia

760.  Hong Kong

Greeting from Hong Kong, a city located in Asia which is packed and crowded city.  I am planning my vacation in end o fyear, most of the time I will send myself a postcard when traveling.  Will you do the same?  Happy Postcrossing, Fennie

757.  Itzig, Luxembourg

I am Dan, 52, lives in a little town called Itzig in Luxembourg/Europe.  Best wishes and Happy Postcrossing with Stan and Ollie!

36. This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

#1 Monsters of Verity
read on my Kindle
2016, Greenwillow Books
427 pgs.
Genre/Level: YA Dystopia/Fantasy
Finished 6/30/2017
Goodreads rating: 4.14 - 18,963 ratings
My rating: 3
Setting: Verity City, USA in the future

First line/s:  "The night Kate Harker decided to burn down the school chapel, she wasn't angry or drunk.  She was desperate."

My comments:  This book was okay.  So much darkness, just a little too much, it definitely overtook the light.  What is a monster?  There are more than just three detailed in this book!  Kate, a human and Andrew, a monster that wants to be human, are enemies....until they meet and bond in a weird way.

Goodreads synopsis:  There’s no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books.
          Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives. 

MOVIE - Beatriz at Dinner

R (1:23)

Limited 6/9/17

Viewed 6/30 at Carlisle Theater
IMBd: 6.5/10

RT Critic:  76  Audience:  69
Critic's Consensus:  Beatriz at Dinner offers timely social commentary enlivened by powerful, layered performances from Salma Hayek and John Lithgow.

Cag:  It should have been a 6 (awesome) but ended up being just so-so

Directed by Miguel Arteta

Roadside Attractions

Based on the book by

John Lithgow, Salma Hayek

My comments:  Another totally wonky ending.  Enough already!  Too many of these lately, another one that made no sense to me, only pissed me off... Spoiler: I realize that mental illness took a jump into this film.  You could see it coming...depression, then hyper-talking, then long silences. I know that depression and other kinds of mental illness are what spawn many suicides.   However, I still find them very difficult to accept and/or understand.  And in this case, she let him win!  This movie had such great possibilities.....

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Beatriz, an immigrant from a poor town in Mexico, has drawn on her innate kindness to build a career as a health practitioner in Southern California. Don Strutt is a real estate developer whose cutthroat tactics have made him a self-made, self-satisfied billionaire. When these two polar opposites meet at a dinner party, their worlds collide and neither will ever be the same.

PICTURE BOOK - Pop's Bridge by Eve Bunting

Illustrated by C. F. Payne

2006, Houghton Mifflin

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.07 - 210 ratings

My rating:  5

Endpapers:  Dark Evergreen

1^st line/s:  "My pop is building the Golden Gate Bridge.  Almost every day after school Charlie Shu and I go to Fort Point and watch."

My comments:  I am so fond of this book...I've read it many times, to myself and aloud to different groups of kids.  Last week I read it aloud to a group of nine to twelve-year-olds that were attending the "Bridges" STEM camp that I was facilitating, and it delighted me once again.  I love the Golden Gate Bridge.  I never saw it or drove over it until about 15 years ago when I went to visit a dear friend in Marin County, California.  Since that first visit there have been at least two visits a year, and we always drive at least one back-and-forth trip over "my" bridge.  My friend's mom was one of the thousands of people who walked across the span on opening day in 1937.  She's told me the story several times.  This is a wonderful book of two friends and the dads who built the Golden Gate Bridge.

Goodreads:  The Golden Gate Bridge. The impossible bridge, some call it. They say it can't be built.
          But Robert's father is building it. He's a skywalker--a brave, high-climbing ironworker. Robert is convinced his pop has the most important job on the crew . . . until a frightening event makes him see that it takes an entire team to accomplish the impossible.
          When it was completed in 1937, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge was hailed as an international marvel. Eve Bunting's riveting story salutes the ingenuity and courage of every person who helped raise this majestic American icon.
Includes an author's note about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

35. Posted by John David Anderson

Read on my iPhone
2017, Walden Pond Press
384 pgs.
Middle Grades CRF
Finished 6-27-17
Goodreads rating:  4.34 - 254 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting:  Contemporary small town Michigan

First line/s:  "I push my way through the buzzing mob and freeze, heart - struck, dizzy."

My comments: This book looks bullying right in the eye and takes it on.  It doesn't give answers.  The writing is beautifully crafted, taking a few major themes and weaving them around and together, the unifying link being  friendship, where it comes from and where it goes.  Quite a book.

Goodreads synopsis:  From John David Anderson, author of the acclaimed Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, comes a humorous, poignant, and original contemporary story about bullying, broken friendships, and the failures of communication between kids.

In middle school, words aren’t just words. They can be weapons. They can be gifts. The right words can win you friends or make you enemies. They can come back to haunt you. Sometimes they can change things forever.          

     When cell phones are banned at Branton Middle School, Frost and his friends Deedee, Wolf, and Bench come up with a new way to communicate: leaving sticky notes for each other all around the school. It catches on, and soon all the kids in school are leaving notes—though for every kind and friendly one, there is a cutting and cruel one as well.

     In the middle of this, a new girl named Rose arrives at school and sits at Frost’s lunch table. Rose is not like anyone else at Branton Middle School, and it’s clear that the close circle of friends Frost has made for himself won’t easily hold another. As the sticky-note war escalates, and the pressure to choose sides mounts, Frost soon realizes that after this year, nothing will ever be the same.

PICTURE BOOK - Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner

Illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal

2015, Chronicle Books (SF)

48 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.1 - 794 ratings

My rating:  5

Endpapers: Beige with brown line drawings of plants and garden tools

Illustrations:  No white border, actually no white: all beige, edge of page to edge of page...

1^st line/s:  "Up in the garden, I stand and plan ---
my hands full of seeds and my head full of dreams."

My comments:  Great information about gardens, soil, planting, and seasons, this reads as a fiction book but is full of information for little ones.  It also has beautiful language, lots of alliteration, and great rhythm.  I read it aloud to eight preschoolers, holding all their attention, and will use it with my STEM "Down and Dirty" (soils) summer camp at the library.  

Goodreads:  In this exuberant and lyrical follow-up to the award-winning Over and Under the Snow, discover the wonders that lie hidden between stalks, under the shade of leaves . . . and down in the dirt. Explore the hidden world and many lives of a garden through the course of a year! Up in the garden, the world is full of green—leaves and sprouts, growing vegetables, ripening fruit. But down in the dirt exists a busy world—earthworms dig, snakes hunt, skunks burrow—populated by all the animals that make a garden their home.

TV Show - The Handmaid's Tale

Just finished watching Season 1
Premiered: 4/26/17
Season: 1
Number of Episodes: 10
Length of Episode
IMBd: 8.7
RT Consensus: Haunting and vivid, The Handmaid's Tale is an endlessly engrossing adaptation of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel that's anchored by a terrific central performance from Elisabeth Moss.
RT Audience Score: 93% (100% from critics!
cag: 6
Produced by:  Hulu
Based on the Margaret Atwell novel of the same title (Margaret Atwood even had a bit part in the show!)

Characters:
Offred - Elizabeth Moss
Commander Fred Waterford - Joseph Fiennes
Serena Joy Waterford - Yvonne Strahovski
Nick (the Commander's driver and Offred's secret) - Max Minghella
Moira (Offred's best friend in her previous life)- Samira Wiley
Luke (Offred's husband in her previous life) - J. T. Fagbenle
Ann Dowd - Aunt Lydia

My comments:  This is wonderfully done. Really fantastic entertainment, such a story!  Elizabeth Moss is also a producer.  She does a great job as Offred, but there are so many silent tears!  She handles her feelings really well and silently (for the most part), but those silent tears are a few too many....

Storyline from IMBd:  Adapted from the classic novel by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale is the story of life in the dystopia of Gilead, a totalitarian society in what was formerly the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birthrate, Gilead is ruled by a twisted fundamentalism in its militarized "return to traditional values." As one of the few remaining fertile women, Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a Handmaid in the Commander's household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate the world. In this terrifying society, Offred must navigate between Commanders, their cruel Wives, domestic Marthas, and her fellow Handmaids--where anyone could be a spy for Gilead--all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken from her.

34. Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Passenger #1
read on my iPhone
2016, Disney-Hyperion
498 pgs.
YA Time Travel
Finished 6/20/2017
Goodreads rating: 3.85 - 23,715 ratings
My rating: 2.5
Setting: Contemporary NYC with forays to 1776, ancient middle east, etc.

First line/s:  "As they ascended, retreating farther from the winding trails that marked the way to nearby villages, the world opened to him in its purest form:  silent, ancient, mysterious.  Deadly."

My comments:  2.5  I usually like time travel stories.  I just could not understand how this one worked.  I'm not sure the author did, either....or at least didn't know how to get it across to her audience.  Some of the description was ridiculously long and there was too much inner turmoil about the love-dovey stuff.  And it seemed to start in a weird place.  Other than that, it was okay.  It left it way up in the air about what would happen next - or not happen next - and, to tell the truth, I don't really care what happens.  Ate least at this moment.  Sol maybe a three rating is a little generous?

Goodreads synopsis  
Passage, n.
i. A brief section of music composed of a series of notes and flourishes.
ii. A journey by water; a voyage.
iii. The transition from one place to another, across space and time.
          In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.
          Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods—a powerful family in the colonies—and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas’ passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them—whether she wants to or not.
          Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home... forever.

33. The Plantation by Chris Kuzneski

Payne & Jones #1
listened on Audible
2002, Paradox Publishing
432 pgs.
Adult Contemporary Mystery
Finished Sunday, June 18, 2017
Goodreads rating:  3.73
My rating: 2
Setting: Mostly New Orleans area, contemporary

My comments:  Didn't do it for me.  Took me forever to get through.  I'm thinking that I'm so used to this particular reader (I listened on audio), who has been the narrator for so many other mysteries  I've read that his inflections have become associated with other protagonists.  The"good" guys in The Plantation approach killing with the same kind of glee that the horrid slave owners did.  Very off-putting.  Also,  good vs. evil with no in between?  Payne's ardor for Ariana was also a little off-putting, it was so constantly notated.  And his "best friend's" subservient manner towards him bugged me too.  Waaaaay too long

Goodreads synopsis:  One by one, in cities across America, people of all ages are taken from their homes, their cars, their lives. But these aren’t random kidnappings. They’re crimes of passion,
planned and researched several months in advance, then executed with a singular objective in mind. Revenge.
          Ariane Walker is one of the victims, dragged from her apartment with few clues to follow. The police said there’s little they can do for her, but that isn’t good enough for her boyfriend, Jonathon Payne.

          With the help of his best friend (David Jones), Payne gives chase, hoping that a lead in New Orleans somehow pays off. Together, they uncover the mystery of Ariane’s abduction and the truth behind the South’s most violent secret.

MOVIE - Paris Can Wait

PG (1:32)

Limited release 5/12/17

Viewed 6/17 at Carlisle Theater
IMBd: 6/10

RT Critic:  48   Audience:  46
Critic's Consensus:  None

Cag:  3 liked it, but that's all

Directed by Eleanor Coppola

Sony Pictures Classics

Diane Lane, Alec Baldwin

My comments:  Other than getting to travel a little bit through France and enjoying Diane Lane's performance, this movie didn't do much for me.  I wasn't turned on even the tiniest bit by the French guy who ended up sweeping her off her feet, which made what might have been a good ending a bit blah.....

RT/ IMDb Summary:  When her director husband is occupied with work in Paris, an American woman takes a jaunt with his business associate, a charming Gallic rogue who is happy to squire her on a tour of some of the finest meals in Provence. The first feature directed by Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis and director of the "Apocalypse Now" documentary "Hearts of Darkness".

PICTURE BOOK - What Degas Saw by Samantha Friedman

Illustrated by Cristina Pieropan
with reproductions of works by Edgar Degas (7 of them)

2016, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 3.97 - 34 ratings

My rating: 4

Endpapers: Front: Pen and Ink people - Back: Made to look like a blank canvas

My comments:  The concept of the book is that Paris is changing and that Degas, as an artist, wanted to change with the times.  So he went out walking the streets of Paris, examining its people and their activities.  The explanation is in words and watercolor and ink illustrations, but when you turn the page, you see Degas' actual painting.  The writing was lovely, except for the first and last page. "The world was changing.  Paris was alive." (What, exactly, does this mean?).  Then, on the next-to-last page was my favorite paragraph, "Soon he would put brush to canvas, or pastel to paper, or ink to plate, and he would try to describe the city's push and pull, its run and hum, its lean and stretch."  But when you turn the page, it reads, "But for just a little while, all was still."  There is still activity on the streets.  Those two pages - because of their words - just didn't work for me.  Ah, well.  Otherwise, an excellent picture book.

Goodreads:  What Degas Saw looks at the world through a beloved artist’s eyes and provides insight into his creative process. Walking through the streets of Paris with cape and cane, the French artist Edgar Degas observes the world around him, finding inspiration at every turn. From the blurry faces of passersby glimpsed through a bus window to the sun-dappled landscape seen from a moving train, from the hunched profiles of laundresses at work to light-bathed ballerinas on the opera house stage, the artist—with open eyes and a curious mind—collects impressions of the people and places he sees. Accompanies major MoMA exhibition, Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty, on view March 26 through July 24, 2016.