Tag: regular fiction

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Title: Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Scored a: C-
Status: Finished

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Diary of a Wimpy Kid was a disappointment. I picked it up because the art looked like a lot of fun. And it’s true, the comics in it are pretty charming. The problem was the characters.

With a few exceptions, the characters are pretty repellant.

The father’s sexism/homophobia/whateverness made anytime he was on the page teeth-gratingly irritating. While he was a good explanation for why the wimpy kid was a real jerk, I could have really done without him.

One of the bits of the story that really stood out to me was how the kid wanted a Barbie Dream House for some reason, and his father threw a fit, so the kid asked his uncle, who gave him a Barbie instead. So the father threw another fit and ordered him to get rid of it.

I don’t care much that the kid never learned a lesson about how not to be horrible, because that would have been fine if he was at least entertaining to watch going from situation to situation. But in the end I just wanted my money back.

I rated this a C- instead of anything lower because the art was fun.

 

Bunnicula

Hell yes Bunnicula! Deborah and James Howe wrote a funny little story that I liked as much now as when I read it as a kid. Harold the dog is quite the narrator, with very typical dog priorities (although I went NO when I found out his favourite snack was chocolate cake) that make him pretty endearing, since it’s mixed with a mature, humanlike viewpoint.

To those not familiar with the plot, it goes: The family that Harold the dog lives with goes to see Dracula, and in the theatre seats they find a baby bunny and bring it home. The bunny is then named Bunnicula in honour of the film.

Chester the cat, the last character, senses something is immediately Not Right when white, drained vegetables start appearing…

A lot of the appeal of this book is the writing. It has Harold’s narration, Chester’s catlike ways of trying to stop a vampire rabbit, and really adorable descriptions of Bunnicula. The characterization of the family is pretty ace too.

Harriet the Spy


Harriet performs her onion dance

Tonight I read Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (had to look that up, I was looking at the tiiiny cover on my ipod and thought her last name was Pittsburgh) which was the source of my childhood fixation on tomato sandwiches. I’m also realizing I must have read the sequels, because there was a scene I clearly remembered involving goat cheese that did not, in fact, happen in this book.

Harriet wants to be a spy, so she keeps a dossier on everyone. Everyone. Unfortunately, Harriet doesn’t have very nice things to say to people and the inevitable happens.

When I read this the first time, I was eleven which is Harriet’s age, so her behaviour seemed perfectly natural. Now that I’m an adult with an eleven year old stepbrother, I see how accurate Harriet’s behaviour was. Running around, screaming when talking for no reason, not understanding how feelings work outside her. Don’t let that imply I don’t think my step-brother is totally awesome, but now I see how typical eleven year old Harriet’s attitude was.

A sort of thorny read emotionally, the part that really got me wasn’t even overtly sad, but it was just Harriet dealing with the fallout when things went wrong and her parents trying to help. There was just something about watching a kid suffer, even if the kid wasn’t fully aware they were suffering.

Great book, I can see why I loved it so much as a kid, even if I didn’t take its lesson to heart and had a brief fling with wanting to be a spy. Thank god for short attention spans.

The Adventures of Sally

“I have been asked,” repeated Mr. Faucitt, ignoring the unmannerly interruption [of who had asked him], which, indeed, he would have found it hard to answer, “to propose the health of our charming hostess (applause), coupled with the name of her brother, our old friend Fillmore Nicholas.”

The gentleman referred to, who sat at the speaker’s end of the table, acknowledged the tribute with a brief nod of the head. It was a nod of condescension; the nod of one who, conscious of being hedged about by social inferiors, nevertheless does his best to be not unkindly. And Sally, seeing it, debated in her mind for an instant the advisability of throwing an orange at her brother. There was one lying ready to her hand, and his glistening shirt-front offered an admirable mark; but she restrained herself. After all, if a hostess yields to her primitive impulses, what happens? Chaos. She had just frowned down the exuberance of the rebellious Murphys, and she felt that if, even with the highest motives, she began throwing fruit, her influence for good in that quarter would be weakened.

The Adventures of Sally by PG Wodehouse

The news tonight made me sick, so I read a book. I know that’s my response to everything, but there you go.

Not much to say about this, except it was nice to see Wodehouse write from the perspective of a woman for once. I love the Jeeves and Wooster stories, but women don’t usually come off very well in them, so I was curious how this would be. Turns out Sally’s quite lovely and well-rounded.

It went on a bit with some fat-shaming, but overall I liked it and it distracted me a bit. I liked Sally, her brother, and all the people in her life.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is my latest read book and I quite liked it. It’s about an eleven year old girl (twelve by the end) in 1899 Texas who wants to become a naturalist, aided and encouraged by her cantankerous grandfather she barely knew before he comforts her one summer day after her failure to get Darwin’s controversial new book from the library. It starts with her trying to understand where these new types of grasshoppers had appeared, big fat yellow ones, different from the small green ones she was used to.

She’s the only girl in a family of even kids and right in the middle, and three of her brothers are sweet on her best friend. In-between trying to master science, she has to deal with her mother trying to make her into the girl her mother didn’t get a chance to be thanks to the Civil War.

Speaking of that, the book dances around the fact that her family fought on the south’s side. They have a black cook, Viola, who is treated with a lot of respect in the book but the specter was held over the book. The uneasiness that left in me was the only sour point of the novel, however. Otherwise it is a perfectly sweet book, with Calpurnia coming off as a very realistic young girl.

Also, apparently it’s got my taste nailed because:

Are all books I strongly recommend, especially Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin which is still one of the best books I have ever read.

Summer book count: Working on #49.