J is for Janet Lennon at Camp Calamity

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 

Title:  Janet Lennon at Camp Calamity

Author: Barlow Meyers

Original Publication Date: 1962

Date I First Read: Sept 1986

Basic Category: Juvenile Fiction / Series

Basic Summary: Fictionalized Janet Lennon (of the Lennon Sisters and Lawrence Welk fame) has nothing to do this summer.  She is fourteen, and her sisters are all busy or married.  Suddenly she gets the opportunity to be a counselor at a summer camp.  They need her there immediately!  Pretty soon she is involved in all activities and drama the camp provides. 

What I Remember About the Book: I had no idea who the Lennon Sisters were.  I got the book from the bookshelf in Grandma’s basement.  It had been my mother’s, apparently.  I read the book in no time at all.  I remember that one of Janet’s charges - Karen, the scholarship girl -liked birdcalls, and had her teach the other girls.  This same camper also ran off and discovered new trails, which Janet uses to get a kidnapped girl.    

What I Took Away From the Book:  Yes, you can have a boring summer even if you are a famous singer.   Yes, you can have an exciting summer if you are suddenly needed as a camp counselor.   (Actually, I always thought that was kind of stupid, because I never had a boring summer.  Ever.  Even as a kid, there was swimming, biking, piano practice, and lots and lots of books (not for school) to read for fun. There were stories to be written too, in secret notebooks.  I always thought that people who were bored were boring people . . . and that as long as there is something to read or a piece of paper and a pen to be had, there was absolutely no reason to be bored! 

Rating (1-5 stars):  3.5 

Here is a link to the Lennon Sisters today:  http://www.lennonsisters.com/home.html

I is for Izzy, Willy-Nilly

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 

Title:  Izzy, Willy-Nilly

Author:  Cynthia Voigt

Original Publication Date: 1985

Date I First Read: August 1987

Basic Category: YA/Teen Fiction

Basic Summary: Izzy is from a “nice” (this word is used often in the book) family, but she is 15 and has been invited to a party by a popular guy.  Well, he’s been drinking at the party, and he drives Izzy home.  They never made it home.  Marco is fine, but Izzy is not.  Her leg ends up being so destroyed in the accident that it has to be amputated.

What I Remember About the Book:  I was 12 and about to enter seventh grade when I read this.   I remember being in the back seat of our old brown ’76 Plymouth Valarie on the way home from the library and reading the very first page.  I was confused . . . and then finally, it dawned on me that Izzy had been in an accident – and Izzy was confused, too.  I also remember Izzy making new (and better) friends.  And Izzy takes up cross stitch, something I’ve always liked to do.   It all made quite an impact on me.  See below.

This was the first Cynthia Voigt book I had ever read.  Over the next year and a half, I read just about all of the rest of her books that were out (and at the library.)  The Callander Papers is my other favorite of hers, both then and now.

What I Took Away From the Book:  Never, ever get in a car with someone who has drunk.  Never, ever drink that much myself, either. I would tell myself, “I don’t want to be stupid like Izzy. She should have gotten a ride home with someone else.  Or called her parents.”   And I did not.  That said . . . I am quite a lightweight when it come to alchohol, and beer makes me nauseous (the half a beer that managed to drink when I was 22 made me vomit – and I had heartburn for hours after.)  Needless to say, even as an adult, I don’t drink much or often. 

Rating (1-5 stars):  4.5  

H is for Heidi

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 

Title: Heidi

Author: Johanna Spyri

Original Publication Date: 1880

Date I First Read: 1982/1983

Basic Category: Juvenile Fiction (although, the author apparently said it was “from children and those who love children”, according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi)

Basic Summary: Heidi (short for Adelheide) is an orphan, and her aunt doesn’t want to raise her anymore.  The aunt takes her to her grandfather in the mountains – the Alps, because after all, this is Switzerland.  He is recluse of sorts.  Heidi becomes friends with Peter, the goatherd, and his blind grandmother.  Her aunt comessagain to take her to the city, where Heidi is to be the companion of an ill rich girl, Klara.  Heidi becomes extremely homesick. 

What I Remember: This was one of the first long so-called “chapter books” that I read completely on my own.  It took a while.  I had been loaned a copy by my grandparents (which inherited some years later) because Grandpa’s ancestry is partially Swiss, and this book takes place in Switzerland!  I also had a Little Golden Book version that I loved, but I wanted to read the real thing!   I remember being very insistent about this.  It was not abridged, either.  I remember most Heidi having to leave the goats to go to the city, and then of course, Klara comes to visit Heidi’s mountain and miraculously learns to walk. 

After that, I read more orphan books more or less from the same time period . . . and of course they have similar themes and miraculous recoveries – such as The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter.

What I Took Away From the Book: Mountains are wonderful.  Cheese is wonderful.  You might find your future husband as a young boy working as a goatherd.  You never know!  You might want to become a physical therapist but they didn't really exist back in 1880 – oops.  

G is for Girl Who Owned a City

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 

Title:  Girl Who Owned a City
 Author: O. T. Nelson

Original Publication Date: 1979

Date I First Read: 1988

Basic Category: YA/Teen Fiction / Post-Apocalyptic 

Basic Summary:  Everyone who is above a certain age dies in a plague/virus.   Lisa and her brother are left to fend for themselves in a Chicago suburb.   

What I Remember (most) About the Book: The kids barricaded themselves in a warehouse or school, I think.   Honestly, it was one of the first apocalyptic books I ever read, and it made an impression on me, though I remember that I liked Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence better. 

What I Took Away From the Book: Kids can survive in world without adults . . . if they can think like adults sometimes. 

Rating (1-5 stars):  4.0 stars – I would have given it four stars back then.  Now, I don’t know.  I re-read it in 2006 or so.  Portions left me wondering, and asking “Would I have really been able to drive a car at 10?” (I was maybe almost tall enough with the seat pulled up.)  I think I am going to have to find it, if I can, and read it again.   

F is for The Family Nobody Wanted

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 

Title:  Family Nobody Wanted, The
 Author: Helen Doss

Original Publication Date: 1954

Date I First Read: 1988

Basic Category: Nonfiction / Memoir / Adoption

Basic Summary:  It is the late 1930's and Helen and her husband can’t seem to be able to conceive.  They started adopting children, and because the wait is so long, they are willing to take older children and children who are Asian and Mexican in ancestry.  

What I Remember (most) About the Book: I remember most the section describing their experiences while living in a parsonage in Hebron, Illinois in the early 1940's.  They only had four or five of their eventual dozen children, but it was all quite eventful with balloons being thrown into the old coal furnace, not enough coal during a blizzard, all of the kids being sick with chicken pox, the basement flooding, and lots of cherries to be canned.  

What I Took Away From the Book:  I loved this book at age 13ish.  I re-read it a number of times.  I liked that they adopted all of these children – and that she wrote a rather humorous book about it all.  I loved being able to go to the library basement where all of the old issues of Life magazines bound into volumes and stored.  This was pre-internet (at least for me) . . .   the family was featured in Life prior to their last three children coming into their lives. I loved to read about families with large numbers of children.  Today, I think, they would have never been allowed to adopt so many children.  Right? 

Rating (1-5 stars):  4.0 stars – I would have given it four stars back then. 

Here is a link to a page that contains two of the photos and interesting discussion of the book.  

http://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/topics/familynobodywanted.htm

E is for The Eyre Affair

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 

Title: Eyre Affair, The

Author:  Jasper Fforde

Original Publication Date: 2001

Date I First Read: 2003

Basic Category: Fiction – Comic Fantasy/Alternative History

Basic Summary:  Thursday Next works for SpecOps 27, the Literary Detectives.  In her world, literature is very important, and it is possible to jump in and out of books.  If something in literature is changed, it can change the world – so it is important that literature is policed.   

What I Remember About the Book: I actually listened to this book the first time I read it, on audio cd on a trip in my car.  This is funny as I had an ARC of the book since before it was released but never read it (until later.)  It was the mid-1980s in this alternate history.  I remember laughing out loud a lot.  I remember Thursday’s inventor uncle Mycroft;  Pickwick, Thursday’s cloned dodo bird; Shakespeare machines at airports;  jumping into books; And, of course, Landon, her eventual husband. 

What I Took Away From the Book: The fun of a parallel, very similar but very different, universe.  And an urge to actually read Jane Eyre (I did for a college class, and really disliked it.)  I did re-read part of Jane Eyre so that The Eyre Affair made more sense.

Rating (1-5 stars):  5

D is for Dark Reunion

(For the 2013 A to Z Blogging Challenge, I will be featuring one book each day, that begins with that day's letter, that made an impression on me.  This means that for some reason, I didn't just read that book and forget about it.  No, I still think about it after some period of time has passed.) 


Title:  Dark Reunion (Vampire Diaries #4)
Author:  L.J. Smith
Original Publication Date: 1991
Date I First Read: 1992
Basic Category: YA/Teen Fiction / Vampires

Basic Summary:  This gives away the prior books in the series (sorry about that), but Elena is dead.  There is still evil in Falls Church, so her friends battle the evil. This story is told mostly from her friend Bonnie’s point of view.   

What I Remember About the Book: Elena is dead and her friends are sad. There is something evil going on.   What I remember most is . . . 

SPOILERS!!

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Stephan coming back and Elena somehow being reborn in a field full of Civil War ghosts.

What I Took Away From the Book:  Dead doesn’t always mean you’re really dead for always. 

I was still in high school when this book came out and I read it.  It was my favorite of the first four.   I am not appreciative that there are suddenly more books in this series in the last couple of years.  I liked the way this book ended.  It should have ended there.  As well, I didn’t like the first episode of the tv series.  I haven’t watched it since.  

Soon after, I read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles books for the first time.  They are definitely far superior to Ms. Smith's books.  However, this particular book has stuck with me for some reason.  I think it is because of the Civil War ghosts.  And a crush on Stephan.

Rating (1-5 stars):  3.5  - I might have given this book a four back then.  It was just nice fluff to read between studying.  And reading more full-blown horror with scary dolls and ice picks by Ruby Jean Jensen.