books
American Rose: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott
A biography of Gypsy Rose Lee which doesn't try too hard to figure out the inner life that Gypsy preferred to hide. It follows her childhood, her sister (June Havoc), and their undeniably warped mother.
At the same time it gives us a little history of vaudeville, burlesque, and being an entertainer during the Great Depression.
I've never had a particular interest in Gypsy Rose Lee, knowing the name more than anything else, but it was a really interesting book. It flowed well, was well written, and didn't really go in for guess work at all. The inclusion of history which wasn't strictly about Gypsy rounded the work out without feeling forced or truly off-topic. Recommended.
The Damned Utd by David Peace
This a fictionalized account of Brian Clough's 44 days managing Leeds United with many flashbacks to his time managing Derby Co and some job hunting post Leeds. While the audio edition was really well-read, with all the anger and frustration voiced, it was a bit difficult because the flashbacks comes so frequently. The scene changes paragraph to paragraph at times.
I saw the movie they did based on the book/Clough a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. He is a slightly more positive, or perhaps just more human, figure in the movie than in the book where his constant anger and stress dominate. Despite that, you root for Clough and clean football as you go. It's a short, intense book.
Recommended for football/soccer fans.
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
This is a good set of essays that range from the personal to the politically personal to the generally political. The title comes from Gay's media derived picture of feminism when she was younger, a twisted caricature made of crude stereotypes ignoring the main goals of feminism. That's not something that I can relate to much, so in those parts of the book I was mainly puzzled (not truly puzzled but you know what I mean).
There are sections on gender and sexuality, race and entertainment, and politics gender and race. A lot of that was repeat information for me, as I've been pretty tuned into those discussions for the past couple years, but they were well-written and interesting even so.
There are, of course, some places where Gay screws up. I was disappointed when she listed groups left out of mainstream (often meaning cis, hetero, white) feminism and didn't have disabled people on there. She didn't even mention disability later on when bringing up a quote from a feminist who stated that a woman who isn't working is hurting feminism (she only mentioned those who chose not to work). She mentioned trans women being shut out, but her language in the sections about birth control and abortion rights exclude trans men who often need those services as well.
Her views on trigger warnings (she doesn't really like them) ignore what to me is paramount - that a) some people have extreme PTSD reactions to triggers and b) we all know we'll be triggered in many spaces, but if you can possibly warn someone ahead of time and save them one extra moment of stress, why wouldn't you? It doesn't censor you to say, "Hey, I'll be talking about this later, be aware of that." In one place she also talked about psychopaths and sociopaths as though these were synonyms for criminality and all people with those disorders were automatically criminals.
I would certainly still recommend this book, particularly if you're not all that tuned in to these issues and particularly for high school and college women who often have that warped view of feminism. Her essays about media are especially important. I listened to the audiobook which was really well read, with all the anger and disbelief and humor present.
The Property by Rutu Modan
This is a graphic novel about an elderly woman returning to Poland with her granddaughter, ostensibly to see about regaining property taken from her family during WWII. Regina Segal, the grandmother, is extremely cagey about everything and what she tells her granddaughter Mica, varies quite a bit.
It was an interesting and enjoyable book, very realistic in the way people and families operate. I enjoyed the art too, which is in the ligne claire style pioneered by Herge.
The Siege by Ismail Kadare
Kadare has stated that this is not a historical novel, though similar events have happened all throughout history (sieges in general, but also between these two countries/empires). However, this is a generic siege, a generic army, tied to no specific action.
The Ottoman Empire is besieging a fortress in Albania, and while war is at the heart of the book it doesn't feel like a military novel. The Ottoman camp is somewhat allegorical to the communist regime Kadare had lived under most of his life (born in 1936) and was living under when this book was published (just after the country was declared an atheist state by Hoxha).
Chronicles make up another key idea of the book, as a good bit of our time with the Ottoman army is centered around the chronicler brought to tell the story of the siege and there are very short chapters interspersed which read as a chronicle of the siege written by an Albanian in the fortress.
It's a very rich book, and I really enjoyed reading it. I'm not a big fan of strictly military novels, and again, this didn't feel like one. It was more focused on life in the Ottoman camp, the various key players and their relationships, the psychology of all-powerful leaders and soldiers, etc... It all worked very well.
Recommended!
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
This is the story of two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn during and after WWII. Reuven is from a Modern Orthodox community, his father is a Talmudic scholar, while Danny is from a Hasidic community which his father leads. Danny's father, Reb Saunders, permits their friendship in part to use Reuven as a buffer to talk to his son.
It's a novel about traditions, silences, and friendships. It flows through the events of the wider world but retains its narrow focus on Danny and Reuven.
I don't know exactly what to say about it, but I really enjoyed it. Reuven and Danny are unusual young men but by and large it felt like a very realistic portrait.
West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story by Tamim Ansary
I've read two other books by Ansary, Games Without Rules and Destiny Disrupted, which I loved, so I was excited when the library had his memoir. This was his first published book, and it seems to have sprung into being after an e-mail he wrote to friends post-9/11 become widely known.
Ansary, child of an American mother and Afghan father, was born in 1948 and grew up in Afghanistan. He witnessed a variety of changes in the country, particularly when it comes to education. At 16 he started attending an American boarding school. With his sister going to an American college, his mother moved to the US with his younger brother. Their father briefly worked as some sort of ambassador or diplomat but when his fortunes fell and he was removed from that job he chose to remain in Afghanistan.
The book follows Ansary's life through college and after, an extensive trip through the middle east, and his work with charities set up to aid Afghanis during the 1970s.
It's an interesting life and an interesting book. Ansary illuminates a lot of details about Afghanistan that most Americans will be ignorant of, and I really enjoy his writing style (particularly with him reading the audiobook). I think it's a particularly interesting book for others born around 1948, just to add another life experience to how they think about their youth.
Definitely recommended, though if you only read one Ansary book, make it Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.
Safekeeping by Karen Hesse
I was extremely fond of Hesse's books when I was in grade school and middle school, starting with Letters From Rifka. She's a wonderful children's/YA writer, and she often tackles difficult subjects. In middle school I would re-read all her books (that my library had) every single month (along with new books), because I so wanted them imprinted on my heart.
This is a bit of a departure, being a present day/near future Dystopian story. That aspect was a little confusing to me. The president of the US is assassinated and the American People's Party (APP) has taken over (think Tea Party or the BNP). Only later it's said that president was apparently a member of the APP, so I don't know. The US is in chaos, people being rounded up, electricity spotty, roaming gangs, snipers, etc...
Radley, our protagonist, has been in Haiti working with an orphanage. When the assassination is announced she flies home only to find that she doesn't have the papers needed to get to her town. Her parents' phone is disconnected, her cell phone is dead, and she has no money. She walks to her town in Vermont to find her house empty and no sign of her parents. The police bang on the door at intervals and she hides in fear, dumpster diving at night and not attempting to, you know, contact anyone she knows (barring one person) in her small town. Sigh. She decides to walk to Canada and meets up with another young woman who's traveling there.
I just don't know about this book. I don't tend to like dystopian themes anyway, but I couldn't suspend my disbelief for some intervals. I would have liked it more in middle school probably, but even that's hard to say (I was pretty focused on the past in my reading). It's a dark book, and that's fine, but Radley is more distrustful (in certain ways) than seems realistic (and there's one instant where she's far too trusting). Perhaps Hesse was trying to convey how confused and shaken Radley was by not being clear about the political situation, or only giving us what Radley knew, but it really was baffling and made it hard to take the book seriously.
William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
Being both a fan of the original trilogy and Shakespeare, I snapped these up when they were published. I'd look at a page or two, look up how a favorite line was rendered, and then put it back on the shelf. I've read plenty of plays cold before, never having seen a production, but it takes more motivation these days.
Then I found the audio editions! They are multi-cast recordings and the stage directions are read as well. The readers do a good job of mimicking the original cast and it was a really fun listen. Rather than just doing the script straight there are interior monologues inserted for various characters (I admit I really didn't care for the ones they did for R2D2).
I do wish they had inserted more archaic words where appropriate rather than just changing sentence structure and using thee, thy, though, dost, etc... All in all, great fun though. Reminds me of being in 7th grade and listening to Star Wars radio broadcast on NPR every week on the way home from my clarinet lessons.
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay
This was a relatively enjoyable book, and talks directly to people who worked at the park about how they started, what the work was like, what the social aspect was like, etc... It's much less about the timeline of discoveries that helped the war effort. It's also just about the nature about having to keep this huge aspect of your life secret both during and after the war.
While the information was all interesting, the books felt scattered and disorganized. I listened to the audiobook and sometimes that can enhance those feelings, but I think this one would feel like that in print too. I'm not sure exactly what I expected from this, I've already read a book about the enigma machine and the work on that. Given what's covered in this, I'm not sure it could be organized all that well.
Recommended for the WWII completest, but maybe not the casual reader.
I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (everywhere but the US it was published as The Messenger, which is a much better title, really.)
I'm not quite sure how to describe this book. It's sort of YA magical realism maybe? Ed Kennedy is in his late teens, working as a taxi driver. One day he does something brave and then he receives a playing card in the mail, with a list of addresses on it. At each address he finds something is wrong, and intuits that he's supposed to help. He receives more cards throughout the book, which sometimes require deciphering.
If you've only read Zusak's The Book Thief you're missing out, and you won't realize that he has a great talent for writing teenage boys realistically and smartly. Often with YA novels there are characters who are written as we would have liked to be as teens (confident, cool, smart, and funny at all times), and those characters jar me, they never seem true to life. If there's one feeling that is nearly inescapable as a teen it's insecurity, though many of us are good at hiding that and it's easy to forget how things really felt once we're adults.
While I enjoyed this book, it won't be a favorite. The premise was a bit too silly for me, though I like the lessons the book conveys (the power of small acts, the importance of paying attention to the world and not just focusing on ourselves). Whether or not the premise of this book sounds interesting I do highly recommend Zusak's Fighting Ruben Wolfe and its sequel Getting the Girl (non-US title: When Dogs Cry). If you're struggling for book gifts for teenage boys, I really recommend those two as they have some very important lessons
How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman
This cover is so much nicer than the US one! So unfair!
Ruth Goodman is a historian who has taken part in numerous projects where she and other historians and archeologists work a farm in a certain historical period (with a pretty fixed date) for a year. I don't know if this is always called experimental archeology, but that's what they call it on the most recent show she's on. The TV shows covering this are basically my favorite thing ever, and I've grown incredibly fond of Goodman. Her focus is domestic/social history which is my favorite thing to study. She has an endless enthusiasm for this work even when it's incredibly difficult (such as all laundry forever until the modern washing machine was invented).
The book covers every day life as a Victorian by studying the routines of a single day (though I know that sounds a bit simplistic, it's not really), which is highly effective. She talks about all classes of society, differences between town and country but also between north and south, and compares the same needs at the beginning of the Victorian period and at the end.
Once I started reading the book I found it extremely difficult to put down. It's something that I could have easily read in a day, but I purposefully slowed myself down so I could enjoy it for a long period (something I rarely do). Goodman's writing is compelling and in many places she has her own experiences to add. The book is full of small pictures throughout the text as well as one small glossy section.
Highly recommended to everyone. If you read one book about the Victorian period, make it this one.
Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome
This is the fourth book in the Swallows and Amazons series, this time taking place during the winter. The Walker children (the Swallows) are staying near the Blacketts (the Amazons) for the winter while their mother goes to visit their father overseas. They meet and become friends with Dorothea and Dick who are also staying on the island and who are "town children." Their winter vacation gets extended by a full month due to Nancy contracting the mumps and the rules of boarding schools not allowing children back if they've been around a contagious disease. I can't remember if it had made clear they were all boarders in the other books but I didn't realize it.
Very enjoyable, though I found it rather odd that Dorothea was extremely concerned about the other children seeing her brother as more than just a common or garden variety nerd. I don't think my siblings cared even a tiny bit about what anyone thought of me. Granting they're much older, but it seems unlikely that Zachary thought about how anyone thought of Kyla, and they're closer to having a similar age gap to the Ds (I think).
These really are the perfect books for the child I was. Very imaginative, looking on imagination as a totally GOOD thing, and kids getting to be relatively self-sufficient.
I'll post the full list with favorites bolded and special dislikes in italics or something later.
A biography of Gypsy Rose Lee which doesn't try too hard to figure out the inner life that Gypsy preferred to hide. It follows her childhood, her sister (June Havoc), and their undeniably warped mother.
At the same time it gives us a little history of vaudeville, burlesque, and being an entertainer during the Great Depression.
I've never had a particular interest in Gypsy Rose Lee, knowing the name more than anything else, but it was a really interesting book. It flowed well, was well written, and didn't really go in for guess work at all. The inclusion of history which wasn't strictly about Gypsy rounded the work out without feeling forced or truly off-topic. Recommended.
The Damned Utd by David Peace
This a fictionalized account of Brian Clough's 44 days managing Leeds United with many flashbacks to his time managing Derby Co and some job hunting post Leeds. While the audio edition was really well-read, with all the anger and frustration voiced, it was a bit difficult because the flashbacks comes so frequently. The scene changes paragraph to paragraph at times.
I saw the movie they did based on the book/Clough a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. He is a slightly more positive, or perhaps just more human, figure in the movie than in the book where his constant anger and stress dominate. Despite that, you root for Clough and clean football as you go. It's a short, intense book.
Recommended for football/soccer fans.
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
This is a good set of essays that range from the personal to the politically personal to the generally political. The title comes from Gay's media derived picture of feminism when she was younger, a twisted caricature made of crude stereotypes ignoring the main goals of feminism. That's not something that I can relate to much, so in those parts of the book I was mainly puzzled (not truly puzzled but you know what I mean).
There are sections on gender and sexuality, race and entertainment, and politics gender and race. A lot of that was repeat information for me, as I've been pretty tuned into those discussions for the past couple years, but they were well-written and interesting even so.
There are, of course, some places where Gay screws up. I was disappointed when she listed groups left out of mainstream (often meaning cis, hetero, white) feminism and didn't have disabled people on there. She didn't even mention disability later on when bringing up a quote from a feminist who stated that a woman who isn't working is hurting feminism (she only mentioned those who chose not to work). She mentioned trans women being shut out, but her language in the sections about birth control and abortion rights exclude trans men who often need those services as well.
Her views on trigger warnings (she doesn't really like them) ignore what to me is paramount - that a) some people have extreme PTSD reactions to triggers and b) we all know we'll be triggered in many spaces, but if you can possibly warn someone ahead of time and save them one extra moment of stress, why wouldn't you? It doesn't censor you to say, "Hey, I'll be talking about this later, be aware of that." In one place she also talked about psychopaths and sociopaths as though these were synonyms for criminality and all people with those disorders were automatically criminals.
I would certainly still recommend this book, particularly if you're not all that tuned in to these issues and particularly for high school and college women who often have that warped view of feminism. Her essays about media are especially important. I listened to the audiobook which was really well read, with all the anger and disbelief and humor present.
The Property by Rutu Modan
This is a graphic novel about an elderly woman returning to Poland with her granddaughter, ostensibly to see about regaining property taken from her family during WWII. Regina Segal, the grandmother, is extremely cagey about everything and what she tells her granddaughter Mica, varies quite a bit.
It was an interesting and enjoyable book, very realistic in the way people and families operate. I enjoyed the art too, which is in the ligne claire style pioneered by Herge.
The Siege by Ismail Kadare
Kadare has stated that this is not a historical novel, though similar events have happened all throughout history (sieges in general, but also between these two countries/empires). However, this is a generic siege, a generic army, tied to no specific action.
The Ottoman Empire is besieging a fortress in Albania, and while war is at the heart of the book it doesn't feel like a military novel. The Ottoman camp is somewhat allegorical to the communist regime Kadare had lived under most of his life (born in 1936) and was living under when this book was published (just after the country was declared an atheist state by Hoxha).
Chronicles make up another key idea of the book, as a good bit of our time with the Ottoman army is centered around the chronicler brought to tell the story of the siege and there are very short chapters interspersed which read as a chronicle of the siege written by an Albanian in the fortress.
It's a very rich book, and I really enjoyed reading it. I'm not a big fan of strictly military novels, and again, this didn't feel like one. It was more focused on life in the Ottoman camp, the various key players and their relationships, the psychology of all-powerful leaders and soldiers, etc... It all worked very well.
Recommended!
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
This is the story of two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn during and after WWII. Reuven is from a Modern Orthodox community, his father is a Talmudic scholar, while Danny is from a Hasidic community which his father leads. Danny's father, Reb Saunders, permits their friendship in part to use Reuven as a buffer to talk to his son.
It's a novel about traditions, silences, and friendships. It flows through the events of the wider world but retains its narrow focus on Danny and Reuven.
I don't know exactly what to say about it, but I really enjoyed it. Reuven and Danny are unusual young men but by and large it felt like a very realistic portrait.
West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story by Tamim Ansary
I've read two other books by Ansary, Games Without Rules and Destiny Disrupted, which I loved, so I was excited when the library had his memoir. This was his first published book, and it seems to have sprung into being after an e-mail he wrote to friends post-9/11 become widely known.
Ansary, child of an American mother and Afghan father, was born in 1948 and grew up in Afghanistan. He witnessed a variety of changes in the country, particularly when it comes to education. At 16 he started attending an American boarding school. With his sister going to an American college, his mother moved to the US with his younger brother. Their father briefly worked as some sort of ambassador or diplomat but when his fortunes fell and he was removed from that job he chose to remain in Afghanistan.
The book follows Ansary's life through college and after, an extensive trip through the middle east, and his work with charities set up to aid Afghanis during the 1970s.
It's an interesting life and an interesting book. Ansary illuminates a lot of details about Afghanistan that most Americans will be ignorant of, and I really enjoy his writing style (particularly with him reading the audiobook). I think it's a particularly interesting book for others born around 1948, just to add another life experience to how they think about their youth.
Definitely recommended, though if you only read one Ansary book, make it Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.
Safekeeping by Karen Hesse
I was extremely fond of Hesse's books when I was in grade school and middle school, starting with Letters From Rifka. She's a wonderful children's/YA writer, and she often tackles difficult subjects. In middle school I would re-read all her books (that my library had) every single month (along with new books), because I so wanted them imprinted on my heart.
This is a bit of a departure, being a present day/near future Dystopian story. That aspect was a little confusing to me. The president of the US is assassinated and the American People's Party (APP) has taken over (think Tea Party or the BNP). Only later it's said that president was apparently a member of the APP, so I don't know. The US is in chaos, people being rounded up, electricity spotty, roaming gangs, snipers, etc...
Radley, our protagonist, has been in Haiti working with an orphanage. When the assassination is announced she flies home only to find that she doesn't have the papers needed to get to her town. Her parents' phone is disconnected, her cell phone is dead, and she has no money. She walks to her town in Vermont to find her house empty and no sign of her parents. The police bang on the door at intervals and she hides in fear, dumpster diving at night and not attempting to, you know, contact anyone she knows (barring one person) in her small town. Sigh. She decides to walk to Canada and meets up with another young woman who's traveling there.
I just don't know about this book. I don't tend to like dystopian themes anyway, but I couldn't suspend my disbelief for some intervals. I would have liked it more in middle school probably, but even that's hard to say (I was pretty focused on the past in my reading). It's a dark book, and that's fine, but Radley is more distrustful (in certain ways) than seems realistic (and there's one instant where she's far too trusting). Perhaps Hesse was trying to convey how confused and shaken Radley was by not being clear about the political situation, or only giving us what Radley knew, but it really was baffling and made it hard to take the book seriously.
William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
Being both a fan of the original trilogy and Shakespeare, I snapped these up when they were published. I'd look at a page or two, look up how a favorite line was rendered, and then put it back on the shelf. I've read plenty of plays cold before, never having seen a production, but it takes more motivation these days.
Then I found the audio editions! They are multi-cast recordings and the stage directions are read as well. The readers do a good job of mimicking the original cast and it was a really fun listen. Rather than just doing the script straight there are interior monologues inserted for various characters (I admit I really didn't care for the ones they did for R2D2).
I do wish they had inserted more archaic words where appropriate rather than just changing sentence structure and using thee, thy, though, dost, etc... All in all, great fun though. Reminds me of being in 7th grade and listening to Star Wars radio broadcast on NPR every week on the way home from my clarinet lessons.
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay
This was a relatively enjoyable book, and talks directly to people who worked at the park about how they started, what the work was like, what the social aspect was like, etc... It's much less about the timeline of discoveries that helped the war effort. It's also just about the nature about having to keep this huge aspect of your life secret both during and after the war.
While the information was all interesting, the books felt scattered and disorganized. I listened to the audiobook and sometimes that can enhance those feelings, but I think this one would feel like that in print too. I'm not sure exactly what I expected from this, I've already read a book about the enigma machine and the work on that. Given what's covered in this, I'm not sure it could be organized all that well.
Recommended for the WWII completest, but maybe not the casual reader.
I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (everywhere but the US it was published as The Messenger, which is a much better title, really.)
I'm not quite sure how to describe this book. It's sort of YA magical realism maybe? Ed Kennedy is in his late teens, working as a taxi driver. One day he does something brave and then he receives a playing card in the mail, with a list of addresses on it. At each address he finds something is wrong, and intuits that he's supposed to help. He receives more cards throughout the book, which sometimes require deciphering.
If you've only read Zusak's The Book Thief you're missing out, and you won't realize that he has a great talent for writing teenage boys realistically and smartly. Often with YA novels there are characters who are written as we would have liked to be as teens (confident, cool, smart, and funny at all times), and those characters jar me, they never seem true to life. If there's one feeling that is nearly inescapable as a teen it's insecurity, though many of us are good at hiding that and it's easy to forget how things really felt once we're adults.
While I enjoyed this book, it won't be a favorite. The premise was a bit too silly for me, though I like the lessons the book conveys (the power of small acts, the importance of paying attention to the world and not just focusing on ourselves). Whether or not the premise of this book sounds interesting I do highly recommend Zusak's Fighting Ruben Wolfe and its sequel Getting the Girl (non-US title: When Dogs Cry). If you're struggling for book gifts for teenage boys, I really recommend those two as they have some very important lessons
How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman
This cover is so much nicer than the US one! So unfair!
Ruth Goodman is a historian who has taken part in numerous projects where she and other historians and archeologists work a farm in a certain historical period (with a pretty fixed date) for a year. I don't know if this is always called experimental archeology, but that's what they call it on the most recent show she's on. The TV shows covering this are basically my favorite thing ever, and I've grown incredibly fond of Goodman. Her focus is domestic/social history which is my favorite thing to study. She has an endless enthusiasm for this work even when it's incredibly difficult (such as all laundry forever until the modern washing machine was invented).
The book covers every day life as a Victorian by studying the routines of a single day (though I know that sounds a bit simplistic, it's not really), which is highly effective. She talks about all classes of society, differences between town and country but also between north and south, and compares the same needs at the beginning of the Victorian period and at the end.
Once I started reading the book I found it extremely difficult to put down. It's something that I could have easily read in a day, but I purposefully slowed myself down so I could enjoy it for a long period (something I rarely do). Goodman's writing is compelling and in many places she has her own experiences to add. The book is full of small pictures throughout the text as well as one small glossy section.
Highly recommended to everyone. If you read one book about the Victorian period, make it this one.
Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome
This is the fourth book in the Swallows and Amazons series, this time taking place during the winter. The Walker children (the Swallows) are staying near the Blacketts (the Amazons) for the winter while their mother goes to visit their father overseas. They meet and become friends with Dorothea and Dick who are also staying on the island and who are "town children." Their winter vacation gets extended by a full month due to Nancy contracting the mumps and the rules of boarding schools not allowing children back if they've been around a contagious disease. I can't remember if it had made clear they were all boarders in the other books but I didn't realize it.
Very enjoyable, though I found it rather odd that Dorothea was extremely concerned about the other children seeing her brother as more than just a common or garden variety nerd. I don't think my siblings cared even a tiny bit about what anyone thought of me. Granting they're much older, but it seems unlikely that Zachary thought about how anyone thought of Kyla, and they're closer to having a similar age gap to the Ds (I think).
These really are the perfect books for the child I was. Very imaginative, looking on imagination as a totally GOOD thing, and kids getting to be relatively self-sufficient.
I'll post the full list with favorites bolded and special dislikes in italics or something later.