Summer 2009 Reading Spectacular #9

Today I finished two books started yesterday, continued one, and started two others.

Off the Road by Nina Bawden is sort of a blend of Lois Lowry’s The Giver and ......, with a bit of M. Night Shamalamadingdong’s The Village thrown in for good measure. In a society in which only-children are the law, and where Oldies are sent on their sixty-fifth birthdays to vague fates at Memory Theme Parks, Tom makes a fateful decision of his own when he follows his grandfather who goes “over the wall” and into the Wilds beyond. There he meets a family he never knew existed and discovers a way of life he never imagined. But he is there as an Illegal and the authorities on the Outside will only look the other way for so long. Perhaps my only real criticism of the book is that Bawden could have taken the story further; the premise has potential for so much more. In a roundabout way, I guess that’s a compliment.

I also finished Richard Peck’s Here Lies the Librarian, another example of what Peck does so well – turn-of-the-century(ish) historical / whimsical fiction. This book brought me back to The Teacher’s Funeral and could conceivably be considered a companion work. Here Lies the Librarian deals with tomboyish Eleanor and her brother as they try to operate a garage during the advent of the automobile age in small-town America, while the town is carried along into a miniature renaissance of sorts by a quartet of affluent young women from Indianapolis who take over the local public library. Enjoyable if you like that sort of thing, which I do. Ha!