Palette cleansing time! The past few weeks have been devoted to reading, and re-reading some light philosophy, psychology, and pop-psychology books and articles for my HTR column. I needed a break from wading through (and hopefully correctly interpreting) the high powered language. Like magic, Horten's Incredible Illusions dropped in my lap. The cover clearly draws on the wild popularity of The Mysterious Benedict Society series, but that's OK. It worked. It got me to read the book. Tween and young adult fiction always get me through transitions, and times when I just can't concentrate on anything more challenging.
I'm not quite ready to dig into The Family Fang, our book discussion title for July. In fact, I'm a little worried about how it will be received. It's a dark comedy. That's all I'll say since I blogged about it in the past....loved it...but I'm still worried - and excited- to see what everyone thinks.
No, on to "Horten..."
Trapped in the Beeton Museum inside the Pharaoh's Pyramid, Stuart slotted a star shaped disk into place, the pyramid fell open and he was in the middle of a desert. Just when height-challenged Stuart Horten thinks his big adventure is over, he discovers that Great Uncle Tony has left behind yet another mystery for him. He has hidden his will, and his magic tricks are clues to its location.
Great mash-up. Mystery with magic. I love magic and was lucky enough to see Doug Henning twice. My friend, Chris, did sound, or was it lights? for a magician for a while right out of college. He had to sign all sorts of agreements that he would never reveal any of the secrets, and to this day, I have only been able to pry one out of him. William Pounstone wrote several Big Secrets books in which he reveals, among other things, how several high tech magic tricks are done. Believe me, they are high tech, and the descriptions are so complex that the magic has not been ruined for me.
Anyway, Horton will be published in September. Watch for it.
Other stuff....
- I'll be closing out the events blog soon. Instead, I put an events tab at the top of this blog.
- We're working with Alison Arngrim, Nellie from the "Little House on the Prairie" series. She'll be appearing at an Historical Society event in August and she has asked us to be there to sell books with her.
- Check out Heart-A-Rama blog on July 3rd for an announcement about the 2013 theme. www.heartarama.blogspot.com .
- Emily Trask will be playing Lady Macbeth in Rhode Island this summer.
- Caught up with Brendo and Jenny this past week. Now I need to find out what Jacque has been up to. It is great to keep in touch with these past employees. I valued them as workers, and value them even more as friends.
This new Blogger platform continues to terrorize me, but I am getting the hang of it. It can do some fun tricks, but, in the hands of a techno-phobe like me, those tricks oftem backfire.
