Marion Zimmer Bradley must have had some very strange experiences in the 1970s in Berkeley.
Her book, The Inheritor
As with Cam, the narrator of House
Naturally, Emily begins studying piano and harpsichord with Simon, and Leslie falls in love with him. Charming hippies come out of the woodwork to warn Emily and Leslie about how dangerous Simon is and how he has followed "the left handed path" to try to regain his piano talent after a serious accident.
This story makes more sense than House
Anne Lindbergh is the daughter of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author of Gifts from the Sea. When I picked up Nick of Time
Actually, the daughter has more of a sense of humor than her mother. Nick of Time
Nick, who lives in the future, appears one morning in the kitchen of the strange alternative boarding school where Jericho (the narrator), Alison, and Bunny (the other time-travelers) go to school. Nick and his family manage a museum about late 20th century customs, in the "historic" home where the others go to school — which is also Jericho’s home. The school is run by Jericho’s father, a certifiable loony who goes by the title Fugelman. Misinterpretations about 20th century culture are some of the funniest parts of the book.
I would say the themes of the book are probably how hard it is to be 13, the pressure to conform to social expectations, and the rewards of succeeding in being a non-conformist, and the difficulties that being a non-conformist can impose on the people around you, especially if you’re an adult non-conformist with children.
But the book isn’t preachy, it’s funny and clever, and the language is delicious.
Laurence Yep is an extremely prolific and talented children’s/young adult author.
The first time I read something he wrote, was at ALA’s annual meeting in 2002. He’d just published Spring Pearl
Amah
Amy is also a talented dancer, but her lessons suffer when she has to take care of her sibs during class and rehersal time. At the same time, Stephanie is busily bribing the good wishes of Amy’s mother and siblings with gifts.Of course the tension mounts, but the girls wind up learning from one another, and so do their parents.
It’s a sweet story, and Yep does a nice job of conveying how hard it is to be a 12 year old girl.
I’m not sure this book was even worth the $1.87 I paid for it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Marion Zimmer Bradley. I loved Mists of Avalon
But some of her other work is just cheesy schlock SF, and I’m sorry to say that The House Between the Worlds
The basic plotline is that a young researcher in the UC Berkeley Department of Parapsychology agrees to test a new drug that enhances ESP, but in him and 10% of other users, also appears to fling them into an alternate universe. However, they appear there as "tweenmen" who lack substance and who must return to their home worlds and reunite with their bodies in order to survive. The world that narrator Cam finds himself in is at war with a villain who has figured out ways to bring evil troll-like creatures from still a 4th world into both our world AND the world Cam reaches through these drugs, where the trolls rape and brutally kill. Romance, danger, adventure, frustration, and mystery-solving ensues.
The work does have Zimmer Bradley’s characteristic feminist bent, and interesting tension between male and female characters around chivalry, appropriate behavior, and respect for women’s intellectual and leadership abilities. But in this book, the politics are less subtle and successfully woven into the story than they are in Mists or Firebrand.
The book is also dated. Published in 1981, it radiates having been written in Berkley in the 1970s. Reading the drug references today is almost jarring. The idea that a University would conduct drug experiments like the one central to the plot of this book is almost unimaginable.
Zimmer Bradley is a prolific writer. Read something else she wrote.
Yesterday, we took dinner over to my cube-neighbor Harry’s house and met his wife and their now-one-week-old baby, Max.
It made it more real for both of us. Even though Max is a big baby, weighing more than 9 lbs at birth, he’s still SO TINY and vulnerable looking. He didn’t seem to enjoy anything but being curled up in the fetal position against Mommy or Daddy.
And in six months, we’re going to be the sleep deprived adults helping a tiny, vulnerable, hungry person learn how to live out here in the big, bright, loud, scary, exciting, and overwhelming world.
It feels both moving and frightening, the idea of all that responsibility.
And true to form, Jill is trying to plan for every possibility, and I am trying to read up on them all. As if that’s going to work. 
My extremely cool new toy arrived today!
6 GB, engraved with 2005 EarthLink Adoption Challenge. So far, I’ve downloaded 3 complete episodes of This American Life.
And, my friend Amy sent on a new (to me) Silly Internet Quiz!
Directions:
1) Type "Your Name is" (including the quote marks), into Google.
2) Pick out and share your 5 favorite results.
Here are mine:
I know so many wonderful librarians, that I have an extremely high expectation of libraries and my library experience.
I think that’s why it took me two days to write this post.
Saturday morning, I had my first really unpleasant library experience. It was actually shocking, on a number of levels.
I was browsing the children’s fiction section of my local library, when I overheard what was obviously a tour of some kind going on a few rows over.
The library staffer conducting the tour — I refuse to believe he could possibly have been a librarian, for reasons that will become obvious shortly — explained that children’s fiction was here, children’s biographies were there, and children’s non-fiction was in that area against the wall.
One of the people on the tour politely asked the staffer what fiction is. I was startled, as the voice sounded like an adult man, and listened as the library staffer answered in a hard voice, "Are you trying to give me a hard time?"
I nearly dropped my books. While I was taking a deep breath and trying to decide what to do, the questioner said no, he just wanted to make sure he understood what the library staffer was telling him.
The staffer then said, voice still hard, that fiction was everything that wasn’t non-fiction or bio.
I stepped out of my row. The group was about 6 feet away from me, and I couldn’t see the library staffer right away. There were 3 people on the tour, all adults by my guess. I would also guess that all of them were Americans by birth. They appeared to be the same race as the staffer giving the tour.
The questioner continued his polite inquiry. He asked if instead, the man could perhaps explain what non-fiction or bio was, because he really wanted to understand what was what.
I nearly jumped in, but fortunately, the library staffer seemed to finally understand the question. He answered, "Fiction is stuff that’s made up. Bio is stories about people, and non-fiction is like facts."
Everyone was satisfied with that answer, and I stepped back into my row as they continued on their tour.
There was just so much in that interaction. Did those people graduate from high school without knowing what fiction is? Heck, how did they graduate from elementary school??? On the other hand, that might explain why a group of adults, with no children visible, are getting a tour of the children’s section of the library.
Librarians are just as entitled to get frustrated as anyone else. And I suspect that the number of people who ask questions of them all day long may lead to increased frustration. BUT. Librarians are also educators. And anyone who works in a library in a job that involves contact with the people using the library is an educator. Probably not as systemically as a traditional teacher, but far more than most jobs.
So I’m curious, librarians. Do people give you a hard time, baiting you with deliberately "dumb" questions? Is it hard to stay patient when you’re explaining your community’s resources for the 500th time? Do you often feel like you’re cleaning up after a failed educational system?
