Reading like it's my job #11 - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Ghost in the Wires
I've got some variety this week with a couple children's books, a fantasy, and a non-fiction. So many things to read and so little time!
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
I finally finished reading this with my four-year-old son and it was like pulling teeth: A little painful during, but glad we did it once it's over. One memory I'll take with me is how much he enjoyed William Wallace Denslow's illustrations (we read the 100th Anniversary edition). Every time we got to a page that didn't have a picture, he'd say "Boring part!" and go play with blocks or flip through the pages of a picture book. To his credit, he built Dorothy's house out of blocks and then destroyed it with a "cyclone," so the story wasn't completely lost on him. Safe to say that 4 is too young for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
As for me, the movie imagery and story have been seared into my brain and it was hard to put myself in the shoes of a person in 1900 reading this for the first time. A few things in the book felt out of place in the land of Oz. Some examples:
Kalidahs, which are monstrous beasts with bodies like bears and heads like tigers.
The Dainty China Country where everyone and everything was made of china and exceedingly brittle. They spend a chapter there and nothing really happens.
The Quadlings which are short, stout, flat-headed creatures with no arms that can shoot their heads from their bodies by stretching their necks.
The violence. The Tin Woodman was bewitched to chop off his own arms, legs, and head (thus requiring he have a new body made of tin). He also kills one yellow wildcat and forty wolves while the Scarecrow breaks the necks of forty crows.
Like I said, I'm glad I had the experience but it's not one we will revisit.
Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick
Kevin Mitnick is a highly accomplished phone/computer hacker and con man. He makes Frank Abagnale (the Catch Me If You Can guy) look tame by comparison. This is his autobiography and in part one he explains how easy it was for him, as a teenager, to hack into telephone companies in the 80's. He would make a series of phone calls to company employees, pretend he was a fellow employee, use the proper company lingo, and voila! they would give him certain seemingly harmless information. By combining a few pieces of seemingly harmless information, he would have enough credibility when it came time to ask for the family jewels. This technique is called social engineering and hackers and cons are still using it today. This book has been eye opening and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it along with his other books The Art of Deception, The Art of Intrusion, and The Art of Invisibility.
Other Stuff
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin - After enjoying book 1, The Wizard of Earthsea (see my letter #3), I was looking forward to returning to the world for book 2. The first half was slow, but I got through it and once Ged showed up in the underground labyrinth tombs, things got interesting. There's good stuff about choosing freedom, serving darkness or light, and how both the female character and the male character could not escape a certain doom without each other's help. You know, real life nuggets of wisdom in a fantasy novel package. It is likely I'll read book 3, but not anytime soon.
Pete's a Pizza by William Steig - A short, simple children's book about the author's own experience as a boy. On rainy days when he couldn't play outside, his dad would turn him into a pizza. Kneading the dough, stretching it, and adding toppings all require some imagination and a lot of tickling. My boys love this one and keep asking me to make them into pizzas. My oldest son even cut out pepperoni from red paper and cheese from white paper so I can add them as toppings.
That does it for me this week. Thanks for reading and please stay in touch! I'd love to hear from you and what you are enjoying.
Kyle