Belles-Lettres: Brilliant, Blue-Ribbon Books 2013

Biggest Surprise of the Year -  I Loved This Book! 

So Big by Edna Ferber; published in 1924

Top Three Non-Fiction Books That Were Entire Educations in Themselves: 

At Home by Bill Bryson; How to Live, Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell; The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey

Top Three Fiction Books (not mysteries): 

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster; Equilateral by Ken Kalfus; Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

Author Most Read: 

Donald Westlake - Six of his Dortmunder capers

Most Delightful Reread: 

Counting My Chickens... by The Duchess of Devonshire

Brothers I Would Most Like to Meet: 

Reggie and Nigel Heath of The Baker Street Letters, The Brothers of Baker Street, and The Baker Street Translation by Michael Robertson

Best Foreign Location: 

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and West With the Night by Beryl Markham

Most Laugh-Out-Loud Dysfunctional Family: 

The Spellman Files and The Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

Dreamiest Tale: 

The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys

Best Road Trip: 

The Lost Continent - Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson

Mystery Writer I Am So Glad I Found: 

Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective, Diamond Solitaire, The Summons, and Bloodhounds. 

As If I Needed More Reasons Not To Go On A Cruise: 

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.

Proof That The South Shall Rise Again: 

Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White.

Authors I Have Met and Their Books I Read This Year: 

Duffy Brown (Killer in Crinolines), William Zinsser (The Writer Who Stayed), and George S. McGovern (Abraham Lincoln)

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth is a book full of adventure. It is a tale of friendship and bravery. But most of all, it is a story told so cleverly that it leaves one in awe of the imagination and wit of its author Norton Juster. I wish I had written this book!

The basic story has to do with Milo, a young boy who doesn't find the world to be a very interesting place. There is nothing that excites him. Every day is the same. Dull. But one day he comes home from another boring day at school to find a box in his room that was not there that morning. It turns out to be a tollbooth complete with two coins. He assembles it, gets in his little car, inserts one of the coins in the slot and drives through.

What happens next is the tale. He arrives in a land that is full of the oddest, most enchanting characters you will ever meet. There are King Azaz the Unabridged, who rules the kingdom of words (Dictionopolis) and his brother the Mathemagician who rules the kingdom of numbers (Digitopolis). The brothers haven't gotten along with each other for years, ever since they banished the princesses Rhyme and Reason, their sisters, from the kingdom and sent to them to Castle in the Air. 

Milo, accompanied by the dog Tock whose body contains a clock that ticks, and Humbug, the pompous bug, set out to rescue the princesses thereby bringing Rhyme and Reason back to the kingdom.

The story is told with puns and jokes, plays on words, riddles, and idioms taken literally. The use of language is so sparkling that it is difficult to describe how laugh-out-loud funny it is. You just have to experience it for yourself.

This book was published in 1961 and it has aged well. There is not a misstep to be found. Adults will appreciate the skillful way Mr. Juster weaves so many vocabulary words into the story.

Here is a bit from Milo's visit to Digitopolis:

Milo glanced curiously at the strange circular room, whose sixteen tiny arched windows corresponded exactly to the sixteen points of the compass. Around the entire circumference were numbers from zero to three hundred and sixty, marking the degrees of the circle  and on the floor, walls, tables, chairs, desks, cabinets, and ceiling were labels showing their heights, widths, depths, and distances to and from each other. To one side was a gigantic note pad set on an artist's easel, and from hooks and strings hung a collection of scales, rulers, measures, weights, tapes, and all sorts of other devices for measuring any number of things in every possible way.

I first read this book about five or six years ago. It gets better (if possible) upon rereading. If there happens to be a copy of it sitting on your child's bookshelf, by all means ask to borrow it. You will be delighted.

Additions to My Itinerary

I have added two destinations to my travel itinerary - armchair travel that is - for this long weekend.

I am visiting Dictionopolis, the Island of Conclusions (which can only be reached by jumping), and watching out for the demons who ramble about in the Mountains of Ignorance with Milo and Tock in The Phantom Tollbooth. This clever, clever book by Norton Juster was on my Summer Reading List and with summer just about over, I figured I had better hop to it.

Also, I am making a quite unexpected stop in The Afterlife with Sum by David Eagleman. A frequent commenter, Tullik, recommended this after reading my entry on Einstein's Dreams (here) by Alan Lightman. Instead of taking a look at thirty different conceptions of time, Eagleman, a neuroscientist, offers forty tales from the afterlives. It is quite witty and imaginative and unsettling at the same time. 

Now there is the fun of armchair travel - one always has the appropriate outfit for any change in plans.

The Lands Beyond

Another book on my Summer Reading List is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. A young boy bored with life, receives an anonymous gift of a tollbooth and a map to The Lands Beyond. He answers the call to adventure and rides through the tollbooth in his toy car. Although not a book about summer, the tale is nonetheless full of fun and puns and clever names that I remember made me laugh.

Kids love adventure and this is one that I can't wait to have again.