Book Review: The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee

I know Halloween is over. I've already qualified for the free turkey at my local supermarket. But I still like a good scary story, and almost as good is a well-written review of a good scary story. I found one of these not too long ago at the blog of one of my followers, Brian James who's a pretty darn good writer himself. With his permission, I'm reprinting his review of Lewis Buzbee's The Haunting of Charles Dickens. Feel free to post a comment here or on Brian's blog. And if you have a review you'd like to see reposted here or posted here for the first time, please contact me. You can do so via mwsinclair@gmail.com or via elephantsbookshelf@gmail.com.

The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee
(Feiwel & Friend 2010)

Sometimes there are stories that float around in my mind that I want to read, but know not within what pages they lie. As soon as I began this book, I knew it was one of those stories I'd been searching out for a long time.

This book is so wonderful on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin praising it. But I'll start with what is always the make or break for me and that is character. The main character, twelve-year-old Meg, is one of those characters you don't want to leave off and who keeps you reading. She's smart, courageous, and altogether real. I love when the child characters are real heroes in middle grade novels. And though set in Victorian London, Meg is not unlike a modern character. After all, a twelve-year-old is a twelve-year-old no matter what scenario you drag them through.

The story moves at great pace, always leaving the reader wanting to push ahead. The central mystery is full of adventure that unravels perfectly. And the book doesn't talk down to the reader. Even at its most complicated, it's direct but never condescending. This is something that I think young readers will really respond to.

The themes of this book are incredibly relevant to our world. In many ways, I think our world has reverted to the industrial and corporate greed of Dickens's time. Child labor is as much a problem today as it was in Victorian times. Just because it's not happening in the streets of Western Civilization's shining cities, it shouldn't be ignored. It's important for children today to be reminded of the cruelty that comes with this practice, especially when the very same practice is partially responsible for enabling most of us to have cheap electronics and clothing.

There isn't anybody I wouldn't recommend this book to. It's one of those rare stories that can transport you into it's world and make it so you want to stay. I can't imagine any reader not cheering Meg on and feeling proud of her each time she succeeds.

Book Review: Shiver

I don't know if you feel it too, but I think someone punched the afterburners into high gear. I could have sworn Labor Day was a week ago. (And no, I still haven't taken that vacation...) It's also hard to believe that the year is almost three-fourths done. Around New Year's, I asked readers if they'd like to contribute book reviews. I got one back then. Now I have another to share with you. Though I know the writer's name, she prefers to be identified by her Agent Query moniker, Big Black Cat. Thanks, BBC, for your contribution.

Yes, I'm a YA librarian and I hadn't read Shiver yet. There, I said it.

With that off my chest, I have to share that I approach all YA romance with trepidation. I'm virulently anti-love-at-first-sight, which is so common in the genre. Maybe I'm a jaded adult, or perhaps I was just an unattractive teen, but I find the idea of love at first sight is usually an excuse for not having to bother with character development vis a vis the relationship. So I found myself pleasantly surprised by Shiver — but I digress.

The story's basic plot is human girl loves werewolf, which had me gagging at hello. But guess what, BBC was won over by something I didn't expect — really good writing. Stiefvater does a stellar job of using a cliched genre as a vehicle for some excellent writing. She also takes a big leap by introducing YA readers to a little culture, such as the German poet Rilke. Yes, that's a true statement.

While there is an element of "ba BOOM I'm fantastically in love," the rather complicated backstory of Grace, the female main character, and her obsession with a wolf pack, produces a relationship that builds on (gasp!) friendship and trust before evolving into something else. True, the male MC (werewolf Sam) is in his wolf form at the time, but hey — building blocks are building blocks, and if you can’t dig interspecies relationships you have missed the YA bus.

Another pro for me in this book was the supporting cast being well written — something you don't always see in YA, or adult literature for that matter. Teen characters often come off as stereotypes, so I was pleased to find an exception. There were perhaps two characters that I didn't feel I "knew" by the end, but for the most part the whole group was well written and individualistic.

Maggie Stiefvater is represented by Laura Rennert of the Andrea Brown Agency, and I can tell you, I'm jealous as hell about that.

Book Review: House of Leaves

The following is the first of what I hope will be many book reviews written by a guest reviewer. Thanks so much to Caroline and to other followers of The Elephant's Bookshelf who've said they would like to write reviews. ~ Matt

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
Review by Caroline Hagood

Every once in a while, a reader falls in love with a different kind of fiction that changes how we as readers (and writers) think about characters.

In House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski uses the house in the title as a trope for the challenges of written testimony. Here, he has secured himself a space outside of time and narrative from which to survey both.

The inner flap reads: “House of Leaves by Zampanò with introduction and notes by Johnny Truant,” (two of the characters) with no mention of Danielewski. This is followed by an introduction from an edgy countercultural youth (Truant) who claims to have found a collection of writings in the home of an old man who has recently died (Zampanò).

The papers he finds are Zampanò’s scholarly analysis of The Navidson Record, a documentary by yet another one of Danielewski's characters, the world-renowned photojournalist, Will Navidson. The film catalogues Navidson's exploration of the house he moves into on Ash Tree Lane that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

With input and copious footnotes from still more authors and critics real and imagined, the text addresses the physical and psychological world that Navidson examines. The quality that makes Navidson’s house different from the average home is that it suddenly develops new doors, staircases, and hallways; this tortuous structure becomes the novel’s central metaphor for writing.

The labyrinth at the heart of the novel is not only a single location that the characters explore, but also a symbol of the intricate structural composition of the narratives of each of the authors, including Truant, Zampanò, Danielewski, Navidson, and even Navidson's wife, Karen, who also contributes a short film to the novel’s roster of texts.

Since the majority of the critics and authors mentioned either do not exist, or exist but did not say what the novel claims they did, House of Leaves critiques writing's truth claims when it comes to representing individual and communal history.

Danielewski is not at all interested in our progressing right-side-up trip through his literary phantasmagoria. Clearly, authorship is being turned on its head as unstable meaning is filtered through multiple creators. But how do we read a book like this? Easy: we have to change the way we read.

Danielewski is not concerned that we locate an answer; rather, he wants us to note how each new interpretation changes the labyrinth of the narrative structure. In this way, Danielewski demonstrates that the trajectory of history, or present reality, can be altered.

That one writer’s analysis is not an absolute truth is made clear to us as readers of a heap of invented criticism. In a novel that comprises stories from multiple authors, as well as criticisms of these authors that we are forced to engage with as though they were, like us, real outside readers, we are confronted with the changeable nature of written "truth."

In the end, the house represents not merely language but metalanguage. It is the commentary on all stories, both fictional and historical; it's a chance to rewrite reading, writing, and history.

Caroline Hagood is a poet and writer living in New York City. She has written on books, film, and culture for Film International, Film-Philosophy, Film Catcher, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Campus Progress, The Journal of Popular Culture, The DVD Lounge, in her own column on writing for Blogcritics, and her own blog, Culture Sandwich, among others. Her poetry has appeared in Shooting the Rat (Hanging Loose Press), Movin' (Orchard Books), Oxymoron, Angelic Dynamo and Ginosko. This is her first review for The Elephant's Bookshelf.

So You Say You Want to Write?

It was the best of times it was the worst of times. Or something like that.

Lately, I've been feeling rather optimistic about a lot of things (and yeah, I've been worried about a lot of other things too.) While this blog is certainly not the most important thing in my life, I have to say I've been thrilled by the increase in visitors and the number of "followers" I've been able to see. I know most of it is related to my fellow aspiring novelists at AgentQuery, but I don't think all of them are.

I've also been a bit concerned about the state of freelance writing; I'll admit that part of my concern is due to my desire to do more of it in 2010 to help supplement my income and keep diapers on my babies' butts. (Note to self: Invest in companies that produce A&D ointment!)

But maybe I can mix these two things a bit and create a Net positive. An Internet positive, if you will. As those of you who read the short interview I did with Victoria Dixon of the Ron Empress blog already know, I had intended this blog to be a place where I could write and edit book reviews. So now that I have nearly twenty followers, I thought I'd see whether any of you have any interest in writing book reviews.

I'd be willing to post them here, I'd give it a quick copy edit (or depending on the quality, more than that, perhaps), and voila! you'd have a book review published. I know, getting a review published on a free blog is nothing too difficult; you could easily do it at your blog too. But I kinda like seeing stuff that I've written posted elsewhere. Maybe you do too.

To be honest, I don't expect many of you to agree to this — especially since I can't pay a dime. Indeed, it's possible I'll remain the lone book reviewer here at the Elephant's Bookshelf (Quick review: Blindness, by Jose Saramago is both disturbing and excellent!) But if just one joins, then I'll be happy as a clam.

So, what do ya say? If you're interested, you can let me know via the comments section or send an email to elephantsbookshelf@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Zone of Insolvency by Ron Mattocks

This review, which I wrote, appeared previously on a different Web site. If you want the link to the original, please leave a comment below and I will contact you directly. If you want me to view it without publishing your name, I'll gladly do that. I keep no list of readers, so I won't sell it anywhere.

If you're a current nonprofit board member and there's a horror section in your nonprofit library, you'll want to add Ron Mattocks' Zone of Insolvency to it.

That's because Mattocks makes a convincing case that as many as a third of the nation's tax-exempt organizations are operating in a "zone of insolvency" — a financial state somewhere between solvency and total insolvency — and that it's just a matter of time before another nonprofit financial scandal emerges. According to Mattocks, who has more than thirty years' experience developing the financial strength of nonprofits, organizations operating in a zone of insolvency typically experience some combination of challenges, including dwindling cash reserves, increasing debt, an aging product mix and deferred maintenance, and recurring cash flow problems. Unfortunately, once an organization has entered the zone, there are only three ways out: a financial turnaround, merger, or dissolution.

To bolster his case, Mattocks provides summaries of some of the most notable nonprofit financial scandals of the past seventeen years, including William Aramony's misdeeds at the United Way of America and the Ponzi scheme that was the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy. But he also presents several success stories involving organizations that were able to turn things around — including the United Way of America.

His examples don't just involve financial scandals. Indeed, he offers several examples of organizations whose boards determined that, in the face of a changed or changing environment, the best course of action was to dissolve the organization while it was still providing important services. The National Alliance of Business, for instance, ceased operations in 2003 when its president and board determined that its mission had been accomplished. "The market had changed, new issues had emerged, and new organizations had risen to the challenge," Mattocks writes. "Funding sources had changed, and the organization experienced some net losses." Against that backdrop, the CEO helped convince the organization's stakeholders that its task was complete, to celebrate the organization's success, and to close its doors. Mattocks even provides a case study of Women in Community Service, which he headed for the final five months of its existence. Like NAB, WICS had decades of success to celebrate, but in the end it was unable to raise enough funds to continue operating and put itself out of business.

One lesson any board member should take from the book is that, when an organization is operating in a zone of insolvency, the decisions made by its executive director and board assume a different level of importance. As Mattocks puts it, a board's legal responsibilities expand when an organization is teetering between solvency and insolvency. In fact, in such situations boards need to become more engaged with management issues, and that usually increases the stress between a chief executive and his or her board (a relationship that can be strained even in the best of times). Less obvious, however, is how the zone of insolvency can alter the relationship between organization and donor. If, for example, an organization operating in the zone is offered a major gift with significant restrictions, it needs to make its financial situation crystal clear right up front — or risk violating the donor's legal rights.

To guard against that, Mattocks offers the following advice: "When governing in the zone of insolvency, a board should have special legal counsel to assure that no action benefits one party of interest while disadvantaging others." It's also absolutely critical, he writes, for key members of the board to have adequate directors and officers insurance when governing a financially distressed organization.

Like any good horror story, Zone of Insolvency argues that, in the end, organizations can overcome adversity and return themselves to a strong financial footing. Yes, some organizations will stumble and fail. But in the end, strong, well-managed organizations will survive, and that's how it should be.

So before you start banging out that resignation letter or say no to an invitation to join a nonprofit board, read Mattocks' book. As they say in the movies, forewarned is forearmed — and will keep you from getting hurt.