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Monday, July 25, 2011

Cake...Yum!

One beautiful royal wedding cake

Don't give me a sad-sack, single-layer cake. I want lots of layers, padded with thick icing. Hey, if you're going to splurge, do it right!

I feel that way about books. If there's just one simple storyline with no juicy subplots and themes, I can't be bothered. Too many books, so little time.

Give me a novel like Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars.  Though the central plot, of Holling Hoodhood and his seventh-grade teacher Mrs. Baker interacting and discovering one another's personalities, is fully developed, satisfying, and oftentimes hysterical, the subplots -  1) of good ole Shakespeare shaping Holling's life and loves, 2) of his father's personality and domination crystalizing for the reader and Holling, 3) of the maturation of Holling's relationships with his sister and Meryl Lee, and 4) of the poignant turnaround of Mrs. Bigio's and Mai Thi's feelings for one another - give this novel a bittersweet flavor and subtle appeal on a subliminal level. Underneath everything, Schmidt paints the year 1968, weaving in details of home life and everyday citizens affected by the politics and realities swirling around the Vietnam War.

The same explosive atmosphere and blatant intolerance are pushed in our own faces today in various multi-media formats, making this novel extremely relevant to our own times.

Unfortunately.

Let's concentrate on the cake...

Royal wedding cake

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