Category Archives: Books

January 3, 2011 · 9:57 pm

Virginia Delegate David Englin Proposes Legislation To Fix School Textbooks

I’m glad to see someone is doing something about this…

And notice he’s a Democrat.

Republican’s don’t want well-educated voters, so they don’t support the public education system.  I’ll bet this was vetted and approved by Republican School Board reviewers…

It’s too hard to mislead the educated voters….

After one textbook’s inaccuracies garnered significant media attention in October, Virginia Delegate David Englin (D-Alexandria) is proposing legislation to get school primers properly proofed.

The Washington Post reported that Englin’s bill would hold publishers accountable and require them to prove review of textbooks by subject-area specialists. He said the state of public education is at stake.

“As a legislator and a parent, I was shocked and appalled to learn that Virginia social studies textbooks had such egregious factual inaccuracies. As parents, the bare minimum we expect from textbooks is that the facts are correct.”

“Our Virginia: Past and Present,” published by Five Ponds Press, was released during the fall to thousands of Virginian students. Although vetted by textbook review committees, it included a variety of errors, from wrong dates to misspellings.

One section of the textbook tells students that thousands of African Americans fought as confederate soldiers during the Civil War, a statistic that is not validated by mainstream historians.

Carol Sheriff, a professor at William & Mary, told CNN that the mistakes weren’t just inaccurate, but irresponsible.

“It is the equivalent of holocaust denial being taught in public schools but worse. It’s also equivalent to saying the Jews helped the Holocaust.”

via Virginia Delegate David Englin Proposes Legislation To Fix School Textbooks.

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Filed under Books, Education, Politics

January 1, 2011 · 10:31 am

Louise Penny’s Town Captures World’s Notice

Great article about one of my favorite writers, Louise Penny.  It was originally posted on Facebook by another writer, Anthony Bidulka, who writes mysteries I also greatly enjoy reading.

I’m increasingly impressed by the Canadian writers I’m reading…

In Penny’s books, that setting is usually the fictional village of Three Pines, a hamlet in Quebec’s Eastern Townships first settled by fleeing United Empire Loyalists and today peopled by charming eccentrics looking for kindness and croissants in an often cruel world.

It is also, like Agatha Christie’s bucolic St. Mary Mead, home to a surprising number of murders.

Just as surprising is how well Three Pines and Penny’s detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, have captured the imagination of readers around the world. Suddenly Penny, who believes readers are literary tourists and that, as the poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,” is making Canada the deadly destination to which they want to be transported

In the last few months, her 2009 book about the destructive power of greed, The Brutal Telling, won both the Anthony and Agatha awards for best crime novel; in fact, Penny is the first writer in history to win the Agatha three years running.

At the same time, the latest book in her series, Bury Your Dead, which is set mainly in Quebec City and digs up the long-unsolved mystery of Samuel de Champlain’s death, was named to several Best of 2010 lists, including those published by Amazon.com, Kirkus Review, Publisher’s Weekly, The Globe and Mail and The Chicago Tribune.

via Louise Penny’s town captures world’s notice.

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Filed under Books, Entertainment, Social Commentary

December 29, 2010 · 10:34 pm

Some Va. history texts filled with errors, review finds

It’s even more scary that even a Hampden-Sydney professor was able to recognize this…

I am a W&L Man….

In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).

These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.

“Our Virginia: Past and Present,” the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, “Our America: To 1865.” A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation’s most stringent.

“I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes – wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?” said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College. He reviewed “Our Virginia: Past and Present.”

More:   Some Va. history texts filled with errors, review finds.

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Filed under Books, Education, History, Politics, The South, Virginia

December 17, 2010 · 6:26 pm

My Favorite Things: Mystery Novels

While I read a lot of history and biographies, as well as literary fiction, most of my reading is mystery novels.

I don’t apologize for this…They are a great escape.

But you have to be careful.  I detest some of the plot driven mystery novels that turn out to be Best Sellers.  I usually have those figured out in about 10 minutes and don’t really care about the characters.  I quit reading most of them years ago.

I need a good plot, but it’s also important to me that the books be character driven-and that the characters be well defined individuals.

Over the past year or so, I’ve discovered three authors I particularly enjoy.

If there is a mystery fan on your Christmas list, or if you just like to read mysteries yourself, I would strongly recommend these three:

  1. Louise Penny– She is my favorite.  My only issue is that she doesn’t write fast enough!  I have to wait a year for each new book.  She is a Canadian writer and her books are mainly set in a little town called “Three Pines” outside of Montreal.  Three Pines is kind of an artist colony populated with fascinating characters who recur throughout her books.  Inspector Gamache is the police inspector on each case and his interactions with the residents of Three Pines is the though line in these books.  The characters are well defined and the books are wonderfully plotted.  I recommend reading them in order starting with “Still Life.”
  2. G M Malliet- Start with “Death of a Cozy Writer”.  Her three books are all set in England or Scotland and I greatly enjoyed them all.
  3. Julia Spencer-Fleming– I’m currently flying through her series of novels set in upstate New York.  Her books also really should be read in order, starting with “In the Bleak Midwinter”.  There is an interesting relationship between the married chief of police in the small town of Millers Kill and the new Episcopal Minister and military vet Clare Ferguson.  I would probably best describe it as kind of a modern Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn type of thing.  Frankly, some of her books are stronger than others, but I wouldn’t miss any of them.  Again, well defined characters and strong plot lines.

I would also recommend Rita Mae Brown’s Sister Jane/Foxhunting series set in Virginia.  It’s probably because I’m from Virginia and know the area where these are set very well and recognize the character types, but these are a real guilty pleasure.

I also read a fair amount of gay mysteries-when I can find a good one.  This is a very dangerous area as there is a lot of really bad writing in this genre.  However, there are four writers who consistently deliver well written books I really enjoy.  They are Josh Lanyon, Anthony Bidulka, Greg Herren and Dorien Grey.  I would also recommend these guys to people-gay or straight- who enjoy a good mystery.  In this genre, I also enjoy Charlie Cochrane’s series about a couple of Gay college professors in England prior to World War 1.  These are not as strong as the others, but I’m a sucker for English mysteries-Gay or Straight- set in this era.

Just some ideas.

Happy Reading!

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Filed under Books, Entertainment, Holidays

December 15, 2010 · 11:38 am

Murder, They Wrote: The Year In Mysteries : NPR

I love to read mysteries and here are some recommendations from NPR.

However, they left out three of my favorites-more on them later…

If you click the link, you can see the other books the NPR writer recommends.

Okay, let’s acknowledge the big pink elephant (or giant red Swedish fish?) in the living room, and then we can get on with this salute to some of the other best mysteries and suspense novels of 2010. Stieg Larsson. It would be preposterous to offer a round-up of the year-in-crime-fiction without paying homage to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and the international phenomenon of Larsson’s entire Millennium Series. (My local independent bookstore is doing a brisk business selling black rubber bracelets imprinted with the question: “What Would Lisbeth Do?”)  Maybe 2011 will bring us Lisbeth Salander fans some version of that rumored fourth installment floating around on Larsson’s companion’s computer. If not, it’s still been a thrill to witness the launch of one of the mystery and suspense canon’s groundbreaking series.

via Murder, They Wrote: The Year In Mysteries : NPR.

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