Wednesday, September 06, 2006

What Mrs. N's Been Reading

One of the perks of making up new book lists, is that I get to look at all of the books and add some things to my "I gotta read this" list, that I might not notice otherwise. One of those books was Vicki Grant's Quid Pro Quo. It's one of the Orca Soundings books that I've been hearing so much about. If this one's any indication, they're quite good. They are billed as high interest, but lower reading level. This one is a mystery. Cyril McIntyre's mom has disappearred and he sets out to find her on his own. Mom is quite a character - a former street kid who had Cyril when she was 14, and made a lot of bad lifestyle choices along the way, but pulled herself up and put herself through law school, dragging a then 10-year-old Cyril along to night classes. Mom's background and behavior are described in plain, direct, but not graphic (her obsenity-laced rants are "bleeped") terms. You get a sense of Cyril's combination of love and admiration for his mom along with his being sick and tired of some of her nonsense and their bare-bones lifestyle. Each short chapter starts with an easy to understand definition of a legal term, so it will help you better understand some of those courtroom dramas. The story takes place in Canada, so there's an occassional "Canadian-ism", but they aren't frequent enough to be confusing. It's a quick, funny, read that really is good for those older readers who want some action and plot, but have difficulty with a longer book with higher level vocabulary. I'll be picking up some more books in this series. They definitely fill a void.

No comments: