A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. ~ Chinese Proverb

	Rating:
	Publisher: Bantam
	ISBN: 9780385343497

This was a delightful book, I thoroughly enjoyed every word of it. Narrated by Jayne Entwistle who brings Flavia, a very bright eleven year old girl to life. 

Set in the summer of 1950, a simpler quieter period, Flavia De Luce lives in the English countryside in a decaying English Manor, Bucksaw, with her widowed, reclusive father and two older sisters.

Flavia falls into a murder that revolves around a incident that happened to her father while his was in school.  Precocious and wise beyond her years, Flavia leads us through a youthful crime investigation with as much pluck as any hardened PI in the business. 

Bradley has done an excellent job of pulling this off the wall story together, I highly recommend it.

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	Rating:
	Publisher:    Picador USA, 2009
	Pages:    192

I found this book on BookBrowse and then ran into again at Three Percent a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester.  The Housekeeper and the Professor was translated by Stephen Synder, Associate Professor of Japanese at Middlebury College in Connecticut. Synder has also translated another of Ogawa’s books The Diving Pool : Three Novellas.  Yoko Ogawa, as Will Eells  writes in his review, has become a huge success in the“last twenty years, winning numerous literary awards including the Akutagawa Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, and the Tanizaki Prize, while also having one of her novels (the one in question) adapted for the screen in 2006.”

“We called him the Professor. And he called my son Root, because he said, the flat top of his head reminded him of the square root sign.” Thus begins this surreal fairytale of a young astute housekeeper and a middle aged world class mathematician, that was brain damaged after a serve automobile accident 17 years ago, the injury left him with inability to remember anything new, his short term memory is eighty minutes long and his long term memory stopped the year of the accident.

The housekeeper is sent by her agency to interview the Professor’s sister in law as the sister in law explains the situation she has just one rule for taking care of her brother in law: “Resolve any difficulties with consulting me”.  As the Professor has gone through nine housekeepers, it becomes a matter of personal pride for this young housekeeper to keep her new job.

Armed with the knowledge that working for a person that only has an eighty minute memory, the housekeeper is well prepared to meet her new client. She met at the door her first day with the question “What is your shoe size?”  The housekeeper quickly realizes that when the Professor is uncomfortable he turns to his numbers but she also realizes quickly on that he also communicates with numbers.  The Housekeeper and the Professor settle into comfortable routine where each day they reacquaint themselves.

The housekeeper is entranced by the Professor and his mathematics, she wants to learn about numbers and it turns out he is a natural teacher.  As the days progress, the Professor learns of the Housekeepers 10 year old son and is outraged that she leaves him home alone after school.  He demands that she bring him to his house after school each day.  Although it  violates of her employment contract she consents.

From the moment they meet Root and the Professor become friends.  Root is a great fan of baseball and as everyone knows baseball is a statistical game.  Root and the Professor agree that if Root will solve a mathematical question the Professor will fix his old radio so that they can listen to baseball games.  As the relationship grows between the three of them, the Housekeeper and her son decide to take the Professor to a baseball game.  The catch to this is the Professor still thinks that it is 1975 and that the great Enatsu is still pitching for the Tigers, both Root and the Housekeeper do a great job of protecting the Professor from learning that he no longer plays baseball.

After the baseball game, the professor takes ill and the Housekeeper has to make a decision on whether to contact the sister in law, “resolve any difficulties with consulting me”, or to take matters into her own hands.  The housekeeper decides to resolve the problem by staying the Professor until he well.  The sister in law, misunderstands what has happened and has the Housekeeper removed from the job.

The housekeeper moves on to another job, which keeps her from her young son even longer every day.  She then receives a call from her agency says she must get over to the Professor house as Root is there and the sister in law is upset.  When the Housekeeper arrives they are all sitting around the kitchen table and the sister in law demands to know what they are trying to get out of the Professor, money?  Here we arrive at a great revelation, the Housekeeper and Root are friends with the old mathematician, they like him.  the sister in law is disbelieving until the Professor hands a piece of paper with e^ix=cos x + isin x written on it.  This is Euler’s formula and quiet simply it “is a mathematical formula in complex analysis that demonstrates the deep relationship between the trigonometric functions and the complex exponential function. 

Shortly after the Housekeeper and Root return to the Professor his short term memory deteriorates and he is placed in a long term care facility.  Even then the bond the three of the created is not broken.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story.  For me it represents the best of human nature, all of the characters’ stretch beyond themselves, the housekeeper to learn ,to challenge her mind, the sister in law to that not everyone out there is using other people for personal gain, and for Root to accept the Professor not as a flawed individual but rather as unique individual.  

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	Rating:
	Publisher:    Delacorte Press, 2009
	Pages:   384

I found this little gem on the Library Journal website Falling into Bounty Fall & Winter First Novels.  Listed under literary rather than mystery so it caught my eye. 

The story is about Billy Webb a recent college grad who lands a job as lexicographer at the 100 year old Samuelson Dictionary Company.   As he settles in at his new position, he meets another young lexicographer Mona Minot and together they stumble across a series of citations that references a book Broken Teaglass that does not exist. 

Billy and Mona soon discover that the Broken Teaglas hidden in the citations and they set out to find it.   As they continue their search for the missing parts of the story we also learn about Billy and Mona.  Both have had something happen to them that has affected their perception of themselves and the world around them.  It is these events that slowly come out as they delve into the Broken Teaglass mystery in the citations.  So while they are busy searching for clues to the mystery they have found, we are also learning about these two young people and the mysteries they hold.

This novel just sneaks up on you, and soon you are pulled into its quite intrigue.

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