After a book conversation at the moomin this summer, I re-read Hatchet. And then I read the other four novels in the “series”. First of all, I LOVE young adult literature although I don’t read it very often. I read it more often when I had readers of young adult novels. Although they were also mature readers who read more advanced stuff. I love this author, who I think writes well. Note that I am not really qualified to opine about writing YA novels so that’s as far as I’ll go. You’re welcome.

The nit that is picking at my brain is that it felt a bit choppy to read this young person’s story in five books, most of them quite short although that may (or may not) be a characteristic of young adult fiction. If I get it right, YA writers try to draw some of the more tentative readers in as well as providing some good [what word do I want?] for more mature readers.

I enjoyed all of the books but when I was finished, what I kind of wanted was a longer book that told the whole story more fluidly and fleshed out some of the background stuff a bit better. I loved the story line(s) of the young man learning to survive in the woods. I guess I wanted a bit more about his struggles upon returning to society with a bureaucratic high school environment, etc. And maybe more fluid transitions between the two environments.

I am kind of riffing along here. I read the author’s afterword at the end of the fifth book and he talked about how he keeps thinking he’s finished with this character but people keep bugging him about “what happens next”. So he goes on and he might still go on. If he is not finished, I will read whatever comes next, perfect or not. None of us are perfect and these stories are umpteen times better than “Gone Girl,” which was just plain stoopid.

One of the things that made me pick Hatchet off my TBR list was my explorations into the Dog Lake area in Ontario, see a few entries ago.

So my cousin in Sacramento posted on Facebook that it was *116* at his house yesterday. I think that is a historic high for Sacramento? 106 is the highest I’ve ever seen The Planet Ann Arbor, twice, I think. On the radio they were talking about school kitchens (in California) being 121 degrees. I want to say they should declare a “snow” day (you know what I mean) and close the schools but how many of those kids don’t have cool places to go besides school although it wasn’t clear to me from the article if A/C was standard in the schools either. And then there’s the question of what happens to the lucky-shuckial grid if everyone turns on their A/C at once… … …

And I can’t believe I wrote that last paragraph without mentioning covid, even though I am still a covid pessimist… … …

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