A Tale of Two Brandons: Mull

Given how long it took me to finish writing the first blog post on Brandon Sanderson, I might as well start writing the second now too.

This blog first got started when Joy left for a couple months to take care of my grandmother, be pampered by my family in her first pregnancy, and give me more time to write my dissertation. During that time, I wandered the library at Cornell and picked up a book called Fablehaven. I was spellbound and couldn't sleep until I had devoured it whole. I introduced it to Joy as soon as I could. We bought each of the books in the series as soon as they came out, have mentioned our enjoyment of them together several times, and were sad to see them go. We also read the Candy Shop War together, which Joy didn't enjoy as much but was still good. I finished reading the first book in his new Beyonders series this week, which is what got me back to writing about the two Brandons again.

Brandon Mull clearly writes for a younger crowd than Sanderson. The stories are much less gritty, less dark, more moralistic (complete with family home evening discussion questions in the back to get your kids thinking about the right and wrong choices the characters made). Hence, I've been sharing Mull with Joy and not Sanderson.

Mull comes up with unique magical/mythical worlds with their own sets of coherent rules. His young characters generally act their age (unlike, say, *coughtwicoughlightcough*). The last 100 pages or so of each story is in the no-putting-down zone, and I already mentioned how much I loved the first Fablehaven book. His characters are believably fallible, which so many authors forget, and they do a fair share of flailing about trying to figure out what to do next. I got emotionally attached to some of the outcomes and went around for over a year hoping that I was right about a prediction. (I was! YES!!) All that, and I'm a sucker for time travel, which we get just a teeny bit. The primary villain is interesting and complex.

He doesn't manage to do much character development. There is some. In Fablehaven there are two main characters, and both grow in book 1, but only one of them grows in the rest of the series, which is a real pity. In fact, it was my main disappointment with book 5, realizing how little Kendra had grown and changed since discovering courage in book 1. Her brother who has to deal with choosing if, when, and how to break rules constantly gets all the cool toys, the cool adventures, (the plot-altering disasters), the comic-relief sidekicks (who are a scream), the big questions to ask, and gets to do things solo while Kendra is always protected by someone else because she never blossoms into the full sense of her powers. Never. :(  She just radiates light. Pff. In what would be a spoiler if it weren't blatantly obvious in the last book (you are duly warned) her final romantic interest is a unicorn. Come on! Gag! At least we aren't seeing a whole new library section devoted to unicorn romance.

That said, his secondary characters are wonderful. I want to see spin-off series about several of them. Even if they don't grow, they are intriguing and I really wanted to learn more about each of them.

A Tale of Two Brandons: Sanderson

I intended to write these posts months ago but never got to them.

Our family's newest favorite authors are Brandon Sanderson and Brandon Mull. By favorite, we mean that we actually pre-order and sit around waiting for the next one to come out. So far, that's a set of three (the third being Ally Condie whose books we have already praised). Mull will get his own post later. This one is for Sanderson.

Sanderson is not the next Tolkein, or the next Rowling, or the next Hickman and Weis, or the next Brooks. He sets out in very different directions, creates unique worlds, and is not at all derivative. Hooray! (I worry when I read "the next ____," in case that makes things clearer.)

To me, his best quality is his ability to come up with new ways of introducing some form of magic. Elantris uses runes; the Mistborn series consumes metal; the Stormlight series absorbs light from ... you guessed it, storms; Alcatraz uses magical eyewear. Each world has its own source of power, different rules for what it lets you do, and very different, well-thought out characters making use of them. He gets in some wonderful commentary without being preachy or beating anyone over the head. There's religious strife in just about all his books, and he deals with it differently and wonderfully in every case. Other reviewers are amazed at his grasp of topics like leadership or government. Each book has been a delight.

Among his shortcomings that only I would care about are that his economics tends to be a little two-dimensional: nobility vs. slaves and peasants with a serious lack of interest in a middle-class. His next series may fix that. There's still only nobles and peasants, but at least there are gradations of nobility within each in an semi-economically-mobile caste system.

My only real complaint is that he is deciding more and more to have too many main characters. My brother points out that this makes him ideal to wrap up the Wheel of Time series, but I just don't care for it. You read 200-300 pages and wonder what has happened. Not much. We set the stage:

The proof is in the publisher

The final proof of my textbook is off to the publisher.Huzzah!

He has my eyes

One of the things I like about Hyrum is that he has my eyes. Don't get me wrong, I would like it if he had Joy's eyes too. But since I have an easier time acknowledging my son's good looks than I do in thinking there is anything worthy of approval in my own looks, seeing my eyes reflecting from his handsome face gives me a little hope for me too.

Unfortunately, with the eyes comes the pink. I wouldn't say I regularly had pink eye as a child, but it was a frequent enough visitor that I know it when I see it. Hy is having his first bout with it, thankfully nowhere near as severe as what I had a few weeks ago. Little water, little discharge, little staying home from church, little glad there's no school tomorrow for him to miss, very little sleep as he pops into the bedroom several times a night to ask Mommy for help... good times. He's started asking for me to wash his eyes. We got a system going briefly that he liked, and when I did it differently the next time he said, "Daddy, you're not doing it right." I explained a bit further what it is we need to do, got him on board, and now we're working together much happier. I so have to keep trying to convince him to not stick his fingers in my eyes, though.

He also has a mild fever (100.6).

Meanwhile, I think I'm slowly passing another kidney stone, so it's time to be on Vicodin while moving boxes, mowing lawns, and trying to proof-read my textbook for the last time before publishing. For once, I was just as happy to spend church today lying down on the couch with him.

I've never been able to keep him laying down for as long as we just managed. We took turns watching half an hour of Prince of Egypt and Backyardigans. Each time we returned to PoE, he asked to start over and "see the horses going down." After the intro, teenage Moses and Ramses race each other in two-horse chariots. They nearly get themselves killed several times as people get out of the way, they jump gaps, and scaffolding crashes down around them. They pause the horses briefly at a barricade which suddenly collapses and they ride their horses down a tidal wave of sand in a scene highly reminiscent of going down a tall roller coaster. Pretty fun, but not the point, so I said no.

As we went along, I explained some of the parts of Moses' story from the Bible to be a bit more accurate than the film. He asked some pretty tough questions about why God sent curses and he correctly remembered and linked up the Passover with the Sacrament (score!). I was pretty pleased.

He told me several times that the movie was scary, but we made it through. It wasn't too scary, I guess. He and I had tried watching it last year, but it was too scary then. (I should note, he chose it from among the options I gave him.)

Afterwards, I asked him what was the scariest part. Imagine my surprise when he answered -- not the darkness, not the plagues, not the deaths, not the scary music -- "The horses. They go down WHOOSH. They go fast. Why did they go so fast, Daddy? Why did the horses go faster?"

I then asked him what his favorite part was. "The horses."

You liked the horses?
"Yes. They go fast."

I think I'm going to have a very interesting conversation with my Lovely and Gracious when she gets home....

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Hy-guy also apparently needs glasses. The school's best guess is that he has about 20/100 vision. We took him to an eye doctor for children in the area who demonstrated that he can read the top line of the eye chart, but nothing lower. We'll have to wait until the pink eye gets cleared up, though, to give him further testing to see just what kind of glasses. Happily, children who need glasses are a medical condition, while adults who need glasses need a separate vision insurance, so our insurance will cover his glasses if not mine.

Growing Up: Hyrum got Busted

Oops, I think I misspelled the title. That should say, "Hyrum got bussed" and he couldn't be happier about it. In November as we met with the school board about Hy starting school, we had a discussion about whether he should ride the bus or if we would drive him to school. Joy wanted to drive him. She couldn't bear the thought of sending her little baby out on a bus. I was skeptical. "Dear, it's the winter," I said. "You know how much you don't want to drive in the snow. Some days, you are going to call me to walk home from work through the snow to get the car so I can drive him home. Is this really what you want to do?" She looked at me so plaintively that I knew she was sure. To Joy's credit, that scenario hasn't happened once, though I have occasionally driven him to school before work when the snow was bad. She drove Hy faithfully through the snow for months. Brave girl.

But now we're heading to Africa and Hyrum will be taking a shuttle to school (across the street from where I work). Joy is rather set against getting a car there. The reality of needing to put her boy on a bus out there led to a change of heart and she spoke with the school about getting him on a friendly bus here so they both can transition into it.

One week into the bussing, Hyrum loves it. He gets to sit next to his best friend, Tyler (when they aren't pushing and hitting each other) and he is happy and excited every day. The one thing he wants to report to us every day after school is whether or not Tyler said "Arrrr." The problem on our side is that the bus comes to our corner about 6:45, so we all need to wake up half an hour earlier to get him ready on time. We take turns getting him ready and then Joy greets him when he gets home. One day when I was working from home, though, I got to pick him up, which was a major surprise for him. Reward: one happy picture.
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A few weeks ago Hyrum got some belated birthday presents from one of his grandmothers  (our fault). It's hard to tell which he is most excited about: the Backyardigan plush, the MarioParty game for DS to replace the Super Mario game we've been borrowing from my brother for months and will need to return soon, or the Toy Story action figures and play mat. I had left for Nigeria the day after Hyrum's gifts arrived, so he only had one chance to play his DS game before I spirited my toy away. While I was in Africa, the number one thing Hyrum talked about was me coming home and playing the DS game.

Despite that, it was pretty clear who the big winners were: the Backyardigans. Hyrum brought them into his room, set them out in his bed in order (above) and then took Mario, Luigi, and Peach out of his bed and set them on the dresser. We hadn't told him to. He just decided that he couldn't have both and he wanted his back yard friends. Instead of Mario and Luigi or Mario and Peach, Pablo and Tyrone accompanied him to school (until we switched to the bus, and okay, so one day he took Mario and Pablo).

Since then, we've convinced him he can have all of them together. So there are 10 in the bed until the little one says Roll over, Roll over....
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I started reading a book of children's nursery rhymes to Hyrum. He continues to be very interested in poetry. Among his favorites in the book are "The Rainbow Fairies," "Winken, Blinken, and Nod," and "Mud." The amazing thing to me was the other night this week when we sat down to read Rainbow Fairies and he read along with me. I stopped reading and let him recite the vast majority of it without any help. Now when we read it, I'll point to each word as he 'reads' it, sometimes with help. It's a fairly long poem for him.

About two nights ago I asked if he was going to read Rainbow Fairies or if I should. He answered, "You read it. I don't read much yet."

Relatedly, as he got in his pajamas today I was going to help him. He stopped me and said, "I'll do it, Dad. I'm good at that."

Short Review: The Hope

I read Herman Wouk's masterpieces, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, in high school for fun and loved them. They tell the story of the second World War in its magnificent sweep. Detailed, poignant, and stirring, the story and characters have remained with me ever since.

Which is a problem when I picked up his history of the state of Israel, The Hope. One might be forgiven for thinking he only has so many great fictional characters in him, but the main characters are shockingly similar. When the main character met up with a quirky girl much younger than him, I knew exactly what role she was going to play in the rest of the book ... and I'm right.

In fact, I've guessed every major character-plot development to the point that I start skimming to find one of the actual historical figures so I know something real is about to happen. It's very sad. Wouk tells his stories on multiple levels and having one of them essentially skipable does a number to the rest of the book.

If you're only going to read one, I'd go for the WWII account. If you know you are going to read both, I'd read Israel first in the hope that the longer story and greater detail in the WWII will keep you interested in the full story.

The strange part for me is the main character's name. It's just odd, in today's age, thinking that "Barak" is the Hebrew name a good Jewish boy chooses for himself to replace his Germanic/Christian name. It's hard to wrap my head around.

I wonder when this will come to Nigeria....

What is your daddy like?

I gave Hyrum and M the same lesson for family home evening and for home teaching. As part of that, I drew an implicit analogy between their fathers and our Heavenly Father. I first asked a series of questions about their fathers I figured they could answer, then the same questions about God.

The answers I got were not quite what I expected.

Hyrum's:
What is faith? "In the Lord!"  [We had a short discussion about faith in Jesus]

Who is your daddy? [point at me]
Where does your daddy live? "At home."
What is your daddy like? Tell me about your daddy. "Daddy's home."  --- coming home from Nigeria was clearly a highlight of his life.
Mommy tried to help me: What does Daddy look like? "Sunday." --- Yes, I was in a white shirt still.

Who is God? "Jesus!"  [We had a short discussion about the Godhead]
Where does God live? "In Heaven."
What is God like? "He likes it when we pray to Him."



M's answers:
Who is your daddy? [point at her dad]
Where does your daddy live? [points at her heart.] He lives in your heart? [Flustered, she points at the floor.] He lives on the floor? [She whispers to Mommy that he lives here.] Yes, he lives here.
What is your daddy like? "Spicy food!" [We all bust out laughing.] "Daddy likes spicy food."

Who is God? "Jesus!"  [I'm beginning to see a pattern here. We all talk about it.]
Where does God live?  [points up] The ceiling? "He lives in the sky."
Her mother asks what that place in the sky is called. [ponders] "The Kingdom of Heaven."
What is God like? [points at her daddy] "All in white." [She then confers in a whisper with her mother that God is good and that He loves her.]

AUN

I've seen a sketch of what AUN is going to look like, and it's pretty nice: 20 main campus buildings, bunch of dorms and other facilities. Some people look at it and think it's already there. When they get there, they ask, "Where's the rest of it?"

This is the building with most of the teachers and classrooms. I'll be on the second floor.





Across the way from it is what I'll call the administration building. The library takes up the left half of the bottom floor and there are other admin offices throughout it, but the President's office is in the other building. HR, finance, and other offices are across the street mingled with the international school.

That's about it so far.

There are dorms to house the ~1300 students. There's a cafeteria and a vehicle maintenance shop for the fleet of AUN shuttles to take me to work.









They are building a new library. From one day to the next I could see progress being made on it. I think the next one they are building after this is the real admin building. Each of these will then free up more space in the building I've called the admin building for teachers and classrooms. According to the sketch, both the buildings that are currently up are for classrooms.

Speaking of classrooms, here is one. The current department chair was teaching a review session during the 5/6 week summer term. I was surprised how relieved I am to discover just how casual their business casual is. Here I've been ramping up my wardrobe and getting used to tucking in my shirt and all the rest ... I can wear my Hawaiian shirts to work!

One last look at my future office on the way out. There's this really long driveway to get the gate, another indication of the big plans the Founder (former Nigerian vice-president) and American University have for the campus they hope will become the greatest university in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Nomnomgeria

I thought I had already shared this with you, but I guess I hadn't.

I enjoyed the food in Nigeria. This was my breakfast at the hotel. Starting at the top and going clockwise, that's a wedge of pounded yam (dry) standing in the place of a hash brown, boiled potatoes (teeny), boiled eggs, your standard buttery roll, and fried bananas (yum!).

I think I had fried bananas 3-4 times in the 3-4 days I was there. We're talking staple food. Add to that banana bread and hearing about multiple banana recipes and I know there are bananas in Nigeria. I mentioned once upon a time on my work blog that Ugandans eat about 3 times their weight in bananas every year. I figured that I eat Joy's weight in bananas, but not mine. That may change out there.

The chickens and cows are a lot leaner than ours, so even though there is chicken and beef, you get a leg-thigh combo at it looks like wing. There's a lot of fish. A lot.

Apparently you have to know the right places to shop for food. There are plenty of people willing to sell you meat, for instance: they carry it in baskets in the hot sun all day to wherever you will buy it. So you talk to your friendly neighborhood expats or your cook or someone and they'll get you to the safer, higher quality meat. I was thankful I had brought dental floss with me because the meat was remarkably good at fitting between my teeth.

Or you come here to the University Club (members only) for drinks and dinner. Restaurant meal - $6.50. Two pools and a jaccuzzi, weight room, volleyball, tennis courts. Nice place. Friday is pizza night. Saturday there are vegetables you can't find otherwise, likes broccoli or eggplant. They play some games, mostly just hang out and chat.

One of the trusted places is a store called Luka. Luka's was described as "a Walmart inside a 7-11." The place, as you can see, is packed tight. My instructions from Joy were to find out what foods they had, and I figured the fastest way to do that was to take a lot of pictures. So I went around every aisle taking pictures like these of everything on the shelves.

It's also a little like Cosco in that, if you see something you want, you get it because the odds are it won't be there next week. This candy was brand new, for instance. A month or two ago they got in some Christmas treats.

Cereals, spices, rice
Deodorant, makeup, nail care
Shirts, hot pots, sandals
More bug spray than you can imagine
Bread, eggs, water, juice
Canned veggies, canned fruits
Heinz, Mayo, Mustard,
Bleach, furniture polish, carpet cleaner...
The list goes on and on.




I had to explain to just about everyone I met what in the world I was doing. The store owner behind the counter was also mighty curious. I explained that I was coming back in two months to live and shop there and my wife wanted to know what they had. He was satisfied.

For contrast, the video shows a few seconds of driving through the "modern market." It's modern because it is newer than where the old marketplace was. You pay 20N to get in (~12 cents) and then it's small stalls packed in TIGHT. Food, clothing, fabric, electronics, movies, you name it.

The family I was staying with mentioned that the one time living in Yola is not cheaper than living in the US is food. Particularly if you want to buy all the Western brands from Luca's. Calculating from what they spend, it might be a little cheaper for us overall, but it's also clear it'll be another dietary transition for us: carbs are cheap and plentiful, meat also plentiful, but the fruits and veggies are much further between. That, and you shouldn't use the tap water to wash your veggie.