Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit

It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing. Five minutes before, the children had had no more idea than you that there was such a thing as a sand-fairy in the world, and now they were talking to it as though they had known it all their lives.

I had never heard of this book before finding it for free on Barnes and Noble’s weekly “Free Classics” series. I downloaded it because it sounded like it would be short, and then, upon finishing it, I realized that Chris actually read and reviewed this way back in 2008. So, there’s the story.

Anyway, Five Children and It is a children's novel written in 1901. Apparently it’s fairly popular in Europe, even getting a recent film adaptation in 2004 with Freddie Highmore. The plot follows five children who find a sammyadd, or sand fairy, who is compelled to grant them one wish a day, whether he wants to or not. Of course, the wishes all go awry, as wishes in these sorts of stories are prone to do.

It’s a comic novel, thematically boiling down to “be careful what you wish for” and, in the end, “do unto others as you would have them to do unto you”. It’s a nice sentiment for a nice little story. I liked how the narrator threw in little asides to explain various things, and how it acted as sort of a moral compass for the reader. And, that’s about all I have to say.

I Like It Better When You're Funny by Charles Grodin

If you've ever wanted to spend several hours listening to Charles Grodin, of The Heartbreak Kid, Beethoven and MSNBC fame, share anecdotes about various people--mostly unnamed--that he's worked with throughout his 30-odd years in show business, this is the book for you. Of course, if you read I Like It Better When You're Funny and find that it isn't exactly the book on Charles Grodin you want to read, you can always pick up one of his other four memoirs. Just for comparison's sake, Grodin's various memoirs combined are approximately the size of Lord of the Rings. Spy, author, philosopher, and all-around awesome guy Graham Greene got only a two volume set.

I don't know why I picked this up, but I'm sort of glad I did. Grodin is approximately as grouchy as you might expect, and is alternately self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating. Once you've read ILYBWYF, you'll come to understand that Grodin's instincts are always correct, but that he sometimes goes against them and makes embarrassing mistakes. You'll also learn that he has a great deal of respect for pretty much everyone he's ever worked with, and that most of them loved him too, and found him much nicer and easier to work with than expected. If you don't really know who Charles Grodin is, big deal. Once you finish this book, you'll know more.