What Faith is reading now

Had my cursor blinking in a blank post last night when Tommy went to bed.  He has a bad cold and is very cranky and started yelling out at me wondering if I was ever going to come to bed because it was 12:30.  Actually, it was 11:15, but I went ahead and shut the computer off anyway and went to bed.  So I'll owe you an extra post this weekend.  We have Halloweenish activities Friday, Saturday, and Monday, so it'll be a busy one.

Faith just finished reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.  She enjoyed it and wondered if there was another book in the series.  Dahl did leave it very open-ended.  (Last lines: "Well, Charlie," said Grandpa Joe.  "It's certainly been a busy day."  "It's not over yet," Charlie said, laughing.  "It hasn't even begun.")  I assumed he did so on purpose so that he could write another sequel if it proved lucrative.  I didn't realize that Great Glass Elevator wasn't released until after the Gene Wilder version of the original book.  The timing would indicate that he wrote it to cash in, but Wikipedia tells me he hated the movie (not without good reason).  Perhaps he hoped to distract attention from it.  The same Wikipedia article also tells me he intended to write a third book, Charlie in the White House, which is exactly what Faith thought the sequel should be called.  (Honestly, it doesn't take a great deal of insight to come up with that: They're on their way to the White House when the book ends.)  I have to be relieved he didn't write that book, though; the whole political satire bit is a little unpleasant and quite dated today.

Today she read chapter one of Mary Poppins.  She's also working her way through the Encyclopedia Brown series for "pleasure reading", although my copy of book #5 has been misplaced.  I know I used to have the whole collection through book #13.  Honestly, I didn't know there were any more of them than that.  The latest one was released in 2011!  I suppose Encyclopedia and Sally use iPads now and Google things to find out about them instead of riding their bikes to the library.  Sigh.