Library Catch-Up

I haven't reported on my library trips lately, since I'm so deep in denial it's hard to get internet access. So this is a vast catch-up. I'm turning in more than I'm taking out, mostly, and especially in terms of real books to read (I let myself go with picture books still, since P is so much fun to read with). I'm still doomed, however. I think I have to read three books a day through Thursday, and these are all the books I haven't opened in two months, so you see how much incentive I had to read most of them...

In another change, our local city library has been snobbled up by the giant county system, so soon I'll probably pick up my holds there and only do one library visit a day. I've also gotten all the kids cards from the county (Xan had already conveniently lost his city card, although I wish we had noticed that he had some books out before we cancelled it. Turns out I don't bring anything back without the email reminders that you don't get with a cancelled card.)

It also means that I'll do my read-a-book from every shelf at that local library, although that is also doomed since I know they plan to replace the building in a few years. Sniff. I love the library over the river.

Meanwhile, my hold shelf offered up (over three weeks, remember, I'm crazy but not that crazy):

• Blood of the Demon, Diana Rowland
• The Ages of Chaos, Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Rain Is Not My Indian Name, Cynthia Leitich Smith (kidlit)
• Olivia Kidney and the Exit Academy, Ellen Potter (kidlit)
• An Echo in the Bone, Diana Gabaldon. This is a problem -- it's a chunkster, and I meant to freeze that hold until my head is above water. Oops.
• Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, Kate Braestrup
• Nurture Shock, Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman. Another big problem.
• Flirt, Laurell K Hamilton. Another missed freeze.
• The Firelings, Carol Kendall. From[], an book written by the author of The Gammage Cup, without telling me about it! I'm shocked.
• Dr. Frau, Grace H. Kaiser
• Michael Rosen's Sad Book, Michael Rosen. A moving picture book that I've already read with P.
• When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead (Newbery winner)
• The Greatest Power, Wendelin Van Draanen. For P, a Gecko & Stick tome
• Ark Angel, Anthony Horowitz, for X, who has moved far beyond me in the Alex Rider series. I'd better catch up quick.

I then browsed the picture books, looking for another book from my recommended lists, and found

• The A+ Custodian, Louise Bordon
• Classic Transformers. A comic book, not a picture book, but Nicky likes the pictures of Transformers.
• Big Bad Bunny, Franny Billingsley
• Who Is the Beast?, Keith Baker. I love this book, so I wanted to read it again with P.
• The Goat Lady, Jane Bregoli

That last book I grabbed because the cover reminded me of the boys' Greek great-grandmother. We found it by playing the library game. You pick three numbers, and then try to find a book you want to read that has those numbers as their Dewey catalog. You can rearrange the numbers as you need. We played over in the microscopic nonfiction section, so we actually read the "Counting on the Taiga" book, but the goat one was near by. I think the biggest thing P learned from this game is that his mom and her family were weird from earliest historical records.

Total Books from Library Elf (counting all the kid stuff that I'm legally responsible for even if I hope not to read it): 89. Stuff on my card: 73. Missing books: One.

I'll go sign up for Library Loot this week. That's a weekly event hosted in turns by Eva's A Striped Armchair and Marg's Reading Adventures (this week's host) where bloggers can share their library finds of the week. Some of them make me look restrained.

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with G the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

This week is I lucked out, with one of the books due tomorrow starting with the letter "G." How foresightful of me. Alma Alexander's Gift of the Unmage is a YA fantasy about a world where almost everyone has magic, except Thea, our hero. Although a seventh child, she has no magic at all and gets shipped off to the special school for non-magical types (my kids liked the idea of a reverse-Harry Potter when I told them about this). Of course, she has some powers of her own, as well as a special threat from some of the other creatures allied with the humans. A solid blossoming into adulthood story, with some attention paid to what happens under the surface. B

Spring Challenge

Spring has sprung, with a lovely day that I spent reading by an open window. That's almost like being outside, right? And I've grabbed another challenge, thanks to BookNAround, who recommends Kitrina's Spring Reading Thing Challenge.

First, the books I want to read this spring:

• Oath of Fealty, by Elizabeth Moon
• Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner
• How To Teach Physics To Your Dog, Chad Orzel

Second, I commit to more reading my favorite books with my kids. I may change this around, but my thoughts now are:

• The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley (current read)
• The Lives of Christopher Chant, Diana Wynne Jones (April)
• The Railway Children, or something else by Nesbit (May)
• Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Wilder (June)

My third goal will be to tame my library demons, and bring my books out below 20. Not my total check-out, because I also have CDs and movies and picture books, but my personal reading.

My final goal is to get my currently-reading list down to ten books. Which means dealing with library problem first, so I can finish all the non-panic button books I keep starting.

Whew, that's a lot of goals. I'm exhausted. I guess I'll start tomorrow.

Friends and Enemies: Free Fire (F Day!)

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with F the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

Last week I missed posting about my E book, because my internet started dying whenever I walked near with a book. I read Enemy Spy, a Shredderman series book by Wendelin Van Draanen. I know you were worried about it.

Today I finished Free Fire, a Joe Pickett book by C.J. Box. This seems to be a mystery series about a game warden up near Yellowstone (actually in Yellowstone for this book), and I picked it as part of my personal goal to read a book off every shelf in the local library. Which has just become the 2nd closest library, so I may restart this challenge closer to home. Anyway, so far I'm really enjoying the books I'm finding this way, especially the ones I wouldn't have ordinarily come across. Box builds the suspense slowly with the story of the small town lawyer who noticed that a quirk of law made a small section of the park a legal free zone, where no laws could apply. Not even murder. Meanwhile Pickett struggles with his new life since his dismissal from the state park service, until he gets a strange offer back in. The danger mounts but attention is also paid to family, new and old, and friendship. Betrayals and injustice sneak in from above and below the law, while true friendship and courage really shine. I'll probably try to pick up some more of these, although I seem to have started with the seventh so I'm not sure whether to go forward or back. B+

Challenged Again: 2nd Challenge

Well, I found this draft with an official start to the 2nd Challenge, so I think I'll belatedly post it so I can keep all the books together more easily.

Kristen of BookNAround led me to this challenge, which also happened to wink at several books I was about to read/review. And I like challenges. Never mind that I never seem to finish them...

The Queen of Happy Endings is hosting the 2nd Challenge. These are books that are either the 2nd in a series or the 2nd you've read by that author.

So far I've got:

*Fire (Graceling) by Karen Cashore (2nd in Series & 2nd I've read)

*Enigma, C.F. Bentley (2nd in Series, although first I've read)

* Deader Still, by Anton Strout (2nd in Series)

* the next Dooley book by Norah McClintock, assuming it comes out this year

* The Demon's Covenant, by Sarah Rees Brennan (ditto)

and something else, that I'll figure out later. I guess this puts me at the Fascinated Level.

I've read:

1. Fire (Graceling) by Karen Cashore (2nd in Series & 2nd I've read)
2. Enigma, C.F. Bentley (2nd in Series, although first I've read)
3. Never Less Than a Lady, (Lost Lords series), Mary Jo Putney (extra book I was hoping f0r), 2nd in series {Curious Level Complete!}
4. The Demon's Covenant, by Sarah Rees Brennan, 2nd in series, 2nd I've read
5. A Local Habitation, Seanan McQuire

Fiercely Recommended: Fire & Fire

This is a two-fer review, for the Take a Chance Challenge #9: Same word, two books. I managed to find two books that I'm eager to read and that conveniently share a title:

Fire by Kristen Cashore AND Fire by Robin McKinley & Peter Dickinson

Cashore's book is about people fiercely determined to do the right thing, even when it is costly. Her first book, Graceling, won acclaim and glory and I really liked it, so I put down my name at the library for this one. While not quite as great as Graceling, this book also delivered a powerful and honest story. I like book with the characters want to do good, where they sometimes don't live up to their expectations but they do have high ideals for themselves. I guess that's one reason I like YA and kids books; they aren't as full of unpleasant people. Books about people fiercely determined to do the right thing. Fire is a fantasy about a land plagued by monsters, fiercely attractive versions of animals that are supremely dangerous. Fire is one of the few human monsters, and she fears herself almost more than others fear her. There's lots of action as well as characters you can care deeply about. Highly recommended.

Also, this is the second in a series, so it will be the first post in that challenge. Yay! A.

Peter Dickinson and Robin McKinley are two of my favorite fantasy kidlit authors, and I find it highly appropriate that they met and married after writing some

great stuff. Years ago they collaborated on Water, a book of short stories themed around that element, and they finally came out with Fire. Apparently they want to do a series of these anthologies, but McKinley keeps accidentally writing novels instead of stories, which is how we got the books Dragonhaven and Chalice. I only wish Dickinson had the same problem. (Her new book, Pegasus, indicates they are working on the Air book.) The stories are vivid and rich, including salamanders and dragons and the phoenix and other fiery things. Dickinson definitely writes for a more intellectual audience; some stories are more about tone and language than action, but I like that. McKinley's stories again have solidly competent people in them, a trait that was discussed at our last book club meeting, which featured all things McKinley. A.

Hiatus Interrupted: Open Book Sunday

Luckily for me, if you live with a crisis long enough, you soon stop hearing the warning sirens. So I am comfortable with my reading pile, although I would like to read some non-library books again someday. Soon.

Also, this week my blog was cursed -- every day I could break my internet connection by clicking on "new post." So sadly, no one has heard of the pages briskly turning around here. I even missed A-Z Wednesday, despite reading 1.5 E books. Maybe I'll try to double post this week. Also, my son found my lost library book, although I keep forgetting to turn it in. So everything seems rosy.

So, I have many of my own books with bookmarks, but they all still doomed to the bottom shelf while I scurry about with due dates. I am actively reading:

• Enigma, by C.F. Bentley. This is the 2nd in a series, and my first by this author. Time to sign up for some challenges! I read half of this last Wednesday, on E day.
• Spellbent, by Lucy A. Snyder. This was for a book club last month, but I forgot to unfreeze my library hold. So far I'm not too impressed
• Blaze of Memory, by Nalini Singh. Still don't think I'll like this one. The main attraction between the lovers is that they are attracted to each other, mysteriously since they aren't even polite.
• Positive Discipline, by Jane Nelsen. Got to keep up with my homework. We got to skip a week for illness, but now I'm behind again.
• How to Teach Physics To Your Dog, Chad Orzel.
• Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson. Famous book. Very depressing. I'm near the end, so I've ground to a halt, but I peeked at the end to see who lived.

One last list: Books I Have Finished This Week:

• Space Captain Smith, by Toby Frost. I grabbed this from the new release shelf because it looked like every space opera cliche rolled into a book. And that is what it is delivering.
• So Totally Emily Ebers, Lisa Yee. Found it! Third view of the summer these kids met. Fun twist on point of view.
• Alex and Me, Irene M. Pepperberg. A woman and her parrot. Or was it the other way around?
• The Year of the Bomb, Ronald Kidd. Kidlit.
• Enemy Spy (Shredderman #4). Wendelin Van Draanen. For E day.
• Attack of the Taggerman (Shredderman #2). Van Draanen. Hey, another #2!
• Meet the Gecko (Shredderman #3). Van Draanen. After I read #4, I had to quickly catch up. This inspired my third grader to read them all as well, only he did it in order.
• Taken, by Norah McClintock. These are YA books written at a kidlit reading level, but McClintock tells a good story. I liked the twist at the end.

So, a memoir, an SF book, and seven kidlit. But I've also pushed ahead in many of the books due this week. And we found the missing book! And the missing video! But not the missing CD. It is so awful that I feel it would be good karma if I pay to have it removed from the library system. Modern rock Christmas songs on the glockenspiel (for innocent children). Yes, "We Are the World" can be made worse.

I hope everyone had a good PI day.

March Madness! Weekly Update

As a library reader, I still feel like I'm jumping from sinking stone to sinking stone in a pile of lava. The good news is, I can see the other side. The bad news is that all the stones are sinking at the same rate, so my last few steps are doomed.

The other good news is that if I fall off, I don't get burned to a crisp, I just don't read a few books. Yet. The other bad news is that one of my books has gone missing! We all remember seeing it a few weeks ago, but now it's not in the pile. X is pretty sure he gave it back to me, and I am pretty sure he is right, but apparently I carried it around and read a few pages and then put it down somewhere, not where it belongs. Oops. Never share books with your kids, that's the moral. Come back, Emily Ebers! I'll never procrastinate on reading you again!

So, I have many of my own books with bookmarks, but they all still doomed to the bottom shelf while I scurry about with due dates. I am actively reading:

• Space Captain Smith, by Toby Frost. I grabbed this from the new release shelf because it looked like every space opera cliche rolled into a book. And that is what it is delivering.
• So Totally Emily Ebers, Lisa Yee. Except I'm not reading it, because I can't find it. Eek!

When those are done I'll read forward in:

• Blaze of Memory, by Nalini Singh. Still don't think I'll like this one.
• Positive Discipline, by Jane Nelsen. Got to keep up with my homework. I'm actually liking this one a lot; it helps me keep my cool when all around me are losing theirs.
• Alex and Me, Irene M. Pepperberg. A woman and her parrot --for SCIENCE.
• How to Teach Physics To Your Dog, Chad Orzel. My kid already skipped through all the dog conversation bits, which he approved of. I haven't tested how much physics stuck, though.
• Spellbent, Lucy A. Snyder. Last month's online book club book. The library failed me. Probably because I forgot to un-freeze my hold.
• Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson. Famous book.
• The Year of the Bomb, Ronald Kidd. Kidlit.

One last list: Books I Have Finished This Week.

• The Private Patient, by PD James. The mystery took a far back place to an interest in the characters involved, both police and suspect. That was OK with me.
• Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. Pat Tillman was a real hero. Our military brass does not cover itself with glory, however.
• Pink Brain, Blue Brain by Lise Eliot. We should encourage people to develop fully, not limit people to their gender roles. A sex difference should mean a chance to help, not a life sentence.
• Promise of the Flame, Sylvia Engdahl. The end of the book spoiled things completely, with the characters acting like complete idiots in service to the plot. Humph. Read her earlier books, they are much better.
• Spinning Through the Universe, Helen Frost. A variety of poems about a fifth grade class.
• Dragon Spear, Jessica Day George. A dragon war and a wedding dress.
• Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card. What Ender did in his teen age years.
• The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers. Lilian Jackson Braun. Paid even less attention to the mystery than James's book, but without insight or coherence to make up for it.
• Olivia Kidney. Ellen Potter. Surprisingly tasty kidlit.
• Divine Misdemeanors. Lauell K. Hamilton. I believe the title refers to the series of savage mass murders committed by the villains. Maybe Divine Felonies wasn't as catchy a offering?

So, three kidlit, a YA, a paranormal fantasy, one SF, two mysteries (with vastly different audiences), a biography and a science book. Or, three awful books, three satisfying books, and four decent books.

Ender's Teen Years: Ender in Exile

Our book club recently read Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Card is a famous SF writer who also likes to write about writing; he's talked about where he gets his ideas. His first idea for Ender actually became Speaker for the Dead, the sequel, but in order to understand his main character he started wondering about where he came from, and that wondering became the Hugo and Nebula winning Ender's Game. (The Hugo and Nebula are SF's big prizes, awarded by fans and writers respectively.) Then he went on to write Speaker for the Dead, which also won both prizes. But there is a long gap between the two stories. I highly recommend both books, and so does my son (well, he mostly liked the first one, the second one has more mature themes about life and death and stuff).

Card eventually went back to Ender, writing later books and going back to the beginning with a parallel story about other characters in the story. None of these books were as good as the first, and I eventually dropped out. But my son is a completist, so he read his way through all of them, and when I saw Ender in Exile, the book that bridges the main events between the first two, I decided to pick it up.

The story of Ender's life between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead fills in some of changes between the boy and the man, and the beginning of human expansion into space. Card's writing has settled down into a fairly talky rhythm, with a deep understanding of the emotional twists of his characters but a tell-not-show habit of explicitly detailing them for the reader. His dialogue sounds hilarious to me, to the point where I'd love to listen to him talk with people to see if he or anyone else really talks like that. But only when people are serious. Maybe I just have no idea how to have a serious conversation.

But the most fun for me was Card's wild family-building schemes, which reminded me of Heinlein. The problem of a skewed sex ratio was fixed by a lottery because everyone knows (at least everyone in these books -- several characters mention this as a fact) that only permanent monogamous families preserve a decent society. No one questions this, or wonders if that lottery thing will make for solid families. The scene where a woman makes a pass at a man because she doesn't like her husband, and the man refuses her because their society needs healthy marriages just seemed to miss so many assumptions that my head was spinning. It's just an aside in the novel, but has me still gobsmacked a week later.

The story itself was fun -- not as powerful as the first two Ender books, but it didn't leave me wishing it hadn't been written (like the 3rd and 4rth). It did a better job of changing things than the other series in Ender's world (the Bean stuff) because it doesn't try to undo important things. Well, it explains why Ender's parents were so dumb; it's because their kids never understood them. I like that explanation. B

Light Library Bag

Well, I turned in a bagful of books and stuff, and I came out with a light load. Yay! I'm not sure it's in time to save me, though.

Meanwhile, my hold shelf offered up:

• Quatrain, Sharon Shinn

I then browsed the picture books, looking for another book from my recommended lists, and found

• The Three Bears, Paul Galdone (hidden in the folk tales section)
• The Wolves in the Walls, Neil Gaiman (recommended as the scariest picture book ever by bookiewookie.blogspot.com)
• Divine Misdemeanors, Laurell K. Hamilton. I think this is the latest in her Fairie Princess series. I expect it to be awful. It was on the new book shelf at the local library, a dying breed since the amalgamation went through. The county library is all about the hold lists; much less serendipity on the front shelves. (This is not a picture book.)

Total Books from Library Elf (counting all the kid stuff that I'm legally responsible for even if I hope not to read it): 76. Stuff on my cards: 70.

I'll go sign up for Library Loot this week. That's a weekly event hosted in turns by Eva's A Striped Armchair (this week's host) and Marg's Reading Adventures where bloggers can share their library finds of the week. Some of them make me look restrained.

Duelling Dragons: Dragon Spear on D Day

Today is Reading on the Beach's A-Z Wednesday, with D the starring letter. Every week bloggers are invited to spotlight a book starting with the letter of the week. You show the cover, tell the title, give a synopsis, and post a link. Just to be annoying, I like to actually read (sometimes just finish) the book on that day, so I include my little review. Makes things more interesting. Then I sign up on her page to see what everyone else came up with.

This week is complicated by my need to read the stuff due tomorrow, but I found Dragon Spear, a children's book already started, as the perfect filler. It was good timing because some of my other books were about to get very depressing.

Dragon Spear is the third book in Jessica Day George's dragon setting, and it fits nicely with the others. Creel is the spunky seamstress who befriends the dragons; she alternates working on her wedding dress with helping the dragons deal with kidnapping and empire building from a splinter group of runty dragons. She occasionally does something silly (stops to tie her shoe while on a secret mission, and gets separate from her raiding party) but generally manages to get herself out of her fixes. There's no deep after glow, but a pleasant adventure story, garnished with some sewing challenges that get as much respect as any other subplot. It's fun to have a hero who doesn't start off by condemning sewing as boring. And I like the idea of somebody named George writing books about friendly dragons. B

Bad Guy Heros: Blood Memories

I read another vampire book, Blood Memories, by Barb Hendee. She's written a Noble Dead series, which I think is about other vampires, but I haven't read them. These vampires drink blood to survive, and each has some little trick that helps them -- they cause fear, or look helpless, or something. Our narrator, Eleisha, is the helpless one. She finds her victims by looking pathetic until she attracts either a nice guy looking out for her, or a nasty guy trying to take advantage. She prefers the latter, so she doesn't have to feel as bad when she rips out their throat and drains their life, soaking up their memories with every gulp. Ew. Luckily Hendee doesn't spend a lot of time gloating over these icky scenes.

At first I thought it was interesting how the viewpoint narrator was obviously the evil creature that needed to be defeated. We slowly learn about the methods of the vampires through a police investigation of Eleisha's friend Edward, who committed suicide by cop. Unluckily, he picked two psychic cops, one who absorbs memories by touching objects and one who bonds telepathically. Touchy-feely Dominic decides to hunt down the vampires, because he's a good cop and these guys have been killing people for centuries. Go Dominic! He's the bad guy. Cop #2, Wade, likes to swap memories with Eleisha and help her out. He feels sorry for her because she never wanted to be a vampire, but was forced into it.

After finishing the book, I'm deeply confused. Did Hendee not realize that her cute protagonist was a serial killer? Yes, she mostly killed people who weren't all that nice, but her standards were laxer than Dexter's, for crying out loud. Mild regret does not make it OK. I was rooting for Dominic all the way, but I'm fairly sure I wasn't meant to, that his maniacal devotion to killing vampires was supposed to be bad. The writing was slightly better than most vampire literature (not a huge bar), but the ideas seem very muddled. There is a sequel, and the teaser makes it seem like Eleisha slows down on the mass murder thing, but I prefer a slightly higher moral standard. Even Vlad Taltos (a fictional assassin) doesn't take death this casually. C

PS. I think there is a vampire challenge out there. I may go join retroactively, because I'm still on a vampire kick.