Pumpkin Carving

This week showed a definite move away from summer -- the rains came down and the sun hid away. Luckily most of the weekend plans were weather independent -- volleyball class is in a gym, chess is not really an outdoor sport, and D&D only has imaginary storms. Even the pumpkin carving party was safely indoors, with enough natural and electric light for me to create my usual masterpieces.

My sister hosts this every year, and she has a nice collection of specialty carving knives and saws and shapes as well as a collection of design suggestions that almost everyone else uses to create vegetable artwork. Me, I'm a jack-o-lantern traditionalist. My boys were trapped in some of the above activities, so I carved two pumpkins and then decided that the gourd-like object was spooky enough intact. Also, it looked like it might hurt me if I tried to cut it.

I had an good time reading this week. From Monday to Wednesday I concentrated on the books due back at the library, and then I just meandered through my still quite hefty currently reading sack. That looks to be my policy for the next month or so, at which point I will switch from frantically reading whatever is due to frantically finishing off my challenges.

I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists.

• The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander. A truly depression description of what America's evil drug policy has done to its minority underclass, and how hard it will be to change it.
• Touch Blue, Cynthia Lord. Simple tale of a family reforming -- I thought it would be much more preachy than it is. Left me hungry for a lobster dinner, though.
• Drink, Slay, Love, Sarah Beth Durst. This story of vampires, unicorns, and prom deserves the high honor of being shelved next to Team Human. I have recommended it to my high schooler. Also, Connecticut!
• Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell. College kids struggle through their first year. And they do it in Nebraska! Score!

What am I currently reading? Only 20 books! Which means it fits on one page of my screen, which is the definition of restrained.  My currently reading list is now on up-to-date on GOODREADS.

• Uzumaki, Junji Ito. For the Cybils. The official finalist is the compilation of volumes 1-3, but my library has them seperately. I assume it is because my awesome library know about them before they were cool.
• The Heiress Effect, Courtney Milan. NOOK. Fun yet emotionally true romance mixing English voting reform with the legal helplessness of women, and of course humor and true love.
• Pleasure Unbound, Larissa Ione. Very old Vaginal Fantasy pick. I think. I thought it was endless BDSM porn, but it mixes the sex with funny dialogue. I think it is supposed to be funny.
• Thorn Fall, Lindsay Buroker. NOOK. I have to say that Buroker does urban fantasy just as well as she does her steam-punk stuff set in a different world.
• Codex Born, Jim C. Hines. Second book in a series where magicians get their power from books, so it's hard to see how it can possibly go wrong. I liked the first one, so I bought this one.
• Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean. From my shelves.
• A Matter for Men, David Gerrold. No change.
• Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barett. No change.
• Magic City: Recent Spells, Paula Guran, ed. I liked the Elizabeth Bear story about the tall werewolf drag queen.
• About That Night, Norah McClintock.  No change. 
• Rogue, Michael Z. Williamson. 
• Wildflower, Alecia Whitaker. 
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt. No change.
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. No change. 
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling.  They get to the island and take a bath.
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. I do enjoy this book. Windwolf saves her from a bad date. 
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change.

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• The Jury, Stephen Adler. Why intelligent people are tossed off juries. 
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. Different approaches to reading. 
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. What strange organization is this?
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Time to welcome home the traveler.
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. 

What's up next?  Still starting a book every other day, until I get this library backlog under control. I think my the New Year I will have this under control, just in time for three month drought where I try to get no new books.  I picked a book for it's location, a book recommended by my elementary school book club, a Cybils finalist, and the Sword & Laser October pick.

Monday: The Summer Girls
Tuesday:
Wednesday: I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Thursday:
Friday: The Boy in the Wooden Box
Saturday:
Sunday: Alif the Unseen

For my NOOK, I have Kiss of Steel waiting, and Dark Triumph when I finish that.

NOOK books:

2014 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils: 62/77. Although I'm most of the way through the last Graphic Novel.
2. Where Am I Reading? 36/51. Connecticut and Nebraska down. Now I need an Arkansas book. And Maryland. Will start South Carolina this week.
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 19/26. Only books from my shelves count, and all my library books are due! Still need EIJ V XYZ.
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything. Ha!
5. Book Bingo: Fifteen boxes into square 2.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge complete!.
7. Small Fry Safari: 8/8. All done! Except for the reviewing...
8. PoC Speculative Fiction: 22/5: Son of Neptune has to PoC main characters.
9. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
10. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.

Dewey 24 Hour Readathon Weekend

This weekend I signed up for the Dewey 24 Hour Readathon, and managed to read for about 21 hours of it, with a few interruptions for walking around, cheering on everyone else, and breathing. My goal was to finish some of the books I've been carrying around since this summer, and to get my currently-reading stack under 20.

Mission accomplished! Of course, I've only read about 100 pages since Saturday, so now I'm falling behind again, but I just need a few hours a day of concentration. I had fun pushing myself to finish things, and my kids had fun slacking off. Sunday I managed to get out of the house to do some long overdue grocery shopping and to enjoy the beautiful weather and the return of my traveling niece.

I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists. Six of these books were finishing on Saturday during the read-a-thon.

• Protector, C.J. Cherryh. This series is getting very top-heavy, so wheels spin for the first hundred or so pages, but once past that the plot is fast and furious. The stilted language of the aliens tired me out so I didn't quite finish it on Saturday.
• The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan. They got to Alaska! Although the Amazons were my favorite part.
• Cathedral of the Wild, Boyd Varty. Touching memoir of growing up interacting with animals at a safari park, only to almost succumb to demons within.
• Always, Abigail, Nancy Cavanaugh. A cautionary tale of a sixth grader attracted to the mean girls who almost can't bring herself to make friends with actual nice people.
• "The President Has Been Shot!", James L. Swanson. Taut description of JFK's assassination, a worthy finalist for the YA nonfiction Cybils .
• Templar, Jordan Mechner. Another Cybils, this time YA graphic novel. Interesting history that I didn't know much about.
• Divergent, Veronica Roth. Better than I expected -- and now I can get the movie!
• The Whispering Skull, Jonathan Stroud. I'm struggling a bit with this series, because I keep wishing for the narrator to be as awesome as her boss.
• Imprisoned, Martin W. Sandler. Another Cybils history book, which taught me things I didn't know about the Japanese internment.

What am I currently reading? Only 19 books! My currently reading list is now on up-to-date on GOODREADS.

• Pleasure Unbound, Larissa Ione. Very old Vaginal Fantasy pick. I think.
• Drink, Slay, Love, Sarah Durst. I believe this takes place in Connecticut.
• The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander. NOOK. Distressing account of the evils and racism of our drug policy.
• Thorn Fall, Lindsay Buroker. NOOK. Buroker does great action scenes, and so far I like the characters and the peril.
• Codex Born, Jim C. Hines. Second book in a series where magicians get their power from books, so it's hard to see how it can possibly go wrong. I liked the first one, so I bought this one.
• Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean. From my shelves.
• A Matter for Men, David Gerrold. No change.
• Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barett. No change.
• Magic City: Recent Spells, Paula Guran, ed. It has returned to me!
• About That Night, Norah McClintock.  No change. 
• Rogue, Michael Z. Williamson. I don't really pay attention to their techniques, but I like the action.
• Wildflower, Alecia Whitaker. She chooses a record company -- fame is starting.
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt. No change.
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. No change. 
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling. 
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. I do enjoy this book. Windwolf saves her from a bad date. 
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change.

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• The Jury, Stephen Adler. Now an example of a bad jury. 
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. How a phonics classroom operates. 
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. Our hero discovers that the kids he bullied don't like him.
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Not much happens in a small town
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Bringing idiots along to a delicate negotiation is not a good idea.

What's up next?  Still starting a book every other day, until I get this library backlog under control. Actually, I suspect I'll have to send some books back unread even at this pace. At least I only got one new book last week:

Monday: 
Tuesday: Fangirl
Wednesday: 
Thursday: Touch Blue
Friday: 
Saturday: Uzamaki
Sunday:

NOOK books:

2014 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils: 62/77. I have left all the long books for last.
2. Where Am I Reading? 3451. Alaska! Now I need an Arkansas book. And Maryland.
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 19/26. Only books from my shelves count, and all my library books are due! Still need EIJ V XYZ.
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything. Ha!
5. Book Bingo: Fifteen boxes into square 2.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge complete!.
7. Small Fry Safari: 8/8. All done! Except for the reviewing...
8. PoC Speculative Fiction: 22/5: Son of Neptune has to PoC main characters.
9. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
10. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.

The 24Hour Readathon!

I got off to a slow start for the Readathon by sleeping in till 6:30, but maybe that will help me power through farther.

First book: Veronica Roth's Divergent, at Chapter 21, p.261.

But first -- the Opening Meme:

1. Where: Reading in Renton, Washington, USA.
2. Most Anticipated book: Argh, I dunno, About That Night by Norah McClintock.
3. Snack: Nachos
4. About me: I read too many books. Not overall, but at the same time -- currently over 20 open.
5. What I Am Looking Foward to: Finishing a lot of those books!

8:30 AM. Finished Divergent. It was more complex than I anticipated, and now I'm ready to see the movie!

Now grabbing Templar, a graphic novel by Jordan Mechner. It's on page 87. Chapter 3.

11:30 AM. Finished Templar, which was a gripping story of the fall of the Templars in France. Took a quick break with a story from Magic City: Recent Spells, and then I dove into "The President Has Been Shot!"by James Swanson.

While driving around I'm listening to The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan, and having a lot of fun with the Amazons.

1:30. Back from driving around. Finished "The President Has Been Shot!"  In the mood for something that does not involve a lot of dead people (unlike Divergent, Templar, and The President Has Been Shot!"  Opened Always Abigail, a book I won during the 48 Hour Reading Challenge. The secondary character's mom died three years ago.

3:30. Finished Always Abigail. It was actually quite stressful to read about a reluctant bully who constantly disappoints herself. The last few pages didn't really make up for the previous 275. Ouch. Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty is about growing up on a South African safari park -- that should cheer me up.

4:30 Survey for Hour 12:
Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty, a memoir of a man whose family runs a safari park in South Africa
2. How many books have you read so far? I've finished 3 (both started before today), read a story from a book of short stories, and listened to an audio chapter.
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? rereading Tinker by Wen Spencer
4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Nope, people are leaving me alone.
5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? How grim so many of my books were! I may develop a complex. I need something happy and light!

Mini challenge for Hour 15: Spine Poetry:

About that night
Drowned hopes find me 
Forever free.
The warrior templar,
Protector, Rogue.
Dead man walking.


(The book Protector is sadly hidden beneath Templar, sorry for the bad photography.)

9:00 PM: Finally finished The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan. That's a heavy book out of my bookbag! I like what Riordan does with the Greek vs Roman mythology, and as a Seattle neighbor I found the Amazons hilarious.

2:45: I've been reading Protector by C.J. Cherry, but I'm going slower and slower and getting more and more tired. I think it's time to give up, which I will do at 3:00 AM. So I started 90 minutes late and ended two hours early. I guess that's OK for a first try!

I managed to knock six books off my currently-reading stack, and moved the bookmark in Protector along 225 pages. I'm still reading too many books, but I think I'm closer to having things under control. This was a lot of fun!

Emergency Protocol: 24 Hour Read-a-Thon

OK, it is time to directly address my problem. I have never caught up from my start-a-book-a-day summer reading habit, and now I have over twenty books with active bookmarks. Even I admit this is unwieldy. In addition, my library pile has blossomed to a huge extent, with fifty books jostling for my attention. A few of those are for my kids, but honestly, only a few. Something needs to be done.

I could stop reading new books until I get caught up. But that's not going to happen. I mean, not only am I way behind on many challenges, but I also have the will power of a flea. Additionally, reading things is my security blanket, so if I have nothing new to distract me, the normal stresses of life will send me quivering under my bed, unable to reassure myself with the thought that Jane Eyre had it worse.

So instead, I have stumbled across the Dewey 24 Hour Readathon, a twice-yearly event held by some fabulous bloggers. I can devote all of Saturday to reading, and do it with a pack of other bibliophiles so it looks like a community-spirit, social event! And my kids are supportive and have promised to bring me nice things to eat during it.

I'm not going to go all insane -- the official start time is 5:00 AM PST on October 18th, but I think I'll sleep in until 6 and start in a good mood. And I've put an audio book on my phone so I can drive my kid to a few things, and I'll want to pull out of the pages to welcome home my niece from Japan. But I'm hoping to get a few books finished, especially almost everything on the bottom row of my to-read picture.

My Cybils Nominees 2014

It's Cybils Nomination Time! The Cybils are my favorite book awards for kids, because so far they have a very solid record of listing books that both I and the kids I like enjoy. For the next few days, they are accepting nominations from regular people like me. And like you, mythical person who probably doesn't read my blog.

So, if you've read any great books that kids would love in the past year, get over there and nominate before Oct 15th rolls around and the polls close!

For the past few years, I've challenged myself to read the entire Cybils shortlist, with the exception of BookApps because I have no idea how to get those. I've really enjoyed this reading journey (odyssey?) and have hauled along my children and any other children I can get my hands on as far as they would go. Obviously the younger ones don't get the YA lists, and the older ones sometimes aren't all that interested in Early Chapter Books.  Cybils picks have provided me with excellent options for my book clubs (and now I'm the Laser of Sword & Laser Kids, so I need a lot more science fiction kidlit, STAT).

A sad side effect of my Cybils challenge obsession hobby is that I miss out a lot on new books because I'm spending so much time reading last year's picks. I only read 1-3 kidlit books a week, and I'm also doing book clubs at the elementary school, online, my family book club, and keeping up with all the series and authors I love (which the Cybils have added a lot to!) so the 77 books from last years list have kept me fairly busy. Yes, my excuses are fascinating, aren't they? So I don't have much to nominate this year. I meant to keep a list, but then I always mean to do a lot of things.

I did enjoy looking through the new picture books at my library, at least until they tore it down (don't panic, they will build it up again. It just needs walls at this point). So I had a favorite picture book:


 Paul Meets Bernadette -- fiction picture book. Two odd fish. This book by Rosy Lamb had quirky characters with pictures that perfectly matched the tone, and it just made me smile and wish my sons were small again so we could read it together.

And then on Saturday I finished Unmade by Sarah Rees Brennan. Loved it, nominated it, although as a third book in a series I don't think it has much chance.

I really liked the most recent Nathan Hale history book (found him through the Cybils) but someone else already nominated it. I was going to put it in YA for extreme grimness and slaughter, but apparently it got nominated in the younger category. Maybe I should offer it to my 8th grader...

I got some graphic novel suggestions at GeekGirlCon, so I will look them up at the library tomorrow and maybe sneak some in before nominations close.  Jinx's Magic by Sage Blackwood was one of my favorites this year, but someone else loved it faster.  Also, it's a sequel to a 2013 nomination.

Geek Girls

Instead of reading this weekend, I headed up to Seattle for GeekGirlCon, a celebration of nerd culture and the women who help make it. It was a lot of fun -- I heard interesting stuff, saw interesting art, turned in a library book, checked out a library book, and met the Doubleclicks.

Also, I successfully navigated public transit, something my kids do with ease but that fills me with fear and trembling. Which is sad, because it's ridiculously simple, with a frequently running express taking me straight downtown. That's the one my boys ride a lot, so now I feel even safer about them doing this.

I must have looked like I knew what I was doing, because three people asked me for directions. One I could even help!

I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists. I read a lot of short books this week, which should help me get my library count down:

• Captain Marvel, Vol 2: Down, by Kelly Sue Deconnick. I found this one grimmer and less fun -- I like my comic book superheroes to have comic problems, not real ones. Probably because I haven't been here for the long haul, so they don't feel fully real to me. Also, the art changed drastically (if I noticed, it was very drastic!) and that made the later parts of the story less convincing, which was sad as that was the part with the illness and depression in it.
• Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan. Good landing for the trilogy -- I got to recommend it at a panel at the con. I especially liked the relationship between Holly and Angela, and the heroic but whiny way the main trio faced their doom.
• Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Treaties, Trenches, Mud and Blood, Nathan Hale. As grim as promised -- World War I is never a cheerful tale.
• A Part of the Sky, Robert Newton Peck. Speaking of grim! If anyone is feeling too bouyant and chipper after the ending of A Day No Pigs Would Die, this book will help.
• Waiting For Normal, Leslie Connor. Kid raising her mother eventually has to give up. 
• The Governess Affair, Courtney Milan. At least this one ends with a lavender farm.
• Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer, Dorothy Gilman. I would prefer a real country for the African stories, but since she's letting her characters mess with the politics I can see why she fakes one.
• Black Butler Vol 3, Yana Toboso. I liked seeing the differences between the manga and the anime. I have to hurry up and get the next because I prefer to read first and watch afterward.

What am I currently reading? Less than I was last week, but still too much. I've got roughly 23 books in my currently-reading sack.  Most (not quite all) of my currently reading list is now on  GOODREADS.

• The Whispering Skull, Jonathan Stroud. I'm having problems relating to the characters this time around; we're in the viewpoint of the sidekick but I keep wishing she was the main hero.
• The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander. NOOK. Distressing account of the evils of our drug policy.
• Templar, Jordan Mechner. Cybils graphic novel. I need to finish this to work on other Cybils books.
• Thorn Fall, Lindsay Buroker. NOOK. Buroker does great action scenes, and so far I like the characters and the peril.
• Imprisoned, Martin W. Sandler. Cybils book. I want to get my boys to read this.
• Codex Born, Jim C. Hines. Second book in a series where magicians get their power from books, so it's hard to see how it can possibly go wrong. I liked the first one, so I bought this one.
• Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean. From my shelves.
• A Matter for Men, David Gerrold. No change.
• Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barett. No change.
• Magic City: Recent Spells, Paula Guran, ed. It has returned to me!
• Always, Abigail, Nancy J. Cavanaugh. Poor Abigail -- I saw that alternate thing coming. 
• About That Night, Norah McClintock.  No change. 
• Rogue, Michael Z. Williamson. I don't really pay attention to their techniques, but I like the action.
• Protector, C.J. Cherryh. Kid with a hangover, Bren with a dinner plan.
• Wildflower, Alecia Whitaker. She chooses a record company -- fame is starting.
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt. No change.
• Divergent, Veronica Roth. I heard this mentioned several times at the con this weekend. 
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. No change. 
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling. 
• Cathedral of the Wild, Boyd Varty. They almost turned into teenagers at boarding school, but his parents pulled them out just in time.
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. I do enjoy this book. Windwolf saves her from a bad date. 
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change.
• The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan. They are getting closer to Alaska -- come on Percy!

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• The Jury, Stephen Adler. Now an example of a bad jury. 
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. How a phonics classroom operates. 
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. Our hero discovers that the kids he bullied don't like him.
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Not much happens in a small town
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Bringing idiots along to a delicate negotiation is not a good idea.

What's up next?  Still starting a book every other day, until I get this library backlog under control. Which may be never, since I'm still checking out more books than I read. Last week I had to shuffle things around a bit, since I pried The Whispering Skull out of my kid's hands and then managed to renew the spy book.

Monday: Affecting Fictions (family member wrote this)
Tuesday:
Wednesday: "The President Has Been Shot" (Cybils)
Thursday:
Friday: Pleasure Unbound
Saturday:
Sunday: Drink Slay Love

NOOK books:

2014 Challenge Progress (NONE!):

1. Cybils: 59/77. My son is reading a lot of these. Does that count?
2. Where Am I Reading? 33/51. Vermont! Woot! Hoping to start the Connecticut book this week.
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 19/26. Only books from my shelves count, and all my library books are due!
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything. Ha!
5. Book Bingo: Fifteen boxes into square 2.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge complete!.
7. Small Fry Safari: 8/8. All done! Except for the reviewing...
8. PoC Speculative Fiction: 21/5: Still getting more.
9. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
10. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.

Books Are Fun

I may have checked a few more books out of the library this week. But I didn't buy anything! Well, except for an ebook that was on sale. Oops, almost forgot about that...

I think I need to pay more attention to my holds list. That's my weakness. And having to walk past the display of new and interesting paperbacks on my way to the hold shelf. That's another weakness.

The old library still looks like the picture, so I'm still in the smaller back-up library, which isn't as conducive to roaming about. So if I make it past the new book display, then I can weigh my library bag after emptying my hold shelf and head straight for check out. So all I really need to do is keep that hold shelf tiny. Currently I only have 4 books and 3 ebooks on hold, so next week at the absolute worst will be better.

This week I was delighted to see three books (well, five) on my hold shelf:



Wicked As They Come, Delilah Dawson. The October Vaginal Fantasy pick.

Kiss of Steel, Bec McMaster. The October Vaginal Fantasy alt pick.

Fountain and Tomb, Nahguib Mahfouz. My 10th grader's teacher recommended this; he's making the kids read it.

I also walked past three new paperbacks from series that I like, so I grabbed them:



The missing two books from my hold shelf are really for my kids -- both of them are racing through Scott Lynch's series but one prefers paper to ebooks. And the essay book is an attempt to prove that not all essays are dire forms of torture possibly unexpectedly developed by the Spanish Inquisition.



So I still have 58 things out on my library card.  I have to keep my library card under my age or I ban myself from getting new books. So I should be banned. Humph.

I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at The Captive Reader  this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. 

Reading Many Books

This was a good week, with pleasant weather and good times with friend and family. We had a fun dinner with friends and planned out our next few Family Book Clubs (two families, kids ranging from 7-16, read a book and have dinner together).  Then I went to Seattle's BrickCon, a Lego convention that my brother's Lego groups helps put on, and admired all the displays and cheered him on as he demonstrated his Great Ball Contraptions, which is always a huge crowd pull.

Then I cooked up a storm for Saturday dinner, pulling out a cookbook my best friend gave me when I was pregnant with my first child, and served out Baked French Toast, homemade plum capote, cinnamon rolls, fresh fruit, and bacon. And I made crepe batter but saved that for Monday's breakfast, to the delight of my kids.

Sunday we hosted the local D&D group and my kids killed all the bad guys, suffering only one fatality within the party.

I'm off to sign up to see what everyone else is reading lately at bookjourney's and Teach Mentor Texts lists. I didn't finish that much, but I did manage to read a bit in many of the books I have bookmarks in, so I felt good.

• A Web of Air, Philip Reeve. YA. Not enough initiative or cleverness from the main character.
• A Free Man of Color, Barbara Hambly. Interesting story set in pre-Civil War New Orleans.
• The Search For WondLa, Tony DiTerlizzi. For this months Sword & Laser Kids. I'm the new Laser, so I hope people come talk about it!

What am I currently reading? Less than I was last week, but still too much. I've got 22 books in my currently-reading sack.  Most (not quite all) of my currently reading list is now on  GOODREADS.

• Mrs Pollifax and the Lion Killer, Dorothy Gilman. I'm still enjoying these; I'll probably finish this one today. I like Mrs Pollifax as a parental figure.
• The Governess Affair, Courtney Milan. NOOK Short novella by a romance writer I enjoy.
• Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan. After doing the library reading I must do because of due dates this is my top priority. It's so good that when I was late to pick up my 10th grader, he was miffed until he heard my excuse: "I was reading Unmande."
• Templar, Jordan Mechner. Cybils graphic novel. Very interesting history period.
• Thorn Fall, Lindsay Buroker. NOOK I jumped this Buroker in front of her other books because it is set in Arizona.
• Imprisoned, Martin W. Sandler. Cybils book about Japanese interment during World War II. I'm discovering things I didn't know -- like that Canada also interned their citizens.
• Codex Born, Jim C. Hines. Second book in a series where magicians get their power from books, so it's hard to see how it can possibly go wrong. I liked the first one, so I bought this one.
• Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean. From my shelves.
• Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Treaties, Trenches, Mud and Blood, Nathan Hale. This will probably be a downer.
• A Matter for Men, David Gerrold. No change.
• Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barett. No change.
• Magic City: Recent Spells, Paula Guran, ed. Soon this will come back to me. p.201
• Always, Abigail, Nancy J. Cavanaugh. Poor Abigail -- I saw that alternate thing coming. 
• About That Night, Norah McClintock.  No change. 
• Rogue, Michael Z. Williamson. I don't really pay attention to their techniques, but I like the action.
• Protector, C.J. Cherryh. Kid with a hangover, Bren with a dinner plan.
• Wildflower, Alecia Whitaker. She chooses a record company -- fame is starting.
• Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt. No change.
• Divergent, Veronica Roth. This is getting interesting -- I like the questions about divergence, and I'm finding the different houses surprisingly complex.  
• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time, Suzette Elgin. No change. 
• Shards of Time, Lynn Flewelling. No change.
• Cathedral of the Wild, Boyd Varty. They almost turned into teenagers at boarding school, but his parents pulled them out just in time.
• Tinker, Wen Spencer. I do enjoy this book. Windwolf saves her from a bad date. 
• Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. No change.
• The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan. They are getting closer to Alaska -- come on Percy!

Reading intermittently, and deliberately slowly. These never change much:

• The Jury, Stephen Adler. Now an example of a bad jury. 
• Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vacca. Skills-based approaches. 
• Nerds, Michael Buckley. Our hero discovers that the kids he bullied don't like him.
• Out to Canaan, Jan Karon. Not much happens in a small town
• The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens. Bringing idiots along to a delicate negotiation is not a good idea.

What's up next?  Still starting a book every other day, until I get this library backlog under control. I'm only days ahead of due dates, since I can't renew if other people want the book. Pesky other people!

Monday:
Tuesday: Waiting For Normal,
Wednesday:
Thursday: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Friday:
Saturday: Black Butler III
Sunday:

NOOK books:  I'll probably start The New Jim Crow. And if that is too hard going, I'll add in a kid's book.

2014 Challenge Progress (NONE!):

1. Cybils: 59/77. Moving through through YA Graphic Novels.
2. Where Am I Reading? 32/51. On the bright side, I've started an Arizona book.  My Connecticut book is pushed back another week.
3. Alphabetically Inclined: 19/26. Only books from my shelves count, and all my library books are due!
4. What's In a Name?: 7/7. Still have to review everything. Ha!
5. Book Bingo: Fifteen boxes into square 2.
6. Gentle Spectrum Challenge complete!.
7. Small Fry Safari: 8/8. All done! Except for the reviewing...
8. PoC Speculative Fiction 19/5: One more!
9. Best of the Best 2012: 52/25.  I am stalled.
10. Reading My Library: Library temporarily closed, so on hiatus.

Still Not Good

If you only let yourself start a new book every other day, (ebooks magically don't count here), and you check out five or more books from the library each week, how long will it take you to finish the bookcases full of unread books lining your bedroom? Please show your work.

So it's a bit discouraging to discover that I had seven items waiting for me when I showed up at the library yesterday. (Still my temporary library, as my main library continues to have aggressively wide ventilation portals, shown on left.) Luckily things weren't quite that dire -- I got the next House of Anubis DVD, but that went straight to my nephew's house and I probably won't even see it again until it has to go back.

Also, Wood Sprites doesn't really count either, since I went out and bought it last week and plan to just return it. I only requested it because I thought I'd be too cheap to buy it, but HA! I'll just leaf through a few of my favorite parts while it lolls about in my library bag...


The manga also shouldn't count, because it's part 3 of a Cybils pick, but I'll read them all as one since that's how the nomination went. Dark Triumph is another Cybils pick, which my son will probably steal first as he is at this moment gobbling up the previous book. Alif is the current Sword and Laser pick, and more excitingly, Affecting Fictions is by my cousin. Who I will see next month, so I'd better have some good quotes to drop.

I also got a new ebook, but it's a duplicate of a paper book so I can read at home or away, and doesn't really count. Right?

So I still have 56 things out on my library card.  I have to keep my library card under my age or I ban myself from getting new books. I just found out my brother will buy the new Brust next week, so I'm OK with that.

I'll go sign in to Library Loot which is at Silly Little Mischief this week to see what everyone else is getting.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week.