Does My Family Read My Blog? Because My Birthday Is Coming Up

If you are looking for a gift for me, the cable connecting my phone speakers to the car jack is getting flaky. Also, my kids are supposed to get me a superhero movie, preferably one with Hemsworth in it. Or any other Chris, really.

In the meantime, I'm in the short time of year when I'm much younger than my older brother, who just had his birthday, and the same age as my younger sister, who had hers the week before. (The other brother has his birthday in the fall, so he's just weird. He's also the only one who might read this blog. Hi Kevin!)  But for these few weeks the world is askew and anything can happen. Then my birthday comes, I eat cake, and we are stair-step siblings once again. This is still fun for me and my older brother is almost 50 -- I imagine it will still tickle me as he turns 79. Leap years are especially fun because it gives me an extra day for this imbalance, and reminds me that I'm a leap year birth, which is more special than non-leap year people. Much more special.

The Book Date is collecting the roundups of what everyone is reading and talking about this week. I'll also look in with Teach Mentor Texts which does the same thing for kidlit.

This week I finished only four books:



Cupcakes, Trinkets, and other Deadly Magic,  Meghan Doidge. This was February's Vaginal Fantasy pick. I liked the setting (as did the group) but found the protagonist suffered from TSTL (too stupid to live) syndrome. Also, the grief over the murder victim seemed a bit over done -- they hadn't even had their first date yet. Yes he looked hot at yoga class, but that doesn't really imply a deep soulful connection. Horror at the murder, yes, personal grief, not so much.

No Vulgar Hotel, Judith Martin. This witty reminiscence of life as a Venetaphile felt like listening to a charming and intelligent companion at a dinner party that you thought you were dreading but are having a marvelous time at. Martin assumes you are as delightful as she is, and you almost believe it. I'm not converted to her passion, but I appreciate how she lives it.

* Twin Spica 5, Kou Yaginuma. I've stuck with two manga series -- this and Bride's Story, and I guess that are mostly opposites. This one is set in near-future (modernish?) Japan, and I suspect that one reason I like it is that the main character is so short I can easily tell who she is. In the fifth volume, I find the story of the new boy interesting, as well as more back story for the Lion guy. I've requested book 6, and I'm eager to see how the training exercise in the woods turns out. I'm really hoping the kids pull through successfully.

Rob Roy, Walter Scott. This book stayed action adjacent to the very end. The narrator seemed a passive observer when he was close enough to see what was going on, although mostly he just missed events and heard about them later. As a framing story to tell the story of Rob Roy, it left me flat. I did feel a little sorry for his girlfriend, who deserved better. At least life with our Francis was possibly marginally better than being walled up in a French convent, as her dad planned for her.

* Books I started this week. Most books tend last for weeks on my lists, because I have this habit of reading dozens of things at once. But occasionally I keep focus for several days on end.

I wasn't feeling too great on library day, so I didn't browse for picture books. Which made me feel even more low energy. Everything conspires to make me grumpy when I'm ill.

I started and am still reading  more books:


The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy, Julia Quinn. The next Reading my Library book, because I'm not enjoying Miracle at Augusta.

Everything, Everything, Nicola Yoon. The next Cybils YA. I should space these out more, as I suspect that reading too much non-SF YA makes me crabby. Kids with weird problems and angst.

Child of the Ghosts, Jonathan Moeller. Another Kindle book I have somehow acquired. I know absolutely nothing about this except that it appears in my Kindle reader.

Bookmarks moved in several books:


Republic, Lindsay Buroker. I'm rooting for Moldynano to keep his girlfriend.

Hild, Nicola Griffith. Things got a little confusing when I accidentally skipped 3 disks, but now I'm on track again. There's no way I'm finishing before the library limit is up, though.

Under a Graveyard Sky, John Ringo. They are only giving us ten minutes or so each time, down from twenty or thirty minutes a few weeks back. More discussion of the rules of sea salvage.

Crux, Ramez Naam. Still not grabbing me, which is a pity since this means I'm falling behind on my mail (I read it while sorting the post).

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. Nazi Germany was a grim place to live in during the war, especially if you were in any way a decent person. Also, foreshadowing the death of the neighbor boy does not make me want to leap ahead in my reading. Need to finish this by next Tuesday, though.

Radiance, Catherynne M. Valente. So far I don't mind reading about 50 pages a day, but it's not hard to put it down after that. But I'm hoping that like the hosts of Sword and Laser I'll find the back half more interesting.

Only a Kiss, Mary Balough. OK, they've fallen in love and are having a satisfying affair. Somehow there's still over a hundred pages left, so I suspect a Misunderstanding will happen.

Miracle at August, James Patterson & Peter de Jonge. Our hero does some smart stuff, and then some stupid stuff. I'm guessing there is a difference between a 6 and a 9 in golf clubs?

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases.




A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George.
Awakening to the Sacred, Lama Surya Das. How to meditate Rushen, identity-meditation.
Midnight Crossroad, Charlaine Harris.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens. The brother has pulled an Edmund and fallen in the hands of the evil witch.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca. Peer reading appears to benefit both the able and the lagging reader, so have at it!

2016 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2015: 10 out of 82. Reading Everything Everything, and then Dumplin' will finish off my first category.
2. Reading My Library:  Reading Miracle at Augusta. Not enjoying it, so also reading The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy. Still listening to Hild.
3. Where Am I Reading?: 13/50.  Nothing new this week.
4. TBR Triple Dog Dare. My totals are 26 library books, 6 personal library, 4 e-book. I don't think there are many library books left.
5. Full House Challenge: 25/25. I'm done! Rob Roy has been in my TBR bookcase for years.
6. Library Challenge: I'm at 38 and have moved into the last category.
7. Diversity Challenge 2016: Kidlit: 6/12. Adult lit: 6/12. 
8. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  Moving up! 8. 
9. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 12/20. I don't think I'm approaching this in a very adult manner.
10. Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: 2/12. I got the easy ones.

Library Drought

This Triple Dog Dare is getting real. The only books I've gotten from the library were ones I put on hold last year, that I needed for various book clubs, or 2015 Cybils finalists. The only thing left on that list is the tidying up book which my book club is considering; we all put it on hold to see if we'd get it at about the same time. This means I'm facing a rather bleak March with few new books.

This week, I had NOTHING waiting for me.

That is, of course, the entire point, since I still haven't actually read all the books I've gotten out from the library. I'm glad I'm still letting myself read picture books while I wait for various teens to get off the bus; I get the thrill of the new while not bringing home more things for my suffering shelves.

I haven't quite warmed to the new library picture book schema, though. The rebuilt library sorts all the picture books by category (counting, vehicles, emotions, life events, etc.) and has face out sections near most of the categories. I'd rather have the books mixed up, but keep the face out sections by category, so you both browse for serendipity but find books for your child's current sweet spot. That would require a lot more time from the librarians, though. Also, I miss having a new book section -- even the newest books seems to go straight into their categories and so are easy to miss. Maybe I'll ask the librarians about that.

I did get a book in the mail as I used a big coupon from Barnes & Nobles, and another one for my NOOK:


Breakout, by Ann Aguirre was something I promised myself I'd pick up at Foolscap, but then the dealer didn't have it. I met the author of Virtues of War, Bennett Coles, and he seemed really interesting and performed as a great Sherlock Holmes in the radio play, so I bought his book. I'm looking forward to reading these in April...

I've currently got 29 things out from the library, including ebooks, books for me, and books for the kids. That's under thirty! This feels very responsible. I wonder if I can get down to 25...

I'll go look at the 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. 

I'm continuing my Library Quest with Patterson's Miracle at Augusta. It's a golf book, so I'm picturing reading it with my Atlanta uncle, who makes watching golf interesting.

I'm still listening to Hild by Nicola Griffith, and it's still lovely and I hope an accurate depiction of Britain way back then.

Eclectic Is My Bookcase Theme

Twelve Months. (Well, closer to 10 for me, but it's my own fault for procrastinating about signing up.) Twelve Books. Twelve categories. That is the theme of the Eclectic Challenges, which is proudly in its fifth year: the 2016 Eclectic Reader Challenge, hosted by Book'd Out.

This year she has kindly provided some links to goodreads suggestions for the categories, some of which look a bit daunting to me.

Categories:

1. A book about books (fiction or nonfiction): 100 Best Books for Children, Anita Silvey 2/20/16 
2.  Serial killer thriller: Airtight, David Rosenfelt 4/2/16
3.  Paranormal romance: Pillars of the World, Anne Bishop 4/2/16
4.  A novel set on an island: Not Always a Saint, Mary Jo Putney 3/18/16 (are the British Islands cheating?
5. Investigative journalism (non fiction): The Spies of Mississippi, Rick Bowers 3/12/16
6. Disaster fiction: An Inheritance of Ashes, Leah Bobet 4/17/16
7. Steampunk sci fi:  Radiance, Catherynne Valente 3/10/16
8. Any book shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler 4/30/16
9. Psychology (non fiction): Quiet, Susan Cain, 5/1/16
10. Immigrant Experience fiction: Listen, Slowly, Trannha Lai 7/16/16, Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas 7/25/16
11. YA historical fiction: Bride's Story 6, Kaoru Mori 2/21/16
12. A debut author in 2016: Hour of the Bees, Lindsay Eager 8/16/16

12/12

Book about books? That's my jam. I'm reading one right now, so I'll count that.  Likewise for YA, paranormal, and debut authors. Serial killer, steampunk, island and immigrants are a little off my beaten path. The nonfictions will be fun, and the Man Booker might slay me. So wish me luck!

Mid-Winter Break

My kids and my niblings go to different school districts, as in high school my kids jumped to the district by their dad's house. Which meant that the niblings got the whole week off for mid-winter break and my children, tragic victims of a teacher strike, had to wake up early from Wednesday through Friday and slog off to institutes of learning.

It was funny how both sets completely forgot their different schedules, with the niblings dashing over during the day to wonder where my boys were, and the boys astonished to hear of their cousins sleeping till noon. In Texas there was no such thing as a mid-winter break (who wants a week off in February? who in our district can afford to fly to a warm beach for a week?), so I don't really see the point.

It meant I had an excuse to slack off and read, so I got a few things finished. Also I found time to catch a touch of the flu, which would have been great if reading didn't lead to headaches.

The Book Date is collecting the roundups of what everyone is reading and talking about this week. I'll also look in with Teach Mentor Texts which does the same thing for kidlit.

This week I finished nine books. Wow, I didn't notice that:


God Help the Child, Toni Morrison. Reading My Library selection.

A Stranger's Gift, Anna Schmidt. I have no idea how I got this book, but apparently I own the kindle edition. I use a NOOK, so I don't have many kindle books and I've decided to try to read the ones I have somehow acquired. This one is set in Florida so I jumped in. I really liked the character Hester, who struggles with some of the expectations of her Mennonite community. She's a highly trained, supremely competent nurse and organizer, and she uses her work to shield herself from grief over her mother's death. John, her romantic counterpart, is a bit of a loser who works to be somehow someone she could marry. He does come with some useful property, so maybe that's enough?

A Family of Readers, Roger Sutton and Maria V. Parravano. This collections of essays and recommendations from the Horn book might have been written with the intention of giving me pleasure. It discusses the value and beauty of books read to babies, with children, by children, and by adolescents, as well as how to incorporate reading into family life and why doing so is natural and delightful. All of which I've pretty much lived, but it's always fun to have people agree with me, and I got a few book recommendations out of it as well.

Time and Again, Jack Finney. This is the book Sword and Laser read last November (as opposed to the book with the same name that I finished last week). It answers a few more of the questions SF readers bring to books, although it's much more interested in how the characters deal with the switching between times than in the mechanism for how they do it. I found the premise interesting but the characters themselves rather flat, so it tended to drag a bit for me.

Imperfect Sword, Jack Campbell. The latest entry in the saga of the galactic empires spinning after a revolution provides more space combat, political maneuvering, and struggling democracy while minimizing the plot strands I dislike, so I'll be up for the next in this series. I like Campbell's description of military forces, and I know he's ex-Navy, so I trust him. The only time his characters feel odd to me is when his women deal with women's issues such as childbirth; then I find them extremely hard to relate to.

Every Last Word, Tamara Ireland Stone. The next Cybils YA in my stack left me a bit cold. The angsty bits about mean girls and OCD worked, but I found it hard to sympathize with a character who doesn't remember bullying a peer as ruthlessly as she did. I can believe she did it, but that she would forget it so completely makes her selfishness extreme, and that she doesn't even notice this fact about herself makes me doubt her other realizations. Also, she cuts class a lot -- what kind of school doesn't even notice?

* 100 Best Books For Children, Anna Silvey. I think I'll make a list of the ones I haven't read yet: Swamp Angel (Anne Isaacs), Seven Blind Mice (Ed Young), Morning Girl (Michael Dorris), Humbug Mountain (Sid Fleishman), The Great Fire (Jim Murphy), and I'm not sure about In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (Bette Bao Lord).

*I Will Always Write Back, Caitlin Alifirenka, Martin Ganda, & Liz Welch. Cybils YA nonfiction finalist, which the library wants back soon. I was surprised by how caught up I got in this alternating memoir. Caitlin starts out as a boy obsessed, math-hating, giant hooped earring teenager who has never heard of Zimbabwe and would have trouble finding Africa on a map. Martin is a shy and studious student who dreams of education but doesn't expect to achieve it. Within a hundred pages I was rooting for both of them, and despite having read the back cover I was still worried as college scholarships went down to the wire. I'll pass this on to the boys for reading.

* Bride's Story 6, Kaoru Mori. This entry was a thrilling addition to the story, with calvary charges, betrayal, cannon fire, and family conflict. Also a bridegroom wanting to grow into manhood, and a bride terrified to lose him when he has already redefined so much of her life and loyalties.

* Books I started this week. Most books tend last for weeks on my lists, because I have this habit of reading dozens of things at once. But occasionally I keep focus for several days on end.

I wasn't feeling too great on library day, so I didn't browse for picture books. Which made me feel even more low energy. Everything conspires to make me grumpy when I'm ill.

I started and am still reading three more books:



Miracle at August, James Patterson & Peter de Jonge. My next Reading My Library book.

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and other Deadly Magic, Meghan Doidge. February's Vaginal Fantasy book.

Only a Kiss, Mary Balough. I've been enjoying the Survivor's Club books, but I seemed to have missed a bunch. This one showed up on the library Quick Pick section, so I grabbed it. And then let it languish on my to-read library shelf for months.

Bookmarks moved in several books:

Republic, Lindsay Buroker. I think our team is getting back together! Except Sicarus seems to have wandered off.

Hild, Nicola Griffith. The mix of the child afraid of losing her family and the genius recognizing British-wide patterns is very compelling.

Under a Graveyard Sky, John Ringo. Lost treasure ships. Giant yachts of foolish billionaires.

Crux, Ramez Naam. Good guys, bad guys, and losers. Those are the characters.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. Our Tuesday book club book. No one is loving it, so it may get tossed aside. In the meantime, I'll keep reading my 100 pages each week.

Radiance, Catherynne M. Valente. I'm catching up on old Sword and Laser picks. This one hasn't grabbed me yet, but I remember from the discussion that it's a very slow starter.

The next few books I'm not really reading, just dipping into between the books I'm trying to finish so that I can pretend that I'm going to read the books on my bookcases.



Rob Roy, Walter Scott. There is a whole of lot exciting things happening off-page in this book.
A Traitor To Memory, Elizabeth George. Did the nanny or the brother kill the baby?
Awakening to the Sacred, Lama Surya Das. Seems like cotton candy philosophy -- sweet to read, but leaves nothing behind.
Midnight Crossroad, Charlaine Harris. The police show up because the murder is revealed. More characters from previous series appear -- Arthur from the Teagarden books.
Emerald Atlas, John Stephens. The magic has started -- they are in the album.
Reading and Learning To Read, Jo Vacca. I like the insights into how your philosophy and definition of reading affect how reading is taught to young children.

2016 Challenge Progress:

1. Cybils 2015: 10 out of 82.  Finished Every Last Word as well as I Will Always Write Back. Everything Everything is up next.
2. Reading My Library: Finished God Help the Child. Started Miracle at Augusta. Still listening to Hild.
3. Where Am I Reading?: 13/50.  Finished Florida. Got a Virginia last week. Annoyed at how many Californias and New Yorks I have already. 
4. TBR Triple Dog Dare. My totals are 25 library books, 5 personal library, 4 e-book.
5. Full House Challenge: 24/25. I'm stuck! Got the memoir; still need a fossil from my TBR list.
6. Library Challenge: I'm at 36 already --  Adult and about to move into the last category.
7. Diversity Challenge 2016: Kidlit: 5/12. Adult lit: 4/12. Cybils gave me a YA mental illness, and Bride Story gave me graphic novel.
8. Shelf Love Challenge 2016:  Still 6. I read one e-book from my virtual shelves this week.
9. Grown-Up Reading Challenge 2016: 11/20. I am interpreting the categories rather loosely, but that's how I roll as a grown-up.