Gee, my fellow Americans never tire of making America look even dumber. I remember when I could respect Republicans, even vote for them. Now they seem to be the party of corruption and lies. But a good percentage of Americans like that sort of thing. Nice to know.
I went for a run and it was cold but then after twenty minutes I started to warm up. And then after ten more minutes I was hot, and ten minutes later I was done. Humph. I almost ran twice, but the second time I actually just fell back asleep and dreamt I went running. The new neighborhood park I found that doubled as a tiger refuge should probably have been a hint. But when I finally woke up from that very convincing dream I had already exhausted all the gumption that keeps me going when I don't want to. (Which is pretty much all the time I am jogging along.)
I made myself a pesto lasagna to eat for lunches, and then I scared my sister away from my sausage/mozzarella soup by mentioning mushrooms, so I had lots of leftovers. But we also had Friday Book Club, which always means PIZZA.
I managed to do a little bit of my Cybils homework.
I pulled out reviews of the Cybils books to a separate blog, which was also late. Lots of picture books there.
My currently reading has stayed bloated to 26, indicating the problem I continue to have finishing anything. At least it has slowed its climb.
The Book Date does a weekly roundup of what people are reading, want to read, or have read each week called "It's Monday! What Are You Reading" so I'll sign up there. Ditto for the children's lit version at either Teach Mentor Texts or Unleashing Readers. I will be eligible there for the next few months for sure!
Started
Paladin's Grace, T. Kingfisher. For my 2nd Friday book club.
A Sporting Chance, Lori Alexander. Cybils nominee.
Women's Art Work, Sophia Bennett. Cybils nominee.
Wild Girl, Helen Skelton. Cybils nominee.
Screaming Hairy Armadillo, Matthew Murrie. Cybils nominee.
Cy Young, Scott H. Longert. Cybils nominee.
Completed
A Sporting Chance, Lori Alexander. Cybils nominee.
Women's Art Work, Sophia Bennett. Cybils nominee.
Wild Girl, Helen Skelton. Cybils nominee.
Screaming Hairy Armadillo, Matthew Murrie. Cybils nominee.
Spectrum Girl's Survival Guide, Sienna Castellon. Cybils nominee.
Paladin's Grace, T. Kingfisher. This was great, and more importantly my book either liked it or intended to like it. I had recommended it and that's always stressful for me. Some people even went out and read some more Kingfisher books, which is a sign of approval. It was also pandemic-approved; a little bit more complex than our last few picks but not alarmingly so. Charming and I'm on to the wizard baking one next.
Grimoire Noir, Vera Greentea. 2020 Cybils YA Graphic Novel finalist. This didn't really work for me. I struggle with remembering people's faces, so I often have problems knowing who is who in graphic books. The main character was the only boy, a teen who is fiercely jealous that only girls get magical powers but also terrified for his missing sister. He runs around to various girls in town searching for her. And all those girls are drawn in completely different ways and yet I kept getting them all mixed up. And the boy was a bad friend and a poor detective and I really didn't like him much, and the situation in town was fairly complicated with ancient curses and murder and magical boundaries, but I didn't care enough to keep it straight in my head so the ending where everything came together felt a bit flat to me.
Bookmarks Moved (Or Languished) In:
Uncompromising Honor 38/??, David Weber. Baen Free Radio Hour's serial. So something has gone wrong with something.
Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling. I'm listening to celebrities read this to me.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James. Sword and Laser pick.
A Long Time Until Now, Michael Z Williamson.
Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein, Farah Mendelson. Hugo finalist.
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton.
Someplace To Be Flying, Charles de Lint. Making progress.
The Bone Witch, Rin Chupeco.
The Bourne Supremacy, Robert Ludlum.
Return of the Thief, Megan Whalen Turner. I'm really enjoying this, and then I realized if I finished it that would be the end. So now I'm torturing myself by not moving on from the middle of the story.
Wolf Rebel, Paige Tyler. Substitute for my Library Quest: Action/Thriller bag. I like the set up but I'm not sure of the twist.
A Lady's Code of Misconduct, Meredith Duran. Again, I liked the set up but I'm bogged in the middle.
Jane Against the World, Karen Blumenthal. 2020 nominee.
Finder, Suzanne Palmer. Sword and Laser pick. Not finishing this means I'm behind on the podcast as well!
The Wine-Dark Sea, Patrick O'Brien. My Tuesday book club book. I'm behind.
Picture Books / Short Stories:
These Cybils nominees are discussed on the previous Cybils post.
Duel! Burr and Hamilton's Deadly War of Words, Dennis Brindell Fradin. 2008 Cybils nonfiction picture book finalist. Rich illustrations trace the parallel and then intersecting lives of early Americans, stressing the early similarities and then showing how they kept sniping at them. Well, apparently Hamilton did most of the sniping and Burr the complaining? Until the fight, when history decided the loser was the winner and the winner was the loser. I bet kids would be extra interested now because of the musical.
Bad Guys, Aaron Blabey. For my younger kids (2/3 grade) book club, which only two kids showed up for. They were both fun and chatty kids, but one had only read the first few pages and the other had read the entire series, so listening to them together was hilarious. But they seemed to enjoy themselves. I wanted to ask them whether they agreed with the book's definition of BAD, which they weren't that interested in, and then we tried to come up with more good deed for them to mess up. An interesting point was that the kids had apparently no memory of Little Red Riding Hood, so the whole Big Bad Wolf had already gone over their heads, even the fan who had read a pile of these.
Wangari's Trees of Peace, Jeannette Winter. 2008 Cybils nonfiction picture book finalist. I really like the story of the scientist Wangari returning home to Kenya for her doctorate and discovering that they were eliminating their forests, and then she started fixing that, working with women from villages who were suffering from the lack of readily available wood for their stoves. But it lost some credit with me because I read a different biography in the pre-pandemic time that I really liked, so I didn't have the thrill of learning new stuff.
Frogs, Nic Bishop. 2008 Cybils nonfiction picture book finalist. Lots of great photos. It's possible I read this back then, as I had a reader very into aquatic animals and frogs would have been on the fringes of his passion. I assumed he took all the pictures in the wild (I guess by magic) but in the backmatter he talks about how some frogs were his pets and how he had to train them to jump for food and stuff without being bothered by all the equipment needed to take action photographs in such sharp focus.
Palate Cleansers
These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.
The Educated Child, William Bennett. How to assess a school.
Give All to Love, Patricia Veryan.
Wool, Hugh Howey.
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. Men and women are from different planets.
Under the Eye of the Storm, John Hersey. It's sometimes hard to connect to people.
Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca. Other kind of diversity and teacher responses to it.
Reading Challenges
- Cybils 2017. None. I just need 3 YA books to be done. But YA is hard.
- Cybils 2018. None.
- Cybils 2019. Finished Grimoire Noir.
- Early Cybils: Several nonfiction picture books.
- Reading My Library. Working on the action adventure one.
- Ten to Try. At 9/10. I'm STILL working on the last one.
- Where Am I Reading: 29/51 states. 27 Countries. My books didn't take place in places this week.
- Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge. I'm done.
I'm putting this at the end because I suspect it's complete fiction, but I feel I should attempt some structure.
I am reading:
- Book I own: Return of the Thief. Next: No idea.
- Library Book: Wolf Rebel. Next: The Bride book.
- Ebook I own: None. Up Next: Probably a T. Kingfisher.
- Library Ebook: I need to finish either Bourne Supremacy or Luminaries. Next. But I'll probably read a David Baldacci instead.
- Book Club Book: None. Next: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.
- Tuesday Book Club Book: Wine Dark Sea. Next/also: Somewhere To Be Flying until we pick something.
- Review Book: None. Up Next: Not sure.
- Hugo Book: The Pleasant Profession of Robert A Heinlein. Next: Joanna Russ.
3 comments:
While reading Heather Cox Richardson today I learned that new polling shows that 7 out of 10 Republican voters now think that the 2020 election was illegitimate. Unbelievable.
I am a round 2 Cybills judge in the graphic novel category. I appreciate all of you who go through the many many nominated titles so I only have to read the cream of the crop.
I'll be looking forward to reading what you think of Grimoire Noir.
Funny story--our teen has a dystopian unit at school which we can now just call realistic fiction. Sheesh.
Oh my goodness, your dream running has me laughing! They'll just put a tiger refuge anywhere, won't they? LOL I love seeing that Cheriee is keeping up with Heather Cox Richardson. I love her daily emails and it helps me feel not so alone with my election eye-rolling. Thank you so much for all the work you're doing with Cybils judging. I know it's a lot of effort, but I'm grateful to know you're part of that effort!
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