My Boys Are Back In Town!

Well, I'm still way behind on putting up my decorations (for example, I'm not sure where my wreath disappeared to) but I got some good reading time in and also got to talk about books with many different groups, so this is a happy December for me.

Second week of the month means it's time to go to the elementary school and host a book club for the upper grades. The kids this year have been pretty slack about finishing the books so I have to come up with general questions as well as things about the book, but that can be more fun. I'm happy with the turnout -- it's much smaller than last year but just enough to have a good conversation.

In the evenings I had two more groups -- a library sponsored Romance Book Series, which is like a book club in that there is a specific book as a topic each month, but is more because we have a librarian who does research and we tend to talk about wider issues -- how does this romance achieve its goals? Are the goals different from previous books? The librarian is really good at finding a variety of books from different authors and genres within romance, and the people who show up are enthusiastic readers and fun people. I hope it continues! Then my oldest book club met, the one with my sister and friends. We read whatever we want and talk about whatever we want. This month we were talking about the Ilona Andrews book Sapphire Flames. We found Andrews through the club and we like her stuff. It turned out to be a lot of fun because we talked about the entire series and then went and talked about the newest book in the Innkeeper series and all the previous books as well.

And, even more fun, my niece drove in right before book club, bringing my son home from college with her. So he was there to enjoy his favorite pizza (I picked the pies knowing my boys would be arriving) and he hung out with us for a while before heading upstairs, and then after book club we went to the train station to pick up my other son, so everyone is home for the holidays!

Sunday I grabbed one of them and we snuck out to see the new Jumanji movie (one boy was still asleep and missed the noon showing) before having dinner with the extended family. I'll now see just about anything The Rock does.

My currently reading shelf has shot up to the mid-twenties because I want to read a least part of all the Cybils books, but really I'm only actively reading about five books.

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've got the middle grade books and a picture book as well as my CYBILS reading to qualify me!

Started: 





Freedom Train, Dorothy Sterling. For my Tuesday elementary school book club.

Robert E. Lee: The Man, The Soldier, The Myth, Brandon Miller. Cybils nonfiction.

Ever Faithful, Karen Barnett. Pick of the Renton Library Romance Book Series.

A Boy Called Bat, Elana K. Arnold. For the Thursday version of the elementary school book club.

A Thousand Sisters, Elizabeth Wein. Cybils nonfiction.

Locked in Ice, Peter Lourie. Cybils nonfiction.

Accused!, Larry Brimner. Cybils nonfiction.

A Light In the Darkness, Albert Marrin. Cybils nonfiction.

Enemy Child, Andrea Warren. Cybils nonfiction.

Captured, Alvin Townley. Cybils nonfiction.


Completed:





The (Other) F Word, Angie Manfredi. Cybils nonfiction longlist. These are powerful and evocative essays, ranging from the pragmatic and matter-of-fact to the lyrical, about how overweight bodies are beautiful and fat people have value and attractiveness and sex-appeal and can have fashion sense and also love and happiness. It's aimed directly at fat teens who may struggle against the cultural opinion that being overweight is a moral failing and makes you worthless and also ugly. The illustrations consist of stylized large bodies in motion, dancing joyfully and exuberantly and they match with the essays and author notes well.

Freedom Train, Dorothy Sterling.  Having recently seen Harriet, I was all in for this kidlit biography, which the children also enjoyed. We talked about heroism (none of us think we could live up to Tubman's example), and the difference between biography and autobiography, and how long ago the Civil War happened. And whether the opinions of bad guys mattered, in the context of how slave owners would have written Tubman's biography. It was fun!

Ever Faithful, Karen Barnett. Yay -- I made it to the Book Series! The schedule floats a bit so I've been absent for a few months due to a conflict. We discussed the sex content of romances -- this one was very chaste and we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of this. We also liked the historical setting and the links to the CCC, which we had some connections to. This is a Christian romance, and we appreciated that the religions aspects were integrated with the story, as opposed to the characters getting poked with a stick every 100 pages so they leap up and say "Oh yeah, God!" or something. I like the way this series looks at romances from a larger perspective.

Robert E. Lee: The Man, The Soldier, The Myth, Brandon Miller. Cybils nonfiction. A solid biography that filled in a lot of details from my broad overview of his life. I liked understanding Lee through his family, both his impoverished immediate family and the closely knit family he formed with his wife and children (and his in-laws, whose house he lived in as his army salary didn't expand to his own place). Miller shows how his legend grew during the Civil War years, and finished after his death with a look at the myths and untruths that spread around him, all in an effort to suppress African-American political power (or livelihoods) and to support white supremacy.

A Boy Called Bat, Elana K. Arnold. One of the Renton Battle of the Books pick, so we read it to help the kids remember stuff for the contest. It was a fun little story of a family while they care for a skunk -- Bat is somewhere on the spectrum so he's got his quirks. We talked about how his behaviors are more a matter of degree than kind -- most kids do most of them some of the time, but kids like Bat have more concentrated problems with regulation and stuff. We talked about skunks and older sisters and how side-characters in books have their own stories, just like in life.

Dead But Not Forgotten, Ed. by Charlaine Harris. I had fun with these stories from other authors dipping into the Sookie Stackhouse world. The one that sticks in my mind was the seasonal one -- what creature could Santa Clause be? But all were tasty. This is definitely a book for series lovers though; it doesn't stand alone at all.

A Thousand Sisters, Elizabeth Wein. Cybils nonfiction. I enjoyed learning a lot about the women in the Russian air force during World War II; even my historian brother-in-law only knew about the Night Witches but there were other bombers as well as fighter pilots. I liked that Wein used this topic to also illuminate a wider Russian history -- the women enlisted as part of the culture established by the communist revolution and the youth groups founded all over, and the war was fought during Stalin's reign of terror and rules that made it illegal to get shot down affected the women. Wein also looked directly at her teen readers to talk about how character is formed and decisions made, using flying metaphors like wind effects to link back to the history.

Locked in Ice, Peter Lourie. Cybils nonfiction. The story of Nansen and his attempt to reach the North Pole. This guy was the epitome of Norwegian virtue -- emotionally closed off, rigorous in technique, uncompromising with himself and his companions. He had the genius plan of deliberately sailing into the ice and then letting it slow motion of the frozen ocean move them up and over the top of the world, based where the wreckage of previous ships that did this accidentally ended up. And it worked! He missed the North Pole itself since his method was rather imprecise, and even a final dash didn't make it, but he got closer than previous tries. The details of that dash and of the expedition in general are vividly portrayed -- this guy is great to read about but I'd hate to go on a camping trip with him. Although he'd probably keep everyone alive!

Accused!, Larry Brimner. Cybils nonfiction. Another moment in American history expanded for me -- this time the racist trials of the Scottsboro boys, nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of rape and jailed for years over it. There were several rounds of trials that were appealed up to the supreme court, establishing principals around racist jury selection and procedure that would echo into the civil rights era decades later, but it's still a grim picture of the lies America tells itself about justice and law. One bit left a bad taste in my mouth -- the book looks grimly at how everything the defense attorneys tried was shut down, including attempts to discredit the women by discussing their past sexual history. Since the idea that who a woman had sex with weeks or years ago has any relevance to a sexual assault case is incredibly distasteful, it was unpleasant to have the text imply that keeping that information out of the court was another injustice against the boys.


Bookmarks Moved In:





Son of the Black Sword, Larry Correia. 74/? Baen's podcast serial. There is a lot of violence in this system.

Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan. 3/10 discs. The girls are good, the short man a jerk.

Book Lust, Nancy Pearl. Still reading in tiny bursts.

One Good Dragon Deserves Another, Rachel Aaron. They have a plan.

The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang. Last month's Sword and Laser pick. Waiting to recover it.

Brave Face, Shaun Hutchinson. Cybils nonfiction longlist. Unhappy teens are not my favorite subject.

Tropic of Serpents, Marie Brennan. Like The Poppy War the library is calling this home.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke. I've reserved the audio book in hope of catching up on my drive to Christmas.

ConCom: Conflict Communication, Rory Miller. I skipped some of the middle to make it to my book club on time, so now those sections will be my reward between Cybils.

Picture Books / Short Stories:



The Cat, The Dog, Little Red, The Exploding Eggs, the Wolf, and Grandma, Diane Fox. The cat and dog argue about the fairy tale as Cat reads it and Dog pushes for more superheroes in the story. It's a lighthearted meta-story but I've seen it before. Not all kids have though, and the large white pages maket the illustrations fun to explore.

"Bacon," Charlaine Harris. Dahlia does not appreciate it when her husband is murdered. She takes steps.

Palate Cleansers

These books I'm barely reading; I use them as palate cleansers between books I'm actually reading.



A Traitor to Memory, Elizabeth George.

The Educated Child, William Bennett.

Cookie, Jacqueline Wilson. Mom and Beauty are done with dad.

Give All to Love, Patricia Veryan.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt.

Reading and Learning to Read, Jo Anne Vaca. Basal readers. I forget what Basal means.

Reading Challenges

1. Cybils 2017. Nothing.
2. Cybils 2018.  Nothing. I have some out from the library so I'd better get cracking!
3. Reading My Library. Nothing.