Reading in December
Six? Ugh. I could have sworn it was better than that.
4 children’s books
1 audio
(one by a WoC, four by women)
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Fever Dream
Seems sort of fitting to end 2018 with Fever Dream. Creepy, weird, creepy, weird, also kind of compelling. I should have looked away but couldn’t look away. It’s not a good book but it might be a great one. Or a really horrid one. I can’t decide.
Three Children’s Books
JMP is trying to figure out this whole reading thing. It doesn’t come naturally to him and he is easily frustrated so… The Grandmas are on a mission to make reading fun and that led to me reading three children’s books last weekend.
Hi! Fly Guy, we listened to on audio as we drove from Kingsland, GA to pick up Momal at the JAX airport. It was quick and fun. I think I’ll grab a couple of these in print – they seem to be pretty easy to read and if we can get hooked on a series, that’s half the battle.
If You Take a Mouse to the Movies – we have a free version that came from a kids meal many years ago and I thought it would be fun to read and then do some activities based on the book or that were natural extensions from the book. Natural extensions are what “if this then that” is all about right? It was fun and I spent the weekend asking Pippin what happens if you do X.
Because it’s Christmas season and we’d been involved in Christmas ornament making and Christmas decorating because that’s what happens if you take a mouse to the movies… we listened to an audio version of The Gingerbread Man, which Pippin had already listened to in school, while making some Christmas ornaments so that we could think about baking cookies. (Turns out Pippin had never had gingerbread so we changed our cookie plans to gingerbread cookie plans.) It was a fine version but I found myself wishing I’d chosen differently and read one of our many print versions to him. No big deal, maybe I’ll pull out a bunch of versions and we’ll have a Gingerbread Man/Boy/Baby marathon and compare the differences and similarities another time (maybe when we read a House is a House for Me and build gingerbread houses.)
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Lumberjanes: Unicorn Power!
Shortly after we moved to Chicagoland, we discovered a small independent bookstore in the next town over and found ourselves visiting it every year, on Christmas Eve, to purchase books for all of the kids. Yay, Book Bin! When we moved back to Florida, we inadvertently stumbled upon an bookstore in Fleming Island and that’s become our yearly shopping spot – but we don’t necessarily shop on Christmas Eve. This year we went on Black Friday.
While we were browsing, TW stumbled over a couple of baskets of ARCs of books and found a couple that she was interested in. I was skeptical because you’re really not supposed to sell those AND there were no price tags on the books… turns out, you get to choose one free for every $50 you purchase. I won’t tell you how many we got free (4) but an ARC of Lumberjanes Unicorn Power was one of them.
Friendship to the max! Lots of fun music references (Blondie’s Bring On Me on accordion? Sleater Kinney? Yes, please.) Unicorns that are pretty but smell really yuk. There’s also a non-binary or trans person with they/them pronouns. Totally fun!
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The House of Unexpected Sisters
It’s been a long time since we listened to a #1 Ladies Detective Agency book. Our darn library has significantly reduced the number of audiobooks available (even on digital versions) so I was pretty pleased to see that one of their new e-Book services had The House of Unexpected Sisters. It was fun to listen to, mostly on our drive to WDW, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I have some of the other books recently published in the series.
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Reading in November
Sucked. It did and there’s not a good reason for it. Besides work and stress and fun stuff like that. Reading two pages a day is just not going to get the books read, is it? And, I keep quitting books 50 pages in because I am not loving them and that is really annoying. What a waste of reading time when you’re an hour or so in and decide you’re not going further. Whatever. Onward to… January? I’m going to need a #fakereadathon in January, I think.
8 total
2 audiobooks (one was a YA Cybil! First Cybil I’ve finished in ages!)
5 children’s/middle grade fiction. (One was LGBTQ themed.)
1 was written by a MOC
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Scythe (Arc of a Scythe)
We listened to the first Scythe book on audio last month. It’s an actual real live Cybil, woohoo. It’s also pretty grim and gruesome but also very interesting.
Let’s suppose The Cloud takes over the world because human beings suck at taking care of the world (or themselves) and in doing so resolves all the world’s problems, including mortality. People keep being born but nobody is dying… that’s where the Scythes come in.
Makes sense… except that Scythes are humans and The Cloud hasn’t actually solved the fact that human beings are horrible… very interesting, really.
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Down Among the Sticks and Bones
The sequel to Every Heart a Doorway, Down Among the Sticks and Bones was about Jack and Jill and their doorway “adventure.” Good story, even if it was bloody and sad. I’m not sure I’d have saved my sister if she’d done what Jill did. Jack’s a better woman than I am.
The next book will bring us back to Eleanor West’s boarding school. I’m looking forward to it.
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Five Children’s Books
I ordered some Halloween books for the little boys and forgot to blog about them. So here they are:
Bonaparte Falls Apart was a big hit with Pippin.
ET: The Classic Illustrated Storybook – It’s the story of ET with great illustrations. I didn’t have time to read it to Pippin when I was babysitting.
Spooky Pookie – this one was cute. Squishy liked it but mostly just wanted to carry it around and look at it by himself rather than have me read it to him.
You’re My Little Pumpkin Pie – I didn’t like this one quite as well, (I wouldn’t), but Squishy seemed to enjoy me reading it to him. He sat all the way through and didn’t try to take the book away from me, lol.
Princess Princess Ever After is a book I saw on some list of LGBTQ books in June or maybe October? I don’t know but it was in my Evernote mixed up with other LGBTQ titles. It’s a graphic novel for young middle grade kids. It’s cute – princess rescues princess and rescues a prince and then the other princess kind of rescues everyone and becomes queen. Then some amount of time passes (a lot, I’d guess) and the princess comes back to the castle to marry the queen. I could have done without that marrying the queen bit (patriarchy, etc. etc.) and time passed without us seeing the princess or the queen at work. That kind of stinks. If you were going to do that, it should be a series where we watch the kids grow up, do their own things, and then come back together again. (I clearly have strong thoughts about this book, lol.)
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Dippin’ Dots
We’re heading to Orlando for Free Play Florida and decided we might as well stay a bit longer and go to Disney World. Except that didn’t work out (don’t ask) and we suddenly found ourselves with Universal Studios season passes.
Since I’ve never been to Universal and TW hasn’t been in a zillion years, we started researching the rides, the shows, the merch, and of course… the food. Turns out, Universal is very different from WDW. Very, very different.
There are a lot fewer blogs dedicated to Universal Studios. There are a lot fewer videos. The quality of both is considerably lower than the blogs and videos about WDW. It’s been kind of confusing and a little frustrating.
Rather than be frustrated, I gave up on the search for blogs and videos and went to the pros — the Lines Chat for Universal Studios. That didn’t quite turn out as expected.
I asked the Liners, “What are your favorite snacks at Universal?” The answers were… not inspiring.
– Popcorn (not because it’s special or exceptional popcorn, either.)
– Ice cream in Diagon Alley (great – but no specific flavors or anything about it except that it’s good ice cream.)
– Potato Jackets (ok now we’re talking… this sees a lot more like something someone would recommend at Disney World.)
– Candy in Harry Potter World (umm, errr, ok. Sure. Fine.)
– Dippin’ Dots!!! (I believe there were a number of !!! added to that recommendation.)
And that was the list. That’s it. Those of you who have been to Disney World immediately understand my confusion, my frustration, and my feeling of dread.
This is not going to be ANYTHING like Disney World if all I’ve got to look forward to is Dippin’ Dots…
Except, I can’t actually remember the last (only?) time I’ve had Dippin’ Dots. Maybe they’re good. Better than I think they are?
We saw a Dippin’ Dots cooler in the little local pharmacy last week, I was tempted to buy some and find out. But no… I’m going to wait until I’m at Universal and I’m going to order those Dippin’ Dots and I’m going to come back and tell y’all what an amazing snack they are. And in December, I’m going to ONLY eat Dippin’ Dots and ignore all of the fancy snacks offered at Disney World. I’m sure of it. There’s a reason Dippin’ Dots are one of the BEST snacks in all of Universal Studios…
* Important: The Liners absolutely provided the information I was looking for (not just about snacks but about rides and shows, too.) If you’re going to Disney World, I highly recommend you subscribe to Touring Plans (it’s not that expensive) and download the Lines app. You might not need it for Universal, but for WDW – it’s a must.