Brown Girl Dreaming
Yep, I finally read Brown Girl Dreaming and it was awesome. It also made me kind of homesick.
Definitely the best of the bunch in the cybils shortlist for poetry.
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2015
Scratching the Woodchuck
TW looked at Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature On An Amish Farm and asked why I had gotten it. Weird. I would have thought that would be obvious since I spend a considerable amount of my life daydreaming about a few acres in the country.
I wasn’t really sure I was going to read this. It’s been sitting on the library cart for weeks and has to go back on Monday. I even put it in the library bag to go back — and then retrieved it a couple of hours later and figured I’d just read a few pages and if I didn’t like it, I’d put it in the bag. I didn’t even add it to my Goodreads right away. I was that sure I wasn’t really going to read it.
But, it turns out, I enjoyed it. The stories are short. They’re easy to read. There’s just enough “God” to make the stories… nice… not so much that you feel like you’re in someone else’s church against your will. I kept stopping to look things up. Or to ask TW how she felt about this bird, or this animal. (How do YOU feel about moles?)
I really, really enjoyed it. I’m glad I didn’t take it back unread. And, I really really want a few acres of my own.
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The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell
Well that was depressing. Good, but depressing. The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell is FICTION but loosely based on a real person. The question is, how loosely based. I’m not a huge fan of the whole “ghost” story author’s note at the end… that sounds to me like it was added because family members of Lobdell tell a slightly different version of the story. Not that it matters, still a depressing story. Lesbian woman. Trans man. Whatevs. Pretty darn sad.
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Shadow Study
Yay! Another book in the series! Boo, I’m not sure I read all of the “glass” books, haha. I need to go back and figure that out. I did enjoy Shadow Study but not as much as the other books (that I remember reading in the two series. lol) And I absolutely knew what Yelena’s problem was from the very beginning. Wasn’t it a little obvious?
I think the next two books are going to be very interesting…
6 Poetry Books from the Cybils Shortlist
I really wish the Cybils didn’t put children’s poetry in with the middle grade/YA poetry. It seems… not right. Whatever. It is what it is and we’ll just go with it, I guess.
So I read six. Finally.
– Dear Wandering Wildebeest and Other Poems From the Water Hole was fine. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. It was fine.
– Firefly July was a cute seasonal poetry book. Nice mix of poetry from typical favorites and lesser known poets.
– Hi, Koo!: A Year of Seasons was fun. It was haiku but not the traditional haiku, which I appreciated. I was also amused by the hidden A, B, Cs — though that’s probably not super useful, I was just amused by it.
– Santa Clauses was better than I expected it to be. More haiku, which I wasn’t thrilled about but ended up liking quite a lot.
– Voices From the March on Washington was super interesting. (Again, why this and Brown Girl Dreaming are in the category with these younger children’s poetry… ugh.) I liked it very much. Kids who aren’t into poetry might like this. I highly recommend it.
– Water Rolls, Water Rises Water Rolls, Water Rises was excellent. I was surprised by how much I liked this one. I think it might have been my favorite of the bunch.
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Lowcountry Boil
I read the third book in the series early last month and since I enjoyed it, I figured I’d go back and read the first two.
Lowcountry Boil was pretty good. Not as good as book three but not bad. I’m still looking forward to the second book in the series.
Reading In April
Only 20 books total — not great considering it was a #readathon month and we did a second “#fakereadathon”. Uh oh. If I keep this up, I’m not going to get anywhere near close to my goal for the year.
20 books total
1 audio book
1 Kindle book
2 from my stacks
2 Cybils
1 YA
3 Non-fiction (three? wow — is this my worst non-fiction month in forever???)
Lillian Gilbreth: Redefining Domesticity
OK so I’m biased, I’ll just say that right up front. I’m a big fan of the Des Jardins family and this book was written by Julie Des Jardins. Also, I love Lillian Gilbreth. Not the Cheaper By the Dozen version — the real one. Yep, I’m biased. Whatever.
I loved Lillian Gilbreth: Redefining Domesticity and am just annoyed that it took me so long to read it.
The darn thing has been sitting on my desk for years!
She was a pretty amazing woman and her husband was pretty OK, himself. For a dude. 😉 Also, reading it made me spend a little time reminiscing about the Charleston News & Courier… I’d really forgotten that Frank Jr was the guy who wrote the “Doing the Charleston” column for all of my childhood.
And, I spent a good amount of time watching motion study videos and cursing the flow chart (which actually made sense at some point in life, just not now, lol.)
I can’t imagine what “work” would look like today if we hadn’t had the Gilbreth’s — Lillian in particular.
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Prudence (The Custard Protocol)
Yippee! Another Gail Carriger book!
I loved Prudence and am definitely going to love this series more than The Finishing School series. (TW on the other hand likes that series better than this one. Weird.)
I like Prudence and Prim even better than I liked their moms and I liked their moms a lot. These girls are not Alexis and Ivy clones — they feel very much like daughters rather than clones, that’s important.
I’m also super-interested to see what happens in the next book. Prudence seems to know less about her mother and father (not the vampire father) than I’d have expected. That’s interesting. I get that her vampire father really did become her father but still… interesting to get an idea of just how that whole situation worked out for Prudence. Very interesting. Bring on the next book!
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Boy, Snow, Bird
I finally managed to start reading Boy, Snow, Bird (on Kindle) when we went to see JMP in New York. But it wasn’t any easy book to read while distracted by JMP so I didn’t get very far. It’s also not an easy book to read in tiny bits, which is how I generally read Kindle books.
So, it took me a really long time to read this. I really only finished because I had large chunks of time to read when we did our #fakereadathon and #readathon. Without those two chunks of reading time, I’d probably still be reading this book.
About the book. Hoo boy. It had all the things. Wicked step-mothers. Black folks passing as white. Transgender stuff. It was all the things rolled into one and I can’t really decide how I feel about it.
I really liked some of it. I really disliked other parts of it.
I found it hard to read at parts, because it just felt like we were slogging along. But in other moments, I thoroughly enjoyed each word. I also don’t think I really liked a single person in the entire thing. That was troubling. OK maybe I liked Bird. Yea, I liked her. The rest of them — not so much. Not so much at all.
Very interesting read. Not like anything you’ve probably read before (even with the wicked step-mother thread(s).
PS. Thanks Elisa (who gifted the book to me last Christmas.)