Books in Bed

Things That Keep Me Up At Night

1 Comment / 2015, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

We’re moving next year. In May or June. We don’t really know where, exactly. We have to buy a house and then we have to get ourselves, our stuff, TW’s mom and sister and their stuff, three dogs and three prairie dogs to the house that we buy.

The thing that keeps me up at night as the actual MOVING of the ANIMALS to wherever it is we end up buying a house.

I can’t figure it out. It’s just… how the heck are we going to do this.

In comes Dogtripping and I still don’t know how we’re going to manage this but I’m pretty sure it will be easier for us than it was for these folks who had to move themselves and 25 old rescue dogs from southern California to Maine.

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Arabella

2015, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

Sassymonkey mentioned some guy who I can’t remember was the reader of some of the Georgette Heyer books and I was interested in this. So, when we needed a new audiobook, I pulled up Heyer’s books in Hoopla and realized I couldn’t remember which titles she’d mentioned or even the dude’s name who read them so I shrugged and just borrowed the first one I saw that I didn’t think I’d read before… and that’s how I got Arabella.

TW says she had read it before but she still seemed to enjoy it on audio. It was amusing, as most Georgette Heyer novels are. I think we should just listen to them all on audio because it was so amusing to listen to this one.

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Three Non-Fiction Books

2015, Art, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I didn’t feel like starting anything long last night, so I grabbed the three non-fiction art books on my library cart and that was the perfect choice for the last couple of hours before I turned out the light.

Beginners Guide to Chalk Painting was pretty boring. Probably pretty helpful if you’re going to be using any of these paints, though. But overall, ho hum.

Rock Art: Painting and Crafting with the Humble Pebble was an impulse pick up from the new non-fiction shelf at the library. Rock painting isn’t all that intense and you don’t really need to know a lot of techniques to do it but it was really fun to flip through all of the painted rocks. And, I was reminded of an idea I had for a rock garden for JMP… I am definitely going to work on that once we move next year.

I love The Sketchbook Project so you shouldn’t be surprised that I loved the book The Sketchbook Project World Tour. I’m kind of sad that I didn’t find a way to get to the museum in Brooklyn last month to see the sketchbooks in person. Sigh.

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Two Awesome Middle-Grade Fiction Books

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction /

I’m making a lot of progress on my Cybils shortlist and am feeling really happy about all of the really good books that made the list.

I didn’t expect to love Ice Dogs but I did. Victoria is a great character and I loved her strength and I loved her dogs.

I also didn’t expect to love Nickel Bay Nick, either. Totally loved the characters and the story. Even better, I didn’t see the end coming! (That almost never happens and really never happens with children’s books.)

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Three Graphic Novels

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge, Young Adult /

There’s not much on the library cart that I really want to read right now, thankfully there were some graphic novels from the Cybils shortlist to tide me over until I can pick up something interesting at the library. All of them were pretty good so that made me happy.

Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History was super interesting and drawn beautifully. I was surprised to have never heard of any of the people featured in this volume. My only issue with this book is that the text was difficult to read in places. I’m old, probably could use some bifocals, and the white text on black at times was difficult. In some areas, there was brown text. And, it was tiny, too. This is a book for kids so I’m guessing this is my issue and not an issue the intended audience will have. lol

Harlem Hellfighters was excellent. The pages felt chaotic, which seemed right for the story but made it hard for me to read late at night. Again, this might be an old woman problem. Hah.

In Real Life was pretty darn good. Girl gamers FTW!

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The Meaning of Maggie

2015, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Fiction /

From the Cybils shortlist, a middle grade fiction… The Meaning of Maggi. I really liked Maggie and I especially liked her family. These were real people… dad worked at Hartsfield and worked his way up from a baggage handler to ticketing. Mom got a job at a fancy Atlanta hotel, cleaning rooms and doing laundry. They ate some junk food.

What I didn’t like was the way they kept Maggie in the dark about her father’s health. I get it but… I didn’t like that aspect of the story. I also cannot picture any of my kids as 6th graders grokking this at all. Maggie was so young, in so many ways — for someone especially bright. Infantile, even. This… was troubling, particularly when Maggie had the breakdown at the end. She was completely unprepared and that was messed up.

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2 (Southern) Fiction

2015, Books in Bed, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Women /

I couldn’t resist the cover of Mama Does Time and I was happy to hear TW chuckle through it. I chuckled through it, too. It was a lot of fun and I’d definitely read more Mace Bauer mysteries, (this was the first book in the series.)

Next, I read Karen White’s The Sound of Glass. Hoo boy. There’s no such thing as coincidence. Having said that, I could have hated this book because really???? These people were all tied together this way? Really???? But I didn’t. Every single character was likeable and I cared about them way more than I expected.

What’s extra interesting about me reading these two books, back to back, over a 2 1/2 day period is… I didn’t really feel enticed to move to the Okeechobee. I did, however, feel really drawn to moving to Beaufort. Which is interesting since I’ve spent more time thinking about moving back to Florida than I have thinking about moving back to SC. So here I am, looking at houses in Beaufort again. I think I need to lay off the southern literature until after we buy a house. This flip-flopping around is nuts. We need to just pick a spot and stick with it. Or something lol.

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