Books in Bed

Moon Cleveland

1 Comment / 2014, Books in Bed, Daily Dose, Family Funk, Kid Talk, Non-Fiction, Travel Log /

Here I am playing catch up with books — so out of order, let’s go with Moon Cleveland. RJ flipped through the book while she was home on mid-term break and picked out a bunch of places she thought she might like to check out while we were visiting for parents’ weekend.

I went through it after her and then planned our itinerary around her choices — and mine.

Saturday
– West Side Market was fantastic. Unplanned dash into Koffie Cafe — TW is still raving about her coffee.
– A visit to the A Christmas Story house/museum and that was awesome. Even if they over-booked their 12:15 tour and we had to wait in the cold for an extra half hour. Heh.
– Melt Bar and Grilled for lunch was a-freaking-mazing. Vegan chicken wings were excellent. All of our sandwiches were fabulous. I’m so glad I noticed they had vegan offerings because RJ was in heaven with her pierogie grilled cheese.
– Next, we headed to Cleveland Heights and wandered around the shops on Coventry Village. A used bookstore and Big Fun Toys were both big fun.
– We ran over to Eton something or other (a frou frou mall) for the Vegan Sweet Tooth and RJ was very pleased with her vegan baked good.
– A stop in Target for dorm supplies (and junk) rounded out a very full day.

Sunday
– The Root Cafe for breakfast — my huevos rancheros were good, RJ’s friend joined us and her egg & goat cheese sandwich looked excellent. RJ was very pleased with her vegan scramble.
– The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame visit was more fun than I expected. TW was the one who really wanted to go there but I definitely enjoyed it.
– The Free Stamp was on my list but A had to be back to Oberlin by 2 so we didn’t have time to walk over to see it. Luckily, we drove right past it on the way back so that was a lucky break!

All in all, a good trip. Oh, the Moon guide was fine. Not exceptional but it did the trick.

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Shadows

2014, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Oh look, another Cybils book that I wanted to love but couldn’t. Shadows turned out to be perfectly fine but not great. I don’t generally mind made up words or ordinary words turned into slang words but in this case — it was a struggle from beginning to end. Too much of it, not enough context and to make matters worse, there were Japanese words thrown in for fun. The struggle was real. Very real.

We also spent a whole lot of the beginning of the book listening to Maggie rant about her step-father and that took way too much time and used far too many made up/slang/Japanese words.

Once the story got beyond the hatred of Val the step-father, it was better. The author does a fabulous job with animals (the kind we know and the gruaa kind that we didn’t) and the use of origami throughout the book was fantastic. These last two things make the book worth reading. Mostly.

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Reading In October

2014, Books in Bed, Reading /

My numbers look better than it really was because I blogged so many of the August/September children’s books which means I didn’t count them in August/September and get to count them for October. And of course, it was a #readathon month. LOL. Lots of children’s fiction…

41 books total!

28 were from the Cybils shortlist (which is good because I had fallen way behind there.)
Only 1 was YA. Weird, but I read a lot of middle grade stuff, too.
11 non-fiction
2 graphic novels

You’ll notice no audio books — we did finish one audio book but I’m waiting til November to blog it because it’s related to another one we’re listening to now. Blogging them both together makes more sense.

Onward — I really need to finish the Cybils before the holiday season arrives. Wish me luck — I’m going to need it.

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Sidekicked

2014, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

I felt like I had already read Sidekicked but apparently not. So much of it seemed familiar. Weird, right?

I enjoyed it. I didn’t love love love it. Not sure I’ll read Minion but I might. We’ll see. Maybe.

I liked the sidekicks. I liked the way the Titan storyline developed (and ended.) I also liked the Fox/Silver Lynx story progression, though I would probably have liked it more if the story had been told through Jenna’s point of view. Not that I didn’t like Drew, I did. I just think it would have been a better story if Jenna was telling it.

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Conjured

2014, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Don't Read This, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Gah. If Conjured had not been on the Cybils shortlist, I never would have finished it. I hated this darn book.

The idea of it was good. The ending of it was good. The first half (if not more) was so damn slow and repetitive that I was cursing it pretty much nonstop.

Eve is in a witness protection program. She has memory loss. A lot of memory loss. The agents guarding her want her to tell them… something… what, nobody knows because the author doesn’t tell us and Eve has memory loss. Eve can do magic and when she does, she blacks out. When she wakes up, days (weeks? months?) have passed and she’s apparently been awake and interacting with society but she can’t remember anything that’s happened at all.

Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over for a good 1/2 of the book. That’s pretty much all that happens. And it’s annoying. By the time the story started moving, I was so disgusted that I barely wanted to finish. But I did. It was hard but I did it.

I hate books like this. Move a little more quickly or give us some reason to keep reading the slow mess at the beginning. Do not make a book for kids a struggle to read. Stupid.

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Two Pre-#Readathon Non-Fiction

2014, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

Oops. I forgot I didn’t blog the two books I read the night before the #readathon… probably because neither were all that great.

Beautiful Mess was full of pretty pictures and I kind of like their X 9 ways pages. It was very much like their blog so if you read their blog and like it, well — you won’t find anything new but you’ll probably like the book well enough.

101 Kids Activities That Are The Bestest, Funnest Ever. Did we really have to have Bestest in the title? I hate that word which might have colored my feelings about the book. Also, I’m kind of jaded when it comes to books of this type. It’s hard to find new ideas or new ways to present old ideas. This isn’t a bad book (except for the title) and if you don’t have a lot of these types of books, it wouldn’t be a bad one to have. It’s just not the best book in the world. Ho hum.

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Rose

2014, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

I really liked Rose, the book and the character. She’s an orphan who does not have far-fetched dreams about returning parents or marrying princes. She just wants to leave the orphanage, go into service, work hard, and earn her own way. Even when she’s given chances to be more than a downstairs maid, she turns those chances down. She just wants to be a regular person. I like that.

Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t just be a regular person. You have to step up and into other roles. That’s what happens to Rose. And at the end, it gets very dark — so if you’ve got a middle grader who can’t handle dark, scary, bloody scenes… skip Rose until later.

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Fang Chronicles: Dimitri

2014, Books in Bed, Kindle, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

During #readathon, I always try to go back to some of the series written by BlogHer community members that I haven’t kept up with. This time around, it was Fang Chronicles. Fun to read on my iPhone when I want a break from paper or while I’m sitting at my laptop waiting for spam to delete and stuff.

That Dimitri is… powerful. Sheesh.

I’m starting to have trouble keeping the beasts straight — there are so many now. I might need a cheat sheet when I read the next book. Who’s a vampire? Who’s a cat? Who’s a wolf? Who’s a bear? Gah. All the beastkind!

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