A so-so month, all things considered and it sure could have been worse.
I read a 16 books (thank goodness for children’s fiction!)
2 were audio.
6 were for the Cybils challenge.
2 were non-fiction.
2 were YA.
4 were children’s fiction.
And, still nothing from my own stacks. Gah.
Johnny Mac Pippin and I started putting a dent in the stack of picture books from the Cybils shortlist. He liked three of the four we read today.
Black Dog was his favorite — probably because he likes dogs and I said the word dog a lot, so even when he couldn’t see the dog (or couldn’t tell that great big thing was a dog) he knew this was about dogs. Fun story.
Creepy Carrots was amusing for me and JMP liked it, too — though probably because I used some weird voices to make the carrots creepy.
A Home For Bird was cute. He liked this one too, though I doubt he’s ever seen a cuckoo clock. He did enjoy saying Cuckoo, Cuckoo over and over at the end.
The book he didn’t enjoy was Balloons Over Broadway. We didn’t finish that one together. The illustrations weren’t enough to keep his attention and the story was beyond him. Older kids, particularly those who have seen the Macy’s parade will probably like this a whole lot more than JMP did.
4 Cybils, 3 JMP Approved Read More »
Thatwoman is a pain in the ass.
She goes on and on about how she likes a book but when I pick it up to read it she says “Oh, that was really good but I don’t know why you’re reading it.” Like I’m deficient in some way? Like I NEVER like the books or kind of books she likes? Like… I don’t even know. It’s like the GD Kite Runner all the damn time around here, (long story, don’t ask.)
So yea, I picked up Written in Red and see above… and then I pretty much read it non-stop until I was finished. Which is saying something since after TW went all Kite Runner on me (see above) I looked at some really bad reviews of this book and I was nervous.
Damn TW and damn the people and their DNF mean reviews.
Because I really enjoyed Written in Red. I liked The Others. And, I liked the humans, too. This was not the typical werewolf/vampire book. Not typical at all. There were PONIES. Very powerful ponies. I liked them. I liked everything about the book. Even the annoying Simon.
I loved Creative Lettering so much that I read it twice and didn’t want to take it back to the library. Now if I only had time to play with lettering, myself.
Maybe in my next life. Sigh.
Creative Lettering Read More »
The Passion of the Purple Plumeria is my favorite of all the Pink Carnation books — that’s saying something.
I can also safely say that I’ve never really liked Jane.
And, I’ve always loved Miss Gwen.
I often find the 21st century pieces a little slow and just want them to get on with it or go away — in this book, I loved the entire storyline. I want that book!
Also, if you read this — don’t miss the interviews in the back of the book (I know I skip those sometimes, so don’t!)
The Passion of the Purple Plumeria Read More »
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow was one of the books TW said I should read, from the stack of books that had to go back to the library soon.
And it sounded like it was going to be good. Parts of it were good. But omg it was slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, and did I mention it was slow?
Pretty words for the sake of pretty words do not a great story make.
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow Read More »
I enjoyed the first Maisie Dobbs so much that I immediately reserved the second book, Birds of a Feather. But, I accidentally reserved it in audio. Not intentional, definitely, because I have a lot of audio books on my reserve list and I try to keep it to less than three because otherwise they all come in at once and we don’t have enough time to listen to them before they have to back. I also wasn’t sure we’d like the English accents in audio — sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. This time — we did!
Another good story. I really like all of these characters (but I hope Maisie picks Dr Dean over Detective Stanton… jus sayin’.)
I’ve reserved the next book, in audio (sigh — all of my audios will probably come in next week and we’ll have to return some unread! I hate it when that happens…)
Maisie Dobbs: Birds of a Feather Read More »
There were a half dozen books on the library cart with an 8/18 due date. I knew I couldn’t read them all and none could be renewed – so I asked TW to tell me which ones she thought I should read.
Afterwards was one of those books.
Oy. One of those books that makes moms have nightmares. It was good, (good enough for me to stay up past midnight to finish it), even though I had mostly figured it all out long before the author let us in on who did it (or all of the its, since there were several things going on.) That’s probably the only problem I had with the book — too many issues going on with Jenny. Yea, that made it twisty but only a little twisty. The stalker bit just never really worked well for me, I guess.
Here’s another book that started a little slow for me — slow enough that I wondered why I take “what to read next” advice from TW so often. But, just as I was thinking I’d put down The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells and start something else, I realized it was written by the author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli so I stuck it out.
I’m glad I did. Because once Greta found herself in her second life/time, I was hooked and pretty much wanted to just read straight through (with brief stops for Candy Crush, of course.)
Interesting ending. I didn’t think that’s where the “original” Greta would stay, though it was the time/life that made the most sense for her (and probably the other Gretas, as well).
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells Read More »
Every Day is the YA trouble book of all time — there will never be a YA trouble book that has more trouble than this one. It’s impossible.
Because A wakes up in the body of a different 16 year old every single day. This means A deals with every single YA trouble under the sun. It gets particularly problematic when A wakes up in the body of Justin and falls in love with Justin’s girlfriend and tries to figure out how he/she can have a relationship with Rhiannon (and Rhiannon tries to figure out how she can dump Justin and have a relationship with A.)
Oy.
It was interesting — mostly because we couldn’t figure out how this was going to end. Since A obviously couldn’t stay in someone else’s body. It did all wrap up with a neat, but sad, little ending. An ending I didn’t particularly like but an ending that made sense. As much sense as a book about someone who has no body of his/her own and moves around to a new body every day for his/her whole life can make.