I almost forgot I’d checked Yummy out from the library – that’s what happens when I hand a book to Elly before I’ve had a chance to read it… another Cybils shortlist graphic novel and this one is excellent. So sad – Robert Sandifer, sad sad sad. Using a well drawn (and written) graphic novel to tell the story is such a great idea. Love. All kids (and adults) should read it.
I saw A Blue So Dark mentioned on a blog (of course I can’t remember which one) and decided to grab it. Oy. Sad, sad, sad. Depressing. Schizophrenia is such a horribly difficult disease. I loved Aura and her mom and her grandmother. All the characters really – even the jerk of a father who walked out. Good, sad, DARK, book. (And yes, #YASaves)
We love to listen to The Ladies #1 Detective Agency books on audio – and the timing of BlogHer Food ’11 and the latest book in the series, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party was perfect. Until we hit the mountains of NC – when the disc started to skip.
TW cleaned the disk as best she could and put it in again – still skipping a little but we kept trying to listen to it until it skipped a lot. TW tried to clean the disk again but it was no use. We had to give up close to the end of the second to last disk. It was very sad.
When we got home, I used one of those disk cleaner thingies to clean all of the disks and kept my fingers crossed as we tried again. It worked! Well it still skipped a little on the last disk but not enough to worry about – and we made it all of the way through.
Thank goodness because the marriage of Grace and Phuti is important and we needed to know what happened to the shoes… and the tiny white van… and the horrible person who harmed the good Botswana cattle!
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party Read More »
TW read The Dry Grass of August last week and said it was excellent… I don’t always listen to her when she says these things but for some reason… I had a good feeling about this book. I’m damn glad I read it – excellent book. Southern family … with a black maid… in the 50’s. You know horrible things are going to happen, and they do, but most of the characters are pretty darn likeable and real.
The Dry Grass of August Read More »
I’m not one of those fanatical Laura Ingalls Wilder fans. I liked the books well enough but I don’t think I’ve read any of them more than once – not like Nancy Drews that I’ve read a million times or the Little Women books that I’ve also read a million times. The books are nice. Laura is nice. The TV, different from the books, also nice enough. But no, I’m not a Laura fangirl.
I’m not sure why I read Melissa Gilbert and Alison Arngrim’s books this year – probably because I saw them on Zandria’s reading list and decided they’d be fun… and they were. I grabbed The Wilder Life because it sounded like it would be even more fun… and when it started slowly and I found myself struggling to finish the first chapter, I got worried.
I think it started slowly because I started it right before the trip to BlogHer Food, Anderson and Gainesville. Not the right time to start such a book. Once I was home, things moved more quickly and I was a lot more interested in the trip Wendy McClure was taking. I kind of thought she was nuts – or I would have if I hadn’t immediately realized what she was looking for in the first place.
What’s really scary is that by the time McClure got to De Smet, I was ready to embark on my only little Laura tour. OK maybe not a whole tour but looking for leeches in Plum Creek and visiting the Ingall’s homestead in South Dakota would be awesome. So awesome that I’m trying to figure out how to make the trip… I really NEED to sleep in a covered wagon.
I was super excited to receive Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok as part of the new BlogHer BookClub. You can find my review here: Girl in Translation: The Strong May Choose Their Own Road. You should also check out the other reviews of Girl in Translation that were written by members of the BlogHer community and if you’ve read the book, visit our spoiler discussion to talk about that thing that we aren’t talking about in our reviews. Heh.
It was a great book and I look forward to reading Jean’s next book (which is not a sequel to Kimberly’s story but sounds very, very interesting just the same!)
Girl in Translation Read More »
After all of the serious Penguin reading I’ve been doing, I needed a light and easy break. Thankfully, I had three Cybils books on my library cart and those did the trick.
First, I’m fascinated by Zapato Power. I’ve never seen a children’s book quite like it. First, we learn that Freddie and his mom live in an apartment complex where the superintendent works hard to keep things neat and tidy – not like the last place they lived where the big kids wrote nasty words on the walls and nobody cleaned it up. And then we learn that Freddie’s dad was not only in the Army, he DIED while overseas fighting. That never, ever happens in early reader books. Never ever. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo! I am now a Freddie Ramos fan.
Next, a middle grade graphic novel called Smile. Elly read it last week and said it was SAD. That confused me. I expected it to be funny. She’s right, it was sad. Forget the dental drama – it was the mean girl issue that was sad. And unfortunately, felt pretty accurate.
Last and also least, my dirty little secret comes out. I have never liked “choose your own ending” books. I cringed when I saw Meanwhile on the Cybils shortlist. I tried to be hopeful about it. Maybe a graphic novel version would be something I’d like? Alas. No. It was worse. On the first try… the story ended on the second page. (which was cleverly done, by the way.) On my next try, it ended on the third page – or maybe I got confused and did not follow the tube-y lines properly, which is pretty likely because lord help me I cannot follow those little lines. The third and fourth times, I was more successful but again… I cannot follow those lines. The panels not related to my current path distract me and I found myself completely confused.
None of this means that Meanwhile isn’t a brilliant, awesome book. IT IS. Elly loves it. I am just not hardwired for this kind of thing. I’m just not. Your kids (and you) might be. You should check it out. It’s a very clever idea – and nicely drawn.
The Bird Sisters was in my Evernote as “reserve this later” – well before later arrived, TW grabbed it from the shelf at the library. I growled a little because I was falling behind on reading and was afraid it would have to go back before I could get to it. And in fact, I ended up returning it late because once I started it, I couldn’t take it back. It was EXCELLENT.
I love Milly & Twiss. I even loved Bette – though it was hard there at the end. Very, very hard.
(And for those keeping track – this one has a wee bit of a lesbian theme tossed in.)
Last fall, Diane from Teen Book Fanatics raved and raved about new YA author, Lauren Oliver. She told me I had to read Before I Fall… and I did, eventually. Diane was right – it was a great book.
Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago and Carmen from Mom to the Screaming Masses tweeted to recommend a YA book called Delirium. I looked it up and saw that it was written by Lauren Oliver. Well that was enough for me – I reserved the book right away.
And it was awesome.
Post apocalyptic fiction where all of the world’s problems were solved by finding a cure for a horrible horrible disease – Love. AKA Amor Deliria Nervosa. When kids reach the age of 18, they’re given the cure (surgical removal of part of the brain), paired with a mate, given a job (and/or a place in a college) and life goes on, without love.
What I really like about Oliver’s books is that there are no happy endings – the right things happen, but that doesn’t mean people are happy and all of the problems are solved in the end. It’s usually just the opposite but it feels real and right.
I would really like a sequel to this book. I’d like to see what happens next – to Lena. Maybe to Alex, if he survived. Or to Hana. Or Grace. Anyone from the story, really. They’re all interesting and I think they all have things to say that they didn’t have a chance to say in Delirium.
I decided to re-read Sister Outsider during the #Readathon and as part of my From the Stacks (by color) challenge for this year… there’s nobody better than Audre Lorde to get me riled up and pointing out the patriarchy at every turn. There’s also nobody better to read when you’re also reading Joan Walsh and Angry Black Lady… in fact, I’d recommend Joan Walsh spend some time reading Sister Outsider before she opens her mouth or puts her fingers to her keyboard again.
Hell. Maybe if we all read a Lorde essay every day for the rest of our lives, we might just be able to have these discussions and figure out how to work together.