Non-Fiction

#Readathon Mid-Event Survey

2022, Art, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon, Non-Fiction, Queer /

Funny. I’ve done a million #readathons and I’ve done very few mid-event surveys. I wonder why. Very weird.

  • What are you reading right now?

I’m going back to the Once Upon a Book Club book, The Roughest Draft.

  • How many books have you read so far?

I’ve finished three books – but I was 1/3 of the way through one of them. So far, I’ve finished Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Part (I was 110 pages into it when I picked it back up today), I read Create Your Life Book, and of course The Woman of Andros.

  • What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the readathon?

I think I’m most looking forward to finishing The Roughest Draft. All of those presents to open along the way!

  • Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those?

Well, the chickens refused to go directly from their day time grazing yard back to their night time area. It took two of us and a lot of cajoling to get them to all move in the right direction and stay in the right area. I mean it’s not like it took an hour to round them up but it was a good 15 minutes. That’s pretty much the only real interruptions, so far.

  • What surprises you most about the readathon, so far?

I’m doing better than I expected, considering how tired I was when I got up this morning. I’m about 450 pages down – that’s not going to break any records but all things considered, I’ll take it. If I can get another 300 pages done before I call it a night, I’ll be exceptionally happy.

My mid-event snack.

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My Halal Kitchen

2019, Books in Bed, cookbooks, Dewey's Readathon, Non-Fiction /

I really enjoyed reading the intro and all of the information about Halal cooking and Halal versions of different cuisines. That part of My Halal Kitchen was really interesting. The recipes, however, were a little boring. I mean, if you wanted to eat Halal, then I’d recommend this cookbook. I was just looking for recipes that seemed unusual, different, surprising, or like they’d be exceptionally tasty – but none really did. Standard recipes and common sense substitutions.

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How to Make Books

2019, Art, Books in Bed, Dewey's Readathon, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I finished a book. During Readathon! Granted I’ve been reading it so long that it’s auto-renewed three times and has to go back to the library next week but still… I finished a book. A good book. A book that I thought would be silly since I know a good bit about making books. Turns out, How to Make Books is a great book and would be a great resource for people who want to make books of all kinds. I’d like to own it, really. I wonder if Pippin and Squish and Evergreen want to learn to make books… then I could justify buying it. In hardback because the binding is awesome. (As a book about making books should be.)

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Six Children’s Books…

2019, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction, Non-Fiction /

JMP came for a sleepover/Grandma Camp, so we read a bunch of children’s books:

– Pete the Cat: Three Bite Rule because JMP is a picky eater and also sometimes needs to be coaxed to try things that are new to him. This was a fun book and he was willing to try a few “new” foods when we sang, “three bite rule!”

– Because I knew TW was going to talk to him about planning/planting their garden, I grabbed The Rosy, Fat, Magenta Radish and Big Red Barn from our shelves and The Carrot Seed from the library. (TW and Pippin actually planted carrots and radishes yesterday!)

– We read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and attempted (badly) to make some paper airplanes from The Kids’ Guide to Paper Airplanes.

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Paperback Crush

2019, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Young Adult /

Almost halfway through the month and the first book I’ve finished is Paperback Crush? It’s going to be another one of those years, isn’t it? Whatevs.

I thoroughly enjoyed Paperback Crush (but found the ending a little abrupt. (Couldn’t we have had an epilogue or something?) It wasn’t so much about the books people my age read when we were tweens/teens, it’s closer to the age of my kids, but because I read pretty much everything my kids read and I love nothing better than a good (or trashy) middle grade or YA book, it was fun to look back. It also made me want to read books I (and my kids) never read. They were never hardcore into Sweet Valley or BSC, though they read a few. The Christopher Pike Midnight Club (I wonder if that’s still on our shelves or did it get Kondoed?)… I want to read that. I don’t want to read (or re-read) any Lulene McDaniel books ever again, though.

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Ultimate Journeys for Two

2018, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

Speaking of a book I finished in June, Ultimate Journeys for Two: Extraordinary Destinations on Every Continent was on the Beach Reads display at the library last month and the cover was pretty, so I picked it up.

I don’t have a lot of wanderlust and am not dying to travel to all the interesting places. I’d really rather just stay home, or close to home. But, I find travel guides to be fun reading when I can look at cool photos and learn things about interesting places. This met both of those needs. It also had some fun lists in each section and I enjoyed those.

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The Best Things in Life are Free

2 Comments / 2018, Books in Bed, Don't Read This, Non-Fiction /

Total impulse pick from the library, The Best Things in Life are Free is a travel book with a bunch of ideas of free (or really cheap) travel experiences around the world.

I’m not really planning on doing much traveling any time in the next couple of years but I thought it would be fun to flip through. And it was, until I got to Chicago and it’s listing for the Logan Hardware Arcade Museum. It was completely 100% wrong. I was going to let that go, thinking maybe the book was older than I’d thought… but no, it was written in 2016 and the info they provided would have been completely WRONG for a very long time. I would guess that they just grabbed some info from some old Chicago travel guide and didn’t bother to check to see if it was accurate. Whatever. At that point, I pretty much just quit the book.

For the record… Logan Hardware Arcade, in Chicago, is an amazing place. But it’s a Barcade, not a museum. The games are not free to play. You don’t have to buy anything in order to play them. They have awesome and relatively inexpensive (for Chicago) drinks (I recommend the Gin & Chronic). You should visit but you should know what you’re visiting. Also important to note, the vinyl record store that used to be Logan Hardware and DID (at one point, before the Logan Hardware Arcade opened) have a back room of pinball machines has also closed down. (That actually happened pretty recently, and it’s too bad.)

Nothing worse than a relatively newish travel guide with old (very old) info. Really bad that it’s a Lonely Planet publication.

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Capital Gaines

2018, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

I didn’t plan to read Chip Gaines’ book, Capital Gaines. Heck, I haven’t even read the main Magnola book yet. But, it was just sitting on the shelf at the library and I didn’t have any books in my bag so what the heck, right?

Then, when I had finished a book a couple of days ago and this one was right next to me and I didn’t have to go downstairs to get a new book… it was fate.

It was also not a great book. I was enjoying it in the beginning, the very beginning. But about the time Chip had to get his ass back to Texas instead of staying in Mexico to learn Spanish is about the time I found myself bored and doing a lot of eyerolling. The best part of the book was the end, the extras, the sections written by Chip’s personal assistants. They should write a book and Chip should just stick to doing the stuff that he does that’s not writing.

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Alice Paul and the Fight for Women’s Rights

2018, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Feminism, Non-Fiction, Women, Young Adult /

OK I think Alice Paul and the Fight for Women’s Rights is the last non-fiction Cybil I’ll read this year. Probably. I’m kind of glad I finished on such a high note.

This was a pretty comprehensive history of Alice Paul’s life and work. It was a quick read but not a simple read. Well done, I highly recommend it to kids (or adults) who don’t know much about Alice Paul.

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