Secondhand Souls
How I love Christopher Moore. Secondhand Souls was a long time coming but so worth the wait. I actually liked it better than Dirty Job and that’s saying quite a lot.
Audiobooks
The Winners Curse
We listened to The Winners Curse on audio and once we got past the accent of the lead character, it was pretty good. I’m not sure I’m feeling it as a trilogy. I’d probably have preferred just two books but we’ll see.
The Luck Uglies
The Luck Uglies is on the Cybils short list and we listened to it on audio. It started a little slowly but picked up quickly and I really enjoyed it. I particularly loved the ‘gloaming beast’ there at the end. Heh. That was awesome. Surely there’s a sequel? There must be… I hope. Oh, there is! Yippee!
Arabella
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.
Nuts To You
We listened to Nuts To You on audio this week. It’s a very cute and very short middle grade fiction book from the Cybils shortlist. We enjoyed it. It was cute. The squirrels are very adorable. It also made me want a peanut butter sandwich.
2 Cybils YA Fiction
I’ll Give You the Sun started slowly and the chapters are really long but I got hooked really quickly and could not put it down. I love both twins and the other kids and adults in the book. Great characters. Well done, well done.
We listened to Noggin on audio and enjoyed this one, too. Poor kid. Seriously. I cannot imagine. I even mostly liked the ending, though for awhile there I was afraid it was going to be stupid. I should have known better, obviously. That whole Travis and Cate thing… gah. Also, I’ve decided I wouldn’t opt for having my head cryogenically frozen. Nope. Not doing it.
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Gabi, A Girl In Pieces
We very much enjoyed listining to Gabi, A Girl In Pieces. I loved Gabi, her family and her friends. I loved the honesty in this book. It felt very realistic, to me. I can see teen girls feeling all of these things. I can see teen girls being confused about all of the same things. It was also a YA trouble book that didn’t leave me feeling like the author just threw in all of the possible teen problems just to throw in all of the possible teen problems, as so many YA books do.
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Konmari Problems: Books
If you are friends with me on Facebook, you’ve no doubt seen me talking about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up aka the Konmari method.
Much of what I typed was just me being silly. It’s a little overwhelming but very interesting and much of it makes sense. My real problem though is her method of managing books. I don’t think she understands my relationship with books.
From the beginning of her section on books…
We have to take all of the books off of the shelf and put them on the floor. I understand her suggestion to do this, in general. It makes a lot of sense to see your collections of items as one big THING. It also makes sense to touch each item to determine which bring you joy.
Since I already know I have an ass ton of books, shouldn’t I be able to just pick up each book from the shelf, hold it and then either return it or discard it? Do I really have to move thousands of books into one room in order to determine joy? I think not.
Also, since TW and I co-own these books, how do we decide together which books bring joy. If one brings me joy, but doesn’t bring TW joy, does my joy outweigh hers?
She also talks a lot about imagining A bookshelf filled with books you love.
I, however, picture a good half dozen bookshelves filled with books I love.
Also, she does not understand that my books are arranged by color. Therefore dozens of bookshelves of books sorted by color DO make me happy. Those books DO have value just by being on the shelf. They are beautiful. They do serve a purpose by just being there. Books are not only valuable for the information they provide to you when you read them. Or even by the pleasure you get from reading them. They bring me pleasure simply by BEING there.
I suspect she doesn’t understand this. Or, I wonder if she’d tell me that my books are not in fact books, they are komono or sentimental items so they should be managed differently. Maybe?
One last problem is that I’m not sure I buy into the idea that “sometime means never” as in “I might read that sometime.” I do sometimes read the books from my stacks, though she is right — I rarely re-read books.
I also don’t think I buy into the idea that the perfect time to read a book is when it first comes to you and if you don’t read it at that moment, then you’ve missed your opportunity and you should simply let that book go. I’ve read books from my stacks years after I first acquired them and I’ve fully enjoyed reading them.
I’m not giving up, I’m definitely going to give this a try — even if I have to do some sort of modified version of Konmari. Totally fascinating.
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The Crossover
I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about TheCrossover — we listened to it on audio and it’s about basketball. Not generally our sort of thing. Turns out… amazing book. Amazing. I loved everything about it. The poetry. The characters. The plot. *sniff* I’m not going to say best book ever but damn it was a good book.
Read it. Listen to it on audio. Give it to your kids.
A Dangerous Place
Poor Maisie Dobbs. *sniff* I liked A Dangerous Place but definitely wish we’d gotten a book before this one. One about the trip to India and then life in Canada. Sigh. Poor Maisie. I wonder if we’ll get a book about where she is now or if it will jump ahead to England. I hope we get one where she is now…