September 2007

My tolerance is low…

5 Comments / Daily Dose, Pet Peeves, Women /

I am subscribed to about 500 blogs. I may not read them all, entirely (especially if they do not provide full feeds) but I do skim them all. Everyday. I don’t love all of these blogs. Some of them I actually hate. Some of them I subscribe to for “work” and others because everyone else subscribes to them – and if I don’t subscribe then I’m sort of out of the loop. I hate being out of the loop. Quite a few of the bloggers are very different from me – politically and socially. I tend to enjoy those bloggers the most. They’re interesting, even if they make me crazy with their opinions or their manner of presenting their opinions. Why am I telling you this? Because generally speaking, my tolerance for other points of view is pretty high. There is one thing I just cannot stomach…

“I need a wife.”

I really hate it when people say that. I really hate it when people blog that. I really hate it when people put that in an email.

“I need a wife” is usually followed by a laundry list of reasons why a wife would make this person’s life better. The items on the list are generally related to house work, cooking, managing children, laundry – you know, all of those things the patriarchy has insisted women are responsible for.

My tolerance for this type of blogging is so low that I unsubscribed from what is otherwise a fairly innocuous and sometimes helpful blog about blogging. A blog I’ve actually linked to in the past and one I’ve sent links from in an effort to help other people learn about blogging or improve their blogging.

I’m sure her post was intended to be amusing. To me it was just offensive – more offensive than being damned three times in the first paragraph by a conservative Christian blogger, (which is something I see every day – over and over again.) So offensive that I’ve unsubscribed.

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Odalisque

2007, Books in Bed, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

About 50 pages to the end of Odalisque: Book One of the Percheron Saga, I realized I was going to hate the book. I realized this because it is what I’ve always thought as a part of a “real” series. It’s a book that doesn’t wrap up the adventure, it doesn’t even come close to wrapping up the adventure. We haven’t even hit the climax – or maybe there are two climaxes and book three contains the denouement and wraps it all up tidy? I don’t know. I just know when I finished it last night, I was annoyed. Now I have to track down Book 2 and Book 3. Immediately.

Damn it.  Book Two hasn’t even been released yet!  How did this happen?  I blame TW for choosing this from the library shelf in the first place.

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Vampires, Zac Efron and Liz

5 Comments / 2007, Books in Bed, Family Funk, Favorites, Kid Talk, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Because it seems as if all I’m blogging about are books and wii, I’ll toss in a kid story along with the “book talk”. How’s that? Soon I’ll blog about something else. I swear.

You know Bookburger right? I noticed a post there about the making of Twilight into a movie. There was much discussion about whether Zac Efron would make a good “vampire Edward”. I thought it was an “ok” choice, not terrible but not great and I said so on the Bookburger blog. Well errr I didn’t notice it but that post was a contest and because of my comment I won an audio version of Eclipse. How cool is that? It’s really cool because on someone’s blog – sassymonkey’s or Kit Cat’s – I said I was going to try and get the audio version because we might enjoy it more than reading the print version (the reviews are hit or miss for this one and we loved the other two.)

So anyway, the day I realized I won this audio book I picked up Liz from school. We were talking about her homework and from there we somehow started talking about her crafting. She mentioned that she really wanted to get busy knitting because she wants to knit a Zac Efron doll for A’s birthday – and to knit some clothes for him. (Heh. This is pretty amusing. How do you knit a Zac Efron doll? I guess we will ask Lorena and crew this weekend…)

I thought it was a weird coincidence that I had just found out I won a book based on a comment about Efron and here she was talking about him. So I told her about winning the contest and we discussed whether Efron would make a good vampire Edward. She doesn’t know the character but she thinks Efron would be a weird vampire. But, her biggest concern is something else…

She wants to know why characters who are named Edward are never bad. It just makes sense to her that all characters named Edward SHOULD be bad – the alliteration of Evil Edward or Edward the Evillllllll is just so excellent, writers should work on that. Quit making Edwards and Eddies and Eds the good guys. They’re evil – they have to be. Liz has deemed it so.

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Wii are having fun

2 Comments / Family Funk, Kid Talk /

The Wii finally left Louisville (where it sat for a week) and made it to our house yesterday afternoon. I cleaned the living room, set it up and we started to play. Or try to play. The learning curve is steep. Seriously. Just as we were trying to figure out how to play Sonic, Michelle called for a ride home from her “Burrito Brothers take over Dragonfly” night so I left TW home alone – with my Wii.

I came home to find she had figured out how to get to the Sonic “tutorial” and had figured out many things in the 20 minutes I was gone. I also discovered she was the recipient of our first Wii injury. Luckily, it wasn’t a serious injury. I can see her going to work with a black eye and trying to explain to the faculty that she hit herself in the eye with the Wii… heh. Actually that would be funny…

Anyway, we came home and Michelle took over the Wiimote and would not give it back! HMPH. My Wii and I wasn’t even getting to play with it. Finally she gave up and I got to play for awhile but by that time it was late and I was tired so 20 minutes was about all I could handle. Today, the darn kid is back on the Wii and has gone all of the way through the tutorial and is moving through the “chapters”.

It’s my Wii! I should get to play it the most – shouldn’t I????

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The Wayward Muse

2007, Books in Bed, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Women /

I wanted to love The Wayward Muse but I didn’t. Part fiction, part non-fiction – it just didn’t grab me. I wanted to like Jane Burden but I didn’t. I wanted to like Morris and Rossetti and I didn’t. I didn’t care anything about any of them and that’s disappointing because I really do like all three – the real people, not the people as “characters” in this book.

Disappointing.

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The Sleeping Doll

3 Comments / 2007, Books in Bed, Fiction, Mystery /

It’s been ages since I read anything by Deaver. How long ago was The Bone Collector written? Years and years. I wasn’t sure The Sleeping Doll would be worth reading or anywhere near as good as The Bone Collector… it wasn’t as good but it was worth reading.

TW started it last night and said “boy it starts with a bang, doesn’t it?” – It does and there are bangs all of the way through it. I won’t go far as to say I couldn’t put it down but I will say that I enjoyed picking it up, every single time.

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She’s Such a Geek

1 Comment / 2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Non-Fiction, Women /

I’m not a geek, not really. Certainly not the type of geek found in She’s Such a Geek. My lack of geekness doesn’t prevent me from enjoying geeks or books about geeks or stories written by geeks. Thank goodness for that or else I’d have totally missed out on the pleasure derived from reading the stories of people like Analee, Violet Blue, Wendy and all of the other geek girls who shared their stories in this fabulous little book.


Being a BlogHer, I obviously enjoyed Wendy’s story about BlogHerCon vs DefCon. Loved it and am extra sorry that I missed the very first BlogHer Con and am extra grateful not to have missed BlogHerCon 6 and 7! If you’re a BlogHer and you’ve seen that little book ad on the left nav for She’s Such a Geek and wondered if it was worth reading – it totally is. If you have daughters, you should buy it and put it on their bookshelves – even if they aren’t geek girls. It’s not just a “geek positive” books, it’s a “woman positive” book. Read it and share it with everyone. You won’t be sorry.


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