Cottage at Glass Beach

2012, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

I thought The Cottage at Glass Beach was going to be a summer chick lit type read. It was a little more fantasy and myth than I expected. Selkies and such. I liked it, though I had a hard time caring about any of the characters for the first 50 or so pages – but by the end, I liked them all. I’d rather have read the story of the generation before Nora’s – that seems like the more interesting one. Maeve & Maire… sisters. Much more interesting than the only child Nora with daughters of her own…

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Breadcrumbs

2012, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

We listened to Breadcrumbs on audio and I liked it more than TW did. She found it a little tired – retelling of fairy tales. So yea, been there, done that, but I still liked it. I liked Hazel. It was a little slow, particularly for audio, but I definitely enjoyed it.

Good Cybils middle grade fantasy. Not the best but worthy of the shortlist for sure.

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The Soiling of Old Glory

2012, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction /

I should probably have skipped reading The Soiling of Old Glory during the RNC – politics all day and then a book about busing, race and class made for a pretty depressing week. The book was good, it was just really bad timing. I should have read it a month ago, before the ugly election politics really got going.

Read it but wait til next year, unless you need to get fired up about race and class issues. Then this would probably help you right along.

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With a Name Like Sparkle Hayter….

2012, Books in Bed, Fiction, Mystery, Women /

I reserved Nice Girls Finish Last and Revenge of the Cootie Girls because I saw the cool pulp fiction-y covers on the library’s recently reviewed spinner. I am a sucker for a good pulp fiction style cover. And once they arrived, I noticed they were written by Sparkle Hayter. Hahaha. I love her name. I love it so much that I actually own Naked Brunch (but have never managed to read it.)

I was a little unhappy when I realized Nice Girls Finish Last was not the first book in the series. I do not like reading books out of order. But, I didn’t have anything else handy that I really felt like reading and I figured I’d take a shot. I still wish I’d read them in order but I enjoyed both of these books a lot. Enough that I’m thinking about reserving the rest of the books in the series. I like Robin. She’s a great character and her supporting cast is pretty darn good, too.

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

2012, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Queer /

I love Jeanette Winterson and that’s pretty much all I knew when I grabbed Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? From the library shelf. It was obviously non-fiction, with a picture of a child who had to be a young Winterson – so I figured it was a memoir. Or maybe not a memoir but something about coming out . Whatever. It didn’t matter. Winterson wrote it, I was going to read it.

And I did. Not quite straight through, because I started it very late one night, but pretty darn close.

Winterson writes in true Winterson fashion about her adoption and early childhood with Mrs (and Mr) Winterson – it wasn’t pretty, to say the least. Mrs Winterson had some big, big problems and Mr Winterson had a few of his own, (war related, poverty related, his own childhood related, and of course – Mrs Winterson related.)  Then, she jumps ahead 25 years – to her nervous breakdown and the realization that she needed to look for her birth mother.

At that point, I was left wishing I knew a little bit more than I did about the missing 25 years.

Let me spoil it for you… Winterson finds her mom, an aunt, a half brother, more family members. They don’t mind her queerness, they want her to be part of their family but… it’s hard. Of course. Adoption is hard. Finding your birth family is hard. Figuring out what happens next is very hard. And when you throw in the childhood, the rough 25 years, the celebrity, the breakdown, the very thing that is Jeanette Winterson… it’s all going to be hard.

I’m fascinated by the Amazon reviews/comments. The people who thought it would be a self-help book. The people who find Winterson unlikeable. The people who find her treatment of her birth family untenable. The people who don’t recognize Winterson’s mentions and quotes from her novels as important to this story, to understanding what led her to be the person she was. Fascinating. This is a book for those who are thoughtful – It’s not self-help and Winterson doesn’t want you to like her. She tells you that here. She’s been telling you that in every novel she’s ever written. She doesn’t want you to like her because… she does not deserve it. Mrs Winterson (and the circumstances of her adoption) taught her to believe that…

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Puppy Problems

Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Family Funk /

When we brought Skeeter home, I specifically told the kids – DO NOT LEAVE ANYTHING ON THE FLOOR OR COUCH OR WITHIN REACH OF THE DOG. I specifically mentioned: remote controls, shoes, books, laptops, cell phones, iPads, make up, food, trash, dishes… and then said, ANYTHING, REALLY.

Today’s contraband puppy haul (and it’s only 8:30am):

1 of RJ’s shoes (I’m sure the other one will show up momentarily.)

1 remote control (for the ROKU)

1 paper towel

1 pair of finger nail clippers (that could have been a huge veterinary emergency disaster, it makes me shudder to think about it.)

1 of TW’s shoes (not the kids’ fault)

Ah yep, here’s the other RJ shoe.

Items retrieved prior to puppy hauling them off (and it’s only 8:30am):

1 plastic sandwich bag

2 remote control

1 magazine

Oh hell, she’s off to explore again. I wonder what she’s going to come back with next.

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Three More Cybils — All Non-Fiction

2012, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Non-Fiction, Young Adult /

Let’s see… what did I read?

Unraveling Freedom. This was interesting because I don’t read a lot of books about WW1, fiction or non-fiction. Nice change from the overwhelming amount of WW2 books I usually read. It was also a nice change to read about WW1 and the US – not WW1 in Europe.

Next, I read Amelia Lost. This took me a long time to get through and I’m not sure why. Maybe because I was reading it while Diana Nyad was attempting to swim from Cuba to Florida and following a living, awesome woman was more interesting than reading stuff about Amelia Earhart that caused me to not like her quite so much. (I had no idea the US government paid to build the airfield on Howland Island JUST for Earhart to land on. Sheesh. We/She would have been better off if she’d just had Roosevelt arrange for inflight fueling at Midway…)

Last, but not least, How They Croaked. This was fun. All of the interesting facts about how famous people died. Nice illustrations (cartoon-like.) It would be a fun book to have on the shelf for kids to pull down and flip through for fun.

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