Press Here

1 Comment / 2012, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Fiction /

Funny. I was going to hold off blogging about Press Here because I didn’t have a lot to say – mostly because I couldn’t decide whether I loved it or thought it was stupid. I figured I’d toss it off to Elly (she’s 13) and see what she thought.

She loved it. She did it all. Every single thing. And she said “IT WAS AWESOME, BEST BOOK EVER.”

And still I wasn’t going to blog it yet because, well, I figured it was just a weird Elly thing and maybe the book is stupid.

But just now, RJ, (who is 16, remember), came down to wait for her papers to finish printing and she picked the book up. RJ does not generally give two glances to the children’s books I check out at the library but I sat here and watched her go all the way through it – doing every single thing the book said to do. And as she was doing this, TW walked in and said, “you’re doing it wrong, you have to press down all of the dots at once…”

I looked at her in surprise. TW belittles my reading of children’s picture books ALL. OF. THE. TIME. And yet she had picked that one up, without me mentioning it to her – and she too, went all the way through the book and just said, (sheepishly), it’s kind of cool.

So. I guess it’s not stupid?

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Chasing Lightning

2012, Books in Bed, Fiction, From the Stacks Challenge, Queer, Women /

We bought Chasing Lightning during our little adventure day trip a few weeks ago where we went into the city and visited three Indie bookstores that we hadn’t visited before – we always buy at least one book when we visit such stores and when possible we buy queer lit in order to support the cause. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, except TW read it first and said it had a lot of sex in it. It did, but not graphic sex (at least not graphic sex when you compare it to straight lit of a similar type, lol.)

I liked the book but it covered a lot of ground in a very short amount of time – short chapters, which can be a little disconcerting but also made it an easy read. It almost feels like it was intended for “new” lesbians because of the explanations about what life was like for queers in the 60’s and 70’s took up a lot of room in the book, considering how short the chapters were. Those “non-fictiony” type sections felt off and were a bit of a distraction from Scarlett’s story because some of them didn’t feel like they fit very well into the story.  

It was a nice, easy read during a busy weekend.

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A Non-Fiction and a Cookbook

2012, Books in Bed, cookbooks, Favorites, Non-Fiction /

I thought Eating with Uncle Sam might be interesting for TW, retro food blog and all that. She was sort of ho hum about it but I liked it. There sure were a lot of recipes from Nixon and Bush. And General Eisenhower’s recipe for chicken soup was fabulous, not that I like soup or anything.

And then there’s Where Children Sleep, a book I kept thinking I would buy but never did. I just happened to walk down the last row of shelves of new arrivals (a row I never really walk past) and it caught my eye. I figured what the heck, I’ll get it. I’m glad I did and I still think I want to buy it. As Elly said just now – that book is really depressing. But it’s interesting and it makes you think.

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The Garden Intrigue

1 Comment / 2012, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

Damn Lauren Willig – she’s in the suburbs this evening and I can’t be there. So not fair, since I just finished The Garden Intrigue and she made me forget to be grouchy about the name of the book, made me like bad poets and bad poetry more than I should, and be grouchy that we have to wait for the next book. Thankfully, it’s a Miss Gwen book – that will be worth waiting for, since we have to wait. Almost as good as a Turnip book.

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The Printmaker’s Daughter

2012, Books in Bed, Feminism, Fiction /

I read The Printmaker’s Daughter because TW told me it was good – interesting. And it was, but it started so slowly that I thought maybe this was another of those weird TW recommendations – the kind that I never quite understand. But no, it was good. Very interesting.

Oi was a real person. Her father, Hokusai, was also a real person – maybe you’ve heard of him? There really is some confusion as to which works were really his – and which were done by someone else – maybe his daughter, Oi?  That’s what The Printmaker’s Daughter is about. A fictional tale of what may have been the lives of both Edo painters in the 1800s.

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Double Dexter

2012, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Mystery /

We just finished Double Dexter on audio – Jeff Lindsay does a fabulous job of reading Dexter. He really does. I think that might be why I never could get into the TV series, well that and the fact that the TV show is so different from the books. I just plain love the books.  It was nice to see Astor get a wee bit of play time in a book, that was excellent.

I have one tiny complaint – Rita is getting worse with each book and Dexter’s ridicule of her is getting a wee bit ugly. Not necessary. It just is not necessary at all.

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2 Children’s Picture Books from the Cybils Shortlist

2012, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites /

Guess what – I liked them both. One took me by surprise because I started out bored, the second I enjoyed all the way through.

I Want My Hat Back, started slowly for me and I was bored. One of those books where an animal asks a different animal on each page for his hat (we’ve seen this format a zillion times) what we haven’t seen is how the animal whose hat was lost gets his hat back. I won’t spoil it for you but…. I LOVED IT. Some of y’all won’t love it because you won’t want to have to explain what happened to your small children. I, on the otherhand, found it to be refreshing and will be buying this one for Johnny Mac Pippin.

I Had a Favorite Dress was adorable. A little girl whose mom found a way to tweak the girl’s favorite dress each time she grew. Fabulous. Adorable. Great artwork.

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2 Graphic Novels from the Cybils Shortlist

2012, Books in Bed, Comics & Graphic Novels, Cybil Challenge /

So it begins, my quest to read all of the books on the shortlist and not surprisingly, I’ve got one I really liked and another that was ok but not my favorite.

The one I really liked was Hereville: How Marka Got Her Sword.  Great drawings. Good story. Knitting saves the day. How awesome is that?

The one I was disappointed and meh about was the one I thought I’d like the most: Nursery Rhyme Comics.  I think I expected the artists to take more liberties than they did – my fault since this is still a nursery rhyme book for kids. I did enjoy seeing Sarah Varon’s work and it was pretty much exactly right. There were some others that I liked but overall – it just fell flat for me. I suspect Elly felt the same way, though she didn’t say anything about it last weekend when she read it (which might also indicate that it fell flat for her, too.)

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The Magician’s Elephant

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

I found The Magician’s Elephant on my library website – in that carousel of recently reviewed books that shows up before you log into your account. I’m a sucker for elephants, even more so now that my elephant loving child is pregnant, so I reserved it without even knowing what it was. (I didn’t even notice the author was Kim DiCamillo – Tale of Desperaux and Because of Winn Dixie.)

Turns out it’s a middle grade science fiction book about… an elephant, a magician’s elephant that causes all sorts of things to happen and leads everyone to a happily ever after ending.

The book is a wee bit dark and some 10 year olds may not like it for that reason. Oddly enough, I wondered about what kind of movie it might make and what do I find when I take a peek at the Amazon reviews… it’s going to be a movie. (Maybe. There’s no release date and the only news I’ve found indicated someone was hired to write a script based on the book, and that happened 3 years ago. So. There we go. Maybe a movie? Maybe not.)

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