Fiction

Ghost Town

1 Comment / 2005, Books in Bed, Fiction, short stories /

Somehow I found myself reading three books at once, I never do that and it was pretty troubling to find myself in that position. I settled down and finished About My Sisters and then finished Ghost Town, a book of short stories about NYC.

Three short stories that were just long enough that I couldn’t finish a complete story during a 15 minute work break. HMPH. I prefer my short stories a little shorter. The stories were, uh, weird. To put it mildly. The first set in the revolutionary war period, the second about the time of the civil war and the third – you guessed it, 9/11. Weird stuff.

I thought they were going to be “ghost stories” but they weren’t. They were stories about weirdness, bad things happening, people just a little short of a full deck. Weird stuff, did I mention that? Now, back to Zipporah…no weirdness there at all, lol.

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The Gilded Chamber

2 Comments / 2005, Books in Bed, Fiction /

Chamber The Gilded Chamber is NOT The Red Tent, we have to get that point out of the way right now. I’m really tired of seeing “If you liked The Red Tent, you’ll like ______” and that sort of thing used to describe these types of books.

Because The Gilded Chamber is not The Red Tent, it falls short just like all of the Biblical novels about women do. That’s not to say it wasn’t good or worth reading, it was both, it just wasn’t … The Red Tent.

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Towelhead

1 Comment / 2005, Books in Bed, Fiction /

Towel How can one girl be surrounded by so many dysfunctional adults? Good grief! A little too much dysfunction for me – and why I read this in September of all months, I will never know. Oh wait, I read it in September because I fell so far behind over the summer … I just kept renewing it and renewing it and can’t renew it any longer.

I didn’t love this one, didn’t hate it either. Not great, not horrible. Just more dysfunctional abused kid surrounded by dysfunctional abusive adults stuff. Ho hum.

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Never Let Me Go

2005, Books in Bed, Fiction, Reading Lists /


I haven’t read the other books on the short list for the Booker Prize but if Never Let Me Go wins, I won’t be surprised.

This is an interesting take on the cloning idea that avoids the science fiction feel that too many cloning novels take on, (I’m not a huge Sci-Fi fan). What’s really interesting is that I didn’t know it was about cloning, lol. It took me pages and pages to realize that was how these children were “created”. I understood why they were created but it never hit me that they were clones. Once it hit me I said “duhhhhh”. 😉

There was one section in part three that felt wrong to me. Kathy H is talking about sex and the voice no longer sounds like hers, at least not to me. It’s a brief section, maybe a page at best, but it bugged me.

If you’re interested in another cloning novel that doesn’t stretch into science fiction a whole lot, Cast of Shadows was pretty good. There’s a computer gaming aspect to it that was really interesting as well.

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Acorna – Anne McCaffrey

2005, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Long, long ago or maybe just a year ago, I’m not really clear on time when it comes to books, some friends were going on and on about some woman named Anne McCaffrey and her dragon books. I informed these folks that either I’d never read them (possible, because I am not a huge “fantasy” buff) or if I had, they hadn’t impressed me enough to remember them. They were shocked and insisted I must read Anne McCaffrey.

So, I headed to my library website (which I love) and searched for Anne McCaffrey. She’s written a lot of books but the thing I hate about my library website is that it is not good about explaining which books belong to which series or which order these books were published. You can’t right click to open the search findings in a new window to check publish date either. I was short of time and wasn’t all that keen on some dumb fantasy books anyway so I reserved all of the books that seemed to be in a series called “Acorna: The Unicorn Girl“.

TW has read McCaffrey’s dragon books, probably not all of them but a lot, but she had not read Acorna so that was a nice bonus. Needless to say, we got hooked on the series and either read or listened to them on audio just as quickly as they came in or as quickly as they were published.

The most recent edition to the series is about Acorna’s daughter Khorri and since I don’t want to give away what happens to Acorna (it’s bad enough I just told you she has a daughter since in the first book she’s just an infant Linyaari!) I’ll just say that you ought to go grab the Acornas and if you have kids who like to listen to audio books, get them on audio and listen to them together. 🙂

By the way, I still haven’t actually read any McCaffrey dragon books! I started one, some collection of stories or something and got bored and took it back to the library. I think I will stick with the Linyaari instead.

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Outlaw Bible – Poetry? Literature?

2005, Books in Bed, Fiction, Homeschool, Poetry, Reading Lists /


I am not sure how it happened but somehow the Outlaw Bible of American Literature ended up on my library reserve list. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago but didn’t look at it until today. Now I’m wondering if some of this and some pieces from the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry wouldn’t be good choices for Michelle this year.

Have any of you read either of these? Know anyone who has? I’m tempted to say we need to own both of these…

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High School Literature

Fiction, Homeschool, Non-Fiction, Reading Lists /

Michelle is home! Besides the phone ringing off the hook, kids going in and out at all times, the interrupting of our weekend naps and the smell of popcorn this means that we’re back in homeschool mode!

Michelle did school all summer via FLVS but she didn’t do a full blown “curriculum”. The problem with her being gone all summer is that we didn’t really get much planning done for the year. TW and I have some ideas – journaling and world religion – but Michelle really needs to give her input into the literature she’s going to read for the next nine months.

We’ve got some books on the list, leftover from last year, and a couple that she did choose during the homeschool fair in May but we’re still short a good six books or so.

Here’s what we know Michelle will be reading:

  • A Clockwork Orange
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • Anthem
  • The Scarlet Letter
  • Jane EyreWhat would you want a 10th grader to read if you could choose anything at all? (We need a biography, we need some poetry recommendations – I can’t take another year of Plath – and we haven’t chosen any Shakespeare yet for this year. Keep those in mind as you’re making your suggestions!)

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    MuggleCast

    Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction, Harry Potter /


    The folks at MuggleNet are bringing us MuggleCasts!

    We’re enjoying episode one at the moment. The guys are pretty good at sharing their thoughts and ideas about all things HP. If you’re interested in speculating about what happens next and what clues have been given thus far then I think you’ll enjoying giving these podcasts a listen. If you don’t have an iPod or other MP3 player, you can download the segments to your computer and listen that way.

    I do take exception to the early part of this particular podcast. The guys seem to think that younger children don’t actually read HP books. They think that the length alone is too daunting for an eight year old and parents are actually reading these to their children. Do these guys know any eight year olds because our children definitely read the books when they were eight. We didn’t read them outloud and we didn’t buy audio versions. Don’t underestimate a kid’s ability to get into really good reading material!

    Warning! Spoilers abound!

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