I really enjoyed Blackthorn Key and hope I remember to look for the sequels at some point down the line. Christopher is a good character. So is Tom. I am disappointed about one thing that happened, pretty early in the book but I understand why it did… I really hate it when characters I like die very early in the first book of a series. (And as TW said, Harry Potter must have been hard for me — and yes, yes it was.)
I read two of the graphic novels from the Cybils shortlist, Terroris: Gavrilo Princip, The Assassin Who Ignited WWI and Oyster War. Two very different graphic novels and I enjoyed them both, though neither will ever be on my favorites list.
Two Graphic Novels Read More »
I’m a Michelle Tea fan. My Michelle T. is a Michelle Tea fan. The two Michelle’s have a lot of personality traits in common. So, I was excited to read How to Grow Up and equally excited for my Michelle T. to read it.
I don’t think either of us were disappointed.
Speaking for myself, I don’t exactly love all of the traits the grown up Michelle Tea has but I have a lot of respect for how she DID grow up and the fact that she owns her grown up addictions and decisions.
PS. Mutha Magazine is fabulous.
I reserved The Curse of the Wendigo in audio, right before we went on our house hunting trip. It seemed like it would be a fun book to listen to, the Gainesville connection and all that. But, it didn’t arrive til we got home. (Figures, right?)
Oh boy. This was one hell of a graphic horror novel — I wasn’t expecting that. I mean, I know we read the first book a zillion years ago but I do not remember it being like this. I even wondered a few times if I was wrong and this wasn’t a YA series because it was… wow. Shudder. Don’t read it if you have scary monster kind of nightmares, sheesh.
Read it if you like good writing and interesting characters, because it has both.
The Curse of the Wendigo Read More »
I think with DIY, Dammit I’m going to call it quits with DIY craft books for awhile. I enjoyed it, but they’re beginning to feel pretty redundant, in terms of the kinds of projects included.
The best part of the book was the intro, the intermission, and amusing commentary. The projects themselves were fine but there wasn’t anything that called to me. Ho hum.
It was a bit of a mistake to read Infandrous right after reading All the Rage… all the bad things that can happen to girls can get a little overwhelming and depressing when you’re reading about it constantly.
But, I really liked Infandrous except I’m not sure it read as YA. The myths scattered throughout the book went a long way towards making this one hell of a dark and deep novel. Not to mention “Felix”… I wonder if teens reading this would have realized who Felix was without having it spelled out at the end. I wish I knew a teen who might read it so I could find out, lol.
Anyway. I really liked this one. It’s one of my favorite books of the year, so far.
Courtney Summers, y’all. Some of you will know why I say that. Some of you won’t, (sorry!) All the Rage is exactly the right title for this book.
Romy has rage, as she should. And that rage wreaks havoc with her relationships with everyone and especially with herself.
I’m not sure I liked Leon’s character… liked might not be the right word. I liked his character well enough, I’m just not sure it was the right character for this particular book. I get that Romy needed someone sort of like Leon but I am not convinced that the story line between the two of them really worked. Might just be me, though…
Ultimately, this is one of my favorite Courtney Summers books so yay?
It’s been a long time since I posted a Kondo update, hasn’t it? Unfortunately, this isn’t really a Kondo update. It’s just a post about photos. All the photos. The problems related to trying to Kondo them. The things I’ve learned from Kondoing mine and watching other people Kondo theirs. And, about why this category was easy and hard and also the best of all the categories, for me.
When I read Marie Kondo’s book, her thoughts on storage of photos really resonated with me because I had a lot of photos in boxes and albums that nobody ever really looked at. Just thinking about the photos in the boxes made me anxious. Not because the job of going through them would be difficult but because I hated the idea that I’d been storing those photos that way for so long.
I did not want those photos in those boxes. I wanted them to be looked at or to be in a place where they could be looked at and enjoyed.
Thinking about the photo albums made me a little anxious, too, because those albums were a mess. I’d often taken out individual pages to scan, upload and share old, awesome photos. But, I never put those pages back. I also had pretty much torn apart some of those photo albums when I got divorced in an effort to be sure I was leaving photos for the big kids’ father. And, of there was also the problem that I had used photo albums that all but destroy photos. Who knew those sticky paged photo albums could be so damn sticky? ugh.
And then there was the whole issue that TW had a ton of photos in boxes, too. And her mother, OMG the photos in boxes.
Where TW and I had a couple of shoeboxes of photos, TW’s mom had large U-Haul sized boxes just full of photos. For 7 years I’ve looked at her boxes of photos and felt sick about them. Photos should not be stored in that fashion. If they’re dear to you, then they should be taken care of. They should be stored in a way that it’s easy to look through them.
So… I had a lot of feelings about photos. I also found myself with very little time or energy to deal with MY photos but I did it.
Michelle and I went through a shoebox full during Christmas break. Or maybe it was in January when she got stuck here due to the weather. Whatever, we did it and it was good. I went through the rest a few weeks later and really enjoyed the process of choosing the photos that truly brought me joy. I really enjoyed doing away with all of the duplicates and triplicates and of getting rid of all of the extra sheets of portrait studio and school package photos. Nobody needs six pages of the same studio photo. That’s just ridiculous.
The photo albums were harder, and to be honest — I didn’t finish those. I don’t want to destroy the photos that are stuck to those damn album pages so I’m going to need to do some real work to get them out. But I’m going to do that because the albums aren’t really a pleasure to look through when there are three pages of photos of the same oceanscape or six pages from a Christmas in 1986 where nobody is looking at the camera, you can’t actually tell what package anyone is opening and they all pretty much look the same. There WILL be joy when the I have albums or books that truly represent those periods of time through really good photos or interesting photos and that’s my goal.
I’m not sure what TW’s goal might be for her photos. She hasn’t really gone through them, yet. I did go through a couple of small stacks to get rid of the duplicates and triplicates but since I can’t Kondo HER photos, she’s going to have to do them when we move.
As for TW’s mom’s photos. That’s been interesting. It took her almost a month to go through them and decide which to keep and which to discard. We bought her one of those plastic archival type boxes to put the small snapshots into and we’ll get some of the bigger boxes for her to store 8x10s and 9x11s. I think she went through a bunch of them and wrote dates and names and locations on some of them — which is good because many of them belonged to the generation (or two) before here and TW didn’t have a clue as to who those people were. If they are important family archives then later generations need some sort of clues as to why those are important.
Which leads me back around to my own photos again.
I need to remember that when I’m creating my albums. If I have any inkling that these photos may mean something to my kids or my grandchildren or my great grandchildren, then I should make sure I leave them some clues, too.
AND, I’m bound and determined to make sure that we are all displaying photos in our home that really bring us joy. That’s a big goal for me for our new home. Come visit this time next year and see if I’ve done it.
Now go Kondo your photos. Get rid of the duplicates and triplicates. Don’t keep 16 pictures of the same tree (unless that tree really, really brings you joy.) Don’t keep 60 pictures from Christmas ’84 unless all of those photos truly bring you joy. Instead, create a visual archive of your life that really sparks joy — on every page of the album and in every picture frame.
Kondo ALL the Photos. Not Really, Just Kidding. I Swear Read More »
I was really enjoying Every Last Word — very interesting story about a teen girl with Pure-O OCD. I had some questions that weren’t being answered but that was ok, the story was good and the characters were interesting.
And then I got to something like page 282 and wanted to throw the book across the room. (I didn’t, it’s a library book, after all.) I did NOT see that coming and I did NOT think it was good for the story…
Still, I stuck with it and mostly liked it after that, too. Mostly. I’m still not really happy with that little Caroline twist but whatever. It’s not all about me, is it?
I never know what to expect when I read Emma Donoghue – I either love her books or hate them and it’s often the ones everyone else loves that I do not love. Frog Music turned out to be a book that I really enjoyed though a lot of other people seem to have not enjoyed it nearly as much. Whatever.
She did a nice job with the story of Jenny Bonnet and a nice job with Blanche’s story, too. I liked it.