Tag Archives: Reading

Jul 22 2011

Reading Too Much, Parenting Too Little

My daughter and her best friend have finally cracked her best friend’s family’s resistance and they are furiously plotting a sleepover at our house for tomorrow night.

Which is fine, because I need incentive to clean the house, after spending the past four weeks reading obsessively (4,228 total pages) and finally completing the five books in the series.  Rabbit has wandered through the house, spent time alone in the yard, watched far too much television and made her own breakfast several mornings, all while PC and I have been reading.

I hesitate to say this, but I think in this case it is true:  I have been reading too much.

So tomorrow I will clean house and do laundry and sweep and mop and scrub the bathroom. PC will mow the yard and rent a movie for the girls.  I will bake and make pizza crusts and shop for some ingredients for their cooking experiments.

They are planning a campout (in the house) and toward that end, Rabbit spent all evening cutting out stars from paper and taping them to the walls of her bedroom.  Hopefully she won’t ask for a campfire.

May 11 2011

An Almost-Rant About Books

Have you ever stood in a book store for more than ten minutes, reading descriptions on dust jackets or the back covers of paperbacks, thinking to yourself: “Who publishes this crap?”

Everyone’s had that experience, flipping through a stack of books and thinking I could never read this, or What the hell were they thinking??

Imagine the slush pile at a publishing house, the manuscripts that never make it to the book store.  God bless them, those writers who finish a book.  But man….I can’t imagine having to read through to find something worth publishing.

In my recent foray into electronic reading, I’ve been fortunate enough to be allowed access to pre-publication review galleys of books that are to be released in one to six months.  Going through the catalog of books, with their brief descriptions of plot, genre and other information, I am able to choose which sound promising, request a review copy, and then download it.

After I finish, I write a review and post it, then post a link and the text to the publisher so they will know my opinion.

Some–actually most–of these books have been very good.  A couple of them have been extraordinary.  One or two were mediocre and at least two have been so cringe-worthy that they almost deserve their own hall of fame.  I couldn’t even finish them.

But the true entertainment for me has been reading through the descriptions of the books that just sound so atrocious I don’t even request a copy to review. Here is a list of some of the greatest offenders.

1.  Supernatural or sci-fi romances.  There’s either love or robots in a book, but for God’s sake, don’t include both.

2.  Anything with robots.  See above, and then subtract robots.  Just….no.

3.  Books with buxom Vikings on the cover.  Male or female.  “She went to a new land looking for love.  He held her captive to enrage her father and then, against all odds, they fell in love…”  These books need to come with a sick bag.

4.  Christian thrillers.  Y’all probably know I’m a fan of Jesus and so on, but when I see the word “Christian” in the genre list, and it’s a work of fiction, I just cannot go there. Especially one I recently saw in the catalog that described its plot in ALL CAPS:  (paraphrased) Satan makes a bet with God that Jesus can’t become divine in the modern age, and God accepts the wager.  YAWN.

5.  Wholesome morality novels.  No, I don’t want to read anything in your “Quilt of Valor” series (I made that up, but it’s not far from the ones out there) or read an uplifting story of Martha the Amish farm widow’s struggle to bring in this year’s sorghum crop with the help of her extended community.

6.  Any novel that revolves around computer technology.  If I wanted to read a publication that would feel outdated and obsolete after only a few years, I’d read my computer manual.  I remember reading a Dick Francis novel written in the 1980s about a computer genius that writes a computer program to pick racehorse winners – and the program was copied onto a cassette tape.  Anyone remember when you used to be able to record computer programs onto cassettes?  Anyone remember cassettes?  Anyone remember the 1980s?  I rest my case.

7.  Effing zombies, effing vampires.  And worst of all, combining old classics or historical figures with either zombies or vampires.  Please, no.  NO NO NONONONONONONOOOOO!!!  I still haven’t fully recovered my rage after reading The Historian and finding out that Count Dracula’s main quest in his undead hunt for victims was to find someone to catalog his vast library.

8.  ”She’s determined to find out what her family is hiding, but uncovers a shocking secret that could tear them apart.” I know this is the central premise of about 20% of the books out there, but for the love of Jesus, publishers, find a new sentence or focus on a different aspect of the book.  I swear, I’ve read that description on half the books I’ve looked at in the last six months.

9.  Anything set more than 50 years in the future.  And I know I have been a huge fan of the Hunger Games trilogy, but that was not presented as a book about the future, it was about the games.  And even at that, I was resistant to reading them.  But any book that starts with “In the post-apocalyptic world…” has lost me.

10.  Any book with the following words in the title:  Unbidden, Forbidden, Valor, Patriot, Knitting, Baking, Cupcake, Bible [unless it is the actual Bible], Torment, Unbridled, Bridesmaid or Whore.  And yes, there was a book that had the word “Whore” in the title.

Mar 28 2011

March Reading Madness

So far in March, I’ve read 14 books. Here’s a sort of quick rundown on them; I would have included links on each book but I’m too lazy.

1. Room by Emma Donoghue

I was amazed and blown away by this brilliant book. I don’t know how she wrote it, but it is fantastic.

Publisher Description: To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it’s not enough…not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

2.  Letters From a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
It was good; nothing spectacular, just good meat and potatoes letters written by a woman who left her comfortable home to homestead in Wyoming in the early 20th century.  Non-fiction, this is the kind of book my mom LOVES to read.

3.  Flipping Out:  A Lomax & Biggs Mystery by Marshall Karp
Kindly loaned to me through Amazon by a reader of the blog, this was a fast and fun read.  It was funny and the plot had enough twists – not deep psychological tension but clever and witty.  Good brain candy!

4.  Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk:  A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris
One of the best collections of Sedaris’s writing, he puts animals in human situations and hilarity ensues.  I’m not sure how to describe the book, other than hilarious!

5. Catching Fire (Hunger Games Trilogy #2) by Suzanne Collins
I could NOT stop reading this book. Excellent story line, even though I liked the first book more. I felt like I was going to have to read something less intense before I started the final book of the trilogy, but ended up diving right into book #3 because I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.

6.  Mockingjay (Hunger Games Trilogy #3) by Suzanne Collins
Well, I didn’t get anything done that whole afternoon because I was glued to the sofa, reading. In fact, I had the book with me on my business errands that morning and was reading it in the car while waiting for an appointment, and in the drive-through at the bank, and in the drive-through at a fast food place waiting for my order. And I don’t even like dystopian fiction – but this entire trilogy is a page-turning, compelling read.

7.  Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander
Better as the blog where it originated; this book read in one sitting was abrasive and got old really fast.  Many cringe-worthy identifiers of hipster behavior had me laughing at myself and people I know, but all in all, not worth the time to read.

8.  Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell
This is a long review, just so you know.  Every time I finish a Kay Scarpetta mystery, I tell myself I’m done with the series, and then the next book comes out and I have to read it. This book is really no exception to the disappointment I’ve felt with every one of her books since “Point of Origin.” I was glad to see Cornwell had returned to first person narrative, which gave the books much of their original appeal.

But what originally made the character unique and compelling….all of it is gone. The series has become about how everything in the world revolves around Kay Scarpetta, as though she is the lone force for good in the world that every evil person, including the people she loves, is out to destroy. Old characters are rewritten to be completely different, with no redeeming qualities. There is no consistency to the story line, and everything would have been better had she just left Scarpetta in Richmond, working as the chief medical examiner. But no, she has to make her an FBI consultant, a super detective, and now, in this book, suddenly we find out that Scarpetta paid her way through college by somehow being in the army for six months, with a secret mission to South Africa once upon a time? Give me a break!

Gone are the weirdly fascinating descriptions of autopsies, the suspenseful weaving of plot, the reverential descriptions of Scarpetta’s therapeutic Italian cooking. For the past six or seven books, the plots have been barely plausible, with endings that all felt like table scraps tossed in a bowl just to tidy things up. Scarpetta went from being a physician who cared for the dead to being an icy and persecuted super woman, understood by nobody, with a fascination with computers, helicopters and undercover law enforcement.

Frankly, I tend to think Cornwell has farmed out her writing to a legion of unimaginative and unskilled hacks – the book was full of grammatical errors, misspellings, and unusually ham-fisted writing. Time to hang up this character once and for all. What used to be one of the best fictional mystery characters has turned into a caricature. Very sad.

9.  Just Kids by Patti Smith
The story is spellbinding. The early parts of the book are poetic, and her writing has flashes of utter beauty. I found it difficult reading toward the middle, when I wanted to slap the crap out of Robert Mapplethorpe. Her indulgence of him was truly a thing of love, blind and irrational.

I was fascinated by her accounts of the New York art and literary scene of the 1970s, her encounters with Janis Joplin, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Sam Shepard. But the book was always going to be about Smith and Mapplethorpe’s relationship, their story.

While Mapplethorpe’s photographic work in the late 70s and early 80s was revolutionary, she gave short shrift to her own impact on the art and music scene, which is unfortunate. I was more interested in her than in Mapplethorpe, who already had enough press. I understand that she loved him, and their journey is a truly epic American story. I just got tired of his spoiled little bacchanalia.

Overall, though, I believe this book is an important one – just more intense and overwhelming than I was prepared for.

10.  The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
I loved some of the characters and hated others, but it was a fun book to read, just to experience different stories tied together by the newspaper and its founder, and the founder’s family. This literary device was used to much better effect in “Olive Kitteridge,” but this book is still a good one.

11.  Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
SUCH a great book!  There aren’t words for how much I loved it.  I just dove into reading it on my Kindle without reading a description of the author and the book, and thought it was a novel until toward the end. Great story-telling, and weaving the music into it was terrific. Poignant and realistic, raw and hilarious….this book has changed how I look at music and friendships and marriage. I highly recommend it.

12.  Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
My first thought was well, at least now I won’t have to watch the movie.  But now I want to see it even more.  Weird and disturbing book, but better than the John Grisham novel I abandoned after 20 pages because, frankly, life is too short.

Actually, Fight Club was entertaining and interesting. Just too male for me to fully enjoy on the day when I read it. Too…testosterone-y. (Which totally sounds like a sort of pasta and rice casserole).  It is a book that gets into your head and leaves you with that weirdness aftertaste, where you keep thinking of the characters for days.  Trippy.

13.  A Lesson in Secrets (Maisie Dobbs Mystery #8) by Jacqueline Winspear
Compelling read, great pacing, excellent plot development. Winspear is at the top of her game with this book!  I have loved this character from the very first book, and had to get this one the day it was released by the publisher.  A wonderful heroine who doesn’t have to resort to gunfights, being kidnapped or held hostage, or having superhuman strength to hold your interest until the last word of the book.  Winspear gives us a very British, very gentle, very compelling main character whose story grows by layers with each book.

14.  I’d Rather We Got Casinos: And Other Black Thoughts by Larry Wilmore
Some great laugh out loud funny moments (“Queen Latifah has officially become Pearl Bailey”) and chapter headings (“Why Brothas Never See UFOs”) and it really helps if you’ve watched Larry Wilmore on “The Daily Show.” What I liked was that the humor was not the same familiar jokes other comedians have trotted out for years; instead, his humor is more off-kilter and unexpected. A quick read, and good brain candy between other books.

And right now, I’m reading The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.  And I’m liking it!

Mar 23 2011

So Far Behind I’m Ahead of Myself

I spent Thursday through Sunday at a youth retreat, and have been exhausted ever since.  And for the sake of regular readers who still don’t quite grasp what these retreats are, let me clarify.  Because I get emails or comments saying “Hope you have a relaxing weekend on your retreat!” or “I wish I could go on a retreat to get away.”

These retreats are fun, inspiring, hilarious, moving and amazing.  What they never, ever are is relaxing.  Being on the team of adults and youth producing the weekend for the kids coming to attend, we work pretty much non-stop starting Thursday afternoon to set up, and the kids who attend get there Friday morning.  As one of the the adults coordinating things, I had to carry a schedule around, make sure six different functioning teams of people were all on the same page and doing what they were supposed to be, both up front and behind the scenes.

I was also processing attendee applications, contacting parents, and fielding phone calls throughout the weekend.  By Sunday evening when I got to go home, I was drained.  It was all worth it, though.  We had an excellent group of kids who seemed to get a lot out of the experience, and I had about 75 straight hours of pure joy.

I also sold a house in the middle of it all, to out of town clients who had already toured homes with me a few weeks ago.  We prepared offers on two homes and they had a re-visit with each home they were considering (courtesy of a colleague of mine) while I was at my retreat.  They texted me their decision and I forwarded the offer from my Blackberry during a small break in activities, and then negotiated a few things on Sunday.

I had a doctor appointment on Monday for a medication consultation, and in the course of my visit, the doctor decided she wanted me to have my blood drawn to test my thyroid levels, because my thyroid was enlarged since my visit to her in December.  She also scheduled an ultrasound of my thyroid, which I had done yesterday at the hospital. Considering that one of my sisters has been battling thyroid cancer, and that another had a tumor on her thyroid when she was a teen, and that a third sister had thyroid problems last year, my doctor wasn’t taking any chances.  I should have some results in a couple of days.

So I have been recovering from being on the run for so many days at the retreat, and getting back into the swing of things this week.  I have managed to read SEVEN books so far in March, so will have to recap those in the next few days.

In the meantime, I’d appreciate any good thoughts or prayers you might have for good scan results from the doctor.

Mar 7 2011

The Crispy Reader

I haven’t posted in the past couple of days because I’m afraid I would be too crabby to do anyone any good.  I’ve been in a sour mood for a few days for any variety of reasons: cat hair everywhere, cold weather, tight bras, dirty dishes and grit on the kitchen floor.

Just to name a few.

I did scrub the floor in the kitchen, and I mean SCRUB.  On my hands and knees.  That was Friday, I think.  I moved the table, I swept, I scrubbed, rinsed, rinsed, and rinsed some more.  It was nasty.

Saturday, Rabbit and I cleaned the front yard, filling five paper yard waste bags with leaves and acorns, and gathered up two wheelbarrow loads of sticks and branches that had been scattered under our big oak tree.  PC and I had budgeted a certain amount of money that we’d agreed to pay a lawn service to clean up the yard in front and back, and haul everything away.  Our lot is a quarter of an acre and full of trees and shrubs.

Instead, we succumbed to temptation and ordered two Kindles.  Remember how excited I was?  Well, time to pay the piper – so I did the front yard and paid Rabbit $7.  It only took an hour.  The back yard will take much longer, and then PC has to haul all the brush and debris away, but it beats paying someone else and not having our Kindles.

Speaking of which, reading is the only thing that has prevented me from going postal over the past few days.  I have been loaned a great many books and downloaded a few, and then found free classics online.  PC’s been devouring all his favorite Mark Twain books, as well as works by Douglas Adams, and a biography of Benjamin Franklin.

I also had a good time finding old and VERY old cookbooks and housewife guidebooks (from the 1800s and early 1900s) online in digital format.  These will make their own weird and delightful blog post, sometime when I’m not so crispy.

Mar 2 2011

Kindle Kindle Kindle!

Well, that darn Kindle is just a thing of magic and wonder.  For me, the best part is that it puts me to sleep just like a regular book.  PC and I read all afternoon after I got home from my last appointment and were so engrossed that we forgot Rabbit had CCD this evening and didn’t pick her up from her after school program until 5:30.

When she got home and settled in, she saw us both reading so she went to her room and got her new book about Kittens and Cats (the Scholastic book order arrived yesterday) and parked herself at the other end of the sofa from PC, her feet under a blanket, reading intently.

I read for so long that I dozed off, since it was so quiet in the living room. I got up and made tacos for dinner, and then we all returned to the living room to read. PC is reading Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” and I finished Elinore Pruitt Stewarts “Letters of a Woman Homesteader” this evening, and am starting on another book already.  Like chain smoking.

I’m taking a short break to blog, and then will watch American Idol, and then it’s off to bed with my book – or at least, the Kindle in a leather case that looks like a book.

Unfortunately, our library doesn’t lend to Kindles, only to the Nook eReader.  Turkeys.

Mar 1 2011

Reading Goals

My goal this year is to read 100 books by the end of 2011.  Hopefully I can crush that before the end of summer, but in the meantime, I’m going to set the goal at 100 just in case things get busy, and especially since I’ve only read four books so far this year and it’s already March 1st.

I’m also crossing over to the dark side and getting a Kindle from Amazon.  So far, I’m going to try to get only books available for free – classics, and others whose copyrights are expired and available online. I’ll have to budget carefully in order not to bankrupt ourselves ordering bestsellers and other books.

The Kindle will be here tomorrow.  I’m sick with anticipation!!

If you would, leave in the comments section any recommendations for books you think I might enjoy.  If you happen to have a Kindle and would like to loan me one of your books, there’s apparently a service to allow that (the book becomes available to another Kindle user for 14 days, during which time it’s not available on the lender’s Kindle), which I’m going to try to find more information about.

Again, please leave me your book recommendations!

Feb 26 2011

Blessed and Counting

On a cold and snowy Saturday, instead of complaining, I stop to count my blessings.

I wander into the living room and even though nothing in the room matches and the rug is too small and I’d like a new couch and to be rid of the monstrosity that is our entertainment center, Rabbit thinks it’s the greatest place in the world, and is pretty good at MarioKart.

In my home office, there are stacks of books I need to give away and a lamp with a ruined shade, and piles of paper everywhere.  But Hazel, my cat, is snuggling on the pillow my sister made me from one of my late father’s flannel shirts, with a poem about my dad tucked into the breast pocket.  Relax with those you love, she seems to tell me.

I walk down the hall to Rabbit’s bedroom and her cat, Flower, is on the bed. He sees me and flips inside out the way cats do, stretching up his front paw in response to my voice.  Even though the picture is blurry, it captures perfectly how content this silly animal is in our modest, cluttered and dusty house.

In the kitchen, I see the thermos picnic set I found at Goodwill for $3.99, complete with two insulated thermoses and a plastic sandwich box, all of which fit in a retro plaid carrier.  It helps remind me that spring, and picnic weather, are around the corner.  No matter how much crack we think that groundhog has been smoking.

Tonight, I made homemade chili in a new Cuisinart pan PC got me when he and Rabbit went to TJ Maxx this afternoon.  And I used our battered old bundt pan to make monkey bread (cinnamon pull-apart bread), to Rabbit’s delight.

And on the table, I had to lay out one of my new flour sack dish towels – these things make me so happy.  I needed some new ones since the old ones were stained and tattered.  I went on eBay and found a set of a dozen for $6.00, and they’re printed with a great reproduction of an old French advertisement.  I love them!

And finally, who can be in a grouchy mood when there’s a tub of Trader Joe’s Chocolatey Cat Cookies For People?  They taste like oreos without the filling and are hilarious to look at.

So yes, there is slush in my car port, snow puddles in my kitchen, 5″ of snow outside and it’s bitterly cold.  But inside, the fridge is full and the lamps are on, clean clothes tumbling in the dryer and Rabbit is getting into her jammies.  If this life isn’t good enough, then probably nothing ever will be.