Bonus Book: 29

Okay, so not the best picture, but whatever.

This was a super fast read. As in I got it at the library at lunch time yesterday and I was done around J's bedtime last night. And I'd done stuff in between like, you know, making dinner, tidying the house, going to the park, playing with J, J's bedtime routing...etc.

The premise of this book reminded me very much of Freaky Friday, although the author, Adena Halpern, says that book had no influence on this one.

A grandmother wishes she could be 29 again (for one day) on her 75th birthday. And she wakes up the next morning and she's 29. Life was different for her than the last time she was 29 - she's single and when she was 29 for real she was married and had an 8 or 9 year old daughter.

She gets to relive being 29 and spend the day with her 25 year old granddaughter. Her very glamourous, fashion designer granddaughter who happens to have a very handsome, single, millionaire friend.

Anyway. The day is full of adventure and some long standing personal relationship issues are resolved. And it pretty much ends happily ever after. And I'm okay with that. It was a good get-lost-in-another-world kind of read. Perfect for a rainy Sunday or a day at the beach or a long plane ride.

Out of interest I took a peek at the book club questions, which were pretty standard, but I thought about number five for a long time...

5. Lucy is thrilled at the chance to spend a day with her newly young grandmother. Think about your own grandmother-can you imagine doing the same with her? What do you think she would have on her "to do" list?

My grandmother and I are somewhat like Ellie and Lucy (except there's no way I would ever be a glamourous fashion designer!). She was married a full 13 years before I was (in terms of age, not real time) and by the time she was my age today, she had six kids aged 3 to 16. When she was 24, she had four kids aged 5 and under. When I was 24 I was living in London, doing whatever the heck I felt like doing on a daily basis...I travelled, I spent money frivilously, I regularly had a few too many alcoholic beverages...that said, I'd love to have had the chance to spend a day with her...I've heard stories...I've seen letters to and from her parents when she was in her late teens. I think she'd be a lot of fun. I think we'd probably get up to a lot of trouble, but I think it would be a day worth remembering! My grandmother is pretty outspoken and very open minded today - I'm sure there are many things she'd like to do that she didn't have the opportunity to do 50 years ago!

So yeah, this book was a fast read. And it was just brain candy. But it was good. I liked it...it was nice to go on a silly vacation with Ellie!

Darkwing

When I worked somewhere that I don't work now, I was fortunate to be involved (peripherally) on a project involving Kenneth Oppel's book Silverwing. I read the trilogy and I enjoyed it - I think I need to reread it though because I remember Firewing being more difficult to follow than Silverwing and Sunwing...but that's not anything to do with this book. You can find some clips of the show on YouTube.

Anyway. Darkwing.


I've been meaning to pick this book up for a while - not only is it another Kenneth Oppel bat book, but there are dinosaurs. And I was going to be a paleaontologist. I was. Really.

Anyway.

I really enjoyed this book - it was a fairly quick read, but it was good. There were some pretty big themes in the book - discrimination and stereotypes being two of them - but they were dealt with so well, they were almost invisible. I'd like to reread Silverwing for sure now (I think it's in my bookcase!) because I felt like maybe I remembered some of those themes being the same...

The naming of the animals was well done - particularly the leader of the Felids being called Patriofelis, the rogue, meat eating Felid, Carnassial and his eventual mate Panthera. I love names...

This book is definitely worth picking up...

Room

So, yesterday I was a bit worried I wouldn't make it to two books this month because I ended up not finishing The Vegetarian Myth. Today I don't think I really need to worry all that much. With more than half the month stretching before us I have finished my first book for January.


Room, by Emma Donoghue has been on my list of books to read since BEFORE it came out. Check out the trailers on her site and on the indigo Community site. There's even an interactive floor plan (you might want to wait until you've read the book to click).

I thought the voice in the book was amazing...the five year words and way of speaking were captured so well. I believed a five year old was telling the story. I couldn't put this book down...somewhere along the lines, I must have mentioned to J that there was a Jack in this book because before she went to bed she asked me if Jack was okay and if I was still reading him.

This book held me captive - it was touching and heartbreaking and funny and horribly awful, all at the very same time. They say little kids are extremely resilient and while they are often resistive to change, it is easier for them to adapt to change than it is for adults and this book showed a very resilient and adaptable little boy.

It was interesting how I didn't really know what Jack looked like until close to the end of the book. He never describes himself (but you know he has long hair because he talks about his pony tail) and it isn't until close to the end when he sees tv reports and reads a newspaper article about him and his mom that the reader gets an idea of what he may look like. To me, he was a little boy. Yes, he was living in horrible conditions, but he still saw the world from a little boy's perspective...

I would definitely recommend this book...and I'm holding on to my copy, sort of. Rebecca has asked to borrow it, but when she gives it back, I think I need to reread it...I'm certain I missed a whole lot!

PS Room + an episode of Criminal Minds just before bed = crazy, twisted dreams

Teaser Tuesday returns

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

So, my teaser is:

So many of us believe we can get healthy by losing weight. The truth is we must be healthy to lose weight. [author's emphasis, not mine]

The Hormone Diet, Natasha Turner, page 5

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

The Vegetarian Myth

Do you remember rule number 1? I sure do. And today I'm oh so glad I put it in my rules for this challenge.

Rule number 1:

If I cannot, absolutely bring myself to finish a book, I will not. I tend to torture myself and force myself to finish books even when they're not keeping my interest and I'm not enjoying them. I'm not going to do that for this challenge.

and as a result of rule number 1, rule number 2 also applies:

If I don't finish a book, I will still blog about it. Then I will attempt to read another book in that same, now truncated, month.

Because this book fits in to that rule. I had to request The Vegetarian Myth (and the university didn't have it!) and my name came up two days before we left to go away for Christmas. So I took it with me.


Um. Yeah. It's not exactly a Christmas reading kind of book. It required that I pay attention and file information in my brain for a later date.

So I decided I'd wait until I got back. Well, it's going back to the library today. I can't renew it because there is a long list of other people who would like to read it. For a while I fooled myself into believing I'd add my name back onto that list, but really, I'm not going to.

I was really interested by the topic of the book and it was recommended by a couple of people as I looked up more information about the GAPS diet. Lierre Keith is a former vegetarian and former vegan who argues that a vegetarian diet creates as much or more destruction to animal life and to plant life as a meat diet does. It's an interesting thought and the way she arrived at her arguments was compelling, but after 70+ pages, it felt like torture.

I started the weekend hoping I'd have it done by the time Alex heads to work tonight - then no late fees because he can drop it in the box. But sometime on Saturday I realized I couldn't do it. As fascinating as it seemed, I just couldn't get into the book. Lierre Keith mentions a couple of times that she was a staunch vegan, set in her beliefs and, (I can't remember if she explicitly says this or if I made it up, reading between the lines) somewhat preachy in her views, but that after a time of illness and research, she has changed her stance. But I kind of felt this book was preachy...just the opposite preaching to what a vegan would preach.

So, if you've read it, I'd love to hear what you thought of the whole book. Maybe one day I'll pick it up again...or maybe I won't. But I tried.

And yes, I will try to read two other books this month...not sure what they will be yet, but I have a stack on the go.

What are you reading?

As you can see by my list of currently in progress books over there ---> I probably don't need any more books to read. But I do. I'm trying to get a list together of books I would like to read and books other people have suggested so that when I reach a point in time where I just don't know what to read, instead of staring mindlessly at my book shelves or walking into the book store and impulse buying a book, I can get out my list and find something at the library.

Also, I really like to hear about what other people are reading and why they do or do not like their current book...

So...what are you reading?

I'm going to make this a regular post - maybe every couple of weeks or so.

I'll start...the two on that list that I'm actively reading are Room and The Vegetarian Myth. Room is making me a little sad and I'm finding it's a fairly quick read that is slowed down a bit by the five year style of prose (that is not a complaint...I love that a five year old is the narrator). The Vegetarian Myth is annoying me. I'm not sure it's the book so much as I haven't been able to sit and read it for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time because I'm not finding it before I go to sleep material, so that means the other times I have to read are limited because of the toddler who lives at my house. I have nothing planned tonight so I'm going to try to make some headway. It's due back at the library this week and there's a hold on it so if I decide I want to finish it, I'll have to return it and put another hold on it. (That is my only frustration with library books...the ones I need more than three weeks to read are almost always the ones that have a long list of people who want to read them!)

And The Good Daughters goes to....

EDNA!

I didn't use random.org because, well, I can figure out who randomly gets the book when only one person wants it!

I will try to do a few more book giveaways in the next little while. We're sorting out our books...we did five shelves of books today and we tossed 68 I think...they were mostly Alex's books, so I'm not giving them away - lots of hardcovers and mostly sports and biographies.

Mine are going to take a bit longer to go through...there's some I think I might get rid of, but I want to either reread them first of at least glance through them.

Edna, I will do my best to make it to the post office tomorrow, but the first day back after two and a half weeks off could make it hard...if not tomorrow, Wednesday for sure!

The Challenge changes...

Happy New Year!

So, I did it! I made it through my first year of the challenge and managed to read one book a month. Okay, so November's book might have been a cop-out, but in the seven months of the challenge, I read eleven books. Even taking out the cop-out book and the one that didn't count because I bought it myself, I still average 9 books over 7 months, so I did it.

No matter how I look at it.

Which brings me to the 2011 part of the challenge. This year I am challenging myself to read two books a month. I'm going to try to read two each month, but if I read 24 books by the end of the year, I will be happy. Life with a toddler is a bit of a gong show and there are periods of chaos and periods of relative calm, so 24 books for the year it is.

Oh, and I've made one modification to my no rereads rule (you're still free to reread as much as you want) - I can count rereads for up to half of the 24 books...after I read 12 new and 12 rereads (or some other combination of 24 where number of new reads > number of rereads) I can reread as many as I want!

What are your reading goals for 2011? Anyone out there still with me on this challenge?

Book Summary for 2010

Okay, I found this book summary somewhere and figured I should do it. My stats are a bit off because I didn't really pay attention to what I was reading until June. I know I read more books than 11 plus the book of Negros. Maybe I got up to 15? I'll keep better track in 2011 because my goal is 24.

What about you? What did you read in 2010?

How many books read in 2010? I'm not sure - I didn't really keep track at the beginning of the year, but 11 since June

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio? since June almost 50/50 - 6:5

Male/Female authors? since June 4 male, 7 female

Favourite book read? The Book of Negroes - I read it before June, so it's not on here...

Least favourite? Hmmm...I guess the Constant Princess...I lucked out this year and read mostly good books!

Oldest book read? I think it was Mrs. P's Journey...a lot of the books I read were published in the last few years

Newest book read? The Good Daughters

Longest book title? Crazy Aunt Purl's Home Is Where The Wine Is (9 words)

Shortest book title? A bunch with 3 words, but I'm too lazy to count letters...sorry...

How many re-reads? none

Books in translation? three

Most books read by one author this year? three

How many books were borrowed from the library? a bunch

Name a book you've read this year which was recommended by a blogger? Mrs P's Journey

Giving it away...

Okay readers, I have a copy of The Good Daughters, my copy to be exact, that I want to give away. Melynda mentioned she wanted to read it after I wrote about it, but I didn't email her fast enough and her husband had already downloaded it to their e-reader.

One of my goals for 2011 is going to be reducing the number of books we own - not just sticking to the book diet. I figured since, while I enjoyed The Good Daughters, I probably won't read it again, I'd pass it along. (I am going to try to pass on a few other books as they come up too...)

What do you need to do?

1. Leave a comment telling me what your big resolution/goal/change is for 2011 OR what your reading/writing goals or aspirations for 2011 are OR both (I'm interested in both!)
2. Link to your blog (where I can find an email address to get in touch with you) or leave your email address in the comments. If you're not comfortable leaving your email address (and you don't have a blog) be sure to check back on Monday to see if you're the lucky recipient.
3. When you're done with the book (and if you think you won't read it again) pass it along to someone else - a friend, relative, coworker, neighbour, some random blog reader, a second hand bookstore, a thrift shop, leave it on the bus, in a plane, on a train, donate it to the library or hospital, whatever...it's up to you.
4. OPTIONAL - Come back here and tell us what you thought.
   

That's it. This giveaway isn't affiliated with anyone or anything. It's just me. If there's more than one person interested, I will get random.org to pick a "winner."

You have until 11:00 pm PACIFIC TIME on Sunday, January 2, 2011 to leave a comment. I will try to announce the recipient by 12:00 noon Pacific time on Monday, January 3, 2011 and attempt to get the book in the mail to you on Tuesday, January 4, 2011.

The Good Daughters

I finished my December book in about two days and read most of it on Christmas Day. We had a very relaxing Christmas this year...just how I like it!

Alex's parents gave me Joyce Maynard's The Good Daughters for Christmas. It was one of the three books I brought with me (the other two are non-ficiton).

Alex, who claims he doesn't read (but I know otherwise) actually read the bulk of this book over my shoulder. Which is amazing. Because he doesn't read fiction and this book didn't really fall into the chick-lit genre, but its audience was certainly female.


This book is hard to categorize...it is well written but it felt a bit like a beach book...you know, the kind that you read when you want to read a book, but don't necessarily want to think too hard.

When I read the jacket blurb, I thought I might have figured out the plot. Then after I read the first two chapters (that's how far I got the first night before I had to go to sleep), I knew I'd figured it out. And somewhere in the next couple of chapters, I thought maybe I'd figured out the twist. And it turned out that I did.

And sometimes that makes a book a not very good read (and apparently sometimes that makes my grammar horrible). But this was an enjoyable read even though I knew the end. What made it enjoyable what how the book got to the end. There were a few things that were a bit surprising and there were a few plot devices that were used in different ways than I thought they might be.

The book is written from the perspective of two women, Ruth and Dana, and the chapters alternate between the two voices and I really liked the format. The chapters were a good length...some were only a couple of pages, some much longer, and they were perfect for reading when there was a two year old around who needed attention.

Overall, I think I would recommend this book...especially if you're looking for something that's light on the brain work, but still well written and not fluff.

Does anyone know...

The title of a book, written by a woman, with a yellow cover, about our disposable society that overspends?

It's a one word title if that helps.

It might be something like Spend or Buy or Consume or Cheap. But it's none of those four.

I checked.

The writer lives in New York. There's at least one paragraph about paying for a parking spot.

I think it was published in 2009.

I saw it when we were on Salt Spring Island this summer and decided that I'd get it from the library instead of buying it. I took a picture of it with my phone. But when we got home, it appears I actually took a picture of the floor.

I saw it on a book blog a while ago and went, AHA! That's the name of the book.

But do you think I thought to write it down.

No.

Because apparently I'm not smart like that.

Anyone have any idea?

Thanks.

PS this might show up twice in your RSS feed because I posted it here and there. Sorry if you got it twice.

Everything Men Know About Women

So, November was brutal. I spent the first week of the month in bed with a lung infection. I was sleeping, oh, at least 15 hours a day. Then I decided that I needed some help with fatigue and ended up on the GAPS diet which resulted in a healing crisis. Ever try to read during a healing crisis? No? That's probably a good idea. The healing crisis is pure evil and trying to read just makes it worse.

Because November was brutal, I pulled this book off my shelves and figured it was time to take a look.

It's a gift from a friend.

What does that post-it hanging off the side say? Open here? Okay.
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Ooops, it's empty! And the back claims it's based on years of research and that it's "frank and brilliantly insightful" (more on Amazon, scroll down, way down!)

So that's my book this month.

Next month I will try to return to reading books with words. I did read quite a bit of The Final Act of Mr. Shakespeare, Nourishing Traditions, and Santa Claus: A Biography, but I didn't finish any of them. (Heck, I don't think I'll ever really "finish" Nourishing Traditions since it's a cookbook)

I'm looking at this and wondering how I will ever do the next step of the challenge - reading two books a month in 2011...eep! Oh well, we'll deal with that when we get there!

Teaser Tuesday - Christmas is coming!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Christmas is coming...I gave this book to Alex a few years ago for Christmas. I *know* he hasn't read it, but I thought I'd give it a try. I'm just a handful of pages in, but I'm enjoying it...I wish I had more time to read!

We spend at least one month out of each year of our lives under the spell of the planet's most widely celebrated holiday. At no other time are our feelings as intense; at no other time are we so caught up in a relentless round of preparation, enjoyment, and recovery.

Santa Claus: A Biography, Gerry Bowler, page vii

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This book doesn't count for the challenge because, well, it's a reread...but it does count for this!

By Easter my recasting was complete. And I felt new things had become natural.

French Women Don't Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano, page 48

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

Teaser Tuesday...I'm back!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I'm back...hopefully I can keep doing this every Tuesday. I have a new book now too...finally! Yay for a new month!

It took a while for the Bible to leave the room. Shakespeare's solemn phrases hung in the air like the afterglow of a shooting star.

The Final Act of Mr. Shakespeare, Robert Winder, page 47

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

Mrs P's Journey

I'm a couple of days late posting about October's book...

After I read about this book on Ann's blog, My Villa Life, I had to search it out. Partly because I love maps. Partly because I love London. Partly because I was intrigued by this woman's story.



I have read a bunch of background and it's hard to say whether this is a true, non-fiction biography or a historical novel. Certainly it's based on facts and many of them from Phyllis Pearsall, but there is a lot that the author had to fill in herself. I had trouble categorizing it...

I also had trouble finding it. It appears it is out of print in North America and the VPL didn't have it. But the UBC library did. So that's where I finally got it. I don't often get books from the UBC library mostly because you only get them for two weeks, not three. But, unlike the VPL, you can renew them as many times as you want as long as there are no holds.

Phyllis had a colourful childhood and yound adulthood and it definitely helped frame how the A-Z was born, but I loved the last part of the book that detailed how the A-Z came about. I love the A-Z. One of my favourite things to do when I lived in London and had enough of people was to get on the underground and get out and wander with only my A-Z as company. I figured it was pretty hard to get lost in London - if you had an A-Z you could figure out where you were and if you could find a tube station (the A-Z could tell you) then you could home. Maybe you could find yourself not knowing where you were, but you weren't lost!

I liked this book and if you like London or maps, it's definitely something worth reading. The editor side of me wasn't happy with a few things that were missed (how many siblings did Bella have? Five or eight?) but overall, I was happy with my choice.

Thanks Ann for writing about it...I never would have known it existed otherwise!

Making time to read...

How do you make time to read?! I need to figure that out...

I'm not sure the last time I picked up a book I wanted to read. I've read lots and lots and lots of How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You, Elephant, I'm Gonna Like Me (yes, I know she's too young, but she loves it,so I figured it wasn't going to hurt anything), and Sometimes I Like to Curl Up in a Ball in the past couple of weeks, but not a lot of adult books. I've had a ton of reading to do for work, but it's not going on here...

For a while I was going to bed half an hour early so that I could read...this worked, kind of...either I'd read for half an hour, I'd fall asleep (or put my book down early) or I'd stay up WAY TOO LATE. This week if I went to bed half an hour early, I can guarantee that I'd be sound asleep before I even opened the book (I might just do that tonight, because, hey, sleep is good...

Strategies for getting more reading time in anyone?!?!

It was a gift...really...

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Apparently this book changed the lives of my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law. So my mother-in-law thought I might be interested in it...umm...anyway, when (IF) I finally get through this, we can talk about that more....

When you are feeling good feelings, it is communication back from the Universe saying, "You are thinking good thoughts." Likewise, when you are feeling bad, you are receiving communication back form the Universe saying, "You are thinking bad thoughts."

The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, page 33

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan

I know, I know, I'm posting this a day late. But. September was nuts.

Crazy.

So glad it's gone.

And reading, ha! That's a pastime for those who are retired, independently wealthy, or who aren't trying to juggle a toddler with a new daycare and essentially a new job and, because of a temporary change at their spouse's workplace, all of the meals and grocery shopping and most of the housework life.

I seriously went to bed last night a bit disappointed with myself. I thought I'd failed September.

I have about three books in progress. I've been writing tons. I've been reading tons, actually, but for the purposes of this challenge I had to finish a book. And magazines, they don't count. And browsing through cookbooks, that doesn't count. And reading about 50 million blogs a day, that also doesn't count (although on that note, I have culled a number of blogs from my feed. This morning there were only 96 posts for me to read. I skipped most of them. It makes me sad.) And reading articles and papers for work, well, that doesn't count either.

So sad. I only survived three months of my challenge.

But then I remembered this AWESOME birthday gift from my brother-in-law.


It's not literature. It's not a biography. It's not thoughtful or instructional. It might qualify as thought provoking.

But it made me laugh. And cringe. And possibly throw up a little in my mouth.

And, best of all, IT'S A BOOK!

The premise: A woman found her grandmother's (she assumes, since no one will own up to actually being the original owners) set of Weight Watchers recipes from the 70s. She keeps them, because, wow, easy laughs! And the book is great. It pokes fun at the actual recipes. It pokes fun at the names of the recipes. It pokes fun at the staging of the food.

I loved it! I don't know which recipe was my favourite, but this book had me cracking up. Even Alex read a good chunk of it.

What I do know now though, is WHY people lost weight (and probably lots of it) on Weight Watchers in the 70s - the food was just too gross to eat. And if they did eat it, it probably made them have tummy aches, so they didn't eat much.

I'm glad Weight Watchers uses a healthier model for weight loss these days!

I just googled the book and you can see some of the cards and commentary here.

EDIT: Also check out this page - it's got Weight Watchers information from the 1970s...scary stuff!