February Progress Report

It was a fairly successful month. I read 18 books in February.  I finished 3 series and made substantial dents in 4 more. It's hard to speak in terms of favorites when confronted with a batch of books that are part of a larger arc. So let me say this instead: the most beautiful book I read was Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt, the series that made me feel the happiest was "The Underland Chronicle," and the only time I've ever read a book that was just an alternate ending for one I'd previously read was Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen.

It was a fun month. Next month is a new list, although there will be several books carried over from previous lists.

A. The Ranger's Apprentice:
     1. The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan (B)
     2. The Icebound Land by John Flanagan (B)
     3. Oakleaf Bearers/Battle for Skandia by John Flanagan (B)
     4. The Sorcerer in the North by John Flanagan (B)
     5. The Siege of Mackindaw by John Flanagan (B)
     6. Erak's Ransom by John Flanagan (B)
     7. The Kings of Clonmel by John Flanagan (B)
     8. Halt's Peril by John Flanagan (B)
     9. The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan (B)
     10. The Lost Stories by John Flanagan (B)
     11. The Royal Ranger by John Flanagan (B)
B. The Ender Quintet:
     12. Speaker For the Dead by Orson Scott Card (B)
     13. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (B)
     14. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card (B)
     15. Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
C. The New York Trilogy:
     16. City of Glass by Paul Auster
     17. Ghosts by Paul Auster
     18. The Locked Room by Paul Auster
D. The Brian's Saga Series:
     19. The River by Gary Paulsen (B)
     20. Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen (B)
     21. Brian's Return by Gary Paulsen
     22. Brian's Hunt by Gary Paulsen
E. The Underland Chronicles:
     23. The Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins (B)
     24. The Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins (B)
     25. The Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins (B)
     26. The Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins (B)
F. Odd Thomas:
     27. Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
     28. Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
     29. Odd Hours by Dean Koontz
     30. Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz
     31. Deeply Odd by Dean Koontz
     32. Saint Odd by Dean Koontz
G. Barsoom Series
     33. The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     34. The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     35. Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     36. The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     There are more of these actually, but this is what I have on hand.
H. The Giver Quartet
     37. Son by Lois Lowry
I. The Rats of NIMH
     38. Racso and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly
     39. R-T, Margaret and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly
J. Quantum Gravity
     40. Book One: Keeping it Real by Justina Robson (B)
     41. Book Two: Selling Out by Justina Robson (B)
     42. Book Three: Going Under by Justina Robson (B)
     43. Book Four: Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson (B)
K. Canongate Myth Series
     44. Binu and The Great Wall: The Myth of Meng by Su Tong
     45. The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
     46. Lion's Honey: the Myth of Samson by David Grossman
     47. The Hurricane Party by Klas Ostergren
     48. Where Three Roads Meet by Salley Vickers
     49. Orphans of Eldorado by Milton Hatoum
     50. The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber
     51. The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino
     52. The Song of King Gesar by Alai
     53. The Good Man Jesus and Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
     54. Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt
     55. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic
56. Thinking Through Genre: Units of Study in Reading and Writing Workshops 4-12 by Heather Lattimer (B)
57. Writing About Reading: From Book Talk to Literary Essays, Grades 3-8 by Janet Angelillo (B)
58. Inside Writing: How to Teach the Details of Craft by Donald H. Graves and Penny Kittle(B)
59. Deeper Reading by Kelly Gallagher
60. Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin

So, I'd never heard of Pelevin before this. Apparently he's a part of the young guard of Russian Writers. It took me two tries to get hooked into The Helmet of Horror. The whole thing is written as a chat room transcript where each of the characters have found themselves in a mysterious room in a maze without knowing how they got there.

Everyone is waiting for the Minotaur. Everyone with waiting for Theseus. It reminded me of "Waiting for Godot" I think it even qualifies as neo-absurdist (if that's a thing).

Ultimately, it wasn't a hardship getting through the book. However, I got to the end, where it all devolved into a mooing mess (it makes sense if you read the book) and I ended up sitting there and wondering what the point of it all was. Most of the philosophical concepts weren't new to me.

I don't know. Maybe I just don't get it. Always possible I suppose.

Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt

Possession is one of those books that I know I should read. It's literary. Smart people speak highly of this book. At cocktail parties frequented by beautiful literati, people discuss Byatt's plot points delivered in beautiful lyricism.  At least this is how I've always thought of Possession. Unfortunately, I've never made it all the way through the book. A fact that has always exiled me from the literati society in my own mind.

I did, however, make it through Ragnarok which is told with Byatt's signature lyricism but is much shorter than Possession. Byatt truly is a beautiful wordsmith. She can write about something awful with such entrancing beauty that only afterward do I realize what I read. For example, when describing Jormungandr:

She swam on, meeting miles of floating jellyfish, pulsing glassy umbrellas, trailing fine poisonous filaments, all of which she sucked in, indiscriminate. The poison did her no harm. But it collected in sacs behind her fangs; it ran like quicksilver in her blood. She spat her venom into the eyes of porpoises and monk seals. blinding them, swallowing them, spitting out undigested stuff which sank slowly and swayed in the currents.

See? Gorgeous and awful.

And that's the problem, I think. It's one of those cases where the artistry distracts from the story. I spend so much of my attention on the flow of language that I loose track of meaning. Even though Ragnarok is short and told in a straight forward manner (almost autobiographical in a way), I had to back up and restart several times.

It is, perhaps, the most beautiful thing I've read so far this year.

Quantum Rat

Nobody tells you when you buy a house what a supreme pain in the butt it is. For example, we have some sort of transient vermin who like to spend time in our attic. They don't make a lot of noise, and I don't think they actively live there, but there are definite signs.

So I put in glue traps. Has anyone else noticed that the quote unquote humain options for rat traps sound worse than the old snap traps. The old snap traps just killed the rat or didn't and they got away. The glue traps are different. I picture a poor rat up there stuck in the glue slowly dehydrating to death. Sounds worse to me than a broken spine and then death within an hour.  Maybe it's just me.

Anyway so I put in the traps two weeks ago and vaguely forgot about them until last night. Last night we had one of those southern winter storms: a lot of wind, a lot of rain, and a dropping temperature. Mostly I slept through it. Until 12:21 that is when I woke up to the most awful screeching. It sounded like when one of the backyard owls gets a rabbit, except that it's the wrong season and it sounded both fainter and closer. Tomorrow I go up to check the traps. I'm not looking forward to it. I suspect I'm going to find a rat or a squirrel in some final paroxysm of death encased in a cocoon of glue.

Until I go up there I can make believe it won't be there. But then there's the screeching. *shudder*

Ranger's Apprentice #5 & 6 by John Flanagan

Flanagan is definitely working in two book cycles. It's a pattern. The Sorcerer of the North and The Siege of Macindaw are really all one story line split across two books. I have to wonder if this is an issue of money/profit or of reading length. The YA market seems to have some pretty rigid guidelines when it comes to length so it really could be either.

In any case, The Sorcerer of the North skips over the end of Will's apprentice ship and picks up with his first assignment to a fief as a full ranger in a sleepy little backwater. Of course, it isn't too long before something comes up to pull Will away. Alyss comes back in these two books as a poised and capable diplomat. Harold shows up in The Siege of Macindaw to help Will save the day. New characters include Malcolm the Healer, Gundar the Skirl, Trobar the Giant, and Shadow the dog.

I think Flanagan's bad guys are getting much more interesting and three dimensional. He's left behind the cardboard cutout master villains and has embraced the sympathetic villain. There's some real pathos here. I really feel bad for the guy in the end. He get's what he deserves, of course, but I kind of wish Alyss could be successful in saving him.

If I have a real criticism, it's that Flanagan skipped over a lot of time with the end of Will's training. I feel like there is a least one good story in there.

2 things

1. whatever publishing exec thought it was a good idea to add an inch and a half to the length of a mass market book should be taken out back and shot. It's completely disorientating. Mass markets are supposed to completely regular. They may be 100 pages or 500 but the geography of the page should remain the same. The entire point of mass markets was a was a certain consistency.("mass" -- hello!) In other formats I accept and even embrace variation, do not take away my safe place!

2. I officially hit one third of my yearly goal today. In February. If I keep it up,  I might actually manage my old 200 book goal. I haven't figured out yet what my percentage of YA to other fic is. I maintain, given that I'm a highschool teacher, YA is valid material for me to read. However, if it creeps up over the 50% mark, I might have to impose limits.

Reflection on Writer's Block

My freshmen started a unit on memoir. I don't read a lot of memoir, as a rule, I had a bad formative experience with in middle school with autobiography and it scarred me for life I'm afraid. Memoir is not autobiography, though. I think when a person tries to write objectively about themselves it runs the risk of being intensely boring. (There are exceptions of course)

Memoir on the other hand is filtered through emotion and perspective. It's not supposed to be entirely accurate. Rather, it should be true more than it should be factual. The heart of memoir is expressing how something felt at the time. It's subjective. It's trying to convey experience and so I find it easier to read.

Still, I don't read a lot of it even though I spend a little time each night essentially writing memoir.

It's strange how things work out.

I always get to the point when working on a blog when I feel supremely uninteresting and have a hard time coming up with something to write about. My kids have the same problem frequently. It's easy to feel dismissive of the issue. But isn't that how I'm feeling right now?

The Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien, Leslie Conly & Leonard Lubin - Series Complete

Today I finished the third Rats of NIMH book. I loved the first, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and the second, Racso and the Rats of NIMH, is really growing on me. The characters are engaging and the premise is fun. The rats are the result of scientific experiment on intelligence enhancing drugs that is more effective than expected. The rats escape and create their own community complete with modern amenities.

The third book, R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH, didn't quite hold up to the other two. In this book, the nest is threatened when two children get lost in the woods and end up in contact with the rats. The biggest problem was that it started slow. Margaret, the older of the two kids, doesn't start out a very likable character, which while it works for her character arc, means I spent a third of the book contemplating the possibility that some kids maybe really do need a spanking. By the end, she becomes a more palatable narrator, but it took a bit. As a book: it's ok; as a series closer: I was a little disappointed. It ended the only way it could, and I like that they left an opening for continuation but it just wasn't up to the same standards as the first two.

Regardless, if I was going to put together a canon for middle grades lit, The Rats of NIMH would be on it.

Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen

Brian's Winter is an alternate ending to Hatchet. It's a full length book that happens after most of the events on Hatchet, except that instead of finding a working emergency transmitter, in Brian's Winter he only finds the rest of the gear. So instead of getting rescued, the book picks up right at the beginning of autumn heading into winter.

I have two teacher friends that I've talked to about Hatchet and Brian's Winter. Amanda loves them both. She's big into outdoor life and survivalism but there is also an element of nostalgia when she talks about them. Chad on the other hand hates Hatchet. His big criticism is the improbability of it all and the impracticality. He is also big into outdoorsmanship. I suspect that he read them at a more mature age than Amanda.

Chad is correct though. Several things that Brian does in the books just wouldn't work. I don't think a bit of nylon windbreaker would function very well as a bow string. Learning to spear/shoot fish would take longer. And Brian does have a phenomenal amount of good luck. A ridiculous amount really, but unlike Chad, that doesn't much bother me. Fiction always requires suspension of disbelief.

I like the idea that one could live, at least a while, stranded out in the while. It's a terrifying prospect, yet it's interesting too. I like that this a YA book where the protagonist constantly faces a problems and then thinks his way through them. It's refreshing. No one saves him. He figures it out and works hard. There are worse things the kids could be reading.

Reading Rate

So, as predicted, my reading rate took a steep dive this week. I only finished one book and a children's book at that. I'm about halfway through the next Odd Thomas book and I'm kind of stuck in post modern navel gazing with one of the Canongate books, so it's a little deceptive.

However, between grading and comments and being sick, I spent pretty much all free time, asleep. I'm still 15 books ahead of schedule but I'm not sure if I'll get to hold onto my lead. I tell the kids to read 10 minutes a day. For most of them, that sounds/feels like a reasonable amount but still a meaningful challenge. The trick is, of course, that if they get into their books and read 10 minutes, they will likely read more than 10 minutes. Sneaky right?

I've had some great successes so far. I have many kids who "used to be readers" and have felt like they didn't have the time to justify pleasure reading in high school. Having the excuse that it's required means that they are rediscovering their love of literature. I've even gotten some habitual non readers hooked into good books. It's not universal success, but it is progress.

It makes me look around at the adults around me too. A lot of them have sacrificed reading for "real life" too. I get it. It's way easier to plug into a movie than to read, but the reading is way more rewarding.

Communication Skills

One of the things that makes my school special is that amount of personal contact and communication we teachers, give to the parents. We call when their kid's grade drops to a 75. Homeroom teachers call their homeroom parents every week. Each semester we do two progress reports with individual comments for each student.

I've never minded talking to the parents and students directly about progress, but comments used to be my number one most hated responsibility. I still find them challenging. The problem is that I know how important the comments are. They are one of the few times that the parents know that we are communicating and evaluating progress, or lack of progress, towards goals. It's a lot of pressure to find the right words and I hate delivering anything remotely like bad news.

Some years I contemplate writing spoof comments. The potential for something going wrong is too high. Still, the hardest comments are the ones where I feel like I really have something to say. Because of what they are, everything has to be phrased in teacher P.C. babble.

So I can't just say "Susy, pull your cranium out of your rectum and do your homework if you want to succeed."

The comments end up more like: "Susy, while the scope of material covered in the second semester increased, the expectation that you complete the assignments at home has not changed. If you wish to maintain your customary B, you must do your homework on time and with a reasonable amount of detail."

The second is way more professional, but the first feels more personally satisfying.

Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

I had such a hard time finishing Odd Thomas that I was a little leery of starting the next book in the series, Forever Odd. Within a few pages it was clear that Odd was in a melancholy place. I was sick at the time (third of the three recent) and just not sure I was up for sad.

However, whereas Odd Thomas was about avoiding a mass murder, Forever Odd was on a much smaller and more personal scope. The ghost of the father of one of Odd's close friends appears to him one night. While investigating, he discovers that his friend Danny is missing. Burned by deaths in the previous book, Odd feels that he must pursue this himself and tracks his friend using psychic magnetism.

It's your basic outline for a thriller really. Except I really found the villain chilling. She was so incredibly bizarre and yet oddly believable in a broken way. I just had to keep reading, so Forever Odd ended up being the only book I made it through over the long weekend. (I was really sick and I think it gave me weird dreams)

Over all, I think the narrative voice was stronger and more consistent. Koontz juggled fewer characters in this book and I think that helped iron out some pacing issues. This is a stronger narrative than the first book but I miss some of the beautiful expository passages from the first book; Odd was funny and witty despite the darker events of the novel. This is almost absent in Forever Odd. Hopefully the tone will recover in the third book.

Proved Wrong

I used to think that I had a good strong immune system. Especially, once my insomnia is taken into consideration. I was wrong. I know getting sick a lot is one of the truisms of having a child but I've been sick three different times in the last five weeks. This last time knocked me on my butt for three days with fever. It got me bad enough, that I had a hard time remembering things like writing my posts.

Clearly I don't have that great an immune system. Maybe I'm just more stubborn than other people. I'm certainly just as whiney.

Poor Thomas got hit this time too. He has a bilateral ear infection and a crazy itchy looking rash. I have to wonder, did he give this to us or did we infect him. It's a sort of chicken and egg problem.

Ah well, at least he's sleeping now. With any luck, the whole household will get a full night's sleep and kick this thing.

Routine

It seems being sick has knocked me off my routine. I will get it with forthwith. I'm sorry guys.

Ranger's Apprentice books 3 & 4

One of the things about reading a student recommended series is that patience is not the strong suit of adolescent boys. Every day Matt peeks into my room to see what book I'm reading and if it's one of the Ranger's Apprentice Series. There are 11 of the things and I've been going at a pretty steady clip but it's clear that he's waiting for me to hit some event in the series. To his credit, he's been scrupulously avoiding any hint of a spoiler.

Another thing I've noticed is that there seems to be an artificial cap on the length of YA series lit. It happened in the Underland Chronicles and it's happened now in the Ranger's Apprentice books. The Icebound Land and Battle for Skandia are really one book. The end of Icebound Land is abrupt and resolves little except to lead directly into the beginning of Battle for Skandia.

Virtually everyone warned me about The Icebound Land as well. The story introduces a drug based story line. I'm still a little unsure why I needed to be warned. Sure it's pretty grim, but I feel like the message is spot on and the horror of it. I think kids need more exposure to purely negative portrayals of narcotics: no allure, no sense of rebellion, just the raw truth of what drugs do. It wasn't easy to read, but I don't have a problem with it.

Battle for Skandia starts immediately at the point of resolution for the drug plot line, so strongly influenced by but not bogged down in it. I found Battle for Skandia very enjoyable, great adventure and camaraderie, and I love that Flanagan found a way to keep Erak in play.

*sniffle*

There was a time when I thought I had a pretty healthy immune system. I thought I didn't really get sick.

Having a kid really changes that.

I can't tell if it's because Thomas gets sick and brings home new and exotic bugs, or because I don't get enough sleep, or some combination. However, I somehow feel like my sinus cavities have been clobbered by a mac truck travelling over the speed limit on the autobahn. Didn't I just feel that way a month ago? Damn humbling.

So much for my immune system. :-P

Invasion

I don't really believe in keeping secrets. Secrets imply shame, and to the best of my ability I try to always live my life in a way that can be proud of. That doesn't mean I don't screw up. I screw up a lot. However, my general M.O. is to acknowledge, own, and, hopefully, move on. (That last bit is the hardest) I say this all to preface the following.

My students discovered this blog.

It was never a secret and there certainly is nothing here that I wouldn't want them to see (hi guys) but all the same it's very disconcerting to walk into class and have one of my students tell me that they tried my salsa recipe. *boggle* It's kind of cool too. They are even commenting here and there.

Additionally, I almost had to confiscate a device this morning because someone was actively reading last night's post. Talk about an awkward conversation. "Geez, thanks for reading but give me your phone until 3"

I have to wonder if they'll keep reading or the newness of it will all fade out. *shrug* Guess I'll find out.

Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins - Series Complete

To follow up on yesterday's post, I finished the last book in the Underland Chronicles. My overall impression of the series is to call it solid reading material for the middle school set. After finishing the fourth book Gregor and the Marks of Secret, I really couldn't stop myself from plowing on through the last book, Gregor and the Code of Claw.

As I said yesterday, I was very concerned that Collins was going to kill the end of the this series the same way she did the Hunger Games trilogy. Well, she didn't do that. In fact, in most respects she did a good job tying up most of the loose ends. Really, all of the loose ends except one. Unfortunately it was a pretty significant loose end. If her intention is to continue the series, I can forgive her, but if this is really it, it's kind of a lame resolution.

However, when it comes to death and character arcs, she did a great job. The characters who died, had meaningful deaths.  I do have a lingering question about the character Solivet. In the first book she appears friendly and gracious, but she quickly becomes stern and quite frankly scary starting around the end of the third book. I have to wonder if Collins's idea of the character shifted because she needed a different type of antagonist to drive the story.

If I ever meet Suzanne Collins, I guess I'll ask.

Character Murder

Like most people, I loved The Hunger Games when I first read it. It was refreshing to have a spiky but competent female protagonist. Katniss isn't someone I'd like to invite for dinner, but I enjoy following her and sympathize with her awkwardness. The tough female sidekick has become a more common thing in YA fantasy, but as a protagonist is still pretty rare. Like everyone else, I found both Peta and Gale charming. The pacing is quick and by the end it's hard not to cheer for team Katniss. Catching Fire, while not a strong through and through, is still a good fun read. It's really, in many ways, a rehash of the first book with some new characters.

Mockingjay, however, made me want to just throw the book out the window. Collins developed all these great complex characters and then proceeded to strip them all of what I loved and then killed most of them ignominiously. In short, she committed character murder. The ones left alive were now completely unlikable. I ended up wondering if she had Stephen King problems. (ever notice how a lot of his early novels end with some sort of catastrophic fire or explosion instead of solid character resolution?)

So it's with some trepidation that I begin the final book of Collins's Gregor the Overlander Series. So far I've loved the first four books. I read the first chapter of the last book today and I'm worried that this is going to be Katniss all over again.

Wish me luck.

The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan

Every once an a while I get recommendations from multiple people on the same book or series. As previously discussed, sometimes this backfires and for some odd reason I drag a bit on actually trying the book. This series was originally recommended to me four years ago by a student. Soon after, Vincent also recommended it. I finally started the series last month with the first book: The Ruins of Gorlan.  It was a quick read featuring a young male protagonist, Will, who is the kind of misfit I enjoy reading about. Will actually really reminded me of Piemur from Anne McCaffrey's Pern Series. In any case, I quickly picked up The Burning Bridge afterwards.

It's always a little odd to me how in a lot of YA series, particularly fantasy series, the protagonists lead this charmed life where they take on big dark evil forces and miraculously don't tend to face many consequences. Nothing really happens to them for meddling with the evil lord whatshisname even though said lord is way more powerful and been up to his nefarious plans for much longer. I guess every once and a while it's credible that everything would work out, but these fantasy heroes really beat the odds.

Not so, apparently, in Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice Series. The hero still seems to save the day, but at the end of the The Burning Bridge everything does not work out for Will. In fact, despite his success, Will faces personal disaster. I found that refreshing. And, of course, wanting to immediately jump into the next book.

Tantrums

One of the things they don't tell you about being a parent, is that your cute little squirmy baby is going to turn into an irascible toddler. Well they do tell you that they will have 'tantrums' but the word hardly covers it.

Imagine a screeching monkey, whimpering puppy, and an asthmatic runner all rolled into the body of the critter whose facial expressions evolution has uniquely attuned you to. And they never seem to end. People always say, "oh I know honey, they seem like they go on forever but it's really only about 10 minutes." Yeah, horse doo doo. I clocked the one tonight at 38 minutes-ish. Eventually it ended when he temporarily nodded off mid scream. The longest one we've seen so far clocked in around 45 minutes. Truly my son has inherited a mean stubborn streak from one of us.

What really get's me about the tantrums is what causes them. It's inscrutable. Definitely it seems exacerbated by tiredness but past that. . . *shrug* Reasons my toddler have tantrumed include:

• I wouldn't let him stick his finger in the power outlet
• I put away the toy he finished playing with an hour ago
• We eat dinner on the table, not the couch
• There are no pages to turn to before the first page
• The cat ate his cheerio
• A different cat jumped on the coffee table
• The door won't open. *he was standing in the way*
• And my favorite - He took off his shoes

Babies need warning labels. "Caution: mood subject to broad shifts - always wear your hard hat and carry a shield"

Depth of Winter Corn Chowder

The best corn chowder happens in the summer with fresh corn off cobs slowly simmered into a broth redolent of butter and essence of ... well, corn. I miss vegetable chowders in the winter but a reasonable off-season facsimile can be made from frozen corn and lima.

4 Tbs. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 carrots, peeled and diced
1 pound frozen corn
1 pound frozen lima beans
1 Tbs. dill weed
1 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste

saute the onion and carrot in the olive oil over medium heat. When the onion begins to turn translucent, add the frozen limas and corn. Stir occasionally until the veggies thaw and even begin to brown a little.

Add 4 cups water and dill weed. Simmer 10 to 15 minutes or until the carrots are soft and everything is properly heated through. Use a stick blender to partially blend the soup to the desired consistency. I like mine a little chunky so I only blend it enough to cause the corn and limas to release starches that thicken the broth. You could use a standard upright blender, or a food processor, or even a potato masher if you like. The point is to get those starches out and thickening.

Add the cream. Warm through and serve.

The Giver Quartet: Son by Lois Lowry - Series Finished!

Most people I've met read The Giver because it was assigned at some point in Middle School. I've noticed that any book assigned is hard to get through, so a lot of the kids I talked to just sort of rolled their eyes at me. However, a couple of them gushed about how good the book is. One of my coworkers, Amanda, raved about it and immediately recommended the next book in the series Gathering Blue to me. (She seems to have really good taste in literature, by the way, she's also the one that recommended me A Thousand Splendid Suns) However, everyone I talked to seemed to know about The Giver and two of the sequels Gathering Blue and Messenger. Virtually no one seemed to know about the fourth, and last book, Son.

I finished Son in one day. It's a 405 page book. That's fast, even for me. If I had one criticism of the series, it was that the books were only really loosely connected. All of them are great, but the characters from one book to the next, didn't overlap much. The settings, while all within the world Lowry created, were very different. So when I opened Son I expected more of the same loosely connected sort of story. What I absolutely did not expect, was a story that stitched all three of the previous books together.

Amazingly, this didn't feel at all artificial. If anything, I had the sense that Lowry had always intended to wrap it all up like this. It's nice when an ending really feels right.

The best bit for me is, I now have this secret literary weapon. I can just see it:

"Oh, so you really liked The Giver? Have you read the sequels Gathering Blue and Messenger? You have! Have you read Son? That's right kapow there's a fourth book!" The lit ninja strikes again. bwahahahahaha!

That's totally how it's going to go.

Milestone

Today I finished book 20 for 2016. So, over the the course of about 35 days, I've managed 20 book averaging about a book every other day or so. Realistically, this high reading rate is owing to two factors: 1. I'm reading a high percentage of YA fiction and 2. the crazy grading load hasn't set in yet.

Things will slow down heading into May. On the other hand, 20 books!

It's also interesting to note that my reading total for 2015 was only 45 books. I'm almost half-way to last year's total. Suddenly 100 books in a year doesn't seem so hard and I remember how I used to make it to 200. This is all very encouraging.

Delayed Reactions: Matched by Ally Condie

It's strange how immediately after finishing a book I can have a dim view of it, but find that it sticks around in my headspace days or even weeks later. When that happens, I always try to figure out why. Was my initial impression wrong? or perhaps I missed some redeeming facet? or maybe I was suffering from reader burn-out? It's a tough position to be in because I like to think of myself as a strong reader with a certain level of discernment.

Matched, which I read in January, is proving a bit of a brain fungus. I can't quite get it out of my headspace and my thoughts keep circling back to it. About two thirds of the way in the read, I started getting really impatient with it and irritable with the characters. I have a student, Irene, who was familiar with the book but she eventually decided she couldn't get through it and dropped it. After pushing through to the end, I wondered if Irene hadn't the right idea.

This is yet another dystopian utopia YA book; they've been in vogue recently. Also, it's the beginning book of yet another series. I don't understand the recent trend with impossible love triangles. Maybe this was always a thing. I don't know, but recently it's seems to be cropping up everywhere in YA lit. Edward and Jacob in the Twilight series is an excellent example of this. Perhaps this is linked to my earlier observation that series lit and trilogy lit seems more prevalent. It is definitely a way of throwing obstacles at a potential couple. Anyway, by the end of the second chapter, Matched was clearly heading in same direction. It's possible that this colored all the rest of my read because, in hindsight, there are several interesting ideas.

One of which is that the "perfect" society streamlined art and culture into the 100 bests: 100 best paintings, 100 best novels, 100 best poems, etc. No new art is produced and everything else is destroyed. The main character is given two poems by her grandfather that are not on the list of approved poems. One of the two is Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." This happens to be one of my favorite poems and I think accounts for why the book keeps bobbing up out of my subconscious. Looking back at it, there is an interesting statement about the effect of good art and the power of it.

I'm not sure this is the most fabulous book ever, but I think it deserves better than my initial opinion. I had not planned to spend the time reading the next two books in the series. I might have to change my mind.

Tired

This is the first time so far since reviving the blog that getting a post done has been hard. But I'm tired in kind of a bone weary way and the bedroom routine has become somewhat fraught. There's something about toddlers that wears you out and down. I have enormous respect for early childhood teachers. It's hard to work with a group that can't communicate and wants to.

Anyway, it's not much of a post, but I'm going to try to get some sleep now. I'm exhausted. So here's a picture instead. Sometime life kinda feels like this.

Salsa

Salsa is one of those things that don't really need a recipe. All you need are some knife skills and a sense of what your raw ingredients taste like. I've been told though that I make a good salsa and the recipe for my most recent iteration was requested. So here it is, this is a little closer to a Pico de Gallo.

1 pounds medium tomatoes, diced
1 small bunch scallions, sliced thinly
4 radishes, minced
1 bunch of cilantro, minced
juice of 1 lime
salt to taste

Mix everything in a bowl, let it sit at least 10 minutes for the flavors to meld.

This is one of those dishes that is really only good the day it's made since refrigerators turn tomatoes mealy.

The only real requirement of a salsa is the right proportion of acid to ingredients. Past that, the variations are endless.

Febuary's Pile 'o' Books

Series Galore - since I've found myself in the middle of an unusual number of series, I've decided to concentrate on getting through some of the ones I've decided to pursue. All of the series below are missing one or more of the initial volumes because I've already read them except two: The Paul Auster Trilogy which made the cut because I don't want to wait to fit it into another list :-P  and the Quantum Gravity Books which are on loan from Carra. At the bottom of the list there is a few professional development books so that I can keep up with my sub goal.


A. The Ranger's Apprentice:
     1. The Burning Bridge by John Flanagan (B)
     2. The Icebound Land by John Flanagan (B)
     3. Oakleaf Bearers/Battle for Skandia by John Flanagan (B)
     4. The Sorcerer in the North by John Flanagan (B)
     5. The Siege of Mackindaw by John Flanagan (B)
     6. Erak's Ransom by John Flanagan (B)
     7. The Kings of Clonmel by John Flanagan (B)
     8. Halt's Peril by John Flanagan (B)
     9. The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan (B)
     10. The Lost Stories by John Flanagan (B)
     11. The Royal Ranger by John Flanagan (B)
B. The Ender Quintet:
     12. Speaker For the Dead by Orson Scott Card (B)
     13. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (B)
     14. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card (B)
     15. Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
C. The New York Trilogy:
     16. City of Glass by Paul Auster
     17. Ghosts by Paul Auster
     18. The Locked Room by Paul Auster
D. The Brian's Saga Series:
     19. The River by Gary Paulsen (B)
     20. Brian's Winter by Gary Paulsen (B)
     21. Brian's Return by Gary Paulsen
     22. Brian's Hunt by Gary Paulsen
E. The Underland Chronicles:
     23. The Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins (B)
     24. The Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins (B)
     25. The Marks of Secret by Suzanne Collins (B)
     26. The Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins (B)
F. Odd Thomas:
     27. Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
     28. Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
     29. Odd Hours by Dean Koontz
     30. Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz
     31. Deeply Odd by Dean Koontz
     32. Saint Odd by Dean Koontz
G. Barsoom Series
     33. The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     34. The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     35. Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     36. The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (B)
     There are more of these actually, but this is what I have on hand.
H. The Giver Quartet
     37. Son by Lois Lowry
I. The Rats of NIMH
     38. Racso and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly
     39. R-T, Margaret and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly
J. Quantum Gravity
     40. Book One: Keeping it Real by Justina Robson (B)
     41. Book Two: Selling Out by Justina Robson (B)
     42. Book Three: Going Under by Justina Robson (B)
     43. Book Four: Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson (B)
K. Canongate Myth Series
     44. Binu and The Great Wall: The Myth of Meng by Su Tong
     45. The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
     46. Lion's Honey: the Myth of Samson by David Grossman
     47. The Hurricane Party by Klas Ostergren
     48. Where Three Roads Meet by Salley Vickers
     49. Orphans of Eldorado by Milton Hatoum
     50. The Fire Gospel by Michel Faber
     51. The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino
     52. The Song of King Gesar by Alai
     53. The Good Man Jesus and Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
     54. Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A.S. Byatt
     55. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic
56. Thinking Through Genre: Units of Study in Reading and Writing Workshops 4-12 by Heather Lattimer (B)
57. Writing About Reading: From Book Talk to Literary Essays, Grades 3-8 by Janet Angelillo (B)
58. Inside Writing: How to Teach the Details of Craft by Donald H. Graves and Penny Kittle(B)
59. Deeper Reading by Kelly Gallagher
60. Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

Chances are, I'll still be in the middle of a bunch of series at the end of the month. But hey, should still be a fun month.