The Feeling of Having to Turn Back a Library Book Before One Is Finished Reading It...

All though it wasn't like I relinquished it, digital lending libraries take back their books will you  nil you. For a solid day and a half I've been racing the clock and...I failed. I was defeated. I couldn't stay awake through the night. I was weak!! I slept, and now I'm back on the hold waiting list for Ernest Cline's Armada....

Maybe I should just buy it...

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

It always occurred to me that fairy and folk tales are filled with some really nasty critters and that the bulk of them seem out to kill humans. The ones that aren't overtly hostile tend to be neutral at best. Many of the ones that are benign are easy to offend to disastrous effect. As cool as they are, I'm not sure I would ever really want to meet one. They are too sinister as a whole.

Even though this is true, there's a ton of fey folk popping up in literature and so much of the time they come across as benign or even silly.

In the world of Fabelhaven the world's fairies aren't fictions, they are endangered creatures, so certain humans gather them up in preserves. Seth and Kendra's grandfather is one of these people which is something neither children nor their parents realize when they are dropped off for some quality time with the grandparents. These are not benign or silly versions of the fairy tale world. These critters are dangerous or even deadly. Being the guardian of such a preserve doesn't guarantee the good will of the inhabitants.

Both kids quickly realize something is strange about the house and grounds. Grandma is missing and there are a lot of strange rules. Kendra is inclined to follow the rules, but Seth is more curious and reckless. When the rules get broken, a powerful evil force is unleashed and the kids have to find a way to fix it on their own.

So, this is cute. I picked it up because two of my big readers swore by the series. I don't think it's destined to be my next favorite series, but I do plan to finish reading through the five book run.

The end of Summer

The end of summer break is always a mixed thing. I like the free floating time to work on things but I also get board. This was a good summer. We didn't do any big trips or work on any big projects but we spent a lot of time as a family. We took Thomas to the pool several days each week and he got plenty of time with his grandparents.

I managed to get some smaller projects done. I reorganized the kitchen, started clearing the back yard, and shifted some furniture around. We haven't really sorted through our accumulated stuff in the time since we moved into the house.  I spent a large amount of time this weekend sorting through my back log of books to get my classroom library back together. I'm not sure of the exact number, but it looks like I'm adding over 100 titles which is exciting.

I've come to the realization that I will never catch up on all the reading I want to do. I know this isn't shocking to others, but I still cherish the day dream of infinite time, I guess.

I love this picture from The Millions article on prolific writers: https://themillions.com/2015/09/thats-too-much-the-problem-with-prolific-writers.html 

Saint Iggy by K.L. Going

I have accidentally started collecting K.L. Going books. Collecting but not reading. Out of her seven books, I've somehow gathered up three of them without even realizing, so I decided to give one a try. I had Saint Iggy with me in Tennessee.

Iggy is a delinquent by his own estimation. The story begins on the day that he is ejected from his school which will lead to a hearing which will probably lead to an expulsion. Many delinquents wouldn't care, but Iggy does. Iggy does because he's not really a delinquent.

Certainly, Iggy struggles with school. He was born already hooked on a drug which is what happens when an infant's mother takes drugs while she is pregnant. He thinks that he is stupid and perhaps he's not the brightest, but it seems to me that his biggest issue is focus. Everything seems to distract him and he constantly imagines conversations in his head.

Iggy also has a friend, Mo, who is supposed to be a kind of mentor, but really is just another kid looking for a drug problem. Iggy can see that unless something changes, Mo is going to get himself killed. He also wants to clear his hearing and make it back into the good graces of the school. These two problems drive the narrative.

The story was quick paced and easy to read. The book features short chapters, a linear plot, and a single point of view. So, it's a good book for struggling readers. The end however, is oddly jarring. It's not how I would have expected it to end and I'm not really sure how I feel about it. It fits the story, but it didn't seem to be where things were headed.

It was decent, I didn't love it.

Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow

There is a fantastic used bookstore in Chattanooga called McKay's. Every time we pass through the city we try to stop by. Usually I'm trolling around for YA novels for my classroom library, but this time I was actually trying to find myself some literary fiction. Since deciding that I was going to read 50 non YA books this year, I've had to face the fact that my taste in literary fiction has become somewhat atrophied over the last several years. I'm on a very laid back mission to work on that.

To that end, I snagged an E.L. Doctorow novel: Homer & Langley. My reasoning on this is a little vague, but here's how it went. Fact 1: over ten years ago a person, who's taste in literature I trust, recommended that I read Ragtime. I dutifully bought the book and never managed to read it. I later found out that this is not an entirely uncommon experience of the book. Fact 2: I became a fan of Cory Doctorow. Fun tidbit - Cory Doctorow is not at all related to E.L. Doctorow, but speaks of him highly. I figured therefore that I would give good ole E.L. another chance.

So then, Homer & Langley.  Well the good news is that I was riveted. I read most of it in the car on the way back from Chattanooga. I finished it the next day on the couch which resulted in me wallowing in a profound funk. Reading Homer & Langley is like watching a train wreck happen. I mean it's just awful. Both Homer and Langley are easy to sympathize with and the entire book is watching them slowly descend into secluded insanity.

Homer and Langley are the children  of privilege living in New York City. The lived in an elegant home during and elegant time. Homer is blind. He goes blind as a teenager. Langley, the older brother, survives the first world war but is ravaged by a mustard gas attack. By the time Langley gets home, the sibling's parents succumb to the influenza epidemic.

Langley isn't right in the head and slowly descends into madness. Homer, due a somewhat passive nature, becomes more and more reliant on his mad brother who compulsively collects junk and feels a deep distrust of most.

It doesn't end well.

In fact, the end was so awful that I ended up feeling just deeply icky and depressed. The only thing that made me feel better was to find out that the book is based on two real brothers who lived in New York. I'm not sure why that should make me feel better, but somehow it does. I spent the rest of the evening reading up on Homer and Langley Collyer who are one of the most notorious and publicized cases of compulsive hoarding. Interesting stuff.

Ok, next... something happy.

Well *sigh*

It feels like this summer has been fraught with more than its share of obstacles which make for a tidy excuse for why I haven't been blogging. In all honesty, the various digital issues have made it difficult. There have been several days when it has been impossible or at least extremely difficult to upload a post. However, most of the days I missed, I could have written a post, I just didn't.

The reason I bring it up is that it makes me think about the nature of habit. I like writing the blog, which is why I do it, so why is it hard to get posts up right now. I don't know, but I think it has to do with habit. Usually, I write the post either right after I get up in the morning or after we eat dinner. I do it every day and it really isn't a problem to sit down and get it done. After a while, that's just what I do at those times and I don't really have to think about doing it, I just do it. So what happened? The difficulties broke my momentum and because they kept happening, and I kept having trouble getting it back together, I lost my habit.

My dentist tells me that it takes 30 repetitions to make anything a habit. She usually tells me this in terms of flossing (I hate flossing), but the idea is sound. Do anything, at regular intervals, 30 times and it becomes an impulse. Its actually something I've observed, but I've always thought about it in terms of momentum. The resistance I feel taking on a task usually has to do with the logistics around the task, the whens, wheres, and hows. Once those are set in place, the task becomes easier. After a few days of that, it becomes something I miss if I don't perform the task.

So here I go, revving up the momentum machine.

quick up date

I disappeared because our wifi was practically not working. I'd write posts and lost all of it when it was time to upload. We think we have it fixed now...so I'll start back up tomorrow.

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

First a disclaimer: It feels impossible to talk about my experience of this book without dealing with the Disney cartoon....so Disney, please don't sue me, I have not nice things to say about what you did to this story.

Alright, but what's new about that. Disney is forever adapting classic stories and departing mightily from their base material. So, I wasn't exactly shocked. Although in this case, it feels like Disney really tried to preserve the basic lesson of the story but ended up stripping away much of Pinocchio's character development.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Pinocchio was first published in 1883 and is the fable about a sentient wooden puppet who wishes to be a real boy. Pinocchio, however, starts out as one of the most impossibly awful kid imaginable. He lies, he argues, he's violent, and he never does what he's told. I mean kids do all those things, but not generally to the exclusion of all other behavior. Pinocchio then spends the two or so years of the narrative going through a constant series of adventures that would be more properly labeled trials. Each of these adventures begins when Pinocchio does something bad and, as a result of his actions, horrible things happen to him and usually ends with him crying and lamenting both his behavior and his situation. At that point, a parental figure of some sort forgives him and he resolves to be better. Of the entirety of the novel Pinocchio gradually improves and does eventually become a real boy.

The fable works really on only one level, but there is some interesting subtly to it. Pinocchio is a puppet and therefore not real. In order to become real, he must learn to act as a 'good boy.' So to be human is to act in accordance with virtue.  To act out of step with this virtues makes a person less than human. These virtues are explicitly stated several times. Good boys listen and obey their parent figures, they go to school, study, and work hard. They also are selfless to the needs of others, generous, industrious, and honest. Failing any of these virtues lands Pinocchio into trouble, but Collodi seems feel that dishonesty and slothfulness are particularly bad and reserves special punishments for them. When Pinocchio is dishonest his nose grows and slothfulness turns little boys into donkeys.

Pinocchio also fits the mold as an epic hero in the sense that he descends into the underworld (several times actually) and is transformed by it.

Collodi was writing in the time right after the unification of Italy and all his children's books are apparently didactic. He was addressing what he felt were the ills of the youth of his time. Apparently Italian youth were particularly dishonest and idle.

As is always the case, the book is better than the movie. Pinocchio is actually one of my least favorite Disney movies because it all seems so disjointed and episodic. The book puts those disjointed scenes in context and gives Pinocchio a real character arc.

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

When I'm impressed by an author, I have a tendency to gather up all of that author's books so that I can read them. This can be a bit of a challenge when I'm catching a writer at the end of their career. In this case, I found Jandy Nelson on her second book, I'll Give You the Sun, because it won a Printz award in 2015. The Sky is Everywhere is her first book. I'm all caught up at this point, at least until she publishes her next book.

Lennon begins the book grieving the loss of her elder sister, Bailey, who dies of a freak fatal arrhythmia. She's 17 and her sister was 19. Both children were abandoned by their mother and are being raised by their grandmother and uncle. Every character in this book is what we used to call flaky when I was a kid. Gram is a master gardener who paints portraits of women only using the color green. Big, the uncle, is a massive Casanova arborist who's been married (and divorced) five times. Bailey was a free-spirited actress diva. Lennon is a master clarinetist who's read Wuthering Heights thirty some odd times. All of them are a little off, but they are all just really nice and sympathetic people.

Everyone's sad and trying to recover, but Lennon and Toby (Bailey's boyfriend) seem to be drowning in their grief. Lennon and Toby get closer due to their shared grief. When Lennon returns for the end of school, she meets the new guy Joe fresh in from Paris. Joe is obviously intrigued by her. Soon Lennon finds herself stuck between these two boys.

There is a heavy romance angle to this one. This book is drowning in hormones. While no actual sex, or really anything approaching sex, happens, there is a lot of very intense kissing and making out. Really. Very intense. However, that's not really what the book is about. This is not a romance novel. Ultimately this is a book about getting through grief and the kinds of mixed up emotions that happen as part of the grief process. Everything that happens between Lennon and Toby makes sense in the context of the novel. If anything, the relationship between her and Joe seems the more off key. That being said, I found the resolution touching and spent the whole last third of the book crying.

Jandy Nelson specializes in making me cry. Both her books have had me sobbing at some point during the read and it's not cheap emotion. She has a knack for creating sympathetic characters who are struggling with situations that most of us can relate to. Result = sob fest.

The Great Kitchen Reorganization

This is one of those posts that will probably only amuse me. However, I spent half of yesterday reorganizing my kitchen. I'm not good at cleaning and I tend to be a little cluttered at the best of time, but the one space where I really think about how things go is in the kitchen. I know that sometimes it doesn't look like there is a system, but there is.

The trick with organizing my kitchen is twofold. 1. I have almost no pantry space because what had been a pantry was turned into a laundry room by the previous owners. 2. I have a well equipped and provisioned kitchen which translates to: I have a lot of stuff. The fact that we eat a large variety of legumes and grains complicates this. So, I've taken to keeping much or our dry goods store in attractive containers on the counters. Additionally, somehow my counters became the mail drop spot which has a bad tendency to spread and having a kid means a lot of prepacking food which means a lot of tupperware. Lots of clutter.

We went to Costco and ran across a twelve pack of my favorite oxo containers at a good price. They are not cheap, but they are life savers for me given how much dried bean and grain I keep on hand. Before the discovery of the oxo containers, everything was in some sort of plastic bag (which tended to tear) and got shoved in random nooks and crannies (which meant I lost track of them). These oxo containers are durable, attractive, and stack well. By using them, I can see what I have and I don't tend to lose track of what I have and overbuy as much.

So, I bought the twelve pack of oxos as an early birthday present to myself. Yay. That combined with the spice racks my dad gifted to me was the basis of my project. However, the problem, then,was that in order to use the oxos and the racks, I needed to deal with the encroaching clutter. Ok, it's a sad truth that life can be a bit overwhelming. When we bought the house five years ago, things started to get pretty busy. We bought the house and then rather soon after got pregnant. When we moved in, I organized in a way that I knew would eventually need to get revised. So, I moved the mail off the counter (don't ask where I put it), I emptied two drawers that hadn't been properly utilized and threw away a lot of the old fish supplies, since I'm not currently keeping a fish tank and much of was expired. I put all the cooking spoons, spatulas and related cooking implements in one of the drawers (except for the potato masher because those things just never fit in drawers....grrrr).

I reorganized one of the cabinets, discovered I own a wok, and made space for the blender, food processor, and standing mixer which had been languishing behind a bank of the previous oxos. This had made them almost entirely unusable. Now I'll be able to get at them. I also moved all the attachments for the appliances over with them which freed up space in a cabinet. Ah ha! I moved all of Thomas's Tupperware up off the counter and into the vacated space.

I moved my potato and citrus storage rack over into the space vacated by the stand mixer which meant I could move all the onions up off the floor and into a colander on the opposite side of the counter. Incidentally, you shouldn't keep your potatoes stored next to onions, they each release chemicals that cause each other to decay faster.

Ok, so time to start filling oxos. I moved the coffee into one of them...which looks a lot better and is better for keeping the coffee anyway. I reorganized some of my higher use legumes and grains into bigger oxos, and got a lot of my more medium use ones out of bags. The masa harina finally got an oxo of it's own as did my mix grain blend I like to use when I'm getting bored with the usual grain options. All the spices that were in small enough jars went into the rack and I moved the tubs (I need to buy some more spice jars) up ontop of the rack, I moved the knife block, bread box, and battery charger.

So, in the end I tripled my usable counter space. I can see everything I need to see, finally, and the space looks less cluttered. I also netted an empty drawer somehow.

Good times.

Summer Reading Continued

So far I've had some mixed results on the summer reading. It looks like I read a lot, but really I read through two of the graphic novel series that I had ready to go and that counted as 10 books. I also got distracted by my library card. Really. I renewed and then got to looking at the catalog which meant that I was suddenly borrowing books that I had to read sooner than later. This, my friends, is how I never get around to reading things. *sigh*

In any case, I've pulled down all the things I've read and filled in some of the gaps. I am deliberately not filling in the Graphic Novels category. In addition I've added a category for my library and otherwise borrowed queue. It's probable that many of the books fit in to challenge categories but I'll work that out as I read through them.

• To Boldly Go (Read a book of Science Fiction or Fantasy)
1. Fade by Robert Cormier
2. When We Wake by Karen Healey
3. The Revenge Of Seven by Pitticus Lore
4. Legend by Marie Lu
5. Prodigy by Marie Lu
6. Champion by Marie Lu
7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
10. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling
11. UnSouled by Neal Shusterman
12. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld 
13. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
14. The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey
15. The Last Star by Rick Yancey
• Now Technically... (Read a Book about a Scientific Topic or Scientist)
1. The Double Planet by Isaac Asimov
2. The Universe by Isaac Asimov 
3. Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God by James A. Connor
4. Broadsides from the Other Orders: A Book of Bugs by Sue Hubbell
5. The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
6. The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
7. Engineering In the Ancient World by J.G. Landels
8. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
9. Stiff by Mary Roach
• Award Winner (Read a book that Won an Award - Finalists count)
1. Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (National Book Award Finalist & O'Dell Award)
2. Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson (Kirkus Reviews Best Book 2010)
3. Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes (Printz Honor Book)
4. Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo (Morris Debut Award Finalist)
5. One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke (Printz Honor Book)
6. The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson (Printz Honor Book) 
7. Fat Kid Rules he World by K.L. Going (Printz Honor Book)
8. Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (Nebula)
9. I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (Printz Award)
• How-To (Read a Book that teaches you a new hobby or skill)
1. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman (Cooking Vegetarian) 
2. Grammar To Get Things Done by Darren Crovitz and Michelle D. Devereaux (Grammar)
3. Reading Reasons by Kelly Gallagher (Teaching - Reading)
4. Page after Page by Heather Sellers (Writing)
5. "You Gotta Be the Book" by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm (Teaching - Literacy
• Free Space (Read any book you like)
1. Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
2. Peeled by Joan Bauer
3. The Cemetery Boys by Heather Brewer
4. Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix
5. The Arsonist by Stephanie Oakes 
6. A List of Cages by Robin Roe
7. There Is No Dog by Meg Rosoff
8. Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld
• Picture This! (Read a Graphic Novel)
1. The Nameless City by Faith Erin Hicks
2. The Stone Heart by Faith Erin Hicks
• Seek Diversity (Read a Book with a Main Character of a different Cultural Background From You)
1. Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper
2. Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos
3. The First Part Last by Angela Johnson 
4. Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
5. A Step from Heaven by An Na
6. Monsoon Summer by Mitali Perkins
7. Binu and the Great Wall: The Myth of Meng by Su Tong
8. The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran
9. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
• Just Wait Until You Read This One! (Read a Book Recommended by a Friend or Relative)
1. Story Time by Edward Bloor (Nick R)
2. Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen (Ryan)
3. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (Amanda)
4. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (Sandy)
5. On Caring by Milton Mayeroff (Nathan)
6. Swan Song by Robert McCammon (Ryan)
7. Fablehaven 3: Grip of the Shadow Plague
8. Fablehaven 4: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary
9. Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult (Jess)
10. Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf (Wilfrid)
• Awww! or Eeek! (Read a Book featuring an Animal on the Cover)
1. Babylon's Ark by Lawrence Anthony (Lion)
2. A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron (Dog)
3. The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (Crow, Coyote, Rabbit, & Fox)
4. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (Bee)
5. Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton (Horse) 
6. The Returning by Christine Hinwood (Horse)
7. Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle (Elephants & Unicorns)
8. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (Bird)
9. The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancy (Crow)
• Library and Otherwise Borrowed
1. Solo by Kwame Alexander (due 7/21/2018)
2. He Said, She Said by Kwame Alexander (waitlist)
3. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (super waitlisted)
4. Armada by Ernest Cline (waitlist)
5. Pinocchio by C. Collodi (Howard's) - (Finished 7/3/2018)
6. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (super waitlisted)
7. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green (finished & returned 7/4/2018)
8. Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor (due 7/24/2018)
9. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (waitlist)
10. Artemis by Andy Weir (waitlist)