Wordless Wednesday

My boys.
Goofing around.
Making me smile.
May 2009

Hooray!

I finished Keeper and Kid-- a book that wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. Or maybe I just didn't relate to the author's writing style. Anyway, review to come later, but I just wanted to say that I started a new book while waiting at the cardiologist's office and I can already not stand to put it down--just grabbed me from the opening sentence.

The book?

The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips.

If you are still looking for a southern book to read for the southern reading challenge, you must check this one out. It is set in a 1931 Alabama coal town. The introduction was written by Fannie Flagg, who enthusiastially praised this book. I do too, and I am only 15 pages into it!

Monday info

What's In Your Mailbox Monday is hosted each week by Marcia over at The Printed Page.

I had a fairly busy book week--some arrived by way of the mailbox, but some arrived by me purchasing them and carrying them into the house!

From Paperbackswap:
** Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (for my boys' summer reading)
** They Never Came Home by Lois Duncan (for the boys, again!)
** Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

From the library sale shelves:
**Everyone Else's Girl by Megan Crane

From the store:
**Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
**Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg

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Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about mid-year reading… Now that we’ve come to the middle of the year, what do you think of your 2009 reading so far? Read anything interesting that you’d like to share? Any outstanding favourites?

If you click on the picture of books, labeled: completed books 2009, on my sidebar you will see a list of completed books so far this year. I have finished 31 which is a number a little behind where I was last year this time. That is alright though as I am not doing a "100 books in a year" type challenge or anything. What I am really happy about is that my challenge progress is right where I want it to be, at this, mid-year.

I have enjoyed most of the books I have read, and the couple which I liked the least I am still glad I finished--there are two of them and they were for the book award challenge and even though they weren't my cup of tea, I still think they were worthy of award.

The books which I can point to as outstanding area:
**The Uncommon Reader
** Sarah's Key
** The Birth House
** Mudbound
** Fair and Tender Ladies
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What are you reading on Mondays? is hosted each week by J. Kaye's Book Blog.

I am STILL reading Keeper and Kid, and hope to finish in a day or so. I have so many books I want to read and this one has hit a desperate, dragging on point that isn't too pleasant, yet I wan to know how it ends. It isn't a bad book, I think I just am not in the right mood for it at this time. But, I am so close to finishing it that I can taste it!

Up next:
The Well and the Mine

everything Austen---(edit: 5:00 p.m.)

Edit:: After a trip to my library this afternoon, I have chosen 2 different books instead of the ones at the end of this post. The first one is My Dear Cassandra: the letters of Jane Austen selected by Penelope Hughes-Hallett. The second one is Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners: compliments, charades and horrible blunders by Josephine Ross.





I just wrote a post the other day about how I need to scale down the number of challenges and how I am toying with the idea of chucking them mid-year. Well, apparently, I lied! I have seen this challenge floating around out in blog land for several days and have decided to jump in. It looks too delicious AND I have movie options so it is not all books I am adding to my pile.

The challenge is the Everything Austen challenge hosted by Stephanie's Written Word.

The details! The Everything Austen Challenge will run for six months (July 1, 2009 – January 1, 2010)! All you need to do is pick out what six Austen-themed things you want to finish to complete the challenge. Click the link above for a great list of movies and books to get you started--luckily, there is a lot of Austen stuff out there!


So, my list for now will include:

Books:
Emma or Mansfield Park (already on one of my challenge lists)
Two Guys Read Jane Austen
Jane Austen: a life by Claire Tomlin

Movies:
Becoming Jane
Clueless
A & E Emma

This should be fun!

The Sunday Salon

As is usual, the week has flown by too quickly.
Somebody! Stop the ride. I want to get off!

I have not had a great reading week--just too much going on. I am still reading Keeper and Kid. While I like the book, I think I am not just loving it to death, thus I am not ploughing through it as quickly as other books. When I finish it, I am thinking about reading The Well and the Mine next.

I participated in my usual weekly events this week:
**Monday Questions
**Wordless Wednesday
**My Favorite Reads
**Friday Finds

I put together a reading list for my two boys for summer reading and I found and joined a Summer Reading challenge.

It has been a good week, even though the reading has been slow. Here are some reasons I love summer:

Fresh Fruit

Graduations

Baseball

Youth group short term mission trips (Sam's first one!)

Last Day of School

Flowers

Have a great week everyone!

just one of the reasons I love summer!

Fresh melons and berries! Yum!

Weekly Geeks: reading challenges

This week's Weekly Geeks topic was suggested by Sheri of A Novel Menagerie. She writes:
"Reading Challenges: a help or a hurt? Do you find that the reading challenges keep you organized and goal-oriented? Or, do you find that as you near the end of a challenge that you've failed because you fell short of your original goals? As a result of some reading challenges, I've picked up books that I would have otherwise never heard of or picked up; that, frankly, I have loved. Have you experienced the same with challenges? If so, which ones? Do you have favorite reading challenges?"

As we pass the halfway point of 2009, how are you doing with your reading challenges? Did you participate in any challenges this year?

I just have to say, I love book challenges. Finding the book blogging community was one of the most inspiring things I have experienced on the internet! At first, book challenges helped me feel connected to other bloggers in a way that I hadn't experienced on my other blog. I have always loved to read and talk about books but no one in real life around me loves it as much as I do.

My first year I joined 29 challenges and finished all but 1 of them--(I was one book short from completing that last one)-- and there was quite a variety of challenges in that list. The bottom of my sidebar has a button for my 2008 challenges if you are interested in seeing them all. By the end of December I was feeling a bit stressed about finishing them all, even though I knew nothing bad would happen to me if I didn't finish them all. I just wanted to!

Book challenges have helped me with goal setting and feeling more organized as well as actually doing what they are intended for: challenging me! I definitely have read books I never would have picked up if not for a challenge. One of the things I am proud of is finishing the Book Awards challenge last year. Those books for sure would not have been chosed by me to read otherwise. There was quite a sense of accomplishment over that one and I can't wait for the new (long version) to start next year.

Now, after saying all that, I am really toying with the idea of scaling way back on challenges next year. There are times I feel like I can't just read what I want when I want because I have TOO much planned structure to my reading year. We will see though---come December/January when everyone is announcing the new challenges for 2010 I might throw my resolve out the window!

look good to me!

Windless Summer














Home Repair














Chin up, Honey














Oxygen














The Country of the Pointed Firs

To see other Friday Finds or to share some of your own, visit MizB, our Friday hostess!

favorites

My Favorite Reads is hosted by Alyce from At Home With Books every Thursday. What a great way to read reviews of books that were mainstream (or not!) a while back but have faded off the radar of what is "hot" right now in the land of literature.



One of the first books centered in Asia that I read as an adult and actually enjoyed is the spotlight book for my post this week. I read it back in April 2002. The title is Women of the Silk and the author is Gail Tsukiyama. I remember being drawn into a view of China I had never seen before and became a champion of the main character, Pei, very early on in the book. The conditions and treatment of young girls then, (and now), was heartbreaking but to see Pei rise above her circumstances was inspiring. There is also a sequel called The Language of Threads which I enjoyed every bit as much. Fans of Lisa See will enjoy this author and her books.

From Publishers Weekly
An auspicious debut, this sensitively written, impressively researched novel covers 20 years in the life of Pei, a Chinese girl sent to work in a silk factory during the first decades of the 20th century. Quick-witted, inquisitive, spirited Pei spends her early childhood on a poverty-stricken fish farm; her uncommunicative parents consign her to the factory for the wages she will send home. Initially terrified, Pei soon settles into the communal routine, and finds the 12-hour factory day made bearable by the kindness of supervisors and fellow workers. Along with her best friend, Lin, she decides at 16 to go through the hairdressing ceremony, in which girls pledge to dedicate their lives to silk work instead of marrying, and move into the peaceful milieu of the "sisters' house." Details of the process of spinning silk, the close bonds among the sisterhood, and contrasts between the tradition-steeped existence the young women enjoy and the upheaval attending the new communist regime create a compelling narrative. Tsukiyama's simple, elegant and fluid prose weaves a vivid picture of rural China. In delicately evoking the silk workers' world, she has opened a window onto an aspect of China few outsiders ever see.

wordless Wednesday

Day Lily
June, 2009

reading for the boys

After scouring online lists last night, and a trip to the library today, I have come up with some summer reading books for the boys. Keep in mind that our school system does not assign summer reading, and what few novels they read during the school are few and far between. I think my list, while not comprised of many older classics, is comprised of "newer" classics which will hold the boys' attention. I know they won't get to all of these, but hopefully most of them. I will assign pages per day for each book to encourage maximum use of time!

For Austen (age 17)

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Of Mice and Men ~or~ The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
My Antonia by Willa Cather (this is a maybe pick)
Death Be Not Proud by Gunther
Flowers for Algernon
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg

(there are few others to add to the list but the paper isn't by me right now!)


For Sam (age 13 1/2)

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Curtis
Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
(there will be few more added, as he is my voracious one)

For both boys:

The Call of the Wild
Alice in Wonderland
The Red Badge of Courage

A Summer Reading Challenge!

I have found a new Summer Reading Challenge, thanks to Kara at World According to Books. She left me a comment on Sunday saying she had just joined it too.


This challenge is being hosted by Susan at A Southern Daydreamer Reads. Very low key and you can change the books on your list anytime you want or need to. Click the link and join too! You know you want to. :) Thanks Susan for hosting this.

Here is my list and as you can see I have already finished some of them as I began my summer reading as soon as I was done reading the books I had chosen for The Spring Reading Thing.

Mudbound-finished
Keeper and Kid-finished
The Elegance of the Hedgehog-finished
The Well and the Mine-finished
Fair and Tender Ladies-finished
The Graveyard Book-finished
Mr. Pip--finished
Shanghai Girls-finished
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet-finished
Jane Emily
The Chili Queen
The Year of Fog-finished
Love Walked In-finished
The Governess
Emma
If You Lived Here-finished
Julie and Julia-finished
The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes-finished

Monday Games

What's In Your Mailbox Monday is hosted each week by Marcia over at The Printed Page.




Several books came into my house this week, some by mail and some by way of a shopping trip to 1/2 price books. I am being lazy right now and am going to post group photos of the two types of book.

First is the Mailbox books:



















All 3 of these arrived directly from Hatchett and I was so glad to see them. I had won them from various give-aways from various wonderfully generous book bloggers.
1. The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
2. Testimony
2. April and Oliver


This next stack is from 1/2 Price Books and most were only $1!




















1. The Time Traveler's Wife ( I read this many years ago when it was first released, loved it, sobbed through it, and am dying for the movie to come out this fall. I decided that I should re-read and I should own my own copy)
2. Hannah's Dream
3. Gone With the Wind (Read this in High School 30 years ago, want to re-read it and should own my own copy)
4. Cage of Stars
5. Baby Proof


This little gem also came from the store, cost $1 and looks priceless. It was published in 1954! I adore old books. Especially old books with their dust jackets.



















And lastly, I couldn't help myself. I had to have this bookmark. It made me laugh when I saw it!



















(Feng Shoe)

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Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about library borrowing…Do you restrict yourself on how many books you take out from the library at a time? Do you borrow books if you already have some out? Do you always reborrow books you don’t get to?



This is simple. I have no rules where it comes to library book. I take out what ever looks good and if I get to them before they are due, then fine. If not, that is okay as it is not like I have a shortage of books to read! Re-checking books can be a pain as I belong to a large library system which serves thousands and thousands of patrons. If a book is fairly new or extremely popular there is almost always a hold on it so re-checking becomes impossible.

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What are you reading on Mondays? is hosted each week by J. Kaye's Book Blog.



I am currently reading Keeper and Kid by Edward Hardy.
Next up: The Year of Fog or maybe The Governess: The Little Female Academy.

The Sunday Salon: recommendations needed!

Okay. Someone tell me where June flew off to? Seriously. Is it really the 21st already? Happy first day of summer to all of you in the northern hemisphere.



I wrote a little tribute post to my dear husband on my other blog just in case you are interested in seeing pictures of the man who so patiently endures my book collecting obsession. (little secret here: he has jumped on the loving books bandwagon more himself these past few years!)

Now, on to "about books".

Summer reading for me and my Boys--I kind of put together a list for myself since I did not find any summer reading challenges and I was too chicken to host one myself. My list is here.
But, as is not normal for me, I have yet to put together a little list for my son to read this summer. I find with him, if I am not occasionally throwing some different books at him, he tends to re-read a lot. Now even though I am not a fan of re-reading, I don't have a problem with him doing it to an extent, but I know there are lots of great books out there for him to still enjoy, voracious reader that he is.
He likes fantasy. A lot. Does anyone have some great recommendations from this genre for an almost 14 year old boy?

I would also like to expose him and my 16 year old, (who also tends to like fantasy but not as much as Sam, and really hasn't found a genre he is passionate about), to a little bit more historical fiction--this desire of mine is definitely a throw back to my homeschooling days with them. We always used a literature based curriculum.

So, please! Recommend away as fantasy is not my genre and I feel a bit at a loss here.
Tuesday is the last day of school here. I am continuing our tradition of taking the day off work, taking them out to lunch, hitting Old Navy for some new summer clothes, and then Barnes & Noble to buy them each a new book to kick off the summer reading!

My reading has been slow a bit this week. I did write a couple of reviews last week, Fair and Tender Ladies and also Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Both books I greatly enjoyed.
Right now I am reading Keeper and Kid, a book I saw reviewed sometime last year and it has been on my tbr radar for sometime. Because I haven't had a big chunk of time to read this week, it is taking me a while to really get into this book. But I think I am approaching that spot where I can say I am hooked and that I am enjoying it.

Alyce from At Home With Books is hosting a new weekly meme regarding books we may have read pre-blogging days which deserve a recommendation even though they aren't the books that everyone is talking about currently. I was able to participate this week and reading every ones response posts was great fun.

Well--that is all the news for today. I am off to enjoy the day with my sweet husband and kids as we celebrate all that he means to us and our family. Tomorrow I will get to play along with the Monday memes that I like and have several books that have made their way into to my house after a couple of weeks in a row of a sad lonely mailbox!


EDITED after our yummy lunch at Olive Garden with our two youngest boys. Dinner at our daughter's house is later!

Me and my honey:

Daddy and 2 of his boys (oldest boy couldn't come down for the day, as he had to work)

Lunch for the man of the day--absolutely yummy!

After we ate, we headed over to 1/2 price books. Part of my gift to Kerry was a gift certificate. He found 3 hardcovers on the $1 rack so he was quite pleased! I, of course, found my own little treasures but you will have to check back tomorrow to see all the books brought into this house this weekend!

mailbox love

Guess what came in the mail?

See ya!

I am off to bed to enjoy my favorite publication!

favorites

My Favorite Reads is hosted by Alyce from At Home With Books every Thursday. This is my first time to "play along" and I think this is a great idea. I have several book journals dating back to 2002 listing books I read which might be considered old and off the radar of what is considered a good book but which are such good books they deserve a shout out!

The book I have chosen this week is A Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich. I chose it because when I read it back in 2002 I could not forget it and have not been able to since! It is the most moving testament to a mother's love that I have ever read and I must say, by the end of the book I was sobbing as I so totally related to the changing stages of a mother's life. I was at the time, watching my daughter, and first born child, navigate her way through her senior year and I was preparing to let her test her wings and fly out of our nest! The pioneer woman Aldrich writes about here is based on her own mother.

It is not only a portrait of a mother's love, but is also a tribute to a woman devoted to the man she loves even through adversity, in this book that adversity is the trials encountered as a young family that has moved to Nebraska, a frontier state at the time. Abby, the young mother, slowly gives up her personal dreams as real life on the prairie takes over, but then she realizes that she can see those dreams fulfilled in her childrens' futures.

This book is truly a classic and a must read!


Review "Piercingly beautiful. . . . Aldrich's pioneer woman was based on her mother, and the integrity of her depiction of life in a sod house in the late nineteeth-century Nebraska speaks to her readers. . . . In her own introduction Aldrich writes of wanting to tell her mother's story after her mother's death: `Other writers had depicted the Midwest's early days, but so often they had pictured their women as gaunt, browbeaten creatures, despairing women whom life seemed to defeat. That was not my mother. Not with her courage, her humor, her nature that would cause her to say at the end of her life: `We had the best time in the world.'"-Allyson F. McGill, Belles Lettres (Belles Lettres 20081124) "The language is good and sturdy and dotted with imaginative metaphors and similes (`Silence, so deep, that it roared in its vast vacuum'). If the book tries to crowd too much life into 300 pages, well, there was a lot of life: `We old pioneers,' Abbie says at the end, `we dreamed dreams into the country.'"-Roger Miller, Milwaukee Journal (Milwaukee Journal )

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Book: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Pages: 285
Finished: June 2009
Challenges:
** New Author Challenge
** Read & Review
** War Through the Generations

First Sentence: "Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the Panama Hotel."

To sum this book up in one word, I would have to use bittersweet. This debut novel by Jamie Ford has been making the rounds in the book blogging world for several months and I knew I wanted to read it long before I really knew much about it based on the cover alone.

When I discovered it was set in my home city, Seattle, I wanted to read it even more. So many of the places mentioned in the book are places I know about and have heard about. The old Panama Hotel mentioned above is a place that I asked my husband to take me to this summer so I could see it in person. What I have never heard a lot of is that of what the main story is about--the evacuation of the Japanese community in Seattle and the San Juan Islands. I knew this event happened, but only because I read, many years ago, the book Snow Falling on Cedars. That book quickly became one of my all time favorites. What I did not know until reading this book was that there was a temporary camp at the Puyallup Fair Grounds. I also did not know that so very few of those who were shipped away ever actually returned to Seattle. Never returned to claim their possessions that were stowed away because there was nothing for them to come back to. In the 3 or so years they were imprisoned, the buildings and businesses that comprised Japantown in Seattle were bought up by other people and turned into the very diverse international district which at the time of the end of the war was predominantly Chinese. This was a dreadful event in our history and one that should be talked about more when discussions of WWII occur. When I graduated from high school in 1980, my formal education in a school which sat in the suburbs of Seattle included the very bare minimum on this topic. It was like it was kind of added in at the end of our study of WWII after spending weeks and weeks on the European Front and the Holocaust.


I read mostly good things about this book from numerous blogs, but I did read a few criticisms when I looked on Amazon and I have to say that I agree with one of those criticisms in particular. The two protagonists, Henry and Keiko are just too young for me to believe they could feel the things so deeply that Ford has written at their age--the age was 12. Especially back in 1942, where even though the world was turned upside down I think children were a little more innocent when it came to love and the opposite gender at such a young age.

The novel did read a little like a young adult book which explains to me why this book showed up on a reading list for Sam's 7th grade honors history class this spring as one option they could read as a wind up to their Washington State History unit. Sam did not choose to read this one, but I may encourage him to read it this summer.

Regardless of that one little criticism I did enjoy this book! The prose is sparse, but a very clear picture of the two cultures Henry and Keiko come from are portrayed beautifully.

From Booklist Ford vacillates between a front story dominated by nostalgia and a back story dominated by fear. The front story struggles to support the weight of the back story, and the complexity Ford brings to the latter is the strength of this debut novel, which considers a Chinese American man’s relationship with a Japanese American woman in the 1940s and his son in the 1980s. Although Ford does not have anything especially novel to say about a familiar subject (the interplay between race and family), he writes earnestly and cares for his characters, who consistently defy stereotype. Ford posits great meaning in objects—a button reading “I am Chinese” and a jazz record, in particular—but the most striking moments come from the characters’ readings of each other.

giveaway!!!

Serendipity is hosting a little giveaway! Is the cover of this book not the most gorgeous ever? The book is Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen. This giveaway ends June 18th, so hurry on over and sign up. Scrap Girl lives in the UK so I am not sure how the whole time difference thing will work with when she actually closes it!

Wordless Wednesday

My 3 sons

June 2009

Fair and Tender Ladies

Book: Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith
Pages: 316
Finished: June 2009
Challenges:
** A-Z Challenge
** Read and Review
** tbr challenge
** Summer Vacation Challenge
** Southern Reading Challenge

First sentence: "My dear Hanneke, Your name is not much common here, I think it is so pretty too.".....

....so begins the letters that Ivy Rowe spends her life writing. Ivy was born near the turn of the century and and this lovely little book is the story of her life, spent in the Appalachian Mountains, seen through her eyes as she writes from her heart to those people most dear to her. Life is not easy--death being an all too common event, along with poverty and the lack of education. But life is still a thing of beauty to Ivy and she finds herself to be a strong woman, a loving woman, and a practical woman, trying to preserve the simple way of life that she holds precious amongst her memories of growing up in Sugar Fork.



From USA Today: "These beautiful letters...display Ivy's soul up close, the way a just caught firefly illuminates a jar. So read does she become that itis hared to believe that Ivy did not actually live to write her letters."

The Sunday Salon: June 14th

It has been a very eventful week around here! First we brought a new little dog into our home and she already has us spoiling her like crazy. Her name is Molly and is the sweetest little thing.





Then we were honored to watch our second born child graduate from college. It has been a rough and winding road for him, but he finally reached his goal and we are so proud of him! Now that gives us two college graduates and with two more to go!







Along with those two major events we have also had baseball games and school concerts and finals and end of the year projects and ....only 7 more days of school! We are ALL ready for a break.

Amazingly though, I have managed to have time to read! I finished Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith and plan to write my review in the next couple of days while I am off of work on a little medical leave. I have now been reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and am enjoying it---especially because it is set in the Seattle area and deals with a part of local history which I was not taught in school. It wasn't until reading Snow Falling on Cedars several years ago that I really realized what happened to the Japanese population here in my hometown!

I hope to finish this one tonight and hope to either read Keeper and Kid or If You Lived Here. I haven't finished any challenges recently feel like I am right on track for finishing them all on time!
Have a great week everyone!