I didn't pull together a mailbox post last week, so today I am sharing two weeks worth of book acquisitions. In the interest of post length, I will link each book to amazon for a description, for those interested in more information. Just click the book! Paper Books I Purchased: 1
What are you reading on Mondays? is hosted each week by hostess, Sheila from One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. I am home sick from work today, and may be tomorrow also--nasty head/chest cold makes for a miserable me. I hope to be able to just lay around and read the rest of the day.
I am currently engrossed in: Eating Heaven by Jennie Shortridge
But I hope to REALLY start The Girl in the Green Raincoat this week
Another one I would like to start is a Persephone book I found while visiting Viv over at Serendipty. ( you should visit her blog-she is witty, a prolific reader and a very great writer)
Saplings by Noel Streatfield
That is all from me today--crawling back into bed with my books and a box of tissue! Oh, and I am TOTALLY ignoring the white stuff that is falling outside my window. We were wanting snow in January when the rest of the country was getting some. Now? Not so much. It will be March tomorrow--where is our typical rainy gray Seattle skies?
Outside my window: The wind is blowing and very cold rain is drizzling down. We are making the change over from off and on snow showers all week to warmer (term used loosely--low 40's to be more specific) temps and rain.
I am thinking: I don't like the fact that my eyes are watering, my nose is all stuffed up, and I think this crud is moving into my chest again. It really burns when I cough. I hate having to call in sick to work--which is what I am thinking might need to happen tomorrow. Everyone else at work has had it, and it is definitely not a 24 hour bug.
I am listening to: My Norah Jones radio station on Pandora.
I am grateful for: Being able to persevere through a health insurance debacle I have been dealing with since October. The short of it? I have dual insurance coverage and they didn't want to play nice with each other. Now, I have forced them too, and payments have been made to everyone all around---including me!
I am reading: Eating Heaven by Jennie Shortridge and The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman. I just saw that two books I have been waiting for are set to be released: 1. Dreams of Joy by Lisa See due out March 31st. (this is the sequel to Shanghai Girls) 2. The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas due out April 26.
I am photographing: I took this photo of my snow covered pussy willow tree when the snow began falling on Wednesday.
I am listing: My menu plan for the week, and later today I will do a Mailbox Monday post for tomorrow.
I am creating: I finally finished the little dress for Adelaide--pics coming later when I get the buttons on, and now am creating a little top for the little girl due in May.
To live my faith: Lots of praying!
I am hoping and praying: That my oldest son doesn't really end up staying in China for a third year....
Around the house: We have purchased a brand new desktop computer, something that has been long overdue. Currently Sam and Dad are out purchasing a new laptop--another item that is long overdue. If you saw the dinosaurs we have been using for years and years, you would be shocked! Shocked I tell you!
From the kitchen: We had yummo chicken noodle soup last night for dinner--perfect for a bitter damp evening. Click the link in the question above of what I am listing to see the other things I am planning for the week. I am thinking if I can muster the energy, I might make some banana bread, using my mother-in-law's secret recipe!
One of my favorite things: The relief I felt when Sam walked in the door at midnight last night. His school jazz band had traveled to Moscow Idaho for the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. They had to come home over the mountain pass in the dark, in the icy snowy roads, in a school bus. Umm, did I mention the passes were under a winter weather advisory and how terrible treacherous the roads looked on the traffic cams? :-)
The child this week: Austen, big child, is working on more college apps for next year. Sam, the younger, is practicing bari sax like crazy. He is working on a new piece to take to State in April. He and I will be attending the little annual Stuttering workshop next Saturday. (he is a mild stutterer)
Plans for the week: Get well!! Hope I don't drown under the work that is sure to pile up if I call in sick. No one does my job when I am out.
On this date: In 2008, I reviewed The Color Purple, a book that had been in my tbr pile for ages. In 2009 I did a Poetry Friday entry complete with poem and photograph. In 2010, I wrote about some thrift store children's books finds! Every Mimi needs a children's book shelf at her house.
Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads each week and offers a unique way to merge booking with cooking! Go check out her blog and see what other people have linked up with today.
After taking care of sick grandgirl Adelaide last weekend, I now find myself with the same head cold she was suffering from. A big thank you from her Mimi for sharing! ;-)
I thought I would try to get my blogging act together and write a weekend cooking post today--never mind the two reviews I have to write hanging over my head. This post will be done in two parts--the first, about a foodie kind of book I am reading and the second, my menu plan for the upcoming week. It is full of comfort food I tell you! After our record low temps and snow last week, we now have a cool and very rain showery pattern headed our way. I find that rainy damp stretches chill me as much as freezing temps.
A while ago, I saw a delightful looking book on someone's blog and quickly acquired a copy for myself.
I am now getting around to reading it, and so far, I am in love with it. The main character, the writing style, the setting (Pacific Northwest!). I am not that far yet, but like the flow of the story.
So friends. That is what I am reading, what I am cooking, and now I think I will throw in a picture of what I am knitting! It is a little newborn size shirt intended for our new grandgirl, Amelia, due in May. I fancied this up a bit and put a little picot edging on the hemline....so cute and so tiny!
Book: The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown Finished: February 2011 Pages: 336 ( I read mine on my Kindle) Challenges: ** Amy Einhorn Perpetual ** A-Z 2011** Just For Fun**
From Amazon: The Weird Sisters in Eleanor Brown's delightful debut could have been weirder, considering their upbringing. Their professor father spoke primarily in Shakespearean verse, and while other kids in the bucolic Midwestern college town of Barnwell checked the TV lineup, the Andreas girls lined up their library books. They buried themselves in books so completely that while they loved each other, they never learned to like each other much. And when adulthood arrived and they pursued separate destinies, each felt out of step with the world. When news of their mother's cancer makes a terribly convenient excuse for attention-hog Bean (Bianca) and Cordy (Cordelia), the “baby” who always got off easy, to boomerang back to Barnwell from New York and New Mexico, respectively, they return bearing the guilt (and consequences) of embezzlement and pregnancy-by-random-painter. They're most terrified of admitting these failures to Rose (Rosalind), the responsible eldest, who stayed in Barnwell to teach Math and cling to her caretaker-martyr role. With lively dialogue and witty collective narration, the sisters' untangling of their identities and relationships feels honest and wise, and the questions they raise about how we carry our childhood roles into our adult lives will resonate with all readers, especially those with their own weird sisters.
From Me: Well. I have heard that this book has gotten some mixed reviews, but I am going to throw my hat into the camp of the positive! I loved this book and I connected with it on a very personal level.
I could relate to the relationship the sisters had with one another--that is not to say that I necessarily liked all 3 of the sisters, and I was glad to see some redemption in all of the them by the end of the book. Really this is a testament to the idea that people can change--and do change- and can change for the better.
Most of importantly though, it made me really think about my own family. I am a sister. I only have one sister (no brothers) so there are only the two of us. I have always dreamed of having one of those loving , mushy gushy, Hallmark, do everything together kind of relationship with my sister, but it isn't there. We truly are more like the thorny Weird Sisters. And to be honest, there have been plenty of times that Kelly and I have not liked each other much. We could probably spend hours and thousands of dollars sitting on an analyst's couch to sort through our relationship but I have come to some conclusions all by myself. We are so totally opposite of each other, and there is so much bad history from our early young adult/ young married/ having children phase of our lives-- that is really, now, so much water under the bridge. To say the least, our relationship is thorny, but as we are aging, it is getting better. We will probably never have one of those dream relationships, But now? I know that we will be there for each other in times of trouble--just like those Weird Sisters. At the end of the day, there will come a time when both of our parents are gone, and we will be all that is left of our small little family.
This little gem was written in the third person plural, which felt strange at first, but was ultimately effective in portraying the lasting connection the 3 had with each other. The Shakespeare quotes were confusing just a few times, the Bard and I don't have a great relationship, but I did "get"most of them, and was pleased that there seemed to be just a nice amount of those quotes peppered throughout.
I marked a few passages as I read (a new skill I learned on my Kindle!)--
1. On sisterhood:
{Would we all have chosen to come back, knowing that it would be the three of us again, that all those secrets squeezed into one house would be impossible to keep? the answer is irrelevant--it was some kind of sick fate. We were destined to be sisters at birth, and apparently we were destined to be sisters now, when we thought we had put all that behind us.}
2. This made me smile--as a mother of 4, the battle over "the hump" has occurred many times. And even though Sam is the biggest of my 4 boys, because he is the youngest, he still gets stuck on the hump on those occasions all 3 boys are in my car.
{Rose and Cordy stood by the door for a moment and stared at each other expectantly, until Cordy rolled her eyes and climbed into the middle...."I haven't been the smallest for a long time," Cordy complained as we squeezed in on either side. "You're still the youngest," Bean said....}
3. I strove to install this preparedness for any kind of waiting in my own children, and fits me, personally to a tee. I always have a book (and Kindle) with me!
{On this road trip to our mother's date with breastiny (tm Cordy), we had all brought books, of course, no one in our family would ever think of being without reading material...}
4. All I could think here was, "oh, how true".
{ Rose and Bean looked at her as though she were a noxious substance we had just stepped in. The was a look best performed as a duet, and Cordy cringed just as she had the million times we had delivered it in concert before. How was it possible, all these years and experiences later, that no one could wound us like the others?}
5. Sisters--or really in the case of all combinations of siblings
{But it is worth noting, especially now that "weird" has evolved from its delicious original meaning of supernatural strangeness into something depressingly critical and pedestrian...Shakespeare didn't really mean the sisters were weird at all. The word he originally used was much closer to "wyrd" and that has an entirely different meaning. "Wyrd" means fate. And we might argue that we are not fated to do anything, that we have chosen everything in our lives, that there is no such thing as destiny. And we would be lying. Rose first, Bean never first, Cordy always. And if we don't accept it, don't see, like Shakespeare's Weird Sisters did, that we cannot fight our family and cannot fight our fates, well, whose failing is that but our own? Our destiny is in the way we were born, in the way we were raised, in the sum of the three of us.}
6. An arrow to my heart--
{We see stories in magazines or newspapers sometimes, or read novels about the deep and loving relationships between sisters. Sisters are supposed to be tight and connected, sharing family history and lore, laughing over misadventures. But we are not that way. We never have been, really, because even our partnering was more for spite than for love. Who are these sisters who act like this, who treat each other as their best friends? We have never met them. We know plenty of sisters who get along well, certainly, but wherefore the myth? }
This book helped me look at my relationship with my sister in new eyes. With renewed hope that we can and are changing things with each other as we age, that it is ok not to have that "magazine Hallmark-ish" kind of relationship. We have a shared history and memories, and not all of them are bad. We are who we are as individuals, but we are finding a way to come together again as family. Yes, there is hope that we will become friends.....
(note: books for the Just For Fun challenge aren't supposed to be cross-overed to other challenges, but I figure, I found this book on other blogs and I would have read it for fun even if it wasn't part of the Amy Einhorn imprint. The same goes fro the A-Z challenge. I didn't pick this book specifically for my "W" book, but hey, it works there! )
A couple of weeks ago, I posted pictures of raindrop covered pussy willows--expressing hope that Spring was right around the corner.
Well, here are those same pussy willows this afternoon. Yes! We have begun to get the snow rolling in, with Arctic temps and more snow headed our way tonight. And yes! We did close work down early so I got a partial snow day out of the deal. Might even be closed tomorrow too--we will see!
I guess the rest of the country has had its share of winter weather--it is our turn now!
Sorry-- Not wordless today-and very random. I am sharing my favorite pictures of my sweetie-pie Adelaide from the weekend. We had a great time together even though I knew she wasn't feeling the best due to the cold she was coming down with. Thankfully she waited until mommy and daddy came home to spike a fever and to vomit! OH....the joys of being a Mimi!
I finished 2 books recently that I need to write about. Both of them were great and worthy of reading. Number one is The Weird Sisters, and Number 2 is Deep Down True. Hopefully I will get them reviewed this week.
We are looking at a blast of winter hitting us tonight, with chances of significant snow fall lasting from tonight, through part of the day Thursday. I am keeping fingers and toes crossed for a snow day out of it--thus, the blogging can get caught up. :)
I am currently reading, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It is an odd little book-with such serious subject matter. It is quite a different and unique experience to read about the Holocaust through a very sheltered and pampered 9 year old German boy's eyes.
We got a new computer over the weekend and oh my goodness! How did I manage to blog on that old dinosaur, single processor??? And don't get me started to raving about our new 24 inch monitor. How long did we have the old one? Oh, maybe about 8 years or so--too long in my book.
Not much reading or blogging happening this morning! We have had Adelaide since last evening--(her first over nighter!) and I have totally forgotten how busy a 15 month can be. She is such a good girl though, and I have big plans after quiet time to take her shopping at the Carter's outlet and then out for a bite of lunch. And please indulge me, because there will be photos coming! Here is a picture I took about 7:00 AM today--
...after she woke me up at 6:30 with her sweet voice just chattering away. I was going to let her stay in there a while longer but decided to check on her and she was in dire need of a diaper change. After that, she had milk in her cup and played! This little red-head is about the only thing I will get up at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday for.
Later today--I hope to write a weekend cooking post and a review of The Weird Sisters....so stay tuned. :)
What are you reading on Mondays? is hosted each week by hostess, Sheila from One Person's Journey Through a World of Books. I am home sick from work today, and may be tomorrow also--nasty head/chest cold makes for a miserable me. I hope to be able to just lay around and read the rest of the day.
