End of 2009 Reading Meme

We book bloggers have criminal tendencies. We see an interesting meme and steal mercilessly. I admit to be of this disposition. This meme came from Dolce Bellezza, who pilfered it from another source, who also pilfered it. See what I mean?

How many books read in 2009?
59

How many fiction and non fiction?
51/8

Male/Female author ratio?
22/37

Favourite book of 2009?
The Secret Scriptures
Cutting for Stone
Last Night in Montreal
The Well and the Mine
The First Part Last
Prayers for Sale
Homer & Langley
Green Angel
When She Flew

Least favourite?
A Peculiar Grace

Oldest book read?
The Reluctant Dragon

Longest and shortest book titles?
Love Finds You in Lonesome Prairie, Montana
Home

Longest and shortest books?
Cutting for Stone (688)
The Reluctant Dragon (41)

Any re-reads?
The Reluctant Dragon

Favourite character of the year?
Ghosh (Cutting for Stone)

Which book wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?
The First Part Last (thank you 3M!)

Which author was new to you in 2009 that you now want to read the entire works of?
Alice Hoffman (Green Angel)
Sandra Dallas (Prayers for Sale)
Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scriptures)

Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?
The Merchant of Venice because I want to read all of Shakespeare's works.

Did you learn anything about yourself and blogging this year?
*I can easily get caught up in the lure of ARCs.
*I'd like to include a "number of pages read" section in my sidebar.
*My blog has mood swings that correspond to my own. :)
*My life is about so much more than the books I read. I want my blog to reflect that.
*I like to cook and my readers like it when I share it with them.
*Blogging continues to be a great creative outlet for me.

Travel Log

Sights and sounds on the drive to Nana and Dude's:

* we saw a goat in the back of a pickup.
* my daughter saw what looked like a reindeer but turned out to be a pile of dirt with a tumble weed. I said it was probably manure. Reindeer Poop. ;)
* Snow!! In California!!
* when he saw an Out of Order sign on the root beer dispenser my son said, "They're out of beer Mom." He has my sense of humor.
* we saw a bright yellow, 3 wheeled motorcycle.
* I yelled back to son as we drove by the beer factory, "They have beer here! One pint or two?"
* we saw a car with the passenger seat taken up by a large teddy bear.
* we were listening to John Mayer's The Great Indoors as we drove by a store called The Great Outdoors.
* we drove by a convertible BMW with the licence plate 8T PLUS. The driver did look really old. What a healthy fellow!

A Challenging Year

I'm going to sign up for several challenges for the coming year(like everyone else) but I'm not committing to more than I think I can realistically handle. All of these challenges run from 1/1/10 to 12/31/10, and they all allow cross-overs. Sweet!

Our Mutual Read: A Victorian Reading Challenge
Signing up for Level 1-to read 4 books set between 1837-1901, and possibly doing the Short Story Mini Challenge-to read 12 short stories within the same time period.
1. Bleak House
2. Great Expectations
3. The Three Musketeers
4. Alias Grace

Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge
Signing up for the Saturday Movie Marathon-read 4 books, then watch their movies and review both.
1. Bleak House
2. Because of Winn-Dixie
3. The Three Musketeers
4. Girl, Interrupted

Audio Book Challenge
Signing up as Fascinated–listen to 6 audio books.
1. Bleak House
2. Because of Winn-Dixie
3. A Cousin's Promise
4. A Cousin's Prayer
5.
6.

2010 Twenty-Ten Challenge
Reading 2 books each in 10 different categories, thus reading 20 books. Clever!
1.Young Adult-
2.TBR- Great Expectations
3.Shiny and New-
4.Bad Bloggers-
5.Charity- Alias Grace and Girl, Interrupted
6.New in 2010- Fireworks Over Toccoa
7.Older Than You- Summer and The Three Musketeers
8.Win! Win!- Bleak House and Because of Winn-Dixie
9.Who Are You Again?-The Romantic
10.Up to You- My Life in France and A Cousin's Prayer

A New Kind of Audio Book

The holidays mean travelling for my little family, so before each trip we stop in at the library and pick up an audio book for the long drive. This morning I was by the library with my daughter so we went in. My daughter pulled out Ella Enchanted, a book we enjoyed as a read aloud a few years back. But the box said it needed a battery and headphones. (?) I opened the case to find what looked like a cassette tape with buttons. It's a new device called a Playaway. With a AAA battery and a set of ear buds you can listen to an audio book without a CD player. It's like an MP3 player with a preloaded audio book.

I am not very electronics savvy, but I was able to figure out this Playaway within a couple of minutes. There's a play button, volume, fast forward, rewind and a button to speed up the reading, kind of like a x2 on a DVD player, but it's still very easy to listen to. There is one other button I haven't figured out called "6 graphic equalizer presets". It seems to control the quality of the reading but I am fine with whatever the current preset is.

We got Ella Enchanted for my daughter and Bleak House for myself. There is a wide variety of offerings from classics to children's to modern (Danielle Steel, Beverly Lewis, Gresham, 39 Clues, Clifford, The Brutal Telling). These are so cool. So far, the ones I looked at are all unabridged. They have the same readers as the traditional audio books. They are expensive to buy but my library is stocking up.

I'm impressed and looking forward to a long drive with Dickens.

*I don't work for Playaway and have received nothing for this review.

Who Wouldn't Want One?

I haven't gotten on the Reader bandwagon, mostly because I have a room full of books already that I paid for but I haven't read, but since it is being offered as a prize by the very generous Pam at Bookalicio.us for her one year blogiversary, I'm sure I could put it to use. You say you want a chance to win one for yourself? All you have to do is tweet "I want to win a Sony Pocket Reader from Bookalicious! http://bit.ly/7dB8os #bookalicious" and you're in. You get an extra entry for blogging about it. So you see, I am not sharing out of the goodness of my heart but from a ruthless desire to one up everyone else so I can get one of those readers in my hot little hands. I'll take the pink one Pam.

Review: The Snowflake

The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty
text by Kenneth Libbrecht
photos by Patricia Rasmussen

I noticed this book at bookstores last winter. I thought it looked like a stunning coffee table book. The photography is just so beautiful. It was hard to believe that these are pictures of actual snowflakes, not glass ornaments. The quilter in me thought, "Quilter, you could make quilt patterns from these photos." And then I thought, "Quilter, you are so totally right."


Thinking a coffee table book would be a good choice for the Four Month Challenge, earning me 20 points, I checked it out of the library. Surprise surprise! There are words in this here book. Not just a few but many. And big ones at that. This is more than a coffee table book; this is a scientific text put into layman's terms. The author is a physics professor and head of the physics department at Caltech. He's been studying snowflakes since he was a young boy growing up in North Dakota.


Prof. Libbrecht explains what a snow crystal is, what the different forms consist of, and the conditions in which each type develops. There are plates and branching and high humidity... I won't pretend to have understood everything I read but what I read was certainly interesting.

For example, did you know that most snow crystals have 6 branches or plates? Occasionally you will find 12 sided crystals and rarely the 3 sided kind. But there was also columns, bullets and needles. The weather conditions must be very specific to create each kind. He deals with the commonly held belief that no 2 snowflakes are alike. I am now an amateur expert on snow crystal trivia.

Even if you don't want to read all about snowflakes, at least check out the book for the photographs. There are several of them, including one called a Photographic Album. They will make you appreciate winter and nature.

And that quilt idea? Plans are in the making.

BTT-Speedy Gonzales

What do you think of speed-reading? Is it a good way to get through a lot of books, or does the speed-reader miss depth and nuance? Do you speed-read? Is some material better suited to speed-reading than others?

The average person reads 250-300 words per minute. I read 100 words a minute. When I concentrate on speed I can make it to 150 wpm but I worry about missing something. This means I can read about 25 pages in an hour if I work at it. No, I am not a speed reader. But my son is. I haven't tested his speed but he can make it through a 1000 page book in 3 days. Then he can spend half a day telling you everything about the story. He has lost nothing in the reading just because he has done it quickly. In fact, I sometimes think I lose something along the way because it takes so long for me to get from cover to cover. But my speed has improved with practice. The more I read the faster I read. I didn't know that was possible until it happened to me. It takes time but it does work.

It's Tuesday...Where are you?

Has a book ever transported you to a new land or experience? Share where your reading has taken you this week. Visit An Adventure in Reading to participate.

I am a girl convicted of murder in Kingston in Canada. A doctor of a new branch of medicine, psychology, is trying to figure out my guilt or innocence.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Fairies, Reluctant Dragons, Rogue Tooth Fairies and Stitches

I've noticed that there are 4 books in my sidebar that haven't yet been reviewed. We can't have that now, can we? So here are my very small reviews:

The Reluctant Dragon - What a cute story about a pacifist dragon who is more interested in poetry and acting than in frightening the people in a local village. I've read it more than once and I always enjoy it. It's short and great for kids.

The Coming of the Fairies - Sir Conan Arthur Doyle wrote this non-fiction book in 1920 in defense of the sensational photos of the Cottingley fairies. It pretty much ruined Doyle's credibility with the public. It was dry and repetitive and definitely written from a slanted POV. To learn more about the Cottingley story, which is very interesting in its self, go here, or watch the movie Fairy Tale: A True Story. My family loved the movie even though it is not very accurate. It's on par with The Little Princess and The Secret Garden.

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy - It was difficult as a read-aloud because there are duel stories going on so the switching back and forth was awkward but the story was fun and made my kiddos LOL often. The vocabulary is broad and will stretch the minds of many young kids. We enjoyed it.

Stitches - I read Stitches because of several recommendations from book bloggers. I didn't find it fascinating. His family was riddled with mental illness and he suffered as a result but there was no real reason why I needed to know about it, unlike Maus or Persepolis which have something important to say. There was one drawing that was amazing. It's of the author's mother when he walks in on her in a compromising situation. It conveyed the emotions of deep sadness and fear that she must have felt. Otherwise I wasn't impressed.

The Sunday Salon

Literature
Books-In case you missed it on Thursday, I quit 3 books this week because they were bogging me down. Now I'm working on The Snowflake and Alias Grace, both for the Four Month Challenge.

Challenges-I'm down to 2 challenges and am planning to join the 2010 Challenge that begins Jan. 1st. It seems like an easy one to fit my reading whims into as I go, making it easier to complete. I am making steady progress on the Four Month Challenge but I quit the one book I was reading for the Really Old Classics. I'm failing that one. Perhaps a couple of short plays can help me along.

Life
Quilts-I have several quilt tops that I've made because I like to sew and I love beautiful fabrics, but I don't need them. (20 baby quilts in pink do me no good other than to stare at.) I've considered finishing them and selling them on Etsy. Has anyone had any luck with Etsy? What do you think? Here is a queen sized quilt top I finished last week.

Christmas-Twelve days til Christmas! We have our tree up, all decorated and looking lovely. I still have shopping to do. The 2 boys are good but my daughter doesn't want much. You'd think this would be a good problem to have but I cannot possibly give the boys 10 gifts each and have only 1 for the girl. Suggestions for a creative girl that likes music and playing on her computer?
Have a great week friends!

Adventures in French Cooking

It was after we had enjoyed my first French cooking endeavor, Boeuf Bourguignon, that Mom declared she expected Chocolate Soufflé for Thanksgiving. She wasn't joking. Mom was so serious about it that she bought a soufflé dish and looked up soufflé recipes and taped an episode of Good Eats about soufflés(very helpful) that we watched together. She even ate a chocolate soufflé at a fancy-pants restaurant nearby so she would know what it was supposed to taste like. She called it research. Suuuure.

This was my first taste of chocolate soufflé but I am a big fan now. It was just so delicious.
We used Julia's recipe with one exception: I substituted hot cocoa for the strong coffee that it called for. We knew from this experience that the coffee flavor comes through too strongly for our discerning palettes.

We didn't get away without learning a couple of lessons. It was a first try after all. It wasn't perfect. We didn't have the right sized soufflé dish because we couldn't find one that was 2-2.5 quarts so we used a 1.5 quart dish which worked alright, but the dish was small enough that it needed extra time to cook in the middle while the outside got a touch too much heat. It made not a bit of difference to the taste. You can see a little of the black edges in this photo.

Isn't she beautiful?

That fancy-pants restaurant I mentioned earlier? We went there a few days later where I sampled the Grand Marnier Soufflé. OMG, Heaven! They serve their soufflés with warm sauce that gets poured over the top and into the center, chocolate for the chocolate and vanilla for the Grand Marnier. I will be doing that next time because Mom already declared that Soufflé is now a family tradition for the holidays. :)

I'm a Quitter, Not a Bored Reader

Hey blogosphere! It's been a while. What have you been up to lately? I can't say I've been busy because I haven't. I can't say I've been sick. Maybe a little sick but not enough to prevent blogging. I can't even say there is nothing to blog about. I've just been too bored to blog. I make no apologies. I'm just saying.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately but nothing seems to be grabbing me, so I am going to do something I hate doing. I'm quitting. I have been shuffling from book to book, reading a chapter in this one and a chapter in that, hoping that all books will be gotten through eventually, but I'm finding that I want less and less to read because some of these books just suck.

I feel guilty about quitting a book, like I'm giving up on it too soon, like I haven't given it time to reach it's full potential. I hate giving up on a story that may just be building up to something interesting. Especially if it's a book that others have raved about. Especially if it's a book that I spent money on. I might hurt the little guys feelings. Well phooey to guilt. So there. Childish, I know but that's what I'm about.

So here is what I have decided to quit under the cliche that life is too short:

Lake Wobegon Days - A library copy of the last book for the Take a Chance Challenge. Even though the challenge ended about 2 weeks ago I wanted to finish it for my own sense of accomplishment. Man, is this book boring. I kept thinking, "So why am I supposed to care about the founding of this town, about the bears that chased away students from it's first college? And why was this book on the Bestsellers List way back when?" So I quit it at page 150.

The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury: The Love of Books - With a title like that I figured I couldn't go wrong. I bought it. It didn't matter that I had no clue who de Bury was or that the book was written in biblical language in the 14th century. It was extremely thin and called The Love of Books. How bad could it be? Well I disagree with de Bury and his writing is hard to follow, not just because of the language but because he changed tenses from chapter to chapter, and because he worships books the way zealots worship God. He even misquotes the Bible to do it. I'm a Christian and a book lover but this was too much. So I quit it at page 19.

The White Mary - So many people have praised this one. Based on the description I wasn't so sure about it so I got the audio version since sometimes that helps me get through a book faster. Nope. I should have trusted my instincts. The degree of research is impressive and the writing is just fine but the subject matter is not my cuppa tea. I thought it sounded a lot like The Heart of Darkness but that made me want to reread The Heart of Darkness, not to continue reading The White Mary. Sorry to the people who loved it, but I quit it at Disk 3.

Awww. I feel so much better. Now I can move on to more interesting books like Alias Grace and The Snowflake. The guilt will just have to crawl into a hole somewhere in the cellar.

Review: When She Flew

When She Flew
by Jennie Shortridge

Wow! I know it's become cliche to say a book is compelling but never was a book more fit for the verb than When She Flew. From the moment I broke the spine I had to find out what happened next. I even neglected my precious computer. This is seriously good reading.

Thirteen year old Lindy has been living undetected with her Iraq vet father for 5 years in a wildlife sanctuary in Oregon when she is spotted. Police are sent to investigate and make sure the girl is in no danger. Officer Jess Villareal disagrees with her Sergeant who has decided that Lindy should be put in foster care until her safety is verified. Jess has a sense about people and her sense tells her that separation from her father will cause more damage to Lindy than good, so she does something she has never done before: she goes against protocol and helps the father and daughter escape from police custody. Jess is just doing what she believes to be right but it will have farther reaching consequences than she could have imagined.

There is just nothing about this book that I didn't love. The characters were all sympathetic (except the mom who, thankfully, was given very little ink) and courageous. Lindy was beautiful and brave. Jess was strong and full of righteous conviction. The reactions of the police department as well as the community felt genuine. Even the excessive cussing was what I believe would be accurate to this type of situation. This was a story that could definitely be real. In fact it was based on a real circumstance that the author touches on in a small interview in the back of the book.

What I admired the most about this novel was that everyone (except mom) was trying to do the right thing. They were all honorable in their own way. They stayed in character and they developed consistently within that character. I kept rooting for the good guys and dreading the dangerous possibilities. The cover blurb says, "Taut, beautifully rendered." I agree 100%.

You should read this book. Seriously. Now!

A Sweet Tradition

The mail carrier delivered some Swiss Colony goodies yesterday. It's a family tradition that my husband the whole family looks forward to every year. You can see a variety of sausages, old world cookies, a bottle of port, petits fours, macadamia nut chocolates, butter toffee, Bavarian creme torte, and liqueur truffles. That's a lot of sweets but the fun doesn't stop there. Before the weekend is over we will also have a large box of See's Candies and some fancy cheeses and crackers to go with those sausages. When Dad pulls out the sweets there are no limits either. You want 10 candies? Well, go right ahead. The only restriction is that there must be at least one of each kind of petits four and liqueur truffle for both Mom and Dad.

Let the gorging begin!