Category Archives: Reading

Reading

Any book is a summer book if you read it during the summer

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I love the idea of having an eReader, but it hasn’t worked super well for me in the past because of my children. I’ve enjoying using both my Kindle Fire and the Kindle app on my iPad, but both devices also have games on them which means they are generally being used by the kids or out of juice because the kids played them until they died. Which is frustrating. So when Amazon did that Prime Day thing, I treated myself to a brand-new lo-fi books-only Kindle. And so far I have used it a lot.

Consider this my What I Did On My Summer Vacation essay.

nightingaleI heard a lot of positive reviews of Kristin Hannah’s “The Nightingale,” so I put it on hold at the library and then forgot about it because a ton of other people had also put it on hold and it took a long time for me to get it. It was worth the wait, though. It’s set in World War II, and it focuses on the women left behind when the guys head off to fight. I cried.

nicevilleI picked up “Niceville” by Carsten Stroud because Stephen King said it would be a good summer read. I disagree with Mr. King on this one. It’s the first of a supernatural/crime trilogy. It didn’t capture my interest enough to make me want to read the rest of the trilogy.

artofracingintherainI thought “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein would make me cry, but it did not. The book’s narrator is a dog. It’s somewhat charming.

thepassageI’ve been hearing about how good Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” is since it came out in 2010. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale, which is right up my alley. But it features crazy horror-beasts, which I try to avoid. I finally picked it up, though, and it is gripping. I was eager to read the rest of the story, so I found a copy of…

thetwelve“The Twelve,” also by Justin Cronin, and it was a disappointment after “The Passage.” I’m still going to read the last book, though, since I’ve come this far already.

woolSometimes I can’t find anything available to borrow from the library via the Kindle so I just grab something and hope for the best. It turned out great in the case of Hugh Howey’s “Wool.” It’s a broken-Utopia / post-apocalypse story that was originally written as a series of novellas called “Silo.” It’s an inventive take on the genre.

clanofthecavebearMy dad’s girlfriend frequently picks up random books at yard sales, so I find something different there most summers. “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel has been sitting there for a few years now, and I finally decided to give it a try. It was weird and great, and the sequel is on my library wait list.

thegirls“The Girls” by Emma Cline is another one for which I’ve read a lot of glowing reviews, and it is very well-crafted. It’s also very dark, and I didn’t much enjoy it.

intheunlikelyeventJudy Blume’s “In the Unlikely Event” was another desperation pick from the library’s eBook selection, and I didn’t love it. I didn’t find the characters all that relatable, for one thing, but mostly it was because it read very much like a Judy Blume book that just had some adult language tossed in. That doesn’t seem like it would be a bad thing, necessarily, because Judy Blume is very good at what she does, but it didn’t work for me.

circlingthesunI can’t remember where I heard about “Circling the Sun” by Paula McLain, but I’d like to thank whomever told me about it because I loved it. It’s a fictionalized biography of Beryl Markham, who out-interestings the World’s Most Interesting Man by a long shot. She grew up in Kenya — you’ll recognize some of the other folks in the book if you’ve read or seen “Out of Africa” — where she trained racehorses and was one of the first bush pilots, and she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. Markham wrote her own biography (“West with the Night”), and I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as it’s my turn on the library’s wait list.

mother-daughter book club

The mother-daughter book club discusses “A Snicker of Magic”

A Snicker of MagicMidnight Gulch used to be a magical place, a town where people could sing up thunderstorms and dance up sunflowers. Twelve-year-old Felicity, a “word collector,” wants to stay in Midnight Gulch more than anything, but first she’ll need to figure out how to bring back the magic, breaking the spell that’s been cast over the town — and her mother’s broken heart.

Last night our mother-daughter book club met for lasagna, salad, brownies and a discussion of Natalie Lloyd’s “A Snicker of Magic.” It only took three book talks for the other members to recognize that I am, to put it kindly, a curmudgeon. Several of them predicted that the author’s prevalent use of “What the hayseed” would annoy me. They were right. I did find that and a few other frequently occurring cutesy phrases and motifs pretty grating.

I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t in love with Midnight Gulch.

“A Snicker of Magic” was not met with universal acclaim by the members of the Witty Kitty Book Club. The girls and the moms agreed that it took awhile for the story to get started. We all had to push ourselves through the first several chapters before it finally grabbed our attention.

Even thought most of them felt lukewarm about the book, the girls did a great job answering the discussion questions. Here are a few of the topics we discussed:

Felicity says that her mother’s storytelling voice is “like something between a summer breeze and a lullaby” (p. 2). How can someone’s voice help him or her tell a good story?
The girls agreed that a storyteller’s voice can help set the mood of a story and draw the listener in. One girl added that it could “give the story character.”

The people of Midnight Gulch possess different types of magic. What kind of magic would you want to have? Why?
Summer: “To be able to fly.”
Scarlet: “To be able to turn any person into anything. I want to be a cat. It would be interesting to see things from another perspective.”
Story: “To talk to animals and to fly.”
Grace: “To be able to talk to plants or to fly.”
Liliana: “The power to turn invisible so I could sneak poundcake.”
Koda: “Magic that can heal nature. I would fix global warming.” She also said she’d like to be able to turn into an animal, specifically so she could find out what it would be like to be a cat, then a bear and then a seahorse.

Words are very important to Felicity. What are your three favorite words?
Summer: “Awesome, super, extraordinary.”
Scarlet: “Hope, family, courage.”
Story: “Nature, animals, peace.”
Grace: “Joy, friends, nature.”
Liliana: “Money.” (Our Poppy was trying her hand at being the class clown at this month’s meeting, to her mother’s dismay and chagrin.)
Koda: “Pickle, meow, family.”

Felicity loves to collects words about people. Choose three words that best describe you.
Summer: “Athletic.”
Scarlet: “Artistic, energetic, daring.”
Story: “Nature, peace, animal-lover.”
Grace: “Creative, fun, nature.”
Liliana: “Fun, crazy, huggable.”
Koda: “Creative, unique, smart.”

The highest rating “A Snicker of Magic” received was an 8.5, and the lowest was a 4. On average, the Witty Kitty Book Club gave it 7 kitty paws.

Once again, this group of girls impressed me with their attention to detail and the thought they put into their answers. Even though they didn’t all enjoy it, they all finished the book and came to the meeting ready to talk. I’m already looking forward to next month’s meeting!

Previous mother-daughter book club selections

  • “Hope Was Here”
  • “Serafina and the Black Cloak”
    • Gardening, partner campaign, Reading, reviews

    How to hide a whole salad in your front yard

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    Farmer Ted is a gentleman in our circa-1955 neighborhood who has converted nearly all of the property around his home into an urban farm. He has fruit trees, a small pond and some ducks in the back yard, and a grid of raised beds covers his fenced-in front yard. He has chickens, too, and he made an ingenious wheeled coop for them that he moves from raised bed to raised bed every season. I admire the whole set-up every time I walk past it, and I almost always notice a small detail or smart feature that I’d never spotted before.

    The neighbors across the street from him, however, are not so impressed. According to Farmer Ted, they’ve reported him to the city for all sorts of infractions in an effort to shut down his sustainability efforts. I haven’t discussed the matter with them, but he says they want the neighborhood to look like it did 55 years ago — with a green lawn and some nice, tidy landscaping.

    So Farmer Ted wants to grow his own food on his own land, but his neighbors want the view from their living room to be more landscape than farmland. Is there a compromise to be found? Well, maybe not for Farmer Ted and his neighbors. I’m pretty sure the neighbors listed their house for sale recently, so I guess Farmer Ted won that fight.

    Angela England's "Gardening Like a Ninja"It may be too late for our neighbors, but you can avoid a lot of gardening-related contention with your neighbors by becoming a Ninja Gardener.

    Angela England’s new book, “Gardening Like a Ninja: A Guide to Sneaking Delicious Edibles into Your Landscape,” tells you which edible plants are most easily hidden in your traditional landscaping and shows you how to arrange them to look picture-perfect, but it’s a great resource even if you don’t have cranky neighbors to assuage. The book contains impressive lists of edible plants, their uses and their ideal growing conditions. Angela shows you how to build your edible garden from the ground up — lingonberries or strawberries down low and lavender or persimmon up top, perhaps? — which is very helpful for gardening novices like myself.

    The list of edible plants in Angela’s book is as eye-opening as it is informational. You’d expect a plant like rosemary to be in such a guide, but did you know you can eat parts of a hosta? Dice that into your salad and eat it. (Or wrap it in bacon and broil it, maybe. Angela says the tender, leafy shoots are somewhat asparagus-like.)

    So far we’ve kept our gardening efforts confined to the back yard, but “Gardening Like a Ninja” has me looking at the long-neglected island bed in the front yard in a new way. There are two dogwood trees and a big bush whose name I don’t recall anchoring it, and there used to be a lot of lavender around the anonymous bush. As much as I’d love to have some fruit trees, I’m not going to take down the big guys already there to make that happen. The lavender is pretty well dead, though, and everything else out there is ornamental, so I’m going to spend some quality time with “Gardening Like a Ninja” over the next few weeks and see if I can’t come up with an appetizing way to bring that sad space in the yard back to life.

    Disclaimer: Angela England sent me a copy of “Gardening Like a Ninja” for review.