Austen in August Challenge

Call me crazy.  I just signed up for another reading challenge.  This one is to read books by or about Jane Austen in the month of August.  Since I have been working on Emma since March I thought this would give me a good excuse to finish her up!

If you are interested in doing the same thing, sign up at Roof Beam Reader.


 

Sunday Salon, California Vacation edition

At Glacier Point overlooking Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California with  my husband (right) my sister and her husband. I'm the one with the yellow shirt. 

Road trip: On July 5th my husband and I jumped into his little sports car (a two-seater with very limited trunk space for luggage) and headed south toward California and a family reunion. We traveled over 800 miles (one-way) to our destination, Angels Camp, in the old gold mining section of California. We stopped off for a two-day visit with Don's brother in Grants Pass, Oregon. There we spent one day poking around in another gold mining town, Jacksonville. The weather was HOT and DRY, so hot that we had to put the top up on the convertible during the middle part of each day otherwise we would have dried up and burnt to a crisp. But we did enjoy our trip and the time spent together.


Family Reunion: For the past few summers my parents have paid for the whole family to stay together in several condo units in various resorts, this year the resort was in Angels Camp, California for the first half of the week and Lake Tahoe for the second half.  Unfortunately, Don had a conference in Seattle that he had to attend so we missed the Lake Tahoe leg of the reunion. The funny timing for this reunion is that we were all together one week earlier for my daughter's wedding. But, obviously, the setting and circumstances were different.  I have three siblings and if all their spouses and kids are added up we have 22 people that could potentially be part of these reunions.  In a lot of ways they are overwhelming, but also so wonderful, fun, and loving.

Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite

Yosemite: A day trip from our resort we drove to Yosemite National Park.  It is truly as wondrous and breath-taking as it has been described. It blew me away how gorgeous it was.


Weather at home: It has been lovely here at home.  The temperature in the high 70s. After the heatwave elsewhere in the country this place seems like heaven.

Yesterday, we attended a wedding and then a hoe-down celebration for a friend who lost her husband ten years ago to complications from diabetes. It is very affirming to know that love can be found a second time and it was a privilege to attend the ceremony.

Today: We need to wash the dog.  She has been hanging out with a whole group of dogs at our neighbors house while we were out of town and she stinks!  Ha!


Book challenge: I have just completed my 8th book toward my reading challenge to read 20 books in the 31 days of July.  I'm behind on blogging since I was away from the computer for nearly a week but I did keep up on the reading.


Road trip audiobooks: 

• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (11 1/2 hours of listening)
• The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe (13 hours of listening)

Currently reading and listening to: Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls 


Recently finished: Sabriel by Garth Nix and Putting Make-up on the Fat Boy by Bil Wright (Reviews pending.)

Scripture Lesson today: Psalms 19:9,10 "The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold...they are sweeter than honey."


I'm praying for: for a family friend who is having trouble recovering from surgery to his neck and another gal who is finally home after back surgery.

Around the house: Grocery shopping is a must. We have no fresh fruits or vegetables in the house.

Musical event: We attended the Seattle Symphony concert Friday night where the whole program was called The Planets and all the music was very ethereal. The second half of the program was Holst's The Planets and while the symphony played, pictures of the different plants from voyageur and NASA were shown. Magnificent.

Review: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Scholars disagree about the causes of the Salem Witch Trials but it is generally agreed that the causes weren't actually about witches.  The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe considers the question, what if one of the reasons for the Salem Witch Trials was because there were actual witches working their magic at the time? Katherine Howe, who is an actual descendant of two women arrested during the Salem hysteria and a graduate student in American studies, started writing this book after a long walk with her dog where she thought about this question and wondered, "what if.."


The book really works. It bops back and forth between 1991, when a doctoral candidate is casting about looking for a topic for her dissertation, and 1692 when Deliverance Dane was being tried as a witch. Unlike many books where there are time frame shifts, this book is not confusing and the reader is always clear who is the subject of the given passage.  There is a big mystery that eventually reveals itself and a few tense moments that add a bit of drama to an already exciting story.

After receiving only a cursory examination of the Salem Witch Trials in school I appreciated the history provided in this book to the actual events of those days.  My husband and I listened to this audiobook on our return trip from California. Katherine Kellgren did a phenomenal job narrating the book, though at times she had a bit of trouble with the Boston accent which played a part in the storyline. One advantage to listening to audiobooks with family members is the ability to stop the book and discuss it at any given point. Don prefers nonfiction but enjoyed this book a lot because of the history within. I thought it was just a well-told story one worth reading. I want to give a shout out to one of my students, Kayla V. She recommended the book to me and urged me to buy a copy for our library, which I did. Take a look at the trailer.  It think it adds to the book's intrigue.

20 books in July Reading Challenge

5 / 20 books. 25% done!

Audio books made long road trip bearable.

 Last Thursday my husband and I jumped in his sporty car to start a very, very long road trip. We headed South toward a destination near Yosemite National Park in California for a family reunion. It was a round-trip of over 1600 miles. It was a trip that seemed unbearable if not for the two audio books we brought along (and, of course, the wind in our hair and the sun on our skin.)

Heading South we listened to Zeitoun by Dave Eggers which was masterfully narrated by Firdous Bamji. Zeitoun is a nonfiction account of what happened to a family when they got caught in the double vortex of Hurricane Katrina and US War on Terror.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American, and his wife Kathy had a successful house-painting business in New Orleans when the city was hit by the deadly hurricane. Kathy and the children left the town ahead of the storm, but Zeitoun stayed behind to keep his eye on the house and his businesses. After the storm he spent a week canoeing around the city helping stranded citizens and feeding abandoned pets when he was surprisingly arrested as a looter but held as a terrorist. He was imprisoned for weeks without one telephone call or even knowing the charges against him. His wife had no idea where he was that whole time and feared that he had died.

As my husband and I listened we both sat with our mouths agape.  How could this happen in America? How could anyone who was wrongly arrested be held for so long without so much as a telephone call or an opportunity to meet with a lawyer? How could a storm and its devastation be equated with terrorism?

Tim Egan, of the New York Times, wrote an excellent review of the book on August 13, 2009. His review is just excellent, so I encourage you to follow the link and read it.  But here are a few of the highlights of it:

• "Eggers, the boy wonder of good intentions, has given us 21st-­century Dickensian storytelling — which is to say, a character­-driven potboiler with a point. But here’s the real trick: He does it without any writerly triple-lutzes or winks of post­modern irony. There are no rants against President Bush, no cheap shots at the authorities who let this city drown."
• “ 'This book does not attempt to be an all-encompassing book about New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina,' Eggers writes in his author’s note. Of course not. But my guess is, 50 years from now, when people want to know what happened to this once-great city during a shameful episode of our history, they will still be talking about a family named Zeitoun." -Quotes taken directly from the book review by Tim Egan in The Sunday New York Times, August 13, 2009.

Don and I both wondered why we hadn't heard more about the situation that happened to Zeitoun and many other Americans in New Orleans in 2005. We have now.  This is a must read for any one who cares about our rights as citizens and who is concerned that these rights need to be protected. In addition, it is always enjoyable to listen to a book with another person so that it can be discussed and dissected.  Even though we were horrified by the events reported in Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, we enjoyed the listening experience very much.

Our Northbound audiobook, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, will be the subject of tomorrow's blog post.

20 books in July Reading Challenge

4 / 20 books. 20% done!

Review: Lockdown-Escape From Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith

Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith is the first book in the Escape from Furnace series, an exciting and terrifying, dystopian-type thriller novel where children are sent to Furnace Penitentiary for life as a deterrent to crime.

Furnace Penitentiary: the world’s most secure prison for young offenders, buried a mile beneath the earth’s surface. Convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, sentenced to life without parole, Alex Sawyer knows he has two choices: find a way out, or resign himself to a death behind bars, in the darkness at the bottom of the world. Except in Furnace, death is the least of his worries. Soon Alex discovers that the prison is a place of pure evil, where inhuman creatures in gas masks stalk the corridors at night, where giants in black suits drag screaming inmates into the shadows, where deformed beasts can be heard howling from the blood-drenched tunnels below. -Goodreads

Lockdown has been extremely popular in my school library with male readers, even those I consider reluctant readers. Now that I have read the book I know why.  The action is intense, the antagonists are completely evil, and the injustice done to the inmates is palpable and despicable. Anyone who likes horror genre books and intense action in their reading material will find this book to be a perfect match.


My niece's young husband, Bobby, and I had a discussion about the book.  He was pleased to see it on my reading list, though he cautioned that after the third book, Death Sentence, the Escapre from Furnace series starts to lose steam and becomes repetitive and predictable. I haven't had any of my readers complain about this but I do know that quite often this is the case the deeper one reads in a series. It is unlikely that I will read book #2 in Escape From Furnace, Solitary, because I rarely read more than the first book in a series and it is really not my favorite genre personally.  However, I will be adding this book to my Nifty-Fifty cart next year as a go-to book for boys.

20 books in July Reading Challenge

3 / 20 books. 15% done!

Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

After completion of The Night Circus by Erin Morgensten it hit me that my opinion of the book went through a sort of evolution. Here is a timeline which helps demonstrate this evolving opinion of the book---

• March 2012- I place a 'hold' on the audiobook version of The Night Circus at the public library. It seems to me that everyone in the blogosphere is reading or has read the book and I don't want to be left out. 
• June 15- The 'hold' is ready for pick up at my local public library branch. I am delighted to learn that the performer for this audiobook is Jim Dale, the actor who read for all the Harry Potter audiobooks.
•  June 18-29- Listening requires time and I don't have much with the wedding and work requirements. When time allows I listen to a disk at a time. Early enthusiasm vanishes as the tedious, boring bits are amplified by the audio format. I do enjoy Jim Dale's narration. I don't have an actual copy of the book so I can't read ahead when listening is impossible. I tell my daughter, who listens with me occasionally, that I wasn't prepared for the mundane/boring parts. It is also confusing with the time jumps back and forth. I am frustrated but continue listening in an effort to finish. 
• July 2- The wedding is over and I have to spend several hours in the car returning rental items and running errands. I'm on the last two disks of The Night Circus when suddenly everything clicks. I become completely captivated by the love story, by the stalemate, and especially the conclusion where the reader learns who and why the story is told. 
• July 4- In preparation for this blog post I read a few professional reviews of The Night Circus. Most are surprisingly negative. I think there is no way the reviewer read the book to the end. It feels like they are stuck in the middle somewhere. 

As a teen librarian students often return books unfinished. They tell me that they just couldn't "get in to the book", but if I push for details they usually admit that they read only a few pages or one chapter. They abandoned the book without giving it a fair chance. That is the way I felt about The Night Circus. If I had abandoned it in the middle, when things seemed a bit tedious or boring, I would have missed the magical ending where all the pieces are drawn together, where the prose penetrated my psyche, swept me up and carried me away.

 Don't miss that final experience.
 

20 books in July Reading Challenge

2 / 20 books. 10% done!

Review: A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

What if our pets never died but were just reincarnated over and over again? What if each pet had a purpose and they could remember information from previous lives that they could use and reuse in their next lives? Would this information change the way you viewed and interacted with your pets? Would you try harder to understand and communicate with this pet?

"A Dog’s Purpose tells the story of a dog who finds himself reincarnated and decides there must be a reason, a purpose he must fulfill, and until he does so, he’ll continue to be reborn. The story is narrated by Bailey, a wise and funny dog who is very much...a dog."

This book is for anyone who considers themselves a dog lover, even a pet lover. Bailey, our protagonist dog and narrator, realizes as he goes through several incarnations that he has a purpose and he must attempt to fulfill his purpose even in the bleakest of circumstances. When Bailey is paired with Ethan, his boy, he knows that his purpose is to love and protect and in the end, to save Ethan.

Recommended by my daughter who bought the book with her own money, this story just touched my heart and it has made me view our dog, Muffy, differently.  I keep asking Muffy what she thinks her purpose is. I'm pretty sure that she thinks she has a few very important jobs: to clean our dinner plates, to bark at the neighbor dog, and, most importantly, to be the family PDA police.  Any time family members hug or kiss, Muffy runs in between our feet and whines. It is both very funny and annoying. Not one of her purposes in life is to be photogenic.  She faced the camera for one of six clicks and it was only because she thought she heard the neighbor's dog.

When I visited Bruce Cameron's website I learned that there is a sequel to this book, A Dog's Journey. Hope it is as good as the original. Enjoy!

Muffy, our Cardigan Welsh Corgi, on duty as neighborhood dog barker.

20 books in July Reading Challenge

1 / 20 books. 5% done!

Top Ten Tuesday: Books for fans of John Green

Broke and Bookish

Top Ten Tuesday topic: Top books for people who liked author: X.

Featured author X: John Green...John writes realistic YA literature that has plenty of heart, humor, and gritty angst. His characters are interesting and complex. His books make me think and feel.  I always take time to pause and reflect when I am reading one of his books.  My favorite John Green book is always the one I just finished reading.  For a long time it was Looking for Alaska, then it was Paper Towns, and now it is The Fault in Our Stars.

If you like John Green books then I recommend:

1.  Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes...Karl Shoemaker is one of my favorite characters in YA Lit.  He has trouble in his life but he works hard to take care of others that he views as worse off than himself. I love this book and always recommend it whenever it fits.

2. Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick...Amber Appleton is another complex and positive character even though things are pretty tough in her life. I was really touched by this book.

3. Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews...you are beginning to think that John Green books must be depressing books because these first three suggestions all deal with very tough situations.   Though there are lots of similarities with Green's The Fault in Our Stars, this book is much cruder and often funny. I like the format as well.

4.  The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen...the main character, Jessica, works through her amputation and is able to run again.  This book is very inspiring.

5. Going Bovine by Libba Bray...Is it magical realism or just an hallucination? Whatever it is, this book is very, very funny, yet the characters are complex and fascinating.

6. Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach...This book is a sports, funny, poignant look at a teenager who deals with issues related to fitting in and growing up despite family problems. This book surprised me by its complexity.

7. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey...Charlie's biggest problem is who is tougher--- Superman or Batman, that is until Jasper Jones involves him in a mystery and a terrible secret.  This book is very complex and satisfying.

8. The Future of Us by Carolyn Macklar and Jay Asher...two terrific YA authors team up to write a surprisingly thoughtful novel which poses the question if we are masters of our destiny or not.

9. Stolen by Lucy Christopher...even though the situation is deplorable, the writing is superior and I find this book captivating.

10. The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork... I think that all of Stork's book deal to some degree with issues of integrity. I appreciate that and like watching his characters learn and grow (grow up). This one is my favorite of the his books.

  

Sunday Salon, on Monday (Wedding Edition)

Bennett-Adams Wedding, June 30. 2012

Wedding Weekend: Our daughter got married this past Saturday.  As you can imagine we spent a lot of time and energy getting ready for the big day/week-end.  It was so lovely, meaningful, and fun.  Now we are exhausted but so pleased.


Weather: Our cloudy, cold week-end weather broke just in time for the wedding and we had a lovely evening of eating, dancing, and festivities.

Yesterday, Sunday our extended family gathered at our house to eat up left over food, cake, and candy from the wedding. At one point we had 26 people roaming around the house and swarming the table, eating up all the scraps.  Everyone left with a plate of extra cake, though. We had three half sheets of cake leftover.  Ha!  :)

Today We took our youngest daughter to the airport.  She left for a month of schooling in Italy. I hope she can sleep on the plane after our exhausting week-end and late night packing session. Then I spent the rest of the day returning rented items, and scrunched in a visit to the chiropractor who gave me such sweet advice that I cried.  He said that he prayed that we did all we could for our daughter as we raised her.


Tonight Don and I will be home alone .  Guess we'd better get used to it.  We are still eating wedding leftovers.  Tonight cold salmon and rosemary potatoes.

Book challenge: I have read very little the past two weeks.  In an attempt to catch up on my summer reading list I have issued myself a reading challenge to read 20 books in the 31 days of July.  I just finished A Dog's Purpose by Bruce Cameron and I'm about half finished with Lockdown: Escape from the Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith.


I'm listening to... The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I'm on the last disc.  Love it!


Up Next:

• Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls (Audio)
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (Audio)
• Sabriel by Nix (I'm about 1/4th of the way through it)

I'm praying for: my friend who just learned that she has non-smokers lung cancer and a friend whose husband is struggling with his cancer treatments. Neither were able to make it to the wedding for understandable reasons, but I still missed them so much.

Around the house: Rita and Dan will be here tomorrow to start moving her out. Sigh.

From the kitchen: A shout-out for my friend Susie who catered a luncheon on wedding day for family members in town so we could all gather and have good food before the wedding. The day after the wedding the rest of the family ate every scrap of leftovers from this luncheon.  It makes me smile to think of my family swarming the food!  Ha!

July Reading Goal: 20 Books

Remember my laughably long summer reading list? I've decided to attempt my own mini challenge to tackle it...20 books in 31 days.  Can she do it?  That remains to be seen.  Cheer me on as I attempt to read almost a book a day.  And if there is anyone out there that knows a counting widget that will update as I complete books, please send me a note or point me in the right direction.

Here goes...