All Things Books

I have, on this blog, pledged to do all sorts of book related things and have not delivered. Sigh. I am not the world's best blogger. I believe that I am two months behind on the Book of the Month challenge, so I'll start there.
February's theme was "heart." I read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. The book is set sometime in the future about 70 years after earth has been attacked by an alien race identified only as the "buggers." The main character is Ender, an enormously bright and empathetic child who is recruited into an elite battle school at the tender age of 6. I read this book when I was in junior high or high school, but I found it to be a completely different experience as an adult. Being the mom of a 5 year will definitely change your perspective. What does this have to do with "heart?" Well, the book, in a nutshell, revolves not only around Ender's extraordinary intelligence, but his equally extraordinary capacity for empathy, i.e. his heart. See how I pulled that altogether? Aren't I clever.
March's theme was "craft." I read Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. This was a hum-dinger of a book with a whopper of a twist at the end. The main character is Blue VanMeer, a 17 year old girl in her senior year of high school. She gets involved with an odd group of kids an a nuts-o teacher and an intricately plotted mystery unfolds. The book's prose is snappy and littered with literary references that constantly made me wish I had paid just a little bit more attention in college. How does this relate to "craft"? This was one of the most well-crafted mysteries I have read in quite some time (ha!).
So, by now you might be thinking that instead of choosing a book to fit the Book of the Month theme and then reading it, I read whatever I want and make it fit the theme. And you would be right. I feel a little bit bad about that and am considering reforming my ways for April. Although April is almost over and I don't know what April's theme is. So maybe I'll reform in May.
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I've also been remiss on the Short Stack reports. This is partly because the Washington Post has not produced list topics to which I can easily relate and I was too busy/lazy come up with my own. But! This week they had a good one: Books to Climb Into. These are the books that created a world you didn't want to leave, or you felt like you were part of, or pulled you into an intense reading experience. I liked the editor's list, and I'd recommend checking it out.
For my own list:
(1) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. I loved this world and Meg's family. When I was younger, I wanted to be Meg's mother when I grew up. She could do chemistry and cook dinner at the same time. I also wanted to hang out with Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace, they are my kind of people and I know we would have been tight.
(2) The Farseer, Liveship Traders, and Tawny Man trilogies by Robin Hobb. These books created an intricate, detailed world that I found fascinating and totally enjoyed. They were some of the first fantasy books that I read of my own initiative (after Moses sucked me in by getting me to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy).
(3) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This is on the Washington Post list, so I feel like a dork for including it on mine, but what can I say, this is a book I've wanted to climb into, so here it is.
(4) Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. This book is big enough that you could almost literally climb into it. Okay, not literally, but less figuratively than the other books. This book jumps between World War II cryptographers and modern day computer hacks (for lack of a better term) and was so complicated that I can't really remember the plot but I know I liked it. I can't say that the worlds in this book creates are ones I'd actually want to live in, but this book delivers that sort of absorbing, suck-you-in-until-you-can't-find-your-way-out reading experience that I think qualifies it for this list.
(5) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Also not a world that I want to live in so much as one that was totally real to me while I was reading this book.
So, time to give it up--what's on your "Books to Climb Into" list?

Funny Story

So, last night I literally hit the "publish" button for my previous post when the phone rang. It was our real estate agent who was calling to tell us we got an offer on our house. I think the best way to describe this offer is crappy but good enough. We're going to take it, cut our losses, and move on. Cross your fingers for us that everything goes well with the sale!

Checkin' In

It was kindly pointed out to me the other day by one of my faithful readers that I have been negligent in my blog duties of late and have therefore failed to provide needed procrastination for those that might partake of my ramblings while at work. I didn't mean to be neglectful. It's just that I kind of had this idea that I wasn't going to blog again until I could jump up and down and scream, "we've sold our house," which I cannot yet do. And I guess I kind of thought that if I didn't blog about selling my house, maybe it would sell. You know, I was trying not to jinx things. Alas, 'tis not the season to try to sell a house.
In the meantime however, we have officially acquired another house, because hey, if you can't get rid of one, you might as well have two. I have been feeling a little sorry and worried for us as of late because of the house situation. But then, on Friday morning I heard the Story Core segment on NPR. The segment featured two men who worked as sanitation workers and were telling about their efforts to organize in the '60's and about hearing Martin Luther King, Jr. give his final sermon. One of the men talked about awful working conditions were, how he'd have maggots in his shoes when he got off work. He also talked about how he'd wake-up in the morning and think, "I ain't going to work today, I ain't going." But then he'd see his kids and he knew he had to go to feed his family--he had no options. And in that moment, I decided that compared to that man's life, I have no problems. I've a got a good job. Moses has a good job. Our biggest worry right now is being stuck with two houses. Two houses that, if we are somewhat careful, we can make the mortgage payments for every month. Somewhat careful meaning paying attention to spending, not eating out much, and not traveling. Not really much in the way of a sacrifice there. And, we made the conscious decision to put ourselves in this particular hole anyway. We knew when we made the offer on the Flagstaff house that we might have two mortgages for a while and we decided it was worth the risk. So really, it's time for me to shut down the negative worry machine and quit complaining and live with this decision until this house sells or we have renters. Because either way we'll be fine and there are no maggots anywhere in either scenario, and for that I am grateful.
On a related note, we moved just about everything we own up to Flagstaff this weekend. Our new house looks much better (to me anyway) full of our junk rather than full of somebody else's. We had lots of Flagstaff friends come to help, received invitations for dinner and hiking in the upcoming weeks, and already have visits planned from my brother and parents. I've been having this feeling the last few weeks that after we moved to Flagstaff, I'd be stuck my little home office by myself and cut off from the world (and freezing cold). But after this weekend, I'm feeling a lot more positive about re-connecting with old friends and seeing a lot more of my family (although I still think I'm going to freeze). Next week, we move the last bits of our stuff and we'll be in Flagstaff for good.



We are going home, and I am glad.