We’re having a get together! A real live in-person let’s talk about books and stuff meeting!
If you want to join in on the fun (and meeting bloggers is always fun…well…the people I’ve met in real life pre-dated blogging but they blog now so they still count) contact Heather here at The Library Ladder.
Hope to see some of you soon! 
I didn’t get much reading done here. I spent a lot of the day yesterday hanging out at the BlogHer site trying to catch some liveblogging action. And then today I spent the day trying to get my bedroom in order. It’s still a work in progress but I have made…well…progress. lol It’s something I’ve been avoiding for awhile but last week I picked up a book at the library that got the wheels turning and that resulted in me requesting another book from the library.
I got the Solutions book first. I was looking at the cookbooks and saw that and thought “what the heck” and added it to my pile. I thought it was really well put together so I requested the Organized Home book and got that this week too.
Beautiful pictures. Well organized books. Great ideas. Some really great ideas.
I really liked these books but whenever I get these from the library I always wonder if they are something I would buy. I think of the two I’d be more likely to buy the Organized Home…just because I think I would use it more.
As you know, I’ve sworn off book buying for a month so OF COURSE these books are on sale. lol
Also I think I’m going to check out the Real Simple magazine. My library branch doesn’t carry it but the next closest one does so maybe I’ll take a look next weekend and see what I think of it.
I really hate having so much stuff. I had originally planned this whole reorganization thinking I could fit another bookcase but it’s not going to happen. There really just isn’t enough room at the moment. So I’m going to have to figure out other ways to squeeze stuff in and get rid of stuff. I’m such a clutter-bug.
I’m hoping one of the Canadians here will help me. I’m trying to remember the name of a book that a teacher read to my class in elementary school. I don’t believe it was on the curriculum though. It was about a black boy in Halifax (or rather, I’m assuming it was Halifax…). I can’t totally remember the plot. I only remember one scene where he was trying to hang out with a new group of kids (he might have just moved there?) and they were writing graffiti and he had to do it too. This isn’t something he normally would have done but he did and he wrote “Remember Africville”. I don’t believe that the title has anything to do with Africville though.
And that’s all I remember. I’m guessing it would have been published circa 1990?
Hey all!
Just wanted to remind you guys that BlogHer is this weekend. It’s day two and there are some good conversations going on. I’ll be in and out of the chat room all day if anyone wants to catch up with me.
I don’t know of many (or even any) book bloggers/lit-bloggers who are there. But I do plan to go next year.
blogher06, blogher
Ok. I know. It’s chick-lit. I know I shouldn’t expect much. But man, was I ever disappointed with Wendy Markham’s Slightly Engaged.
You see, I rather liked the first one in this series, Slightly Single. Yeah she was doing that stupid girl thing of hanging onto a guy who treated her like crap but I could forgive her for that. She did other things for herself and in the end kinda came into her own and I enjoyed that.
Then came Slightly Settled. It was ok. I didn’t like the guy she was dating. Whatever. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t horrible.
This one? Just plain bad. I reallllly disliked it. I got soooooo annoyed with Tracey. Whine, whine whine. Why won’t my boyfriend propose. Whine. Everyone else is getting engaged and married and I’m such a loser cause I’m not. Whine. My life will end if I don’t get engaged. Whine. Cause I’m getting too old to not be engaged or married. Whine. (She is 25 by the way…).
And the end is such a blatant prop for another book in the series. While it doesn’t say “…to be continued” it does say “but that’s another story” so guess what??? We can expect another book.
What a shock.
I hate it when a good (well, by chick-lit standards anyway) book turns into a bad series.
And the nominees are….
And I’ve read none of them. lol
[I've read all the comments in the earlier posts and I'll reply soon - when I'm not quite so drained. The deadline I've been working towards (as has everyone else on my teams this week) was cancelled at around 1pm. What else can you do but laugh? And go out for drinks. Oh and try to stop thinking about work. And start sleeping.]
I haven’t done this in awhile but what the heck? I have a bit of time to kill and the book I’m reading is driving me batty.
My brain is on strike. It just is not interested in reading. I tried picking up several books last night and it just simply does not want to concentrate.
First I tried The Whole World Over. I don’t think that will get read at all. I’m just not feeling it right now. Maybe another time? Maybe not?
Then I picked up Beautiful Lies. It seemed ok but again, just couldn’t get into it. I think I’ll try it again this weekend though because I do want to read it.
When I went to bed I read a chapter or two from The Romance of Libraries. I’m interested in this book because I love libraries and I know a few people in university who either met in libraries or spent much of their relationships in it (sweetly the library was mentioned in a groom’s speech at a wedding I attended last year). Each chapter is full of little short stories from people all over the world. But I even had a hard time concentrating on that.
I need something that is just going to suck me in. I need good characters. I need interesting plot. But I need it not to be heavy because my brain is exploding at work. sigh.
I WANT to read. I’m just tired. And mentally exhausted at the end of the day. sigh.
Yeah…so I did this big push to be at 14 books at the half way point and haven’t really done much since for the SRC (and WOW I just realized I’ve been labelling more than half of this stuff with SCR – I’ll have to fix those…hmmm I wonder what acronym I’m thinking of with that – acronyms are one of the worst things about my job – there are just too darned many of them – ok they are all fixed now but I wonder how long until I do it again…).
So Anne de Courcy Debs at War…as I’ve mentioned I studied war and society and I’ve always had an interest in how war influenced the home front and women in particular. In the US, Canada and the UK WWI played a big role in women getting the vote, even if it was really limited at first. (When I think about women getting the vote I always think of the scene in Mary Poppins where Mrs. Banks and her friends are marching around the sitting room going “VOTES FOR WOMEN! RAH! RAH! RAH!” – I can’t be the only one right???)
But this is about WWII. It starts looking at the last “Season” in 1939 and the women that came out during it (although it did seem as though some came out the year before as there are occasional references to the 1938 season). It then follows the debs as they take war jobs. The debs really did everything. They were farm and factory workers. They were nurses. The joined the Wrens, ATS, FANYs and were “Attagirls”. They worked at Bletchley and in Churchill’s map room. Of course, many of them got their jobs, especially those in the more “secretive” positions, through familial connections. I mean, these women were debs and presented at court. I think one of them was actually an official “lady in waiting”.
It was sometimes hard to remember who was who in this book. The author, Anne De Courcy, interviewed about 40 debs and most of them are mentioned multiple times throughout the book. De Courcy is pretty good at attempting to remind you who they each were.
I found it interesting but I really wish I had either taken notes or used post-it flags throughout this book (sadly I’m out of them and I need to add them to my list of things to pick up at the office supply store). There are a lot of things I’m trying to remember that would make this post far more interesting but alas I can’t find them. Which is demonstrating something about this book – the index rather sucks.
For example, somewhere in the book it was mentioned that one of the ladies wrote a book about their experience at Bletchley and it’s something I’d be interested in reading but I couldn’t remember exactly who it was that wrote it (with 40 debs I’d like to think that’s understandable) but I was pretty sure it was Sarah Norton (aka Hon. Mrs Baring). It wasn’t listened under her name in the index but I was able to find it by skimming through the chapter on Bletchley again. It turns out it’s also in the bibliography under her married name. But I can’t really fault the author for that because it’s really rare that authors do their own index. Oh, in case you were wondering it’s called The Road to Station X by Sarah Baring (and appears to be a rather rare volume…).
I think the thing that struck me the most is that most of these women, while acknowledging the fact that war sucks, admit that it was one of the best times of their life and the most pivotal. For most of them, all that was expected of them was to be the human equivalent of a pretty flower and to marry well. Most were not encouraged to to much else, even if they had a desire to do so. Because of the war they gained independence and basic life skills. They discovered that they had skills and in many cases discovered their own self-worth and confidence.
For me I think this has revived my interest in reading history, something I haven’t done a whole lot of since I got my degree. Part of it is that I tend to read non-fiction at a much slower pace than I read fiction and it really irritates me.
(Sorry this is a bit all over the place – work has my brain tapped.)
