Ballet Shoes

April 29, 2009 Children,Classics,Fiction

Noel Streatfeild‘s Ballet Shoes is another one of those books that I just don’t know how I missed when I was a kid. It’s right up there with A Secret Garden and The Little Princess. It utterly charmed me.

I don’t even know where to start. Seriously, I don’t. GUM’s collection of orphans? (Also, love that they call him GUM.) I loved Sylvia and Nana. The girls were wonderful. The boarders they took in were perfect. Their struggle with poverty and the girls determination to work to earn money for their family. 

I loved it all. I’m horribly disappointed that my library doesn’t have the other “shoe” books.

Question for you all, if I wanted to watch the DVD do I get the one with Angela Thorne, Barbare Lott, Elizabeth Morgan and Sarah Prince or do I get the more recent one with Emma Watson, Lucy Boynton and Yasmin Paige?

Blubber

April 28, 2009 Children,Fiction

After reading Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, a collection of essays written by young adult and adult fiction writers and editing by Jennifer O’Connell, I realized that I really needed to reread a lot of her books. While some of her books stick out fairly well in my memory others are all blurred together. Scenes I thought were in one book were actually in other books. It was a startling and confusing realization. So I was thrilled when I picked up this copy of Blubber in a thrift store a few weeks ago and the 24 Reading Challenge gave me the perfect opportunity to read it. (I was also thrilled that it’s the same cover I remember reading when I was in school.)

What surprised me when rereading Blubber was just how mean they were. Poor Linda. I guess I found it…interesting I guess how early the “mean girl” thing starts. Sure the movie made us conscious about it in a high school frame but sometimes we (or at least I) forget how the later years of elementary school can be just as hard. (Perhaps a convenient lapse of memory on my end since when I think about it sixth grade and eighth grades were probably far worse than high school for me.)

Blubber wasn’t exactly as I remembered it. What book is it where the character is allergic to bees and carries around pills in a locket? Was that even a Judy Blume book?

Hunger Games

April 27, 2009 BlogHer,Fiction,Science Fiction

My post about The Hunger Games is up at BlogHer.

The upshot? Loved it. Katniss kicks ass. Cannot wait for the next book.

But I really didn’t like Peeta. I would tell you exactly how much I didn’t like Peeta but I believe that would involve spoilers (but now having said that I’m sure that those of you who have read it can guess). I’ve looked around and I don’t really seem to see anyone else displaying a large dislike for Peeta. I’m not the only one, am I?

Fool

Authors,Fiction,Recommend

Before I get into my thoughts on Christopher Moore’s Fool, let me tell you how I got a copy. What feels like a long, long time ago on a LibraryThing not so very far away I requested and was told I’d receive an Early Reviewers copy of Fool. My response was something along the lines of, “OMG! Squee!!! OMG!” And then I waited. And waited. And waited. It got close to the release day and still I waited. The book was released and still I waited. I went onto the LibraryThing ER board and other people hadn’t gotten theirs either. Then it was two weeks after it was released. Then three. I whined about it on Twitter. Someone from Harper Collins Canada saw my whine and sent me a message saying, “Hey, want me to send it to you?” What more could I say than “Holy heck yes!” Harper Collins Canada is my hero.

Fool reached me when I was in a reading slump. While I’d love to say that Fool knocked me out of it, it didn’t. When I picked it up and read it I loved it. But then I’d put it down and forget about it for a couple of days. This is highly unusual for me and a Christopher Moore book and says volumes about how much of a slump I was  in.

Fool is a retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear from the point of view of the court jester Pocket. If I had to describe it in a single word that word would be “bawdy”. Fool is not for everyone, particularly anyone that would describe themselves as a prude. There is, of course, a ghost, spoiled princesses, knockers, witches, war, treason and oh yeah, lots of heinous f- …erm, never mind.

Recommended for fans of Moore and fans of Shakespeare who really appreciate bawdy tales. It’s also the standard from which I will measure all retellings. I read this before I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I can’t help but wonder what Christopher Moore would have done with it…

The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square

April 20, 2009 Fiction

I’m supposed to be working on something else but it’s not ready to write itself so I’m going to let it marinate. I finished reading Rosina Lippi’s The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square. People who have read it seem to fall into two camps, those that loved it and those that wanted to leave it. I kind of fall in the middle.

I found Pajama Girls almost oddly compelling. At times while reading it I felt frustrated because I felt like the book was jumping from section to section a bit too quickly. I felt like I was just getting snatches of the story. At the same time it worked – it was similar to peeling back the layers of an onion to get to the center.

I get why people love it. I get why people hate it. I couldn’t stop reading it, and yet I don’t know that I would recommend it.

Minuses: I felt like there were almost too many characters and I occasionally got some of them confused. Dodge’s dad felt a bit…stereotypical, as did many of the other minor characters.

Pluses: The dogs. I loved Bean (honestly, love her). Dodge’s relationship with his sister. Dodge’s grandma. The pajamas.

Something I was curious about: do you think the ladies that worked at The Cocoon wore pajamas to and from work or only changed once they got there?

Readathon Wrap-Up

April 19, 2009 sometimes I ramble

Hours reading: 8
Books read: 3
Pages read: I’m too lazy to figure out. lol Not too many.
Would I do it again?: Hmmm maybe. I love the idea of the readathon but I’d never been someone who stayed up all night to read for it. I’d just get cranky and stop enjoying myself. I do like it as a way to catch up on the books I have checked out of the library though!

Reviews of the books I read to come sometime this week.

Read-a-thon Mid-Event Survey

April 18, 2009 Meme

Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now?  I just finished Briar Rose and I’m trying to figure out what to read next. Maybe Peachtree Island.

2. How many books have you read so far? Three

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I’d love to read a Heyer novel but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? I didn’t, which means I did not free up my whole day and I didn’t start until 1pm.

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Not many. Mostly stopping to cook my half of dinner, which wasn’t too long. Maybe 30-45 minutes.

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? How many readers are twittering!

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? I should decided to do it sooner.

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? Plan better, decide to do it sooner. Have some graphic novels on hand.

9. Are you getting tired yet? A bit.  I’m getting a headache.

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? I can’t think of anything.

Curious Reader’s Mini-Challenge

Meme

I love libraries. And I need a mini-break.

1. What is the name of your local library? What city is it located in?
My local library is the Rosemont branc in the City of Ottawa.

2. How often do you go to the library? If you’re a regular, do the staff know you?
I’m there at least once a week. I’m still relatively new to the library though, haven’t been going there quite a year. I don’t believe they know my name but they know me well enough to comment on when I go in alone since Lee is usually with me. It’s not quite the same relationship I had with my librarian in Toronto, but we’re getting there.

3. Do you browse while you’re there or just pick up items you have placed on reserve?
I mostly just pick up items I have on reserve because I reserve a lot. But I usually can’t resist stopping to look at the express shelves. The hold shelves are located right by the cookbooks so more often than not one or two of those end up making their way home with us.

4. What is your favorite thing about your local library?
That’s it’s close. I can walk to it if I need to (or want to). I also love that it’s a Carnegie Library.

24 Hour Read-A-Thon

Women,sometimes I ramble

Better late than never (errands took a lot longer than we thought they would this morning and it’s totally not our fault that we had to go to three freaking stores before finding a ham for dinner tonight).

Ok, starting to read at 1:05 PM. (Yikes, that is LATE).

2pm: Finished Blubber by Jude Blume (153pp).

3:40pm: 102 pages into Ballet Shoes. How did I never read this when I was young?

5pm: Still reading Ballet Shoes. Not because it is so long, but because I keep getting distracted by shiny objects. And I need to start prepping food. And such things.

6pm: Finished Ballet Shoes. Not sure what I’m going to start next. Will need to break for dinner soon.

9pm: Finished Briar Rose. Not sure what to read next but I’m starting to get a headache.

White Heat

April 17, 2009 Fiction,Romance

White Heat by Jill Shalvis is proof that I do like firefighter romances (I just don’t like it when they pretend to be hockey player romances).

Lyndie is a pilot, raised by her military grandfather, and pretty much as tough as nails as you can get. She doesn’t put down roots, she doesn’t let people in and she’s only at home in the sky. Or so she likes to think. Griffin used to have lots of roots until he became the only survivor of his firefighting crew. He’s turned away from his entire family and all his friends. More than turned away, he’s hiding from them. Then his little brother finds him and signs him up to volunteer to fight a fire in a tiny town called San Puebla in Northern Mexico. The town is so remote the only way to get to it is by air…three guesses who his pilot is. And if you also guess that sparks won’t just be flying from the fire you’d be right.

Loved Griffin. His character was complex, great depth and you kind of can’t help but like him. Lyndie…also complex, probably not quite so likable. I’m not sure the Lyndie of the last few pages really jived with the Lyndie earlier in the book for me, but I was willing to accept it. Great secondary characters too.

You know how there are romance authors who write really good sex scenes but you don’t really care about the rest of the story? That is not Shalvis. And then there are authors who can write good characters but write horrible sex scene but can’t write a good sex scene to save their life? That’s not Shalvis either. She can combine good characters with good sex scenes. She simply writes a darned good contemporary romance novel. If you like this genre at all and you haven’t read one of her books you really must go on that right away.