Isn’t summer supposed to be relaxing?

July 27, 2010 sometimes I ramble

I mean, shouldn’t I be sitting on a lounger in the sun, drinking sweet tea and reading books? Isn’t that what one is supposed to do in the summer, especially when they live in Canada?

Apparently that is not my summer. My summer has been a whirlwind of highs and lows in which I seem to frequently say, “Can I sleep now?”

Let’s recap. Early June? My grandmother has another stroke and I fly home, coming back after the funeral.

Mid-June? I play hooky from work and instead spend 10 hours in urgent care at the hospital for a mystery ailment. It involves pain, morphine and almost passing out a bunch of times until they force me to spend a few hours on a stretcher before declaring they don’t know what’s wrong and send me home. The next day I sleep and am generally considered to be all better!

A week after that I head back home, this time with Lee in tow for a vacation. Cottage is wonderful, the weather leaves something to be desired. We manage to stay pretty busy but somehow find time to relax, which is a good thing because…

Ten days after we get back we take possession of our house. July is a blur of boxes. We spend just over a week sleeping on an air mattress before our furniture is moved in. During that time we get hardwood floors installed. When we do move in we decide that mattresses are the best invention ever and want to do nothing but sleep for a month. Well, I want to sleep for a month. Lee wants to work himself stupid unpacking and then sleep for a month.

Soon we are leaving for another trip, this time to NYC. It’s mostly fun with a bit of seriousness through in for me in the form of BlogHer ’10 (which don’t get me wrong, is also lots of fun but I do put my serious face on in some of the sessions). When I get back I know that I’m going to want to sleep for a week, at least.

You know what’s not in here? Sitting on a lounger in the sun, drinking sweet tea and reading books.

I did somehow managed for finish Making Toast by Roger Rossenblatt and Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini. I probably would have appreciated Making Toast more if I had read it at another time, a time in which I wasn’t trying to figure out how to grieve the loss of my grandmother. Sweater Quest taught me more about Fair Isle knitting than I had learned so far and while it doesn’t could exceptionally difficult it does sound complicated and I’ll stick to knitting plain socks, thank you very much.

Some day soon I am going to blink and summer it is going to be gone. It’s been a very eventful, and even exciting, summer but I’d really like to know when I get to sit on that lounger. I guess it would help if I bought one first, eh?

But before I collapse and call an end to the summer you will see on Sassymonkey Reads:

• My new library branch!
• My new home library, complete with book rainbow!
• A trip to The Strand in NYC! (After which I’ll have been to Shakespeare & Co, City Lights and the Strand and will need to find new bookstores to aspire to visit)
• Possibly even actual discussions about books! (I know, how shocking!)

Of course this is all dependent on me taking photos, which I haven’t done yet. And me actually getting to NYC (yay!). And me not buying that lounger because if I do no one may ever see me again…at least until it’s too cold to stay to outside.

Getting Lost Can Be Good: An Interview with the Lost Girls

July 19, 2010 Authors,BlogHer

I mentioned in my summer vacation post that I had read The Lost Girls while I was in PEI. I also was lucky enough to interview them.

The interview is posted on BlogHer. Go forth and read Lost Girl goodness!

Only the Good Spy Young

July 12, 2010 Fiction,Young Adult

I was thrilled when I found the fourth book in Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girl series, Only the Good Spy Young on the shelf at my local bookstore in advance of the release date. (I’m not sure why, I can only guess that it was because the release date was originally earlier and everyone got confused…including me as I had been looking for it for awhile by then.) Instead of reading it right away I hoarded it, saving it for my vacation.

I waited the whole vacation before reading it. Instead of flying to PEI we always drive it. Why? Well, it actually costs less to rent a cottage there for a week than it would cost for both of us to fly and then rent a car for a week. Driving is easily doable and way cheaper so we drive. (Bonus: we rented a really fantastic cottage.) For some reason whenever we do these long roadtrips I never read on the way there. Ever. But I always get the itch to read on the way back.

So on our drive back, after a break at a truck stop for a late breakfast/early lunch (and our only real stop of the day) I settled in to read it. I flew through it. I flew through it so fast that I’m actually thinking about listening to the next one on audio book (which is how I experienced the first one) just to make it last longer.

Only the Good Spy Young is very, very action packed. I’m almost tempted to say it’s got too much action going on but well, that’s just Cammie’s life right now. After the big showdown in which she discovers that she’s being targeted by The Circle her life is different. When she’s outside of school she’s under constant surveillance. She’s on holiday in London with Bex (her parents acting as her detail) when she discovers that an ally may actually be her enemy. She doesn’t know who to trust any more. When she gets back to the Gallagher Academy it’s not the same. It’s been locked up tighter than Fort Knox. All the secret passageways have been locked up…all for her protection.

As I said I flew through the book and I loved it but it wasn’t perfect. We just don’t see enough of the other Gallagher Girls and life at Gallagher Academy. The action-action-action sequences felt like the main part of the book and the time at Gallagher Academy was… well I don’t want to say filler. It wasn’t filler. But the Academy itself was not a character the same way that I felt it was in the other books in the series.

It was also all about Cammie. Her best friends were really pushed into the shadows in this one. They weren’t as present as they were in the others books. Maybe it was Cammie pulling into herself (quite understandably) but I found I missed them, especially Macy. Maybe it’s because there was so much Macy in the last book but it felt like she was barely present in this one.

And the ending? I had to go back and reread it because I totally did not believe it. (I’m not the only one. I saw a tweet from Ally Carter saying that yes, the end means exactly what it says.) It surprised me. I think it was a good surprise, at least in the sense that I didn’t completely see it coming. It was also the kind of surprise that makes you want to howl at the moon because you know it has to be at least a year before you know what happens next. The ending isn’t exactly a cliffhanger but it caused kind of that same “omg!omg!omg!” reaction for me.

I found myself thinking how different this book was from the first book. Based on that book I never would have expected this one. I really am not sure what is going to happen next. I believe that the series is supposed to end at six books and I’m not sure how it’s going to end. Sure, yes, I believe that in the end Cammie will have a happy ending. Well, not entirely happy. I think there’s going to be some bittersweetness to the end of the series. I just don’t know what that ending will be and that, I think, is rather usual at this point in a series.

So in sum it was a good book but not a perfect one. It didn’t leave me wanting to shout from the rooftop that I want to be a Gallagher Girl but it may come up in random conversations where no one else knows what I’m talking about.  You may need to read the end twice to really believe it, which I did and I’m still not sure I completely believe it. Definitely worth a trip to your bookstore or library.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

July 9, 2010 Fantasy,sometimes I ramble

Dear Fantasy,

I want you to know that I still like you. You have lovely worlds. You’ve taken me places I’ve never even dreamed of. And your looks? Trust me, your covers are so pretty.

You are full of adventures. You really are made of magic.

So I’m really sorry but right now…I’m just not that into you.

I try. I really do. I give you a shot a few chapters at a time but if I’m honest it’s a struggle to get through those and I’m happy to set you aside and leave you until it’s time to return you to the library.

And it’s not just you. Me and YA? We’re struggling too and you know how much I love me my YA.

Fantasy, I’m taking a little break from you. Don’t worry, I’ll call you the next time I’m in town. We’ll hook up, have a few drinks…maybe even get back together and have a fling or two.

Until then, please don’t call. Please don’t write. Let’s just quietly go our separate ways for a bit.

It’s not you, it’s me.

~ Sassymonkey

What I Read On Vacation

July 4, 2010 Lists

I still have a few hours left of vacation, which I am holding onto very tightly, but here’s what I read on my vacation. I may write more about some of these books, I may not. I’m going to have a busy, busy month. We close on the house in ten days – TEN DAYS. We move in 19 days. Anyone want to send some magical packing elves my way? And possibly a money tree?

• The Lost Girls: Three Friends, Four Continents, One Unconventional Detour around the World by Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett, and Amanda Pressner
• Rowboat in a Hurricane by Julie Angus
• The Girl with the Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
• The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz
• The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival by Ken Wheaton
• Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter
• Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim

The only one I didn’t really like was The Girl With the Glass Feet. I had a really hard time getting into it and just, meh. I seem to be a bit off fantasy right now though so that may be playing a part in it. I really, really liked The Lost Girls and think that a lot of twenty-somethings would enjoy it. And Only the Good Spy Young? I want another Gallagher Girls book, pronto.