Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

The White Giraffe

3 Comments

Meh.

I almost want to just leave that one-word review of this book by Lauren St. John as is. But I suppose I should explain why I came to read this book, as well as why I don’t particularly like it.

One of my cousins is a librarian in the Salt Lake county library system, and she’s on the committee for the 2009 (I think) Beehive Award. Each committee member is given a list of 5 books from the big lists (for children’s and YA) and they are supposed to find readers to read and evaluate each of the books. My cousin’s brother is a regular lurker around here (hi, John!) and Hubby’s blogs and he mentioned me to her… and ta-da! I’m a reader for the Beehive Award. (Well, it did involve her asking and me saying yes.)

I finished the YA ones (well, the ones I could find at the library) a month ago, and am just now getting around to the children’s list. I just hope the other ones are better than this one.

It’s not that it’s a bad book… it’s just a less-than exciting one. It didn’t have to be; the story’s quite fascinating. Martine is a child in London, when her parents die in a horrific house fire. She gets sent to South Africa to live with her grandmother Gwyn Thomas on their game reserve, Sawubona. There’s mystery surrounding the reserve — her grandfather was shot a couple years ago, and animals keep disappearing — but the biggest is the white giraffe. Does it even exist? Martine manages to discover not only the white giraffe, but also that she is a child of destiny, as she works to save the white giraffe from the poachers.

I kept wondering why I just wasn’t entranced by this book. Then I hit upon it: St. John is doing more telling than showing. She tells me Martine is afraid. She tells me Martine is sad. She tells me Martine is excited. But I never get the sense that Martine is any of those things. This passage is from Martine’s first day in Africa:

She refused to allow Martine to help clean up the mess. Martine just crept quietly upstairs to bed with tears running down her face. She felt utterly bereft. She was in deepest, darkest Africa with no parents and no friends, living with a grandmother who plainly couldn’t stand the sight of her. Really, it couldn’t get any worse.
As far as Martine could tell, there was only one positive in her new life, and that was Sawubona itself. She was already falling in love with it….

See… not bad, but not great, either. That’s pretty much the story of the whole book. Just kind of … meh.

Story Night

29 Comments

Stories are a major part of my Christmas celebration. (What? You thought I was going to write about something non-book-related?! Um… nope.)

I’m sure reading Christmas stories goes all the way back to when I was really little, but I don’t really remember the tradition of story-reading until I was in middle school. By that time, we kids had pretty much grown too old to appreciate the Christmas Eve talent show tradition. That, and we’d moved away from extended family, and a talent show of 6 people really isn’t all that much fun. So, Mom came up with a brilliant idea: let’s pick and read our favorite Christmas story, ending with Dad reading the account from the Gospel of Luke.

We’d read funny ones, sweet ones and tear-jerkers, and some would read the same story every year (Barrington Bunny!), and others would pick and choose. It became a part of Christmas that I looked forward to.

When I got married, though, we picked a different Christmas tradition for Christmas Eve. But I didn’t want to give up the tradition of story-night. We let it slide during the early years, before we had kids (though we started collecting stories and poems), but pretty much as soon as M got old enough to enjoy listening to stories, we started Story Night. We gather in the living room by the lit Christmas tree — sometimes just us, sometimes with friends we’ve invited to share with us, light all the candles in the house, and lay out a blanket (if we feel like it). The kids are usually in PJs, but not always. And we read Christmas stories. Funny ones, sweet ones and tear-jerkers. We each get to pick (and now, for the older girls, read) our favorite for the year. Sometimes it’s the same one, sometimes it’s different for each year.

We did add one thing, though: mugs of super-rich, made-from-scratch hot cocoa. Yum. There’s something about sitting in the candlelight (and now that we have a fireplace, firelight, too) and reading stories that just says “Christmas” to me.

My choice for Story Night has changed over the years. I’ve read Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey and The Polar Express. Last year, I read Christmas Day in the Morning. One of my perennial favorites, as well as the girls’, is Emma’s Christmas. We’ve suffered through Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear (which, mercifully, got “lost” in the last move), and usually someone reads How the Grinch Stole Christmas. My favorite version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is the one illustrated by Jan Brett (someone usually reads that one), and Hubby likes reading The Gift of the Magi or Santa Comes to Little House, a beautifully illustrated version of the chapter from Little House on the Prairie. And this year, I’m looking forward to reading Great Joy.

And, I can’t forget: the recipe for our hot cocoa. May you all have a very merry story-filled holiday season.

To-Die-For Hot Cocoa
Recipe from The Washington Post

First thing I have to stress: you HAVE to spend the money and buy top quality ingredients. Otherwise, it’s just no good. We make this one, because the Hot Chocolate is just too rich for the girls.

1/2 cup dutch-process cocoa powder (barring that, you can substitute Ghirardelli cocoa powder)
1/3 cup sugar
pinch salt
1/2 cup water
2 1/4 cups 2% milk
3/4 cup half and half
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a saucepan stir together the cocoa powder, sugar and salt. Stir in the water and cook over low to medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture forms a past. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Slowly whisk in the milk and half-and-half and heat until warmed through, about 5 minutes. Do not let the mixture reach a simmer. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the vanilla extract. Carefully transfer the mixture to a blender and pulse until frothy on top. Pour into individual mugs and serve immediately.

To Die-For Hot Chocolate
1 1/2 cups 2% milk
1/3 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, optional
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (again, splurge and spend the money to buy something REALLY good, like Ghirardelli or Guittard)
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a saucepan over medium heat, heat the milk, cream and sugar, if desired, just until a skin forms over the top of this surface. Do not let the mixture reach a simmer. Remove the pan from the heat; add the chocolate (can use semisweet) and set aside until the chocolate has melted, about 1 minute. Whisk the mixture until the chocolate is incorporated. Return the pan to medium heat and heat until the chocolate shards melt and disappear, whisking often, about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the vanilla extract. Carefully transfer the mixture to a blender and pulse until frothy on top. Pour into individual mugs and serve immediately.

And don’t forget about the rest of the Advent stops:
6 December – Laura (Musings)
7 December – Wendy (Caribousmom)
8 December – Nymeth (Things Mean A Lot)
9 December – Raidergirl (An Adventure in Reading), Chris (Stuff as Dreams are Made on)
10 December – Dewey (The Hidden Side of a Leaf)
11 December -Suey (It’s All About Books)
12 December – Chris (Book-a-rama)
13 December – Jill (The Well-Read Child)
14 December – Robin (A Fondness for Reading)
15 December – Alyssa (By The Book)
16 December – Rachel (A Fair Substitute for Heaven)
17 December – Literary Feline (Musings of a Bookish Kitty)
18 December – Dev (Good Reads)
19 December – Callista (S.M.S. Book Reviews)
20 December – Tiny Little Librarian (Tiny Little Librarian)
21 December – Carla (Carla Nayland Historical Fiction)
22 December – Carolyn Jean (The Trillionth Page)
23 December – Booklogged (A Reader’s Journal)
24 December – Kailana (The Written World) / Carl V. (Stainless Steel Droppings)

One of the Nice Side Perks

5 Comments

Of being a book blogger/reviewer, is opening up your email inbox and having a nice letter from an author saying how much they appreciated your review. Makes a person feel good.

All this is a long roundabout way of saying that the December review issue of Estella is up. It’s a small issue (I’m 1/3 of the contributors and wrote 1/4 of the reviews), but I know that there are a couple of the books that I’m now putting on my TBR list…

As for my contribution (and part of the reason why I was in YA land all last week), I read and reviewed a good book, Lily Dale, and a great book, Thirteen Reasons Why.

Go and read (and not just my stuff), when you get the time. 🙂

Empire of Ivory

Leave a comment

So, I picked up this one — the latest in the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik — about a month ago at the library. Hubby scooped it up, excited, and dove in. Three and a half weeks later, he gave it back with the summation: “Lousy story, good ending.”

I needed something different to read after being in YA-land for Estella’s Revenge last week, and I picked this one up on Friday. I stopped on page 81, turned to Hubby and asked for a summary of events, so I could just skip to the ending. (The due date is looming, anyway.) Here’s what I missed (to save you 330 pages of reading):

When Laurence and Temeraire finally get back from their adventures to China and the continent, they find the English dragons in a terrible state. They are all wasting away from this mysterious disease. Sick and miserable, they can hardly defend the country. After a series of events, Temeraire and Laurence discover that the cure to this sickness is some rare mushroom only found in Africa. So, Laurence and Temeraire are sent to Cape Town to go into the depths of Africa to find more of the mushrooms. They get there, get captured by the elusive Empire of Ivory, where dragons are considered to be reincarnations of previous clan chiefs. Somehow (probably mildly interesting) they escape with the mushrooms and the Empire dragons hot on their tale. The Empire wrecks havoc on the colonial towns of Africa (I think it was because they thought Temeraire and Laurence were there to capture slaves), and somehow Laurence and Temeraire get back alive and in one piece.

So. Now you can start the book on page 330, Chapter 14, where things get interesting. Hubby did say that there was an interesting sub-plot with Harcourt (she’s a female dragon rider from the first book) getting pregnant by Laurence’s Navy friend Riley. But that’s only if you want to slog through the middle chapters.

But, the ending — which I did read — was exciting. Laurence comes back to find that the Admiralty sent an infected dragon to France to wipe out their dragons. Laurence and Temeraire are sickened at this, and commit treason by stealing the mushrooms and delivering them to France. There’s a great escape scene, and what happens to Laurence at the end is very interesting.

Which makes me think about Novik as a writer. She doesn’t do the whole adventure to other lands thing very well. I understand it’s interesting exploring other dragon cultures — the whole idea that different cultures would treat their dragons differently is a compelling one — but she just doesn’t do it all that well. The books are best when she’s writing about the war — the fighting, the flying, the escapes — and Temeraire and Laurence’s part in it. Dragon culture and emancipation is all fine, but give me a good fight scene. It’s really all I want out of these books.

And We’re Off!

1 Comment

It’s December, and the Blogger Advent Calendar 2007 has started. Today’s is over at Becky’s and here’s the rest of the schedule:

2 December – Lisabea (Nose in a Book)
3 December – Marg (Reading Adventures) / Lady Tink (Up Close & Personal with LadyTink)
4 December – Valentina (Valentina’s Room)
5 December – me
6 December – Laura (Musings)
7 December – Wendy (Caribousmom)
8 December – Nymeth (Things Mean A Lot)
9 December – Raidergirl (An Adventure in Reading), Chris (Stuff as Dreams are Made on)
10 December – Dewey (The Hidden Side of a Leaf)
11 December -Suey (It’s All About Books)
12 December – Chris (Book-a-rama)
13 December – Jill (The Well-Read Child)
14 December – Robin (A Fondness for Reading)
15 December – Alyssa (By The Book)
16 December – Rachel (A Fair Substitute for Heaven)
17 December – Literary Feline (Musings of a Bookish Kitty)
18 December – Dev (Good Reads)
19 December – Callista (S.M.S. Book Reviews)
20 December – Tiny Little Librarian (Tiny Little Librarian)
21 December – Carla (Carla Nayland Historical Fiction)
22 December – Carolyn Jean (The Trillionth Page)
23 December – Booklogged (A Reader’s Journal)
24 December – Kailana (The Written World) / Carl V. (Stainless Steel Droppings)

I’m excited! I know I’ve been thinking about my post for a while, and can’t wait to see what all the others write about. Happy Holidays, everyone!

The Color of Water

3 Comments

I have had a head cold for the past several days. And now that I’m finally coming out of it, I looked at the review that I had written for this book, and I was appalled. I haven’t gotten any comments, but I could see in my mind’s eye people reading it and shaking their heads and thinking, “I didn’t peg her for a racist.”

I didn’t mean to come off that way. Blame the cold.

I liked this book. Really. It’s the story of James McBride’s growing up, interspersed with his mother’s life history. His family is an amazing one. His mother, Ruth, is an amazing woman. I admire her because she was able to get past her horrific past, most especially her abusive father. I admire her because race meant nothing to her. When asked, by her son, what color she was, she retorted (not an exact quote): “What color does God think I am? What color is water?” I admire someone who can so easily look past color and race and background and be friends with others. Not that it was easy for her, mostly because others aren’t as accepting as she was. I admire her for raising 12 children, mostly in poverty, and giving them the tools to succeed — at least materially — in life. Every single one of her children went to college, many got advanced degrees. All are professionals. Amazing.

I do have to confess that my feelings of being an interloper, though, were real. I felt like I was prying into someone else’s personal business, a place where I had no right to go. I still can’t place why I felt that way. I felt like it was too personal, too emotional, too close for me to truly enjoy. These people were real people. These things really happened. I feel this way often when reading books on the Holocaust, too. I can’t believe these conditions, these atrocities are really out there. It pushes me out of my bubble, and I react by feeling like an interloper. Like I’m not supposed to be there.

Perhaps that’s because I really do need to be pushed a little. It’s enlightening to see other people’s lives, walk a couple miles (or hundred pages) in their shoes just to see. And I appreciated the chance to see James McBride’s and his mother’s lives. It was worth it, even if I felt a little out of place.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins

10 Comments

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. I meant to put up a post yesterday, but instead, I cooked a turkey (for only the third time in my life!), had several friends over for dinner, ate, played games, ate, talked, ate, and began watching Fellowship of the Rings. Blogging just didn’t enter into the equation. Probably a good thing.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater, was a quick read, but one that I have conflicting feelings about. On the one hand, it was a cute little book. On the other hand, it was a little book. Slight, sparse, simple, and well, I felt like they were talking down to their audience. It was like the authors felt the children reading the book wouldn’t be interested in any more than just the basic, simplest story.

And that’s what I felt like I was getting. The basic plot: Mr. Popper is a house painter who longs to travel. He wrote a letter to Admiral Duke, who — out of some weird sort of generosity — sends Mr. Popper a penguin. The chapters once they get the penguin were amusing… getting the refrigerator repairman to drill holes in the icebox and installing a handle on the inside… Mrs. Popper getting used to having a penguin around the house… training Captain Cook (that’s the penguin) to go for walks. But Captain Cook isn’t happy, so Mr. Popper writes to a zoo, who in turn sends him another penguin (because that’s obviously the solution, here), Greta. The two penguins mate, and soon there’s 10 baby penguins around the Popper household. Amazingly, this has all taken place in less than 2 months! (Or at least, that’s the impression I got.) The Poppers take care of the penguins for a while, but then money gets to be short, so they train the penguins and take them on the road. (Those chapters were amusing, too.) That’s essentially the book. It’s amusing, but… that’s all it is. And maybe that’s all it’s supposed to be. I had to keep reminding myself that it was written in 1938; they looked at life and storytelling differently than we do today.

An Embarrassment of Mangoes

4 Comments

I totally and completely bailed on reading Japanland for the Armchair Traveler’s Challenge. The library didn’t have it, Book Mooch didn’t have it, and even Border’s didn’t have it (in stock). Sure, I could have ordered it over Amazon, or even through Borders, but we all know how I feel about buying books I haven’t read yet.

So when I saw this book, by Ann Vanerhoof, reviewed over at Lotus Reads, and discovered that the library had it, I picked it up instead. And I’m glad I did.

Ann and her husband Steve work in the publishing business in Toronto. They go to work, they come home, they have their busy daily routine, but something is missing. And then one day, Steve suggests that they buy a cruising ship and sail to the Caribbean. It took them five years (or so) to save the money, but they did it. They bought a boat, which they named the Receta (Spanish for recipe; I loved that they called the dinghy Snack), and after setting their affairs in order, they headed south for two years. This book is the tale of that trip.

Most of the book is their trip south, the islands they stop and, and the yummy-looking recipes Ann gathers through their travels. I enjoyed Ann’s transformation, not only from a stressed career-oriented businesswoman to a relaxed human being who can enjoy life; but also from someone who was scared of every little thing on the ship to a confident, competent cruiser. I enjoyed their travels; I think on many levels they are the sort of traveler’s I’d like to be. At one point, they’re on Grenada for Carnival, and they decide to join in the fun.

To our surprise, though, we’ve discovered that not all cruisers are as determined as we are to get involved in island culture. Some aren’t only ignoring local events and music, they’re still eating much as they did back home. “They’ve got bigger freezers and more money than we have,” Steve says, “but I’ll bet they’re not having as much fun.”

There are many choice moments in this book. Ann and Steve’s friendship with Dingis on Grenada, the calypso music, conch as an aphrodisiac, Ann dealing with seasickness and the Mona Passage, all the exotic food, the fishing (Reading about them catching dorados/mahimahi was fabulous. Made me want some.), the sunshine, the warmth. This book made me want to travel (though I realized that cruising is definitely not for me). Made me do what I’ve always thought would be the ideal “vacation”: renting a house for a few months and exploring the area that way. It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t like the only cruise I’ve been on: I never got a chance to explore each of the places. We got of the big boat, were treated differently because we did, and were only exposed to that small part of the island that we had time — maybe only a few hours — for. Some islands we didn’t even get to see hardly at all. Our best experience, aside from Puerto Rico (which I would love to visit again), was on Barbados, where Hubby and I hired a taxi to drive us around the island. What I really wanted was what Ann and Steve created for themselves: experiences and friendships that enriched their lives.

Anyway. I thought about all this while reading. I thought about how I’d love to see the world. I thought about how I love my life, but sometimes it’s nice to just get away from everything for a little while. I wondered what Ann and Steve are up to now.

The quote on the back of the book from Kirkus Reviews really does sum it up (this time): “Finely crafted… portraits that prompt us to to see and to yearn: what travel writing is all about.” Yes, it is.

It’s Carnival time!

2 Comments

The November Bookworms Carnival edition is up at The Armenian Odar Reads. There’s original short stories, reviews of collections and six-word stories. Stay for a while and check out Myrthe’s blog, too, while you’re there.

The host for December is A Striped Armchair. The theme is non-fiction and the deadline for submission is December 14. You can email your submissions directly to Eva at astripedarmchair [at] gmail [dot] com.

Enjoy!