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?

Next stop: Kansas

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It’s upon us. The moving truck will be dropped off tomorrow and the LDS Moving Co. (aka guys from our church) will arrive Saturday morning to load up our stuff (and there is so much STUFF!). The upside of using ABF to move, rather than U-Haul (which has served for all our many other moves) is that I don’t have to drive to Wichita with four kids in the car all by myself while hubby drives the truck. The downside is that we’re without our stuff for a week.

Moving is so stressful — not just for me, but for the kids. A’s collapsed in tears many many times over the littlest things. Yesterday, it was because we sold our extra refrigerator. I deal with it by craving (and caving in occasionally) cake. Note to self: next time, I should make a moving cake and eat a bit every day rather than inhaling the store-bought stuff in desperation. I’ve given up (only temporarily) on reading anything serious (I was trying to get through a follow-up on Crunchy Cons) in favor of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’d rather be reading the sixth, but we haven’t gotten it in paperback yet, and the hardback copy is packed. It’s amazing what Harry can do to make the boxes disappear, if only temporarily.

I think the stress isn’t just the act of moving but also the facing of something new. I know I’ll love Wichita (I loved it when I visited last month), but still there’s so much that’s new: church, school, friends, stores. And learning where things are: a grocery store that has all the things we need and like, the library, a bank…

Still, I have hopes for Kansas. Hopes that hubby will really like this job, and that he’ll get tenure and we can stop moving. Hopes that we’ll find good friends there (but we’ve always managed in the past). Hopes that we’ll find a house of our own that we can afford.

One last story: when I was 11, my family moved from Utah to Michigan. On the way, we drove through Kansas, which, through an 11-year-old’s eyes, was very flat and very boring. My mom, because she is my mother, played John Denver’s “Matthew” as we drove into the state. We were listening to the song the other day as we drove to Nauvoo (one of the many things we’ve been trying to do since we’re moving away from here), and the chorus struck me (and hubby’s miffed that I got around to writing my post first, so I get to use the song!):

Joy was just the thing he was raised on
Love was just a way to live and die
Gold was just he windy Kansas wheat field
Blue was just the Kansas summer sky

So, here’s to Kansas! See y’all there.

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

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One week left. Then I’ll renounce the state of Illinois (probably forever; it was good to us, even if the university wasn’t), and become a Kansasan. That still sounds weird. But then, so did being an Arkansasan, and I got used to that after a while.

(I told Julie when I had lunch with her in Ann Arbor that I’d try and put a little more of my life on the blog rather than just reviewing books… one has got to start somewhere, right?)

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (by Dorothy Gilman) was pretty much the last book to be packed; it was loaned to me by someone in Wichita, so it doesn’t go in the usual book boxes, having the disinction of being left out so I don’t accidently not return it. There really isn’t much to say about the book. It’s fluff. But nice fluff. In short: Mrs. Pollifax (I kind of liked that she was always referred to as Mrs. Pollifax rather than her given name; gave it an English touch, I think.) is a retired widow without much purpose in life until she decided to fly to Langly and apply at the CIA for a job. (“No one just walks in here looking for a job!” says one of the characters, or something like that.) She ends up getting hired for a courier job (just pick up a package and bring it back), but it goes wrong (of course), and the rest of the book is how she gets out of a sticky situation. Compared to more recent action/adventure books (of which I read a lot — NOT!), it’s not all that exciting (it was written in the 60s). But still, it was fun.

And since I’m still in the market for fluffy books, it works for me.

Crunchy Cons

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I wouldn’t recommend going on vacation for three weeks and then turning around and moving 10 days (well, 8 and counting) later. It’s not exactly stress-free. Though it does reduce the OCD-induced depression I get from being surrounded by boxes. That was not fun last year.

I had a pile of books to read on vacation, and only got to three. Something about talking to friends and talking to relatives and being lazy and it being hot.

The other downside of reading on vacation and then not posting, is that I can’t remember all the insightful and pithy things I was going to say about this book by Rod Dreher. Sigh.

In a nutshell: It’s a book written for members of the Republican party (which annoyed me at time; I am not nor will ever be a member of the Republican party), but mostly to convince them of some very reasonable ideas. I should define the terms, first. Crunchy: i.e., granoly, flaky, left, hippy, etc. Cons: conservatives, primarily social. The ideas are presented in a series of interviews and stories (though my husband insists it doesn’t hold together theoretically, but that’s not my forte). Some are great: buying local, mostly organically grown food, for example. Or choosing to live closer in the city in older homes rather than bigger, newer McMansions. The education chapter made me feel guilty (homeschooling is best), but then I feel guilty easily about my kids schooling (and I get it frequently, as most of hubby’s family homeschools). There was a chapter about religion (it’s good) and something else, which I don’t remember right now.

It’s not a great book, but I think it’s an important one, especially if it can get die-hard, big-business, money-grubbing, free-capitalist conservatives to think twice about their lifestyles. The question is, will any of them actually read it?

Book Backlog

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Vacation will do that to you.

The first book: Ella Minnow Pea (say it out loud…) by Mark Dunn. It was almost too clever for its own good. Still, I liked it. The basic plot: Ella lives with her family on the fictional island of Nollop, where they revere Nevin Nollop, the guy who penned “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” There’s a statue of Nevin, with the sentence, and when letters begin falling off the statue, the High Council of the island decide that it’s a sign from Nollop (whom they end up worshipping in the end) to stop using those letters. The book is written in letter form, and as the letters fall from the statue, they stop appearing in the book. By the end, it’s pretty amusing. (although difficult to read, especially after the High Council decides that phonetic spellings could be used for written correspondence. I ended up reading pages aloud so I could figure them out.)

The second book: Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. I was less impressed with this one. Fun, but kind of limited in it’s excitement. It was missing… something. Don’t know what. I liked that it was an origin story for Peter Pan, and I liked the world they created. And some chapters were really quite amusing. But, in the end, it just didn’t grab me the way some other books have.

Now to read the rest of the vacation pile.

Enslaved by Ducks

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You have to like a book that has a title like that. Or at least smile. And you know, the book by Bob Tarte is just as good.

It’s essentially the memoir of a pathetic but endearing man and his complete incapability to say no to his pet-loving wife, Linda, whom he can not say no to. In reference to Linda’s ability to gain animals:

“We’ve been down this road before. Linda was driving a steamroller and nothing more substantial than a plywood cutout of a husband stood in her way. I might have succeeded in kidding myself that I had gained vast knowledge of animals over the years, but clearly I didn’t have a clue how to say no to my wife, particularly when the question involved a new pet that part of me secretly wanted, too — and that part was the knot inside my pine head.”

From the first pages, this book had me laughing: it begins a list of all the pets they’ve owned complete with short descriptions. Like “Stanley Sue, gender-switching African grey Timneh” and “Howard: amorous ring-neck dove” and “Turkeys — Hazel: victim of sneak attack/Lizzie: presumed perpetrator of sneak attack.” I could go on. And the pace and the humor keep up through the whole book. Bob’s reluctance and then acceptance of pets in rapid succession — from rabbits to parrots and parakeets then ducks, geese and turkeys — is amusing and, well, endearing (I’m lacking a thesaurus right now).

It’s great even if you’re not a pet-lover (I’m not especially; my idea of a good pet is fish). But, I think if you do love animals, you’ll enjoy this one even more. In fact, I’ve considered getting it for my brother-in-law, not because he loves animals (though I think he does), but because I can see my sister being like Bob’s wife Linda. Maybe it’s a warning for what might be coming in the future.

As for me, I thankfully can sit back and enjoy the life of pet enslavement from a distance. That is, until my husband and girls wear me down and talk me into getting that cow they’ve always wanted…

A Great and Terrible Beauty

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I discovered this book by Libba Bray via Seven Sisters; something about it really intrigued me. Well, a lot about it intrigued me. It’s hard to explain the plot, but I’ll try. It’s 1895 and Gemma, who witnesses her mother’s suicide via a vision, gets sent off to Spence finishing college where she discovers a secret, magical Order that has access to the realms — the place between worlds. She makes friends — Felicity, Pippa and Ann — and with them discovers her magical powers and all that comes along with it.

Okay, I don’t make it sound very good. But it is, really. Well, mostly. I really enjoyed 3/4 of the book. It was funny, it was mysterious and suspensful; it capitvated me. I found myself drawn to the book and mulling it over when I wasn’t reading it (which wasn’t often). That’s a sign of a really good book for me.

But the end — ah, the elusive good ending — just didn’t live up. It was all set up and very little pay off for me. It all came to quick, and didn’t wrap itself up. Too many loose ends (is there going to be a sequel?). It’s not that I mind loose ends… no, it is. I mind loose ends.

Still, I think it’s worth the less-than-stellar ending for the rest of the book. It really is a lot of fun to read.

An addendum: I’m in Wichita, and as I was wandering through Borders (hadn’t found the indie bookstore yet) looking for a place to nurse baby K, I discovered that there is in fact a sequel (a “companion” as the cover page stated). Maybe that one will tie up the loose ends. 🙂

The Mermaid Chair

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My dear husband gave me the chance this week to go to the library sans the kids. Made me ecstatic wandering the stacks without having to check every 30 seconds what the dear girls have gotten in to. Okay, only my 2 year old. The older ones are pretty responsible.

Still, I wandered looking for something to read (I even took my trusty list of recommendations, but none of them really sounded “right” at the moment. Speaking of recommendations, someone posted a comment a while back about an author who was a “modern day Jane Austin”. I know I wrote the name down, but can’t find it anywhere, and am too lazy to go searching through my blog looking for the comment. If you’re out there… PLEASE tell me who the author is!)

I discovered that Sue Monk Kid’s Secret Life of Bees was in, and it’s been on my list for a couple of years. But The Mermaid Chair was right next to it, and frankly, it sounded more interesting to me. So I got it instead.

First, let me say that I think Kidd is an excellent writer. Beautiful prose, very evocative imagry. And very Southern, which I loved.

But, this book made me peevish.

The story in short: Jessie is feeling despondent in her marriage and finds answers/escape/salvation when she visits her mother (who had cut off a finger with a meat cleaver on purpose) at her childhood home on Egret Island (off of South Carolina). It’s more complicated than that, of course, and it involves a monk. But that’s the basic jist of it.

I was talking to my husband about it after I finished last night (I liked the ending, by the way), and he suggested that I felt peevish because it’s asking some hard questions. And ones I relate to. I’ll be married 13 years this August (13 years on the 13th!). Am I happy in my marriage? Yes. Am I still my own person, though? Will I end up in 7 more years feeling like Jessie: trapped, despondent, an extension of my husband and children rather than my own person? How do I avoid that? I lay awake while feeding the baby early this morning thinking about all the ways in which I could find something that is myself , that isn’t “mom” or “wife”. And I haven’t found the answers yet.

I thoroughly admire what Jessie did in the end: she jettisoned her old life and found a new place for herself in her marriage, in the world. (I don’t approve of how she went about it, but it’s only a book, and it’s silly to pass judgment on fictional characters anyway.) I hope my life doesn’t come to that, though. I want to be able to keep what I’ve got, but find some… solitude of being, I think is what the characters called it.

But, then, isn’t that what we all want?

Three Cups of Tea

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I’m torn about this book. As a book, it’s less than remarkable — the writing is sometimes gushy and melodramatic, and has an odd rhythm to it. But, as a person, Greg Mortensen is remarkable. His story is what kept me reading this, not the writing by David Oliver Relin.

In a nutshell: Three Cups of Tea is the story of how Greg Mortensen went from being a mountain climber (who only held down jobs in order to finance his next climbing expedition) to being the director of the Central Asia Institute, with the primary function of building schools, especially for girls, in rural Pakistan and now Afghanistan. And it’s remarkable what he went through in order to accomplish this goal. He started small — building one school for a village that helped him recover after a failed attempt at climbing K2 (in the Karakoram mountain range, I think).

The baby’s crying, so this will be short… it’s a remarkable book if only for the story. At the very least, it’s a remarkable cause, which makes for a remarkable story.

Home Buying for Dummies

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I was reading this book, and C came in, read the title, and said, “But Mommy, you’re not a dummy.”

That had nothing to do with anything, but I thought it was funny.

I’ve been up to my ears in home-buying stuff for the past week and a half, ever since my husband took a job at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. Yes, we’re leaving the small town living of the past 5 years and moving back to the big(er) city. It’s both exciting and kind of stressful, and here’s where the really helpful dummy book comes in.

We really wanted to buy a house right off the bat, but after reading this book (true, we did get tons of advice from family and friends that helped!), we’ve decided to wait. It’s a great book (I’ve never read any of the Dummies books before) — helpful, in plain English, resourceful, and chock full of good advice. Much of which we’re going to take.

In the end, I got what I wanted out of this book; I now know a bit about what it takes to buy a home for the first time. And, unfortunately, it’s got me a bit stressed out. On top of that, I’m a visual person; I can’t read something and be calm about it. I didn’t understand the whole preganancy and labor thing until I went through it the first time. Reading the What to Expect When You’re Expecting book didn’t do much for me. It’s the same reason I’m down on parenting and self-help books. They really don’t help me much. But, for something like buying a house, while I still have to experience it to fully understand it, it’s nice to have a bit of a guideline to help me along. I think I’d like it even better if the authors — Eric Tyson and Ray Brown — would come to Wichita and hold my hand while we do this.

I guess that’s what family and friends are for (even if it is via email). 🙂