Audiobook: In the Garden of the Beasts

December 10, 2012booknutgirls 1 Comment

Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
by Erik Larson
Read by Stephen Hoye
ages: adult
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there !

I’ve not read any of Erik Larson’s work before, even though he (and this book) have been on my radar for a while now. So, when it came up as the November book at the Nook, I was more than happy to read it. (Or in my case, listen to it, since I didn’t really have the time to sit and read it.)

If you don’t know: it’s the story of William Dodd, the U. S. Ambassador to Berlin in 1933, just as Hitler was rising to power, and all that entails. And, it entailed a lot. First off, Dodd wasn’t that popular with the “Pretty Good Club”: the insiders (mostly Harvard grads) at the State Department who didn’t like Dodd’s conservation-minded ways. (He wanted to live within his salary? Shocking!) They undercut all of Dodd’s attempts at, well, diplomacy, and leaked things to the press whenever it served them to make him look bad. All they really wanted him to do — infuriatingly, to the reader, knowing what Hitler was capable of — is get Germany to make good on their debt to America.

The other part of the story (the “love” part) was about Dodd’s daughter, Martha, who was a bit of a manizer. (If a man can be a womanizer, then…) She was naive, silly, and very much in love with falling in love. So, as a result, she was married twice, divorced once, and had strings of lovers on her chain all at the same time. Can you tell yet that she really bothered me? Actually, what bothered me most was not all of that, but that she would play one lover off another. Or pine for their attention, only to push them away. It was most infuriating.

But, this book was fascinating. It did spawn a lot of thought and discussion: about the nature of evil, about relationships, about what could have been done, about politics. And for that, reading (well listening to it — a side note: the audio was just fine. Maybe Hoye’s voice was a bit grating by the end, but not enough to turn me off) this is well worth the time.

Small Medium at Large

December 8, 2012booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Joanne Levy
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Despite the suffocating mid-May heat and the nonbreathable fabric of my lavender polyester dress, it was shaping up to be a very good day.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Lilah bloom is an ordinary 12-year-old with ordinary problems: she’s got friend drama, she likes a boy but is afraid to tell him, her mother just got remarried and her dad’s a wee bit depressed… nothing out of the ordinary. Then she gets struck by lightning, survives, and… now can hear dead people.

Most particularly her very awesome (and Jewish) grandmother, Bubby Dora. Who is visiting primarily because she wants her son to get remarried, and Lilah’s help in achieving this goal. (Can you say awkward?) But, it’s not just Bubby Dora she hears: she becomes a bit of a clairvoyant, helping various people — from her band instructor to the mean girl in class — achieve a, well, happier state.

The best thing about this one? No magical, mystical adventures. No saving someone from a Dire Fate. No weird worlds with characters that have unpronounceable names. This one was a fun, fluffy middle grade novel where the main character just happens to hear ghosts — and to a good end, too. In short, in the midst of all the complicated high fantasy I’ve been reading lately for the Cybils (not that I mind), a nice, light one like this was a breath of fresh air.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Wings of Fire

December 7, 2012booknutgirls Leave a comment

The Dragonet Prophecy #1
by Tui T. Sutherland
ages: 10+
First sentence: “A dragon was trying to hide in the storm.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

The dragon war — the fight between three sisters for the Sandwing crown — has been going on for years, wreaking havoc on the kingdoms. The only dragons — as far as the prophecy goes — that can change everything are the five dragonets spoken of in the prophecy. Who have, conveniently, been in hiding, guided by members of the Talons of Peace, for the past six years.

Clay, a Mudwing, is one of those dragonets, and he (for better or worse) has no desire to be a fighter, or to Change the World. He just wants to be with his clan — Tsunami (Icewing), Sunny (Sandwing), Glory (Rainwing), and Starflight (Nightwing) — and to hide from everything. Well, maybe he does want to meet the parents he was snatched from all those years ago. But when things come to a head in the underground caves, and Tsunami propels them into escape, Clay (and his clan) will find out that things are a lot more Dangerous and Ominous than they thought.

This was a lot of fun. The whole prophecy-as-a-copout thing aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the world that Sutherland created. There’s some very despicable dragons to root against, and the dragonets (collectively, though I really liked Clay) are worth rooting for. I liked the complications of politics, the throwbacks to Roman times, and just the whole dragon thing. It’s not as good a dragon book as, say, Seraphina, but then it’s aimed at an entirely different audience. And for that audience, it works immensely well.

Quite good.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Starry River of the Sky

December 6, 2012booknutgirls Leave a comment

by Grace Lin
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Rendi was not sure how long the moon had been missing.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy received from the publisher.
Others in the series: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

In many ways, this is very similar to Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. So, if you’ve read that one (and you should), you know what you’re in for. Alternating the main story with Chinese folk tales, with Lin’s luscious illustrations, she tells just as a compelling and charming a story as the first time around.

Thankfully, you don’t have to have read Mountain in order to enjoy this one: the story is in no way (at least from my recollection) connected to the other book. It’s the story of Rendi, a runaway boy who happens to find work at a local village inn. The moon is missing from the sky, and Rendi is the only one who seems to hear the screams at night, so he knows he has to find it and figure out how to put it back. However, he’s reluctant to do so: he’s grumpy and complaining all the time, and would just rather run away than do the work. The inn starts to work its magic: he makes friends with the innkeeper’s daughter, Peiyi, whose older brother has gone missing. And a mysterious lady, Madame Chang, appears teasing Rendi’s story out of him.

I had much the same reaction to this one as I did to the first: it’s nice. Really, really nice. Elegant nice. But, I think I enjoyed it more than I remember enjoying Mountain: I enjoyed Rendi’s story, I enjoyed how the folktales wove in and out of the main story, but also served to enrich the main story as well. And even though I guessed the ending before it was revealed, I was still surprised by the way that Lin wrapped everything up.

And maybe just for that surprise, I find myself mulling over this one, and am more than happy to own a copy. It’s definitely one I’ll be recommending to others.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Under My Hat

December 5, 2012booknutgirls 3 Comments

Tales from the Cauldron
edited by Jonathan Strahan
ages: 11+
First sentence: “The stories all start with a hat, specifically a tall, black, pointy hat.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I know it’s bad form to start a review with “I never read x” but in this case it’s true. I don’t do short stories and I’m not a big fan of witches. (Tiffany Aching aside.) But, in this case, I’m glad for the Cybils: I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of short stories about witches.

The stories themselves were good, taking in a wide breadth of witch lore. It went from modern Wiccan (Holly Black’s “Little Gods,” which — since this is a book aimed at the upper-middle grade audience, I feel compelled to add — contains the book’s only f-bomb), to traditional fairy tale (Jane Yolen’s fabulous “Andersen’s Witch”) and everything in between. There are some fantasy heavyweights here as well: aside from Black and Yolen, Neil Gaiman weighs in with a quirky poem; Patricia McKillip has a story about a witch band fighting evil (way cool); Frances Hardinge was her elegant self in the smart, funny “Payment Due”; Charles De Lint explores the idea of a Hispanic witch in “Barrio Girls”, and Garth Nix offers up a creepy boarding school witch story.

Obviously, there were some that I liked more than others, but hands-down my favorite was from an author I’d not heard of before: Tim Pratt. I guess he’s solely a short story writer, which is why I haven’t read his stuff, but his story “The Carved Forest” was amazing. It’s basically the story of a girl who is having conflicts with her family, so she runs away to the witch’s house. Her brother comes to get her, and discovers that the witch has an entire forest of carved trees. They’re of people in his town, and the witch’s job is to keep them rooted, never leaving her care. It works on several levels: as a brother-sister story, as a creepy witch story, and as an allegory for letting people follow their own path. Perhaps it’s what I wanted to read right then, but it really affected me.

Overall, it’s a great collection of stories, perfect for anyone who is into witches (or just wants to explore the topic a bit).

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Nanny Piggins and the Wicked Plan

December 4, 2012booknutgirls Leave a comment

by R. A. Spratt/Illustrated by Dan Santat
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Mr. Green rolled up his sleeves and inspected his tools.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

First off: this is a sequel. If you would like to read the first one first (unlike me, more than once this Cybils season, it seems), then start with The Adventures of Nanny Piggins. However, if you’d rather not, Spratt helpfully includes a two page summary of book one for you. I wish all sequels would do this. It would just save time!

The basic gist is this: Mr. Green’s wife died, and since he is A Horrible Person (read: lawyer), he needs a nanny. And Nanny Piggins, an ex-circus flying pig, is just the pig for the job. The kids love her (well, she does feed them cake at regular intervals), and Mr. Green is okay with it (well, she does only charge 10 cents an hour. And he hasn’t even noticed the 10-foot bear in the backyard). So, everything is hunky-dory, right?

Well, that is, until Mr. Green figures out that he could have a wife for nothing and save him a whole 10 cents an hour (not to mention the flour and honey bill… though on second thought, I’m not sure he does think of that). That, however, would be a Horrible Thing. It’s up to his three kids — Derrick, Samantha, and Michael — with the help of Nanny Piggins, of course, to stop him.

Oh, what silly, ridiculous, silly, fun. It’s actually not a continuous book, but rather a series of loosely-connected short stories, each one just as silly as the last. There’s the duel with Eduardo the Armidillo (“It looks like a pig going to a costume party dressed as a tank”) over who is the best flying animal. There’s the take-down of the Buzzy Bee Scouts over a stolen cookie recipe. There’s the time that Nanny Piggins thought she could heal all aliments with cake. (Well, why not?) And yes, they do, on occasion, put down their father’s ideas to marry Someone Else. And, of course, it all Works Out in the end.

I snorted, chortled, guffawed, and laughed my way through this one.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

2012 Advent Tour: My Advent Calendar

December 3, 2012booknutgirls 15 Comments

Welcome to day 3 of the Virtual Advent Tour (stop here for all the posts). As I sat thinking about what on earth I can write about this year, I thought of all the people who are so Scrooge-ish with the holiday season. “There is just too much to do!” they cry. “How can I possibly deal with EVERYTHING that is coming my way?!?”

This, my friends, is my personal answer to that question. It’s a tradition that started when I was a kid, and I’ve kept it up. And — I’m here to testify (can I get an “AMEN”?) — we’ve found that this works to not only keep the Christmas season more manageable, but makes the time pass in such at way that Christmas is enjoyed by all. At least for our family.

First you get yourselves one of these:

My mother-in-law gave us this many, many years ago. The one I grew up with was a Christmas tree with ornaments, which my mother had made.

Then, you organize your month, one activity on each day, like so (click to embiggen, if you really want to know):

Some of the events are permanent (like A’s birthday is ALWAYS on the 5th), some events we have to work around (like choir or band concerts), and some events can be moved around (like charades or story night). But generally, sometime around Thanksgiving, Hubby and I sit down and work out what has to be done and what we want to be done, tradition-wise, for this year’s Christmas season.

Then, every morning, I write down that day’s event on a little slip of paper, and stick it in the pocket.

We rotate girls (keeping track of who ended — baby Jesus is the one everyone wants; why don’t they clamor for a cow?), and they put up a character and read the note.

By the end, it looks like this, and it’s Christmas.

While we don’t have a traditional advent calendar, we also have a candle that we burn each night:

But we often seem to either forget, or burn down more than one number, so it’s kind of a haphazard way to count down the season.

How do you handle the stress of December?

Don’t forget to visit the other advent stops today!

Ana @ things mean a lot
Michelle @ The True Book Addict

In Which I Go On a Yoga Retreat

December 2, 2012booknutgirls 2 Comments

You’ll have to forgive the length of this post, but I wanted to get this out there for all those who helped pay for it. Just so you can see what a wonderful experience all this was for me.

I flew out to Santa Barbara on Friday (from Wichita to Chicago to LA to Santa Barbara) and caught a taxi from the airport up the side of the mountain (don’t know the name of the mountain range), where I was greeted with this:

Gorgeous, no? The center is nestled at the top of a canyon, and you can pretty much see all the way down to the ocean from there. It was so… peaceful. And nice.

Because I was there early, I got the pick of my yurts, and I picked one down in the “yurt village”. It was a bit of a hike back up the hill (mountains! hills! We don’t have those in Kansas!), so I would pack a backpack with everything I needed for the day, and head up once. It seemed to work.

My yurt! I ended up not having to share, which was nice, actually. Especially since I was still on central time, and crashed really early on Saturday night.

We will pause a moment to admire the yurt village’s toilet:

And the view from said toilet

Yes, even going to the bathroom was an incredible experience.

So. We had a yoga class on Friday night, an unwindy thing, then some lovely vegetarian meal, cooked by our amazing German cook, Beatrix:

(She always explained things beforehand.) And then we sat in a circle and introduced ourselves.

Saturday was more yoga (well, it was a yoga retreat!), and now’s as good of time as any to show you the amazing instructor/yogi, Kent:

Seriously. He was kind, funny, adaptable to our needs, and encouraging. I wish we had more like him out here.

Then, after some more amazing food (including the best. soup. ever.)

a group of us went on a hike led by the center’s maintenance/jack-of-all-trades guy.

This was Jess, an English teacher from Prescott, Arizona. We got along swimmingly.

Then, on Sunday, we listened to a talk/had a discussion with Ganga, the guy who founded the center:

It was all very interseting; I really appreciated his/the center’s philosophy toward yoga — it was very practical, open, and not hokey at all. (Though we did do some om chanting, and I have decided that I would like more singing in my yoga practice. It was quite cool.) And, then after more yoga, we ate more yummy food

(The group of women I ended up sitting with and talking to most meals. From left: Karen, Margo, Jess, Jerry, Terri and me.)

And said our goodbyes.

From there, I headed down into Santa Barbara. An on-line friend, Cathy (who happens to be an old college friend of Hubby’s) drove down from her home outside of Fresno, picked me up from the center, and we headed down to the ocean front. We ate some Mexican food (I had mahi mahi fajitas, which were pretty good), talked an awful lot, went down to the warf, and spent too much (well, I did, anyway) at some quirky local stores. It was a wonderful way to end the weekend!

The hotel Hubby arranged for me.

That’s Cathy. We had a nearby security guard snap this one.

The bums in Santa Barbara were quite creative in their panhandling.

This is the one that got my money, though:

The view from my balcony.

Do I look relaxed and happy?

It was an incredible thing, a wonderful birthday present. Thanks to all who helped make it possible! (And to Hubby who organized the whole thing and manned the fort here at home. He’s a great husband!)

Signed by Zelda

December 1, 2012booknutgirls Leave a comment

by: Kate Feiffer
ages: 8+
First sentence: “Grandma Zelda didn’t answer her doorbell the first time Nicky rang.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Lucy is moving to New York City from Savannah. And even though it means new writing samples — Lucy is an avid graphologist, as well as someone who is interested in the forensic study of handwriting — she does. not. want. to move. And it doesn’t help that her upstairs neighbor, Nicky, is always jumping off his bed, which makes a huge racket in her room.

Nicky has consigned himself to a life in Time Outs. In fact, he barely leaves his room, except to go to school. Which means his best friend right now is Pigeon. Who is not your ordinary pigeon, but rather one who holds conversations with the people around her. Nicky’s other best friend is his Grandma Zelda, who goes missing one day.

It’s up to Nicky — with Lucy’s help, of course! — to figure out what happened to Grandma, and save her from a Terrible Fate.

I know I should put this in Science Fiction/Fantasy, because of the talking Pigeon, but honestly: it didn’t feel like a SFF book to me. It felt like a straight-up middle grade mystery. Grandma goes missing, Nicky finds out, Lucy’s skill with handwriting helps, and Grandma is saved. Also: Bad Dad (Nicky’s; Lucy’s parents are quite lovely) is reformed. All this leads me to believe that the talking pigeon was probably an unnecessary, even if it was amusing, storytelling device.

Even with that complaint, it was an adorable little book.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

November 2012 Round Up

November 30, 2012booknutgirls 1 Comment

It’s coming to the end of the year, and I’m mulling around my final best-of post. Thinking about what’s on my top 10 list for work. Just wondering, of all that I’ve read this year, what’s going to bubble to the top… I suppose I’ll have to work on that before the end of next month. ALSO: you have one more day to enter my blogiversary giveaway. Go. Now. (But come back and read the rest of the post, okay?)

The top of the pile this month? I read a LOT of good stuff (and some not-so-good stuff), but I think this one moved me most: