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Friday Fun! (Unathletic Me)
I have always wanted to be athletic. The version of me that tends to populate fantasy land is essentially the female version of 007. This is so not realistic though, and I’m not just saying that I can’t do backflips. My lack of athleticism is so strong that one of my most frequent memories of schoolyard sports is getting hit in the face by basketballs. This pretty much happened any time I was anywhere near a basketball court. I didn’t even have to be playing. I also have asthma and have this tendency to have to stop running to wheeze. God help me if there’s ever a zombie uprising.
In spite of all this, I still, inexplicably, delude myself into thinking that this time it will be different and sublimely attempt various athletic to semi-athletic endeavor. Last weekend this endeavor was ice skating. I remembered ice skating when I was a kid on the beaver ponds near our house. I was definitely good at it. I’d play hockey with my brother and his friends. Why did it take me so long to remember my awesomeness? I wondered. I discovered a free skating rink in the North End with $5 skate rentals. I asked a friend to meet me there, and it was on like Donkey Kong.
I got the skates in the biggest size they had, because I have inexplicably large feet for my short stature. I laced myself up and fought my way through the 2 foot tall terrors to get onto the ice. I stepped on and almost fell flat on my face. Hmm, this is not the me on ice that I remember. I desperately grabbed for the wall and glared at the children flying around using stacked up plastic crates to keep from falling down. That is so cheating, and no wonder kids are growing up to be such wimps these days, but I digress. Whilst holding onto the wall and taking tentative skating steps, I realized there was growing pain in my feet. The skates were way way too narrow. I also suddenly remembered that I used hockey skates, not figure skates growing up which explained why I couldn’t seem to handle the ice. You use movements more like roller blading for hockey skates, whereas figure skates are more like roller skates. I am not a roller skating girl. I got halfway around the rink, thinking my feet would go numb or something, but they suddenly were in excruciating agony, and I am not exaggerating. Realizing that I would probably be that woman crying on the rink if I didn’t get off the ice asap, I changed my course and headed down the middle of the rink, abandoning the wall and hoping I wouldn’t land on my ass. I managed to make it to the door safe and sound and hastily ripped off the skates. Every step I took still hurt. It turns out I somehow pulled most of the muscles and tendons on top of my right foot, and I’ve been limping most of the week.
I’d say in the future I won’t attempt athletic things again, but I know myself. I can just see me taking skiing lessons at some point in the near future. I’m bound to tell myself If you can snowshoe, you can totally ski, Amanda. I guess it’s just lucky for me that I don’t live in a climate with more dangerous recreational sports.
Happy weekend everyone!
Book Review: Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani
Summary:
Viola loves her life in Brooklyn with her quirky filmmaker parents. Unfortunately, they need to go to Afghanistan to make a documentary and have dumped her in an Indiana boarding school for a year. Can Viola see past her homesickness and embrace what Prefect Academy has to offer or will she be Queen Snark for a year?
Review:
I came at this book simultaneously expecting to like it and not like it. I expected to like it, because when I was in the YA age group, I loved boarding school books, and I’ve read Trigiani’s Big Stone Gap trilogy and really liked her writing. On the other hand, reviews online stated they disliked it due to a negative portrayal of Indiana and what they felt was a lack of understanding of teenagers. Well, I liked Viola in Reel Life, and I would like to offer up rebuttals to both opinions.
First, the book is written from Viola’s perspective. She’s a fourteen year old who has spent her entire life in Brooklyn, and she didn’t want to go to boarding school. Her negative comments about Indiana are to be expected in this case. She’s a New Yorker in the country for the first time. Of course she’s going to think the fashion stinks. Of course she’s going to miss the noise of the city. Personally, I found Indiana and the folks in it to be portrayed in a positive light, because despite her anger and snark, they persist at comforting her homesickness and winning her over. She comes to like aspects of Indiana just as much as she likes aspects of Brooklyn. That is a key part of her growing up that is the main storyline. She has to learn to make home wherever she is and be independent. That point would not have come across strongly if she loved everything about Indiana from the moment she arrived.
Now to those who felt it was too young for teenagers, I think you’re starting to fall for the media’s portrayal of all teens as growing up very fast. They’re not all having sex, doing drugs, and drinking. I wasn’t that type of teen, and even teens who are can appreciate that not everyone is living a Gossip Girl life. It is a clean book, and I liked that because it left room for me to focus on Viola growing as a person. The kids are kind of innocent, and Viola acknowledges that she’s led a protected life so far. On the other hand, Viola and her friends have to deal with step-parents, new siblings, serious family illness, money problems, and more. Their problems are middle class type problems, but what’s wrong with that? Not everyone grows up abused or poor or filthy rich or debaucherous. The overall messages are excellent ones for teen girls to hear–be loyal to your friends, grow up and help your parents, don’t choose a boy over yourself, do your best and be gracious. Plus the storyline supporting these messages is fun and interesting to read.
My only complaint with the book is the minor sub-plot of a ghost. I don’t think it really fit in very well with the overall world and feel of the book. I would have much preferred that Viola find an old diary or something that made her come to understand Prefect Academy better. However, it wasn’t in the book enough to make me dislike the story.
Overall, it’s a fun read, and I recommend it if you enjoy YA lit or stories set in boarding schools.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Won on Reading Sarah’s blog. Thanks!
Book Review: Ethan: Site 39 by Otis V. Goodwin
Summary:
In the near future Earth is destroyed by an asteroid. Luckily for humanity, a group of people had already departed for Alpha Centauri to colonize the two stars found there. After losing contact with the few survivors, the Centaurians believed Earth to be uninhabited. Five thousand years later, their descendants return to an Earth that has recovered from the chaos caused by the asteroid to begin the work of reinhabiting it. When Ethan, one of the colonists, stumbles upon a residence dug into a mesa made of granite, everything the Centaurians believe about what occurred on Earth in relation to the asteroid is challenged.
Review:
I really wanted this to be a good book. First I’m a big supporter of indie and self-publishing, as I often find the stories more creative and thought-provoking than those published by big publishing houses. (See my review of Vow of Silence for evidence of that). I also thought it was an intriguing scifi storyline. Unfortunately, Goodwin can’t write.
Oh, he can come up with a great idea for a story, but his writing is terrible. First, he tells us instead of showing us. For instance, he’ll say things like “Ethan was thinking how worried he was,” instead of, you know, letting us see Ethan’s worried thoughts. Whole parts of the story that would have been fun to read in addition to making the book longer he sums up by telling us about it in a couple of sentences, such as “They talked about their planned future together” instead of letting us read the conversation.
Not that I would have wanted to read the conversation anyway, because the dialogue is atrocious. Every character sounds like an automaton. They never use a contraction or a simile or anything really that makes a human sound human. Goodwin tries to explain this as language changing, but even when we flash back to see characters from the time of the asteroid, they speak in exactly the same robotic manner.
The book blurb says that Goodwin is retired from the military, and it frankly shows. In some ways, this is good. The military portions in the asteroid flashback are clearly written by someone who knows the military. However, mostly it’s just a rabid conservatism showing. We’re talking a world in which the small population of humans rebuilding all automatically fall in love with someone of the opposite gender and that love is automatically, wholeheartedly returned. It’s like the man never got past the fairy tales told to little girls to realize that that doesn’t happen perfectly for everybody in real life. Real life just doesn’t work out that perfectly for everyone. It makes all of the characters unbelievable, whereas having one true love situation would be believable.
Of course, there is no saving the wretched female characters. Goodwin seems to be only capable of writing the completely helpless sobbing woman or a woman who is essentially a dude with boobs. God forbid a woman be strong and feminine simultaneously.
I feel kind of bad saying all of this, because his overall storyline really is good and creative. It’s what kept me reading the book in spite of cringing and rolling my eyes. What Goodwin should have done is acquired a writing partner who could write his storyline on the sentence level well. Then he would have had a great book. Unfortunately, he didn’t do that.
2 out of 5 stars
Source: Free copy from book promotion agent via LibraryThing‘s EarlyReviewers Member Giveaway program.
Friday Fun! (Me vs. Turnip Greens)
Upon the realization that my budget went flying out the window in the last six months of 2009, I decided it was high time to get frugal again. This of course was spurred on when I got my annual free credit report and saw my student debt all summarized in one place. Anyway, to this budgeting end, I got two apps for my iTouch–Budget and SpendLite. I used Budget to outline my monthly budget. This left me with a set amount for food/necessities and one for fun. I added those two numbers together, divided by four, and there you have my weekly fun/food/necessities allowance which I plugged into SpendLite. I can add new expenses right on it as I go without having to save receipts and it automatically subtracts it for me. A world where I have to do less math is a world I like.
Anyway, so to this end, I realized I need to go back to the creative cooking that I established in my super-poor student days. I’m also attempting to eat more seasonally, as you guys know, because it’s cheaper and it exposes me to new foods. This week when I was grocery shopping, I came armed with a list of seasonal veggies–sweet potatoes, turnips, butternut squash, and kale. I quickly found the sweet potatoes and decided against butternut squash since I still had a backpile of frozen butternut squash ravivolis made last week. The turnips were disturbingly pre-cut and individually shrink-wrapped. WTF?! They looked like little deformed heads in shrinkwrap. Kinda like the heads in Futurama only without all that fun water to bounce around in.
Defeated in the turnip arena, I decided to brave the leafy green land of kale. One of my best friends loves kale and insists it’s easy enough to stir-fry up, so I approached the leafy green portion of the produce aisle that I usually give the evil eye to as I walk by. The problem with my grocery store is that it sticks labels of what the leafy greens are on the top in a manner that seems to have zero bearing on the leafy greens down below. You’d think that the lables would be in the same order as the leafy greens, but apparently not. After much searching, I decided that I’d probably found the kale. It was leafy. It was green. It looked fresh. It had a produce number on it, which the signs unfortunately didn’t have, but this meant I could type in the produce number at the self-checkout and be sure.
Upon arrival at the self-checkout, I typed in the produce number, and it informs me that I just bought around $1.50 worth of turnip greens.
Turnip greens?! What the fuck is a turnip green?!
However, the practical and very cheap portion of my mind reminded me that turnips are in season so probably the greens are too, and did I notice that this was only costing me $1.50? So I bought it. Plus removing things you’ve already keyed in at self-checkout is just annoying.
Using my mad librarian skizzillz, I discovered that most greens are cooked pretty similarly and that on the bitterness scale (what kind of veggie *needs* a bitterness scale?!) it is more bitter than spinach. Erm, ok. The next night, I had already determined to make pizza for dinner. The only veggies I had to put on it were sweet potatoes, black beans, turnip greens, and red potatoes. I learned from Vegan with a Vengeance that you can put potato on pizza if you thinly slice it and place give it enough oil to soak up to keep from being crunchy. I’d done that before, and it was amazing. Sweet potato, black beans, and cheese does not a filling pizza make, imho, so I pulled up info on cooking turnip greens on the interweb. Apparently you can make greens less bitter by quickly boiling them for a few minutes prior to cooking them in whatever you want to cook them in. Using copious amounts of garlic was also recommended. The number one recommendation though was to add pork grease. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen, and I couldn’t help but wonder how bad these greens taste if you have to soak them in what essentially equals bacon grease. But I soldiered on.
I took the huge leaves, ripped two in half, and put them to boiling. Guys, turnip greens do not have a pleasant aroma when cooking. It was like smelling armpits. I drained them, stuck them on a cutting board, and soaked them with lemon juice. I read somewhere that putting lemon juice on spinach draws out the iron, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt the turnip greens. I then stood staring at them trying to determine the best method for the pizza.
Since the sweet potato slices have to be on the bottom of the white pizza to soak up the oil, I decided to do the herbs, garlic, and oil, then sweet potato, then ripped up bits of turnip greens topped with more garlic, followed by black beans and three kinds of cheese. One thing the interwebs didn’t tell me is that turnip greens are kinda stringy. I tossed the stems that extend up into the leaves ad infinitum and placed the pieces on the pizza. I crossed my fingers after assembling and stuck the whole thing in the oven.
Surprise, surprise, the pizza was a success! It was yummy and garlicky and the greens cooked to perfection sandwiched between sweet potatoes and garlic. I’m still not sure how I feel about a veggie that smells like armpits when you cook it and that needs to be soaked in other things, like garlic, to taste good. In any case, I still have about 10 leaves to use up somehow over the next week.
Happy weekend guys!
Book Review: Battle Royale Ultimate Edition Volume 1 by Koushun Takami (Manga) (Series, #1)
A Note on Me and Graphic Novels:
This, believe it or not, was my first foray into the world of graphic novels. I was spurred into this new territory by my intense love of the movie Battle Royale. I know that there’s also a traditional book out there, but I’d heard the manga is what the author feels really fulfills his vision of the story. I received the first volume of the ultimate edition, which contains the first three mangas in the series, for Chrismukkah. I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy reading a graphic novel. I tend to associate them with superheroes, and I’m not generally a fan of superhero stories (except Ironman. Robert Downey Jr., *swoon*). But this. This was a story I already knew I liked, so I came at the genre with a much more open mind than the once or twice I flipped through a superhero graphic novel. You guys, I absolutely love the feeling of reading a graphic novel. I could literally feel different parts of my brain working at it than that work when reading a regular book, playing videogames, writing, or watching a movie. It’s like a portion of my brain was like “Oh hai. You finally remembered I exist!” I love that I’m only reading dialogue, because I hate extensive descriptions in books. I love that the drawings are art that I actually enjoy looking at the fine details of. I love it that when I flip back to show scenes to other people, I notice things in the drawings I didn’t see the first time around. I’m officially a convert to the genre, but you still won’t see me reading about superheroes anytime soon.
Summary:
In an alternate history of Japan, Japan comes under the rule of a totalitarian, isolationist government after WWII. The government rules through terror, and part of that terror is selecting, supposedly via lottery, one 9th grade class every year to compete in a televised game where it is kill or be killed. Shuuya never expected to win this lottery, but when his class goes on a field trip, upon arrival they discover that they are this year’s participants on an island location. They discover collars on their necks that will detonate if more than one is left alive at a certain point and also if they wander into the randomly assigned and changing forbidden zones. As the teens attempt to survive the game through various methods, flashbacks tell the story of the 9th grade class members.
Review:
I absolutely love this story. I love violent, gory stories, and there are creative deaths galore here. For instance, the weapons include a scythe, and that scythe gets used. In one particularly memorable scene, a girl desperately attempts to stuff a boy’s brains back into his skull. It’s freaking amazing. There’s also graphic sex, ranging from rape to love. I don’t like my books to pretend like sex doesn’t happen in the real world, because um, it does. The fact that sex can be wonderful and about emotions or horrible and about power is wonderfully depicted.
The manner of introducing these characters tossed together in a horrible situation then expanding on who they are via flashbacks is very reminiscent of Lost. Of course, here the characters knew each other, at least somewhat, before the game. The flashbacks fit in perfectly with the action of the game, and they reveal just enough about the characters without revealing too much. From a cooking class that solidified a friendship to crimes committed to lessons learned from an activist uncle, the flashbacks are endlessly fascinating.
Seeing these characters in what most certainly feels like a hopeless situation orchestrated by a powerful government far bigger than they are is truly powerful reading. It leaves the reader wondering not only what makes people do bad things, but also how to define what is good and bad given various situations. Is it actually good to team up and attempt to buck the system or will that just cause more pain in the end? Is suicide a bad thing when it’s kill yourself or kill others?
If you enjoy Lost, The Hunger Games, violence, psychology, or even just graphic novels, you will enjoy this book. I highly recommend it and can’t wait to read the next volume!
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Gift
5 Questions About Books
I stumbled on this fun meme over at Readers and Reference, and I really liked the questions it asks, so I bookmarked it for future use. I tweaked it a little bit to be in question format and to be a bit clearer. If you decide to do the meme yourself, please post a link in the comments here so we can all check it out and get to know you better too!
What’s a book you most want to read again for the first time?:
Hmmm, there’s a lot of books that have meant so much to me in my life, but I think I’d have to say The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I had seen the movie and absolutely hated it. My nerdier friends at university told me over and over again to read the “trilogy,” and I would love it. I refused to for years, but then one day I decided to take a whack at it. I can’t remember why. Anyway, I was cracking up reading it, which hadn’t happened to me in years at the time. It really reminded me why I love to read.
What was one of your favorite childhood books?:
Absolutely no doubt On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I loved the whole series growing up, but this was my favorite entry. In it Laura lives next to a creek, and I lived next to three beaver ponds, so I felt a bit of camaraderie. I also was completely obsessed with the sod house for some reason. I wanted to live underground just like Laura in a house that plants grew out of and, best of all, that I could walk on. I also enjoyed their problems with cows, since I was frequently sent out to chase cows back into their pastures. Plus, Laura’s relationship with her father, Pa, I identified with as it reminded me of mine with my father. Also, not gonna lie, I wished repeatedly that I had a mother like Ma.
What’s a book that you were assigned in school that you were expecting to be bad, but that turned out to be really good?:
I was a US History major in undergrad (my other major was English and American Literature). We were required to take two courses that gave you an overview of all of US history. I was dreading the Civil War portion, because I just don’t like that war. Every historian has a time period within their specialty they don’t like. Anywho, so this professor assigned us Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe to read, as it was one of the big stimuli for the Civil War. She wanted us to see beyond the modern controversy and read it with historian’s eyes to see why it had such a big impact on the abolition movement. I was expecting it to be fingernails-on-chalkboard bad, but, you guys, it is so good. It really demonstrates how abolitionists saw African-Americans as equally human, just downtrodden as the victims of slavery. It also shows the high expectations placed on Christian women at the time. It’s a heart-wrenching book, and I encourage you to read it and judge it for what it is and not for the racist movies and plays that followed it.
What’s your “guilty pleasure” read?:
This is a tough question for me, because I don’t tend to feel guilty about anything that I read. I’d have to say though that British chicklit books like Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella probably count. The cheesey, romcom storylines annoy the heck out of me, but for some reason, I still read them periodically. I guess it’s kind of like watching Teen Mom on MTV. I can’t look away from the train wreck.
What’s a book you feel you should read, but haven’t yet?:
I’m not sure it quite counts as a book, but Beowulf. I took this AMAZING class in undergrad on ancient mythology, and we mentioned it umpteen times, but didn’t have time to read it. I absolutely love ancient myths, like The Odyssey is one of my favorite books of all time, so really there’s not much of an excuse for the fact that I have yet to read Beowulf. Hm, except maybe that I’m not sure which translation is the best, and we all know how much translation matters in the ancient myths.
*waves* Hope you enjoyed the meme!
Movie Review: Matilda (1996)
Summary:
Matilda has the unfortunate luck of being a smart kid born to not only stupid, but annoying and neglectful, parents. They leave her alone for extended periods of time at a young age, time she fills by reading books from the public library. When she’s six and a half, her father finally sends her to a private school with a bully of a principal. However, her sweet teacher tells her she’s special, and Matilda’s mind stretches to be even more powerful than she ever thought it could.
Review:
This movie sounds serious, but it’s actually quite funny. Danny DeVito directs and acts–both as the narrator and Matilda’s father. Rhea Perlman, known like DeVito for comedic roles, plays Matilda’s mother. Matilda’s telekinetic abilities are played mainly for laughs, and she tends to use them in a child-like manner.
Matilda’s parents aren’t mean to their daughter on purpose; they just don’t understand her. They think it’s fun to watch terrible game shows on tv and are offended when she says she’d rather read Moby Dick. Matilda doesn’t hate them, but she also knows she doesn’t belong.
The message of the movie really is that family is what you make of it, not what you’re born into. Matilda could have dumbed herself down to fit in with her family, but she doesn’t. Her parents could have insisted that she belongs with them, but they don’t. Sometimes people are born into the right family; sometimes they’re not, and there’s nothing wrong with fixing that.
If you want some giggles and a heartwarming message that doesn’t have a love interest for once, give Matilda a shot.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
Book Review: Wizard and Glass By Stephen King (Series, #4)
Summary:
Roland and his ka-tet escape Blaine the Train, but they accidentally wind up off the path of the beam and in yet another alternate version of Jake, Eddie, and Susannah’s world. They start following an interstate, heading for a palace and hoping therein lies the solution for returning to the path of the beam. One night while traveling, Roland finally tells them what has been haunting him all this time with the story of the summer he was 14 years old and his first love.
Review:
As with The Waste Lands, this book reads like multiple books in one. I was expecting that, since The Waste Lands ended abruptly without solving the problem of Blaine the Train. This book takes care of that storyline, then jumps into a flashback that lasts almost the entire book then jumps back to the present and attempts to solve a big problem. It’s a lot for one book to handle, and it would have worked better if Lud and Blaine the Train were one book taking place after The Waste Lands but before Wizard and Glass. If after doing this, King had shortened the flashback, The Wizard and Glass would be an excellent book. Of course, he didn’t do it that way.
Now that I am this far into the series, I’m seeing that King, whether intentionally or not, is writing different bits of the series as different genres. This could be why it holds wide appeal–if someone doesn’t like the genre the story is currently being told in, it will change soon enough. The first book is mainly a travelogue. The second a horror story. The third is a mix of scifi with the time paradox and horror again with Lud and Blaine the Train. Here, we get partly fantasy with the current issues for Roland’s ka-tet, but mostly a medieval romance–the story of Roland and Susan.
That medieval romance starts out well. King sets up three dialects–High Speech, In-World Speech, and Mejis accent–very well. All three are easy to differentiate, and yet are easy to read. Roland’s world is a wonderful mix of the knights of Arthur and the fabeled American west. It’s fun to read, but only when something’s really happening. That’s the problem with the flashback. It feels too long, because very little happens in large portions of it. Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain must spend most of their summer in Mejis waiting, and instead of telling the reader “wow, they waited a long time,” King makes the reader wait too, and it’s fucking boring and annoying. I seriously wanted to give up, and right when I was about to, the action started again. Finally. The action makes excellent use of this mix of fantastical and wild west, but it really takes too long to come about.
As far as the characters go, I know I’m supposed to feel for Susan, but I honestly found her annoying and dull, which is problematic since she’s Roland’s first love. Also, after all this time of Roland stating how Eddie is almost as funny as Cuthbert, I was expecting Cuthbert to be, y’know, funny. He’s not. He acts like that boy in school who used to pull your braids and think it was funny. He’s just juvenile, not witty. On the other hand, the character of the witch Rhea is excellently done. She’s simultaneously disgusting and intriguing, and she’s one of the few who manages to out-wit Roland, partly because he underestimates her since she is an old, disgusting woman. If only Cuthbert and Alain had been so vividly drawn instead of wandering shells of people for Roland to talk at.
The book is a necessary read if you plan on finishing the series. It gives important insight into why Roland is the man he is today, not to mention explains how the ka-tet escapes Blain the Train and gets back on the path of the beam. I think this is the almost inevitable dull book in an overall good series. Just take my advice and skim over the dull part of Mejis until the action picks up again.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
Previous Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review
The Drawing of the Three, review
The Waste Lands, review
Friday Fun! (Featuring My Niece and Swaptree)
My lovely loyal readers and friends, so sorry there’s been no book reviews this week! The book I’m currently reading is really long, and I’m not enjoying it that much so the pace of my reading is a bit below average. I definitely should ring in next week with a review though, as it’s almost done!
This week I played pub trivia for the first time and discovered that I am not good at trivia. This is funny and ironic cause I know lots of random facts, but apparently I don’t know trivia type facts. I mean, really, who’s a tall athletic actor who guest starred in 1970s tv shows? Jeez, I dunno. I also didn’t enjoy that the music to keep teams from overhearing each other meant that I had to yell all night. That’s only worth it for a concert. Ah well. Lesson learned. I guess I should stick to arcade games, pool tables, and dart boards when we go out.
Some of you are aware that I welcomed my first niece into the world on December 23rd. My brother and my sister-in-law made the choice to have her, even though she has Down Syndrome. I know they have plenty of love in their hearts for a special baby, and they are just wonderful with her. Unfortunately, one of the elements of Down Syndrome is that the babies almost all have heart problems. They usually operate on the babies at 6 months (I have no idea why at that particular point, but I’m sure there’s a reason). Anyway, due to the heart condition, my niece is not very strong. She struggled to learn how to eat. I guess that takes a lot of energy she didn’t have at first. Finally she gained enough weight and was eating well enough to come home. I was going to go meet her and visit my brother and father this weekend, but unfortunately she had to get readmitted to the hospital. She wasn’t gaining weight, which babies are supposed to do. This is of course difficult for my brother and sister-in-law who also have an almost 3 year old little boy to take care of and a small farm to run. Thankfully, most of my family lives near them so they have lots of help. I wish there was something I could do from a distance to help my brother, but there’s not much beyond being an ear to listen when he needs to talk.
In much happier news, allow me to tell you guys about Swaptree. Swaptree allows you to list books you have but don’t want and books you want, and then it sets up 1:1 trades for you (or you can browse and request trades yourself). This works extra well since they set up 3 way trades, which helps you find a lot more books. The matches they make are in no particular order on your want list, so it’s a bit of a surprise what you get, particularly if your want list is as long as mine. Since part of ringing in the new year was weeding my personal library, I excitedly decided to try this out. It’s so awesome! So far I’ve gotten rid of 8 books for books on my tbr list. For those wondering, my weeded books were mainly textbooks I will never ever read again, some romance novels that came to my library for free that my boss gave me, and books from a point in my deconversion when I was wondering if maybe I should be pagan. For the record, I’m not pagan. I guess I’m deist. Anywho, so the books I’ve received in exchange so far are:
- Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford
Do not mock me. I have a thing for memoirs. - Living the Simple Life by Elaine St. James
I’m a big fan of minimalism, and this was highly recommended on minimalist blogs. - The Accidental Demon Slayer by Angie Fox
Yes, another paranormal romance. However, it’s supposed to be a comical one which will change things up a bit. - Life, The Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
I’ve already read this, but I love love LOVE the Hitchhiker series, and didn’t (still don’t actually) own them all, so I’m fleshing out the “trilogy.” - Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
This memoir is by a woman whose fundamentalist Christian parents sent her to the same reform school in the Dominican Republic that my cousin’s parents sent her to, so I was intrigued. - Wild Swans by Jung Chang
I realized I haven’t read much non-western lit lately, and I enjoyed the nonwestern lit I read in college. This memoir is about three generations of Chinese women, and I think it looks really good! - Neuromancer by William Gibson
A classic scifi book that my nerdy friends have been berating me for not having read. 😉 - Feed by M. T. Anderson
A dystopian book about our heads being plugged into computers. Right up my alley.
All those books and my personal library size hasn’t increased at all! I encourage you guys to check Swaptree out. The only costs associated are shipping, and you can print labels directly from the website for extra ease. Each book costs around $2.46 to ship.
Have a nice long weekend, everyone! Rock on Martin Luther King Jr!
Blog Makeover
I’ve been intending for a couple of months to give my blog a bit of a make-over. I found my old theme to be a bit difficult to read. On top of that, since it was inflexible, I couldn’t brand my blog at all. So to start off 2010, I sought to give you, my loyal readers, and hopefully new ones down the road, a more adult look to go with my posts.
To that end, I’ve got a snazzy black/gray/white theme complemented by a creative commons licensed photo of a wolf howling at the moon. Snazzy!
In addition to the RSS feed button on the right, there’s now also an option to subscribe via email if you’re not an RSS user. The button to subscribe is just below the RSS feed.
I’ve also rearranged the widgets so that the tag cloud is more prominent. I think this makes for more fluid browsing than the categories, but you can still find categories farther down the sidebar.
Blogroll links have been updated with a bunch deleted and a few added.
I hope you guys like the new design as much as I do! If you’re reading in a reader, click on through to take a look.
Peace!
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 