Like Calligraphy
Title: Voltaire’s Calligrapher
Author: Pablo De Santis
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Fiction
Length: 149 pages
You know it’s been a rough week when you’ve managed to 1. worry your best friends 2. drive your husband batty 3. inadvertently offend your readers 4. write not one, but two overly pouty blog posts and 5. manage to take a whole week to read 149 pages.
Especially when those 149 pages are so delicious.
Not just delicious, witty and divine.
De Santis doesn’t just write about calligraphy and a master calligrapher. He manages to make his words sound like calligraphy. And his story is woven with the same sly craftiness as runaway ink.
Normally, I would recommend someone read this in one sitting over a cup of the best dark coffee blend they have. I didn’t do that. I spent a week sucking down a chapter at a time – and his chapters are only a page to three at best.
There are castles and print shops, automatons, and poisonous fish… dark corners and forbidden candlelight… Oh my! What terrifying fun! You won’t regret diving into the adventure.
Moonhorse
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books
Title: Moonhorse
Author: Mary Pope Osborne
Illustrator: S.M. Sealig
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
I saw this and couldn’t pass it up. Mary Pope Osborne invades my house again! I love her.
I enjoy her complete ability to offer facts and history and in this case astronomy in the form of fiction. To pique a child’s interest in a nonfiction topic with a bit of fantastical fairy tale.
I’m trying to get more detailed and specific when I offer these reviews of my child’s favorite books, but she doesn’t always seem to understand the questions. Or perhaps, I don’t understand the beautiful simplicity of her answers.
Me: “Did you like this book?”
Kiddo: “Yes!”
Me: “What did you like about it?”
Kiddo: “The white!”
Me: “Because the horse is white?”
Kiddo: “With the red.”
The little girl in the illustration is wearing a red dress. I think bits of the story were lost on my three year old today, she was drawing her own pictures and sucking down a cup of milk. I think ultimately, what she may have been trying to tell me, in her distracted three year old way, is that she liked the illustrations and the use of muted color. But I don’t want to put words in her mouth.
If you’re building an astronomy unit study for anyone under ten, this is a nice bedtime story to add to your week. Personally, I wish the poetry of the tale was rhymed more, but I have a natural inclination to the sing-songy way of things.
Stuck in Love
A Movie Review for the Bookish at Heart
I was watching Stuck in Love, and probably about halfway through it, when my husband walked in and said, “You enjoying your book movie?”
It took me a minute. This movie was about a man who spends three years of his life waiting for his wife to return to him – even though they are divorced and she has married someone else. This movie is about the third year and how he handles the emotional struggles of his two nearly adult children. And yes, I realized after my husband posed the question, this movie is about four writers – lots of book lovers – and has many literary references.
Greg Kinnear’s character has won two Penn Faulkner Awards. His oldest daughter is 19 and has just published her first novel through Scribner. His younger son, also having been groomed to write his whole life, is a poet and short story writer obsessed with Stephen King. Jennifer Connelly (the ex-wife) can be found reading Joan Didion in bed. Books are tossed around the set like old friends and are active characters in the movie as well, perched on shelves and end tables, strewn across laps at the beach.
I had not noticed until my husband pointed it out. I had not noticed because it was so familiar. I had not noticed because I live with these stacks of souls trapped in bindings all over my house. Sitting at the kitchen table, watching the sun come up with my coffee, I look out at my table… just here, in the kitchen of all places, I have 10 books, a journal, and a day planner, piled around me. You’d think this was a proper writing desk except for the bowl of orange slices and blueberries, my daughter’s play dough bucket, a United States place mat, and a container of markers.
Granted the houses in Stuck in Love are much nicer than my own. Slightly bigger and the bookshelves are proper built-ins made of mahogany or some-such beautiful woodwork. The end tables were no doubt not retrieved from a neighbor’s discard pile. Yes, that black stone tile end table pictured here on the right came out of the trash. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and I could care less that it doesn’t match anything else in my house – I shall pile books on it. (Even though I’m supposed to keep all my books in the library and not let them trickle into the rest of the house. Keeping them out of other rooms requires a lot of daily maintenance.)
The people in Stuck in Love aren’t just richer than me, they’re probably much braver than me also. The daughter actually takes creative writing classes in school – whereas I took the safe route and studied marketing. They do what they feel – which results in a lot of really bad decisions. But one thing we do have in common, which I found really refreshing in a secular story, is have a permanence view of marriage. (You don’t find a lot of anyone who shares this worldview, not even among Christians: http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=11309913170).
I found a lot of online critics who gave this movie a ‘rotten tomatoes’ rating (the soundtrack, however, gets glowing reviews from everyone). I am not with them (except for the soundtrack lovers). I found it marvelous. It’s a beautiful story about genuine people with a lot of bookish bits. I gave it 5 stars on my Netflix account. I will re-watch it. I will probably compile a list of the character’s books at some point and add them to things to move up my TBR pile (the patriarch can be seen reading Jeffrey Ford as well, but I didn’t catch the title).
Not just for the book lists, the movie is filled with little quotable quotes, little tidbits for book-nerds and writers. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. That and I love that the dad teaches his kids to journal, that he allows them the privacy to write. I love that writing and reading are treated as means to live by, ways to learn, and how to pinpoint your emotions about your reality.
Something so obvious, that I didn’t catch at first glance and my husband did at a brief glimpse, this is a movie for book people.
A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
I was made for yellow tea sets, books about books and the people who read and write them, brown branches, painted bookshelves, brightly colored rugs and papasan chairs, and rooms filled with sunlight. The afternoon hours of today in Dallas, TX are sublime. – Jennifer Joy Golightly
Get Me Out of Here
Title: Get Me Out of Here
Author: Rachel Reiland
Genre: Memoir/ Psychology
Length: 447 pages
There was no hope for this book – it is so fascinating and so full of raw heart and soul of a person and her mental illness – my copy is obliterated with underlines and notes in margins. I read all 447 pages in less than a 12 hour period, without shirking my life responsibilities, and gave it a five star rating. I recommend it to anyone trying to understand the inner workings of a mentally ill brain.
“One of the saddest facts isn’t that there is still a child within you but that you’re so ashamed of that child. What’s even sadder is that you have always been ashamed of that child, even when you were one.” – pg. 141
Lacuna
Title: The Lacuna
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
lacuna
-
n.noun
-
An empty space or a missing part; a gap.
-
A cavity, space, or depression, (Biology) in a bone, containing cartilage or bone cells.
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: a blank space or a missing part : gap <the evident lacunae in his story — Shirley Hazzard>; also : deficiency 1 <despite all these lacunae, those reforms were a vast improvement — New Republic>
- (Printing, Lithography & Bookbinding) a gap or space, esp in a book or manuscript
- (Architecture) another name for coffer; an ornamental sunken panel in a ceiling or dome
- sheet that forms a distinct (usually flat and rectangular) section or component of something
- hiatus
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Origin: L, a ditch, hole, pool from lacus: see lake
Barbara Kingsolver’s work embodies and embraces nearly all these definitions in some way or another. It’s really quite brilliant, although not nearly as riveting as the concept itself.
Whereas The Poisonwood Bible was completely riveting, but I was far less intrigued by the concept. Funny how that happens. I love Kingsolver, I think she’s a genius. She has managed two completely different reading experiences in one career and I only hope that I could accomplish that one day. With Poisonwood Bible, I was captivated by the place, the drama, her ability to tell a story from five completely distinct voices. I could not stop reading, could not wait to get back to the story.
The Lacuna put me to sleep. Honestly. But it’s not a terrible book. To be fair, I was tired – really tired – this week. When I read books like this, I often think of that quote at the end of Fight Club, “You met me at a very strange time in my life,” I want to tell the book. A time when everything simultaneously puts me to sleep and keeps me awake at night. On top of that, I was totally distracted by the concept. I would start reading and instead of getting lost in the story I’d get lost in my thoughts about the story. I’d soak in every nuance of the word lacuna and sit and pick apart every aspect of how that word is tied to MY story – MY life.
“What do you know about love?”
“Nothing, apparently. That it winks on and off like an electric bulb.”
– pg. 184
Those lines hit me pretty hard. There’s the honest truth of so much about the world right there. At least for me, I see it so truthfully. Love is like a light bulb to me – a choice – you click it on and click it off. You decide to love someone in a moment, or not. I’ve talked about this endlessly in other posts, I’m sure. I think it fascinates me so completely because how I feel and think about love is so unaligned with how those around me feel and think about it. While contemplating this word and this story and this quote I remember noting a conversation with someone I had a little over ten years ago. He had not had a romantic feeling about a girl all day and considered this a triumph. It baffled me, as I had not had a romantic feeling about a person in possibly a month or more. When romantic feelings came to me they always overwhelmed me in their suddenness, the complete surprise of it throws me all the time, because I don’t have them often. I’m not saying romantic thoughts – I love my husband, have loved him for 15 years – but the *feelings* (not the butterflies or the goosebumps as related to physical feelings, but the emotional ones) I don’t have much. Explaining this is difficult and often leaves me faced with strange looks. I consider myself a passionate person who loves deeply and loyally, but have often been told how cold and void of compassion I can be. I understand both descriptions of my personality because when I do feel, it is a strong sense of emptiness. I feel a deep hole in my soul – like a lacuna.
Kingsolver has a way with moving you to re-evaluate your entire existence in one sentence over and over again in a book – in a way that writers strive to do just once in their lives. If I write one excellent sentence that moves someone, I will have considered myself accomplished. So here is another favorite from the beautifully quotable Kingsolver:
“This is what is means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move altogether. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.” – pg. 185
I kept saying the word lacuna over and over in my head. Lacuna, lacuna, lacuna… over and over I let it slip seductively off my mental tongue – while I read, while I did house work, while I slept. I dreamed about it. Not the story, not the setting, but the word. I dreamed about the idea.
“[Y]ou can’t really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece: the birthday like an invisible pinata hanging great and silent over his head, as he stands in his slippers boiling the water for coffee. The scarred, shrunken leg hidden under a green silk dress. A wife and son back in France. Something you never knew. That is the heart of the story.” – pg. 325
I’m a little bit in love with the word, and yes, with the feeling of the word. Thank you Barbara Kingsolver for defining this word oh so eloquently in 507 pages.
I Love Dirt!
Title: I Love Dirt!
Author: Jennifer Ward
Foreword: Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods
Illustratator: Susie Ghahremani
I popped in at Half Price Books after a long season off from scheduling book signings. Tucked low in my employee cube was a book – this book – with a post it note on it from my boss.
“Andi – I thought you might like because of the woods you live by!”
I did like it, immediately. And bought it with my Christmas money.
The book starts with a riveting foreword about the nature of nature in the United States and how much we have strayed from the outdoors. Interestingly enough, the more we stray from outdoor life, the more children struggle with obesity, ADD and ADHD, as well as depression.
And the more kids spend outdoors?
“A 2005 study by the California Department of Education found that students in schools with nature immersion programs performed 27 percent better in science testing than kids in traditional class settings. Similarly, children who attended outdoor classrooms showed substantially improved test scores, particularly in science. Such research consistently confirms what our great-grandparents instinctively knew to be true, and what we know in our bones and nerves to be right: free-play in natural settings is good for a child’s mental and physical health. The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees, stating in 2007 that free and unstructured play is healthy and essential for children.”
I’m in love with this book. I already do a lot of nature activities with my child – foraging for starters. We play outside at the public park, we walk nature trails, we run, we jump, do cartwheels in the grass, hunt insects and lizards, sword fight with sticks, and sing our ABCs at the tops of our lungs by the creek. As Ward states in her introduction, “There is nothing more joyful and inspiring to watch than children discovering the world around them.”
All of the activities in this book are pretty much cost free. The only one I found that requires any kind of purchase is the bird feeding one, and that’s only if you want to do it big and don’t have spare groceries in your house. The activities are simple, like sprinkling orange peels in your yard or covering pine cones with peanut butter and bird seed to bird watch from inside when it is too cold to be outside.
The book is broken up seasonally, so you can hop in and do something no matter when you pick up the book. Each activity has a prompt or a concept to get your child thinking about the activity and world itself.
Blood Myth – A Book Review
from Guest Blogger Angelina JoiAnn
Title: Blood Myth
Author: Stacy Moran
I did not know there was a glossary at the end of the book because I tend to just jump into books… I don’t even read the back cover. So at first it took me awhile to understand what was going on. (Words of Wisdom = Read the glossary first)
It was very interesting and unique. I enjoyed the dom/sub relationship, the broken past that Zakan had and dealt with, and the passion. While reading my kept going back to Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. The mystical parts with witches and shape shifters, “little rabbit” blood and gore took my mind to the Anita Blake series by Laurel K. Hamilton. (If you like those books, you’ll like this one)
There is definitely a lot going on in this book. Not just the dominate/ submissive relationship, but good vs. evil, sex, violence, drama, myth, family history, and more.
It took some time for me to wrap my head around everything that was happening, but it did end with a decent shock. And the best way I could describe Blood Myth is “interesting.”
Homeschooling Schmomeschooling
One thing I know I’ve done is slack off on my homeschooling posts. Some of you may be relieved by that as you follow this for adult book reviews. However, this is something I plan to be more consistent about in the year 2014 (what’s a new year without resolutions to fail at?). So, I’ll start with our wonderful Christmas gifts and how that has altered our January plans for the better.
Series Title:The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library
Title: There’s a Map on My Lap!
With her birthday money, kiddo picked out and purchased Oh Say Can You Seed? (All about flowering plants) and If I Ran the Rain Forest (All about tropical rain forests). I was so proud of my three year old, she picked them out herself without being swayed by me and she continues to select them to be read at bed time – obviously not swayed by me because bed time is when I want to read the shortest book possible.
Each one of these books includes all sorts of information, new vocabulary words, and everything a kid needs to know to get started with that particular topic. There’s even a handy glossary at the end that could later serve as a spelling word list.
So when we saw There’s a Map on My Lap we were pretty excited. And when Grandmom got her a Wall Map too – well, it was all over. We have been having ‘map time’ every chance we get.
Title: Magic Tree House
Author: Mary Pope Osborne
We did a pretty extensive Titanic unit awhile back. We read both Magic Tree House books as well as a few of those early reader books. There was a picture book we tackled, and we even found a replica of an old newspaper page from the day the Titanic sunk.
Kiddo likes history and really likes boats and ships. She built our very own Titanic out of play dough one day, which was pretty exciting.
I will not have a kid that watches the Leonardo DiCaprio movie at 16 and says, “I didn’t know that was REAL!” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/titanic-tweets-some-say-they-didnt-know-titanic-wasnt-just-a-film/2012/04/10/gIQA8fZY8S_story.html).
Even though I’m not a big fan of the movie and what it has to say morally, I can’t wait for Kiddo to see it – even if it means me letting her watch it at a younger age and fast forwarding through the inappropriate parts (you know, the ones that made the film PG-13) – because seeing the ship in all its glory is a phenomenal experience. Already, she enjoys looking at diagrams of how the ship was set up and pictures that were taken. We liked this National Geographic list and pictures too: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/history/10-cool-things-about-the-titanic/
Other Projects…
Christmas was kind to us in regards to school projects. Already we have started the year off by growing rock crystals of our very own.
This was more of a lesson in patience than anything else. She thought the science lesson was cool, but really it was about learning to go check on it every hour on the hour and how long an hour was.
We’re pretty excited about 2014 and what it has in store for us. Kiddo turns four in October and we have so many fun things to do before then.
Reading List 2013
Every end of December I post the list of what I have read that year. Most titles have corresponding reviews here on my blog. Some do not.
Obviously I read a lot of books out loud to my child. The ones I have included on the list are the chapter books. Our daily dose of picture books are left unlisted because that would just get ridiculous, although they take up a huge chunk of my day. (Note: The Magic Tree House & Reading Guide listings are two separate MTH books that correspond in subject. Because they are such short children’s books, I make them share a number. It takes me about four hours to read each pair out loud.)
1. The Prominence League – C. David Cannon (January)
2. If These Walls Had Ears – James Morgan (January)
3. March – Geraldine Brooks (January)
4. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Dinosaurs – Osborne (January)
5. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Knights – Osborne (January)
6. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Mummies – Osborne (January)
7. The Small Room – May Sarton (February)
8. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Pirates – Osborne (February)
9. Lords of Finance – Liaquat Ahamed (March)
10. The Secret of Lost Things – Sheridan Hay (March)
11. God’s Love – Calvert Tynes (March)
12. Eden’s Outcasts – John Matteson (March)
13. Inheritance – Louisa May Alcott (March)
14. The Wild Girls – Pat Murphy (March)
15. Fizz & Peppers – M.G. King (March)
16. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan (April)
17. Magic Tree House: Ninjas & MTH: Rainforests – Osborne (April)
18. Lunch in Paris – Elizabeth Bard (April)
19. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Sabertooths – Osborne (April)
20. The History of the Ancient World – Bauer (April)
21. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Moon & Space – Osborne (April)
22. Lessons Learned – Andrea Schwartz (April)
23. Bitch Factor – Chris Rogers (April)
24. Teres – Gershom Wetzel (April)
25. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers (May)
26. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Dolphins & Sharks – Osborne (May)
27. The Hunger Games – Collins (May)
28. Catching Fire – Collins (May)
29. Mockingjay – Collins (May)
30. Don’t Die By Your Own Hands – Holmes (May)
31. Slice of Life – Chris Rogers (May)
32. Magic Tree Houses: Ghost Towns/ Lions – Osborne (May)
33. The Princess Bride – Goldman (June)
34. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Polar Bears – Osborne (June)
35. Born to Run – Christopher McDougall (June)
36. Storybound – Marissa Burt (June)
37. The Prominence League II – Canon (June)
38. The Distant Hours – Kate Morton (June)
39. John Adams – John McCullough (July)
40. Magic Tree House & Reading Guide: Pompeii & Rome – Osborne (July)
& Magic School Bus: Volcanoes
41. Spindown – George Padgett (July)
42. The Cry of the Icemark – Stuart Hill (July)
43. The Color Purple – Alice Walker (July)
Magic Tree House: Day of the Dragon King – Osborne (July)
44. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster (August)
45. Letters to the Granddaughter – Schubert (August)
46. Over Sea, Under Stone – Cooper (August)
47. The Gospel According to Starbucks – Sweet (August)
48. Aphrodesia – John Oehler (August)
49. The Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan (August)
50. My Antonia – Willa Cather (September)
51. Magic Tree House & Reading Guides – Osborne (September)
52. Surprised by Joy – C.S. Lewis (September)
53. Love is a Choice – Minirth (September)
54. Thomas Jefferson: Art of Power – Meacham (October)
55. Going Native: Biodiversity (October)
56. Just One Evil Act – Elizabeth George (October)
57. The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion (October)
58. The Evolution of Jane – Cathleen Schine (October)
59. The Immortal Class – T.H. Culley (October)
60. Aspects of the Novel – E. M. Forster (October)
61. Death Without Cause – Pamela Triolo (November)
62. Player Piano – Vonnegut (November)
63. Seed Savers: Heirloom – S. Smith (November)
64. The Bookshop Hotel – A.K. Klemm [yes, I re-read my own book as I’m currently writing the sequel] (November)
65. The Sparrow – Mary Doria Russell (December)
66. Harbinger of Evil – Meb Bryant (December)
67. Confessions – Saint Augustine (All Year)
68. Been There, Done That, Really! – Paulette Camnetar Meeks (December)
69. The Secret Keeper – Kate Morton (December)
“Can’t believe I didn’t hit 70 this year. I’ve been slacking!” I lamented. Then, when I went to grab the next Magic Tree House selection, I realized I never documented The Titanic Unit.
70. MTH #17 & Research Guide: Titanic – Osborne (some time in the Fall 2013)
– Books Piled Around My House Unfinished –
I am notorious for starting books and leaving them willy nilly somewhere until the mood strikes me to pick it up again. So where it is not uncommon for me to read a book in one sitting, it is also not uncommon for a book I like to take months or even years for me to finish reading because I’m waiting for that right moment to dive in. Like a real-life vacation, sometimes you want to be in a cabin in the mountains and sometimes you want to be on the beach in Fiji. It doesn’t mean you don’t like mountains and it doesn’t mean the beach is awful, it just means that: if you’re in the mood for mountains why would you go to the beach? Because I have reached that point in my life as a reader that if I hate it, I won’t bother setting it aside… I’ll just get rid of it.
My goal for the New Year is to polish off more of these before starting (and temporarily abandoning) too many others. Because these are books I actually really like, I’m just waiting for those magical moments when I know I’ll enjoy them best to return. What’s ridiculous about the books on this list is that I am about halfway through all of these books.
* If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
* Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Clarke
* Freddy and Fredericka – Helprin
* The Path Between the Seas – David McCullough
* Storyteller – Sturrock (this one is actually amazing! I started reading it in November and I’m still picking my way through it)
* The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (still reading this aloud to the kiddo every night before bed)
* The Lacuna – Kingsolver (reading this for the January Half Price Books Humble Book Club meeting, should be done by the end of the week)
Anakalian Whims 