Boy Meets Girl

Awhile back I made a really lame joke about the palms in my yard not being all females. Well darned if it wasn't true. In the midst of my palm peeking ritual I found this palm tree version of a Georgia O'Keefe painting...




about ten feet away from this proudly erect fellow....




And then the yard guy confirmed for me that yes, palm trees have gender and I had a girl and a boy in that bed...together. Oh the scandal.

What's On Your Nightstand June 2009

This monthly feature is hosted by 5 Minutes for Books on the last Tuesday of every month. Click on the logo to go and check out all the particpants.






From last month's list I read and reviewed Dry, Inkheart, and Just Take My Heart. I worked a little bit on John Adams but as you can see it is still there for this month!

This month from the bottom up, I have, John Adams, that I am reading ever so slowly for the U.S President's Reading Project. Then there is Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir which is the June selection for the Facebook Historical fiction book club moderated by Jennifer at The Literate Housewife. The Devil in the Junior League is leftover from last month, it was one of my "D" possibilities for the A-Z Reading Challenge. I didn’t pick it for that challenge but I still want to read it. Next is Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner. That's what I picked for my "G" book for the A-Z Reading Challenge. The Last Queen by C.W. Gortner is the July book for the Facebook Historical Fiction book club. And finally, Zapped by Carol Higgins Clark is my "Z" book for the A-Z Reading Challenge unless something better comes along because Zapped got a very lukewarm review from my friend who passed it on to me at our No Stress Book Club.

No Stress Book Club

About three years ago I tried to start a book club with my girlfriends in town. We had fun the first month, good the second time around but after about four books it just petered out. It was just too much: getting everyone to agree on a book, deciding who was going to host, deciding which night it would be, who was coming, who was going to e-mail who, who would bring what for snacks - there were so many variables it was doomed from the start! It wasn't doomed because we didn’t enjoy it - when we actually got it all together, we had a great time. It was doomed because it was complicated.

Doomed does not equal forgotten. Whenever two or more of us were gathered the topic would come up… "we really should do book club again". Then somewhere on the Internet I stumbled across what we decided was the perfect idea. We stole it and renamed it the No Stress Book Club. Rule One is.. Read whatever you want. Then you bring what you read to the gathering and tell us all about it. The book goes onto the table in the middle.(That's Rule Two - you have to be willing to part with your book) After everyone has had a chance to talk about their selections, we all get to pick something from the pile and go home with a new book. Do you have to read that book for next month? NO! That goes back to Rule One - Read whatever you want!

We made it easier logistically too. We picked a night and we're sticking to it, bringing any kind of food is optional - bring if you like, don’t if you don’t. My house is always available to host and I make all sorts of great martinis so even if no food appears - we'll have martinis! And the day I picked is the one day a week I have a housekeeper that comes so there is no effort involved in preparing my house - it's done! This way Rule Three - come if you can, don’t if you don’t want to, no RSVP needed - doesn't worry me because I'm not cooking or cleaning especially for the group. If only one person appears, that's fine - I haven't put out any extra effort. (Of course "no effort" is not entirely true, I did use the gathering as an excuse to buy a big, beautiful new palm for my entry way and will probably use it as an excuse every month to buy pretty new things but that's just for me to know!)

We had out first meeting last night - bibliophiles that we all are, everyone brought two or three books rather than just one! There was a heavy lean towards historical fiction and a heated discussion about Katherine of Aragon's virginity at the time of her marriage to Henry VIII - some believing she was chaste with her first husband, others convinced their romance led to consummation. The camps were pretty much divided by those who had read The Queens' Lady and those who had read The Constant Princess! At the end of the night I had a few new books but ALL of my books were still on the table. Not sure what that says about me that no one was enticed by anything I had read the last month!

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

From the Scholastic website: One night Meggie's father, Mo, reads aloud from a book called Inkheart, and an evil ruler named Capricorn escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books.


I think the problem with this one was too high expectations on my part because it really is a great story. The family is interesting and endearing and quirky. The villains are dark and heartless. The setting is described in great detail with the little glimpses we get of the world from inside the book (fairies and trolls) magical and fanciful. I like all the elements. The plot was suspenseful. I thought the solution was quite clever and well executed by the characters. But.. I was more than ready for it to end. It was a long book 500+ pages and I never got hooked. I was curious. I was impressed with the details and thought as I read, "Oh this is a good story." but it wasn't a story that captured me so I had to push myself to keep reading. But in the words of George Kastanza, "Inkheart, its not you, its me."

BTW..the Scholastic website above has some stuff for the kids to do and I passed this one on to Youngest, age 10, we'll see what he thinks!

Click here to see my progress towards completing the challenge!

Spring Reading Thing Wrap-up

How did I do? I started the challenge out with eleven books on my list. Of those original eleven, I read six. Not too impressive. But I felt free to expand my list as the days went by…I think it was "legal" but am not really sure it was in the spirit of the challenge. I read an additional 19 books. So I am happy with the amount that I read, I just wish I had stuck to my original list a little better. (And the butchered list, if you want to view the mess, is here.)

What was my favorite? My favorite from my original list would have to be Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It wasn't an easy read, it didn’t hook me and make me want to not put it down. But it was written in a way that made difficult concepts easier to understand, it was thought provoking, and it was amazingly timely considering it is more than fifty years old. It's the book above all the others that I am happiest to be able to say, "I've read this." Of the add-ons, I loved two, The Help by Kathryn Stockett - ooh that was good, and When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton.

Where am I stuck? I went through another Callapidder Days challenge without cracking open Pillars of the Earth - what is my problem? I have heard great things about it, it's sitting there waiting for me. I don’t know why I just haven't felt the urge to read it. And I really thought when I wrote my opening post that I would make a concerted effort to finish John Adams by the end of the Spring challenge but I didn’t. You might say, just give up on John Adams, but I don’t want to do that. I started the US President's Reading Project to learn more about history…I will have to force myself to read all of them until I start getting a firmer grasp of the subject.

What's next? I'm working on a few other challenges... The First In A Series challenge, the 2009 Audiobook challenge, the A-Z Reading challenge,and the Chronicles of Narnia challenge.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Katrina for hosting the challenge. I didn’t get to nearly as many of the other blogs as I had hoped but the ones I did get to, I enjoyed. And I got some good picks, for example, after seeing it listed a few hundred times, I went and bought The Mysterious Benedict Society which I L-O-V-E-D! So thank you also to the all the participants - it was great fun being part of this community of readers. See you in the Fall!

Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge

Do I need more to read? NO! But I remember adoring the Narnia books as a child and having just read Mere Christianity for the first time, I am feeling the CS Lewis love and would like to take part. The challenge starts June 19th and ends July 17th. I may only read one or maybe I'll read the whole series...I'm not going to stress about it..just enjoy what I can!

Quiet here...noisy there.

I am a leader at Cub Scout camp this week. This means I am walking all day in the 100 degree South Carolina heat shepherding Youngest and twelve other boys through BB shooting, and archery, and songs, and skits, and fishing, and sports, and oh so much more. And when I get home, I am exhausted. Every muscle aches. And today my thumb is a bloody bruised mess from holding the nails as these thirteen boys (who apparently lack eye-hand coordination) made bird houses. So things here on the ol' blog are quiet. Camp...very, very noisy!