August Booklist

1. Educating Esme, Esme Raji Codell
   I've seen Codell hailed as Generation X's Bel Kaufman (of Up the Down Staircase fame). This is a funny, gutsy, and often bittersweet diary of an inner-city teacher's first year in the classroom.                              

2. House Thinking, Winifred Gallagher
  krikketgirl spoke favorably of this one some months ago, and my reading it now was perfect timing, as I begin to do more thinking and planning about what I want to do with the house-that-will-be. Gallagher opens by asking "How does my home reflect and affect me?" Neatness and beauty (neither of which nessisarily requires much in the way of money, or even time) are important to me and affect the way I feel in the room, but it's also important to me that my surroundings show things about who I am.

One great thing that this book reminded me of was how important it is to have a variety of spaces in a home - different spaces for different moods. Open rooms, cozy rooms, dark rooms, light-filled rooms.

And she also mentions the importance of entrances, which is interesting: I thought about it and realized that I've never lived in a house with an actual entry of any sort. It seems like wasted space, but it IS important! I'm interested in look at ideas on how to create a faux entrance - I'm thinking that screens could possibly be involved, but I'm kind of at a loss right now.

3. A History of the Breast, Marilyn Yalom
   I first heard about this one from melyndie,  and I've been trying to track down a copy ever since. It's yet another microhistory book, and quite interesting. It covers almost all aspects of the breast in society including the sacred breast, the domestic breast, the political breast, the medical breast...

4. Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, Gerard Jones

    I'm at a loss in knowing how to summarize this, so I won't (the subtitle does a pretty good job, anyway). It was enlightening, though I don't think I agree with everything Jones says. I think this would be a good read for anyone who has sons or brothers or works with boys.        

5. Court Lady and Country Wife, Lita-Rose Betcherman
   As the subtitle says, it's the story of two noble sisters in 17th century England. The lives of the sisters were quite interesting, but a lot of the book was about the political intriques of the time, which I have a harder time being interested in. And I read it in the noisy atmosphere of a casino, which didn't help.

6. The Good Master, Kate Seredy
   A loan fromequuschick  (or more properly, her mother). I absolutely, absolutely loved this story of cousins growing up in rural Hungary. I just don't see books for children written like this anymore, more's the pity. And the art is beautiful!

7. Mysteries of the Middle-Ages, Thomas Cahill
   I wasn't terribly impressed with Cahill's The Gifts of the Jews, but I gave this one a shot because I met a lady on a plane between Detroit and ...well, somewhere that I can't remember, and she was reading it and said it was good. I like medieval history, and the chapter about Hildegarde was particularly interesting, but then again, so was Cahill's bias against the war and certain aspects of christianity which he just HAD to bring up in a book about medieval history.

Sometimes I just get fed up with authors injecting arbitrary personal opinions that have nothing to do with anything in their book.

8. I'll Trade You An Elk, Charles A. Goodrum
   An animal-filled memoir of life as a zoo director's son in 1930s Wichita. Like ruthette promised, so quaint!

9. Blood and Power, Stephen Fox
   It takes talent to write a boring book about the mafia, and that's all I'll say about that. I'm embarressed to say that I started reading this in an airport in March and then I came home, put it down, and didn't pick it up again until this month.

10. Hadassah: one night with the king, Tommy Tenney
    I'm always a little leery of novelizations of Bible stories, although this one was better than I expected. (I've still read better retellings of the story of Esther, though.) So this was mostly a good one, generally more realistic compared to others, but there were a few weird elements - like making the swastika Haman's sign, and making Haman a decendent of the Amalikites, which means ... what, that Nazis are just the latest embodiment of the ancient war between the Jews and the Amalikits? ALSO, the secret book of Esther was a bit too much Da Vinci Code for me, although come to think of it, I'm not sure which book was written first.

11. Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler
    I like how Hessler writes about China, and I think I might almost like this one better than his first, River Town. He is so skillful at combining history and personal stories.

12. The Honor Girl, Grace Livingston Hill
    So this was one of those accidental books. It was just lying there ... and I didn't have anything pressing to do ... and before I realized I've gotten far enough into it that I couldn't give it up. It's pretty typical Hill fare; overly moralistic and sentimental, yet vintage enough to be considered quaint and rather charming, which is what saves it. I have to say, though, okay: I get that a father and two sons might have a hard time making a cozy home after the loss of their wife and mother, but don't you tell me that they can't keep things clean! But nooo, Miss Perfect Sister has to come home and keep house for them because they're living in a pigsty, leaving food and dirty dishes rotting in the sink and never changing the bed linens. There is a difference between a home that lacks a woman's touch and a filthy hovel, and men just aren't that helpless.

13. The Wall and the Wing, Laura Ruby (author)
    THIS is an author I'm going to be reading more of! I'm always so pleased to discover a really good, orginal children's author.

 
14. D.Gray-Man, vol. 3,
15. D. Gray-Man vol. 4, and
16. D. Gray-Man vol. 5, art and story by Katsura Hoshino
     I should finish the rest of the volumes this week!

Two Things That Happened Today That Have Never Happened To Me Before

 

1. I was compared to a Mario Brothers character. (Someone who is .... Spanish? And sneaky? I am neither. Well, mostly. I'm not Spanish, anyway.)

 

2. I was offline for 2 1/2 days and came back to find only two new emails in my inbox. o_O