Month: June 2017

2017 Reading Challenges: Halfway Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations2 Comments

With six months of the year come and gone, it’s time to see how Reading Challenges are going.  I’ve felt like I wasn’t really focusing my reading lately, and that plays out in the books I’ve read–plenty of good books, but not targeted ones, so challenges haven’t moved very much.  Here’s what we have though!

PictureNewbery Medal Winners
Goal: 20 Newbery Medal Winners, halving the number remaining
Host: Smiling Shelves

Only a few new ones here, though since I read so many in the first quarter I’m still good overall.  It’s been harder lately to find audiobooks (I’m running through the ones the library has!) so that’s slowed me down.  These are mostly shorter reads though, so I should be able to do better in the next six months with a little focus.

  1. Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
  2. The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman
  3. Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena
  4. Good Masters, Sweet Ladies by Laura Amy Schlitz
  5. Crispin: The Cross of Lead by AVI
  6. King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
  7. Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman
  8. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
  9. Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson
  10. The Wheel on the School by Meindert De Jong
  11. A Visit to William Blake’s Inn by Nancy Willard

Continue reading “2017 Reading Challenges: Halfway Update” →

Book Review: Anne of Ingleside

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Young Adult1 Comment

I’ve recently been rereading the eight-book Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery, for the fourth (fifth? sixth?) time.  As always with Montgomery’s work, I love reading her fiction as informed by her journals (and her journals as informed by her fiction…it’s cyclical).  I recently finished book six, Anne of Ingleside, and had…a LOT of thoughts.  I reread Montgomery’s journals quite recently, and there was a lot that came to bear in this book.

The last time I read Anne of Ingleside, it was my favorite of the series, though I couldn’t have told you why.  On this read, I’m not sure it still is—but I know why it was.  This changed significantly in the several years since I last visited it.

Anne has grown up by now, and is the happy mistress of gracious Ingleside, with her successful doctor husband Gilbert, five children (number six on the way at the beginning), faithful maid (and surrogate co-parent) Susan Baker, and a respected place in society.  The stories mostly revolve around Anne’s children, their little adventures and childhood heartbreaks.

I realized for the first time in this reread that two completely different worldviews are at odds in this book.  The setting and framework is optimistic and idyllic; the episodic stories are grim and disillusioned. Even though this is book six of eight, this is the very last novel Montgomery ever wrote, and her later journals show her deeply struggling with depression and dissatisfaction with aspects of her life.  Anne of Ingleside is a war between Montgomery’s optimism and pessimism. Continue reading “Book Review: Anne of Ingleside” →

Blog Hop: Interruptions?

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop3 Comments

book-blogger-hop-finalToday’s Book Blogger Hop question is: If you are at a really good point in a book and the phone rings or the door bell rings, do you stop reading or let the phone or door bell go unanswered?

 

I am not positive this has ever come up.  I’m an introvert with largely introvert friends, so–no one ever rings my doorbell unexpectedly, and even phone calls are rare (texts are a different story, but they also come with a different expectation about urgency of responding).  However!  I think the real question here is how easy it is to interrupt my reading, and the answer is–extremely!

I’m used to reading in snatches.  Ten minutes here, fifteen there, two minutes in line at the grocery store.  So really, that means I’m used to putting books down.  My brain stores where I was in the story quite effectively, and I can pick books up again and resume (I even have an instinct for where to look at the page to resume–if I fight it and try to consciously look for the spot where I stopped, I end up hunting around on the page only to finally realize it was very close to where my eyes initially landed.  Truth!)

That doesn’t mean I’m always happy to set a book down, especially if things are getting intense, or something is about to be revealed.  But generally I’ll do it if something comes up that means I need to stop reading for now.

Except for the last two hundred pages of almost any Juliet Marillier book.  Those things are intense!!!

Book Review: Night of Masks by Andre Norton

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction1 Comment

Andre Norton and I have a complicated relationship.  It’s sort of like an acquaintance who was really fun a few times, and now you keep trying to become better friends even though they’ve never been quite so fun again.  I love Norton’s Gryphon Trilogy, and for reasons that should suggest a really great author (beautiful writing style, intriguing characters with compelling relationships, complex world).  And…it never quite works out with her other books.  I actually liked Night of Masks reasonably well–but it’s no Gryphon Trilogy.  It may have given me some insights though.

I’d practically sworn off of Norton, but I couldn’t resist this premise: a young man with a facial deformity has the chance at a new life by pretending to be a boy’s imaginary hero.  So cool!  Plus a sci fi setting, a mysterious conspiracy, and uncertainty about who to trust…it all sounds golden.  And it really was decent.  Just not as golden as I hoped.

I think I figured out where the gulf may lie for me between liking (and sometimes disliking) and loving Norton’s books.  Based on Night of Masks, she doesn’t appear to have any sense of humor.  I don’t think there was a funny line in the entire book–and that makes it a little hard for me to love. Continue reading “Book Review: Night of Masks by Andre Norton” →

Fiction Friday: A Round-Robin Bank Robbery

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

I recently spent an awesome weekend on a writing retreat with several good friends.  We did several writing exercises (one of which may become the beginning of my NaNo novel this year–we’ll see!) including a very cool round-robin story.  That’s a story where each person at the table contributes–sometimes just a sentence or two, though we did passages.

We each wrote about a bank robbery from a different, assigned perspective, shared what we had, brainstormed briefly, then took turns finishing the story, again with sections from each of our original perspectives.  We were really happy with how it turned out–so I got permission to share it with all of you.

Our writers, in order by perspective (this order in, then reverse order out from the middle section): Jackie Loyd; Jenny Lee; Kelly Haworth (@khaworthwrites); Ruth Gates; Karen Blakely; and me, writing my two sections in a row in the middle.

Enjoy!

A Round-Robin Bank Robbery

Ernest watched the clearly botched robbery unfold from his chair against the wall.  A chair because he was 80 next month and had bad knees, so they hadn’t made him sit on the floor.  Mistake number one—the first of many.

The lead robber, wearing a ridiculous pig mask, struggled with the heavy door to the vault behind the counter.  Ernest knew the teller had tripped the silent alarm two minutes ago.  The robbers should have gone for the cash at the counters.  Quick, easy.  Largely untraceable because it had been brought in by customers and wasn’t in those neat stacks with sequential serial numbers.

He scoffed out loud when one robber tripped and fell to the floor in his rush to get from one counter to the other.  The gun in his hand went off.  The bullet struck the marble floor, chipping it, sound ringing out and echoing off the walls.

The people around Ernest screamed.  He rolled his eyes.  He’d done 40 jobs back in his heyday, and never once had he accidentally fired his gun. Continue reading “Fiction Friday: A Round-Robin Bank Robbery” →