Last weekend, I took a trip up to Vancouver to visit a friend. Today, some pretty water-and-mountains photos. Maybe another week I’ll post about the botanical gardens!
This sculpture is a “Digital Orca,” and the sign says it’s melding natural elements with technology. Everyone agrees it looks like it’s made out of Legos…
Visit West Metro Mommy for more Saturday Snapshots. Have a great weekend!
This week’s Book Blogger Hop question: How do you organize your books to be read?
So what you’re asking for here is a glimpse into my obsessive organization? Well then…
I have a ToBeRead List in an Excel document (tracking titles, where I heard about the book, and when I added it to the list). I also have a Word document keeping track of my current annual reading challenges, including (where relevant) specific books I want to read for them. For example, for my “Finish the Series” challenge, I have a list of all the series I’m trying to finish, with notes on progress and number remaining. I sometimes throw in some color coding–green means the book is on my shelf and purple means a book is relevant for the current “Experience” from Stainless Steel Droppings. (Colors are totally arbitrary, by the way.)
So–I look at all the lists and pick what I want to read next. That’s influenced by which books are on a more immediate timeline (review copies or something for a three month “Experience” or my Chunkster challenge, where I’m trying to read one a month) or which goals I need to make more progress on, but it’s also largely a question of what do I feel like. Which is largely influenced by what I’ve been reading, as I often find myself seeking some kind of balance (too much fantasy, time for sci fi; or if I’ve read lots of thick dry books, I need something light and quick).
I usually have a mental queue of my next four to five books, or about two weeks of reading. That’s how long I have to anticipate to be able to request a book from the library with reasonable assurance of having it come in (and having time to pick it up!) Planning too far out means running the risk of needing to return a book before I get to it.
I did warn you–crazy organized! But I find I enjoy my reading more when I do all of this. I’m not sure I’m reading better books than back in my days of browsing (I doubt it, in fact) but I anticipate my reading more, which brings another level of enjoyment to it.
And I do every so often ignore the lists and throw something onto the library hold list just because it popped into my head and I want to read it now. Well, a few books down the queue, typically. But relatively now. 🙂
Now I’m very curious–how do you pick your next book(s)?
I don’t remember anymore where I originally heard about The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, but I know I read it because I couldn’t resist that title–or the premise that came with it.
Sometime in the future, aliens called Boovs land on Earth on Christmas Day (in true Doctor Who tradition) and proceed to take over the planet. Resistance is, shall we say, futile. The Boovs rename Christmas as Smekday, in honor of their General Smek who conquered Earth (Smekland). Our heroine is Gratuity Tucci–her friends call her Tip. Tip’s mother was abducted by the Boov on Smekday, a story she begins to relate for a school writing assignment on “The True Meaning of Smekday.”
When all humans are ordered to relocate to Florida, Tip sets out alone in her car (she’s eleven, but she taught herself to drive after her mother disappeared), accompanied only by her cat, Pig. Along the way, she meets a Boov named J.Lo (his Smekland-name). He has his own troubles, and they form an uncertain alliance. They realize that the troubles for Smekland have just begun, when another race of aliens comes to invade: the Gorg, known throughout the civilized galaxy as the Takers.
I am always impressed by books which can manage satire-level humor, balanced with genuine tragedy and heartache. Telling an absurd abduction story is one thing. Telling a tragic abduction story is another. Doing both at once–now that’s really something. There’s a lot of humor throughout the book, but there are also serious dangers and serious tragedies. Neither detracts from the other.
Tip is a spitfire narrator, brash and brave while also possessing real fears and pain, particularly around the loss of her mother. She has an incredibly strong narrative voice that’s a lot of fun to read. J.Lo is wonderfully funny in his not-quite-grasping human culture, his endless munching on truly awful things and his nutty technology. Balanced with the humor is the growing friendship between J.Lo and Tip. And it becomes clear that, regardless of how many legs he has, J.Lo possesses so many of the qualities that make us all human.
I mentioned satire above, and there are definitely strong strands of commentary here on the real world. The most obvious (sometimes pointed) one is the comparison between the Boovs sending of humans to a reservation, and the Europeans doing the same thing to the Native Americans in history. There’s a Native American character who is great in many ways, but almost makes the satire a little too hit-you-over-the-head-with-it.
On a less serious parallel to the real world, parts of the book take place in Happy Mouse Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. Need I say more? And despite the humor, the book gets into surprising depth about what makes “Happy Mouse Kingdom” so appealing.
There are some interesting experiments in the actual telling of the story. Besides Tip telling the story, the words are illustrated by Tip’s Polaroid photographs (drawings), and supplemented in places by J.Lo’s comics. It’s cleverly done, and adds some depth, especially to the portrayal of the Boov. The comic section detailing their history as a culture was one of my favorite parts (and there was some pretty heavy satire there too).
I read the print edition, but there’s also an audiobook that won an Odyssey. And Dreamworks is planning a movie for 2014, which I am now looking forward to!
Tip is eleven, and that’s probably a good target age for the reader too, though obviously it’s a lot of fun even if you’re older! It’s a funny story about aliens, a heartwarming story about friendship and family, and an effective satire about culture, environmental issues and politics. All that, in a Middle Grade book. Never tell me books for kids can’t have depth. 😉
Author’s Site: http://www.adamrex.com/
Other reviews:
There Be Words
The Bookshelf Gargoyle
The Cazzy Files
Anyone else?
Buy it here: The True Meaning of Smekday
I’ve checked another one off my list of Diana Wynne Jones “to be read” – The Ogre Downstairs. It’s a romp of a fantasy in the old style, about kids trying to cope with magical adventures gone awry.
Caspar, Johnny and Gwinny are not at all happy with their two new stepbrothers, Douglas and Malcolm, and even less happy with their new stepfather, invariably referred to as the Ogre. The two sets of kids are forced to band together when two chemistry sets arrive, with rows of mysterious chemicals that cause unexpected results–from enabling flight to causing people to switch bodies to bringing inanimate objects (like toffee bars!) to life.
I feel like I’ve read many books (from Edward Eager to Edith Nesbit) about kids dealing with magical chaos, but it’s one of those tropes that doesn’t get old. These kids felt like archetypal fantasy children, good kids with some flaws. None emerged really strongly for me, but all five are distinct and effective within the story. They go through some nice growth as well, particularly in their understanding towards each other.
The magic is highly amusing and entertaining, with a grand variety of mishaps. The living, growing (and breeding) toffee bars are my favorite.
There’s a lot that’s good here, and the book is overall very fun. But I did have a big problem–and that was with the Ogre. (Spoilers here, you have been warned…) Throughout the book, the Ogre is loud, angry, ominous and forbidding, apparently with no liking or understanding at all for children. But then occasionally, for no clear reason, he’ll do something nice (like gifting them with the chemistry sets). This made me suspect that DWJ intended to reform him by the end–and she does. Although, it’s less about his change than about the kids changing their understanding of him. Even with the hints along the way…it just didn’t work for me.
The trouble is, the hints felt less like signs of a complex character, and made him feel more inconsistent than layered. The bigger trouble is that, though the kids ultimately decide he’s not really so bad–he is. He doesn’t just yell–he’s nasty, mean and genuinely hurtful. That would be bad enough, but at one point he gets angry enough to hit two of the boys. The scene is off-stage, so it’s not clear if “hitting” means a mild clout, a serious beating or something in between. All we do hear is “Johnny found out he had been right to postpone being hit by the Ogre. It was an exceedingly unpleasant experience.” And then Malcolm is ill for the next day. After that, you can’t convince me that the Ogre’s “bark was so much worse than his bite” (a direct quote).
For the record, I really, really like characters with gruff exteriors and hearts of gold. And I like happy endings, even improbably neat ones. But this…just did not work for me. I feel like the ultimate message was, “be understanding of the verbally and physically abusive stepfather and maybe he’s not really so bad.” That may be putting it harshly, but I feel it’s a valid interpretation!
It’s really too bad, because 80% of this book is a delightful fantasy. But then the conclusion of the last couple of chapters leaves me feeling rather troubled. I tell myself it’s from a different time, and standards on child-rearing were different, and it’s true that if this was an Edith Nesbit book from the early 1900s I’d give it a pass…but was 1974 really that long ago?
I don’t know if I recommend this one or not. It’s complicated. But I know some of you are Diana Wynne Jones fans, so I’m very curious on whether you’ve read this one–and what you think!
Author’s Site: http://www.dianawynnejones.com/
Other reviews:
Dead Houseplants
Caroline Williams’ Blog
Readers By Night
Swan Tower
Forgotten Classics
Anyone else?
Buy it here: The Ogre Downstairs
This week’s Book Blogger Hop question: What is your favorite classic novel?
There are some easy go-to’s here, considering three of my favorite authors would probably fall into the Classic category (L. M. Montgomery, J. M. Barrie and Edgar Rice Burroughs) but let’s face it, I talk about them a lot. Branching farther afield…
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain comes to mind. Huck is such a wonderful character, and both the humor and the heart of the story are so excellently done. And does it get better than Huck’s “All right then, I’ll go to Hell” scene? Such a beautiful story about friendship and finding oneself in the face of a society that wants to shape you into something else.
It may surprise you that Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux is not a favorite. The story is a bit of an obsession (a bit!) but the original, while deserving all recognition as the original, is not actually as compelling as some of the retellings.
Another favorite is Jane Eyre. There’s something about Charlotte Bronte’s writing style that simply draws me in, and the whole last section, after Jane returns to Rochester, is just adorable–and gives me all the romantic dialogue Austen always skips!
So much for my favorites! How about your favorite classic(s)?
Tales of the Marvelous 