Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

This week's pick isn't coming out for months. However, I am excited to see Susan Gregg Gilmore has another book coming out because I absolutely loved Looking For Salvation at the Dairy Queen.

The following excerpt is taken from the authors' website, http://www.susangregggilmore.com/:

The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove by Susan Gregg Gilmore will be out on August 17, 2010.

Apparently among those who consider their social standing some measure of importance, I am to be admired, for I am one of few Nashvillians who can claim with infallible certainty that a blood relation has lived in this town since its inception. My mother, although a Grove by marriage, never tired of sharing this piece of family trivia at cocktail parties or morning coffees, convinced that it elevated her position far beyond what her birth parents could have guaranteed. And whether she did exaggerate the details in the hopes of impressing her peers, the truth remains that a poor Carolina farmer did pack his bags some two hundred and fifty years ago and set out to cross the Appalachian Mountains, heading west with his young bride determined to claim a few acres of his own and a better life for his family. He probably didn’t have a penny to his name by the time he got to Fort Nashboro begging for a hot meal and a place to sleep, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the Grove family anymore.
Legend has it that when the Chickamauga Indians attacked the Nashville settlement, they killed my ancestral father as he fought to protect his beloved wife. She grabbed the musket from her dead husband’s hands and continued the fight, killing three Indian warriors herself. Then she fell on top of her husband’s cold, bloody body and held him in her arms throughout the night.
Her name was Bezellia Louise, and for generations since, the first girl born to a Grove has been named in her memory. Although most official historians dispute any claims of her heroics, my father donated thousands of dollars to the Nashville Historical Society with the belief that eventually some fresh, young academic would see the past more according to my family’s advantage. But fact or fiction, I believed in her courage and passion and have always been proud to share her name.
Sadly, the Bezellias birthed before me never cared for this designation, preferring a monosyllabic moniker – like Bee, Zee or Zell – to their formal Christian name. My own mother disliked the name so much that for years she refused to let it cross her lips, calling me only sister, a generic substitution that summed up her distaste for my name and her inadequate affection for me. I, on the other hand, always wanted to hear my name in its entirety, never caring what others thought of it.

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Trixie Belden #2 - Childrens Classic Mystery Challenge

I'm not sure why I wait until I the second Tuesday of the month is almost upon us before I read another childrens mystery that were such a part of my childhood. I think about reading them often as the month goes on, but the TBR pile I have along with the enormous library stack just overwhelms me and I know that my Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden collections will always be around. So, this challenge is at least getting me to read one of these books each month, when before they would just continue to get pushed to the bottom of the pile.

This month I chose a Trixie Belden to read. Trixie, like Nancy, is a sleuth I was introduced to somewhere around the age of eight or nine. I bought my very first one on a vacation to Minneapolis one summer which is how I usually chose to spend my stash of money I saved up (I am sure I looked like a total nerd to my cousins who could have cared less about reading for pleasure). A few years ago I read the first Trixie Belden, and even though it wasn't fresh in my mind, I could still highlight the main idea of the book. I read the second book, The Red Trailer Mystery, which starts right where the first book left off. When I read the Trixie Belden books as a kid, I never read them in a particular order (what was I thinking? This would drive me crazy now!) and never knew the backstory about how Jim came to be adopted by the Wheelers. The first two books clear this up. These books are such a blast from the past, that even though I don't think they are particularly riveting, it is hard not to enjoy them as a part of my childhood. This month my daughter who has her own book blog, Reading Fever, started reading some of the mystery series I have been telling her about. Last night she was working on Encyclopedia Brown and she happened to notice my Trixie Belden book. It was interesting to see the look of recognition in her eyes as we both procrastinated until the last few days to dig out our books, and as she expressed her interest in one day reading a Trixie book on her own.

I'm not sure what mystery I will read next month. Earlier this month I read a post about Cherry Ames....right now the first four books are sitting in my cart on Amazon because I have never experienced a Cherry Ames book and wonder what I am missing. Hopefully I will be a little bit better about thinking and reading ahead.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"Fernanda's hair was her one vanity. Lovely and thick, it took a full hour to blow dry during twice weekly appointments at Garren. And that very afternoon- after a month on a waiting list, not to mention her entire week's salary at Christie's- she'd finally gotten her first cut-color-blowout appointment with the Lower East Side shut-in that Cornelia and all the girls raved about."

Overnight Socialite by Bridie Clark - taken from my Kindle

So far I am enjoying this chick-lit book and my Kindle, even though participating in a Teaser Tuesday post is different using the Kindle- not so much being able to just pick a page and find a quote. I felt restricted to staying within two or three pages of where I am currently reading.

Some Grown-Up Reading

Around February 3, I was busy talking to a friend and lamenting the fact that I had not finished a single book in February. I was seriously freaking out. The month was flying by and I had nothing to show for it. Right now I have almost ten books I am reading. So, I am making progress in them, but it is slow because I just am moving forward slowly in all of them. Well, after my minor freak out about not reading quickly this month, I realized it was only the 3rd of February. I still have plenty of time to get some reading done. It is now February 8 and I have finished four books with two more that I can probably finish up tonight. Life is good.

Noah's Compass, Anne Tyler's latest book is one I read this weekend. I usually read Tyler's work, but am never completely in love with it. I probably shouldn't admit this since I think her work is probably very beautifully written. Yet, when I am looking at the stack of books in my TBR pile I know that I rarely take the time to really enjoy the writing. I am all about the plot. Noah's Compass is about Liam, a sixty year old teacher who has been let go from his job. He is a divorced father of three girls who is, at best, a bit disengaged from his life. He seems remote, not really a part of anything, and his own distant relationship from his children is evidence of this. When he moves to a new apartment and is attacked during his first night there, he wakes up in the hospital, unable to remember anything of what happened. This also brings him into more contact with his family and gives Liam an opportunity to renew some relationships he let slide.

The front jacket's blurb comments that there is a little of Liam in all of us. Without being able to articulate this any better than that, I did feel while I was reading that even though I didn't really get Liam or some of the decisions he made, I could in some ways relate to him.

Yesterday I decided to unearth the library book Born Round by Frank Bruni, a memoir of Bruni's love/hate relationship with food. I had started this book a while ago (I won't mention how overdue it is) and always meant to get back to it - this isn't even one of the ten books I was reading when I listed them. Not wanting to give up on it, I did start it back up yesterday, and polished it off at bedtime. Bruni talks a lot about the weight fluctuations he has had and how devastating gaining weight was for his self esteem. Bruni also discusses his homosexuality and how his weight and self esteem affected his ability to be in a relationship. For whatever reason I always enjoy reading these memoirs about how other people achieve success in overcoming their obsession with food and eating (I say this as I binged on monster bars at breakfast this morning). Bruni's first book, Ambling Through History chronicling Bush's ascent to the presidency is one I had read when it first came out years ago, never having heard of Frank Bruni, the author. Born Round is one of the memoirs I have heard a great deal about in 2009, and while it was good, it is also a book that I was able to put down for over a month before picking it back up.

Library Loot

Today's visit to the library netted me another stash of great looking books. The only problem is that I already have a huge stash of library loot that I haven't even touched yet. However, it is hard for me to pass up a great looking book. I did feel quite virtuous as I passed over the new Adriana Trigiani and Kristin Hannah's newest book, knowing that these two will be ones that people will really want and that I just don't have time to read quickly enough.

So, this is what I walked away with:

Adult:

1. The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

Young Adult/Tween:

1. A Map of the Known World by Lisa Ann Sandell

2. This Family is Driving Me Crazy: Ten Stories about Surviving Your Family Edited by M. Jerry Weiss and Helen Weiss

3. Donut Days by Lara Zielin

4. Gentlemen by Michael Northrop

5. Hard Gold by Avi

6. Dear America: Land of the Buffalo Bones: The Diary of Mary Ann Elizabeth Rodgers, An English Girl in Minnesota, New Yeovil, MN 1873 by Marion Dane Bauer

7. The Goodbye Time by Celeste Conway

8. Feathered by Laura Kasischke

The Liberation of Gabriel King

Back in 2005 I started reading The Liberation of Gabriel King by K.L. Going with a group of fifth graders. I know other school librarians do this - read chapter books- but for some reason, this just never works for me. I only see groups once a week and end up having to abandon the chapter book somewhere along the way - because we have research skills we are working on, or because teachers ask me to cover something they will need their kids to have for class, or because we miss a week or two for various no school days and pretty soon no one can remember what we read previously.

The Liberation of Gabriel King was my first chapter book attempt with a group, and we did make it several chapters in, but ended up not finishing it. This year one of my fifth grade book clubs picked it to read, and I knew that finally I was going to finish this one up.
Set in 1976, the year of America's bicentennial, Going's book explores some good themes for us to discuss: friendship, race, fear to name a few.

Gabriel King is best friend with Frita, a black girl who is full of excitement and ideas. Gabe, on the other hand, has a lot of things he is frightened of. Duke Evans, the bully in his class is at the top of his list, and Frita decides to dedicate her summer to liberating Gabriel from his fears. While Frida doesn't have quite as many fears as Gabe, she has her own issues to deal with - one being the fact that she is black and she and her family faced violence from the Klan in the past.

My students are enjoying this one. Going has included enough to talk about, yet not too much, either, as this novel is aimed at tweens. While the 1970s seem like the old days to my fifth graders, the fact that this type of racism was practiced during my lifetime is disturbing.

This week we will finish up this novel and move on to something else; this group of students has been such a good group to have discussions with and this novel was a great fit for us.

Visit KL Going's website.

Dance Marathon

This weekend is the annual Dance Marathon at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. Shortly after our oldest daughter began treatment for hepatoblastoma, a rare childhood liver cancer, we attended our first Dance Marathon. The whole experience was overwhelming from time to time, but not in a bad way. Watching thousands of college kids take part in this event that is FTK (for the kids) and raise tons of money so that they are able to provide activities and extras that help make a child's hospital stay more comfortable and entertaining is amazing. Thinking back to my own college days at a small liberal arts college that didn't have anything like Dance Marathon, I don't know how much time I would have found to give to such a worthwhile cause. These students made our stay in the hospitals so much better- and even when our daughter didn't act like she wanted them around, they continued to come and visit her and spend time with her and made her feel special.

This is our fifth trip to Dance Marathon. Chris and I have mixed feelings about these annual trips. They bring up a lot of feelings that we wouldn't mind forgetting. But, it is always wonderful to see the people that were with us and helped us through some of the worst days of our life. And, it is good to be around other families who truly do understand what you have gone through.

As our girls do every year, they proclaimed that this year's Dance Marathon is the best one yet. Dance Marathon 2010 was Disney themed and the girls rushed around getting autographs from different Disney characters. They also enjoyed eating unlimited cotton candy (L had her first helping today at 8:30 AM), popcorn and slushies, jumping in the blow-up castle, and tatooing themselves everywhere. Flashes of Hope provided family photographs for all the families, the Best Buy room featured different games for kids to play, and meals and hotel rooms were provided.

While I didn't get a lot of reading done (only one measley chapter in Bridie Clark's book The Socialite that I am reading on my kindle), spending a weekend at Dance Marathon is always memorable and a reminder of what is really important.

Black and White

I have read some of Dani Shapiro's work and have always enjoyed it. This month Shapiro's latest, a memoir titled Devotion, is out. This is one I have added to my TBR list, all the while working on an older book of Shapiro's, Black and White. The plot in this book is similar to one I have read in a different book (don't ask me which one!) a few years ago....Clara's mother, Ruth Dunne is a famous photographer- most well known for the pictures she took of a young Clara in the nude. Clara leaves home as a teenager, never to return, and remains estranged from her mother despite the many years that have elapsed. Clara remains in touch with her sister, Robin, and learns that her mother is dying of lung cancer. At first Clara returns home without her husband or daughter, trying to make peace with her mother and the way her mother used her to advance her career. Eventually Clara flees, then returns to be with her mother, bringing her family along as she tries to reconcile her past with the person she is now.

Looking at snapshots in time - both the present and past - as we learn more about Clara and her mother and their relationship - is an effective way to tell this story. Once I started reading, I was easily able to recall the enjoyment I felt previously when reading one of Shapiro's books. This book would make a great book club book. I know I would love to discuss the ending and the decisions Clara makes concerning her future and the feelings she has about her mother's work.

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Although this may cement my position as a nerd forever, I am elated to announce that on April 1 the Babysitter's Club prequel, The Summer Before by Ann M Martin will be released.

The following is a product description from Amazon:

Before there was the Baby-Sitters Club, there were four girls named Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill. As they start the summer before seventh grade (also before they start the BSC), each of them is on the cusp of a big change. Kristy is still hung up on hoping that her father will return to her family. Mary Anne has to prove to her father that she's no longer a little girl who needs hundreds of rules. Claudia is navigating her first major crush on a boy. And Stacey is leaving her entire New York City life behind...
...in order to find new friends in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.
The Summer Before . . . is a sweet, moving novel about four girls on the edge of something big - not just the Club that will change their lives, but also all the joys and tribulations of being twelve and thirteen.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.

"Ruth doesn't react. She just takes it all in, wishing - Clara is certain- that she had a camera in her hand. Even now, she is framing her subject: her grown daughter, face contorted by outrage, sitting in the old wing chair with a pile of photographs on her lap (79)."

Black and White by Dani Shapiro