Burn Down the Ground

Not since The Night Circus have I actually read and finished an entire book club book in time for book club.  I think I deserve a parade, or maybe just some ice cream.

As the hearing child of two deaf parents, Kambri had an unusual upbringing, but the fact that her parents were deaf was the least of her problems.  Her father was paranoid and jealous and beat her mother.  He has a very difficult time keeping a job or staying faithful, so they moved to the middle of nowhere to be free from distraction, which did not work.  Kambri and her brother had a pretty free childhood, which lead to problems as teens and lead David, her brother, to spiral out of control and end up rehab.  Kambri on the other hand had her share of close calls, but with a determined spirit, she overcame her childhood only to have it haunt her again as an adult.

I enjoy memoirs.  Biographies, and autobiographies, tend to be stuffy and formal, while memoirs are just a listing of memories, subject to the author's point of view and  perspective.  Kambri's relationship with her father is the driving force behind this book since this is a man that is violent yet he was her loving father at some points.

For me the book lost some steam toward the end, or maybe I was getting bored.  Since this is a book about her childhood and family, once she became an independent adult, the details became a little fuzzy and I wish that she would have explored that a little more.  For instance, she was a Jose Cuervo girl, paid to party and mingle.  I would like to know how she entered such a lifestyle after seeing how alcohol effected her parent's relationship.  I'm not saying that you can't have a healthy respect for alcohol after having two addicted parents, but I would have liked to hear more about her motivations to enter this particular industry.

Parts of this book are very difficult to read, and the author does set the reader up for them.  As the book progresses and readers learn more about her father, you feel prepared for the violent side of him, since it comes out slowly and deliberately.

As a book club book, I really enjoyed it and thought it was very interesting.  I would not have picked it up on my own, but it was worth my time.  It is a memoir full of heart and forgiveness and will hopefully generate some discussion.

Speaking of discussion--I will be hosting book club this week.  We'll see how this goes.  I'm not much of a hostess, but hopefully with a few snacks and some lovely drinks, it will be a good night.

Happy Reading!

NCAA Balloon Wall, Part II

I'm not sure if it was a flaw in the design or execution, but our NCAA Balloon Wall now looks like a balloon waterfall.  I even reinforced it with more tape the other day, but as you can see, that didn't do much.  I still plan on popping balloons as we go, and maybe after enough are popped, we can tape them back up.

Also, I don't know if this is indicative of anything, but the Louisville balloon is flat.  It looked great when we put it up, but the next day, it looked pretty pathetic.  Again, I'm not saying that means anything, but I personally do not have Louisville making it past the second round.  

I wanted to scan in my bracket because it's rather funny, but I think my hubby already took it to put in his office pool.  I have confidence in my NCAA Championship Pick, but the rest of the field might be a little weird.  Basically, I look at the teams, make a quick decision, and write it down.  There is no time for second thoughts.  So you end up with some weird match-ups, like Missouri beating Louisville in the second round, and I think picked Nova for a pretty big upset too.  I kinda panicked when I ended up with Illinois playing Marquette, but I went with my guy even though it meant betraying my team.  And my championship pick:  Michigan State!  Gotta love the Big Ten!  

In other news, Lucy is becoming quite the literary critic.  Her feelings toward The Art of Fielding are vicious.  She tore that book apart.  And I know that she looks remorseful, but trust me, she's only sorry that she got caught!

What teams are on your NCAA Finals List?  Has your dog eaten any NYT Bestsellers lately?

Happy Reading!

Will I Ever Learn?

Will I ever learn that procrastination is not the answer?  Maybe later, but not today.

Procrastination Setback #1:  Book Reviews.  It's always the book reviews.  I got my awesome new pack of reviews and promptly read this series fiction chapter book, and did not promptly write the the review.  So then, I started carrying the book with me and after a couple days of that, I gave it away!  What was I thinking?  Now I have no book, no review, and no idea how I'm going to pull this off.  I'll have to count on my amazing memory for details.  I'm sunk.  But as the internet as my witness, my reviews will go out next week!

Procrastination Setback #2:  Book Club.  Blast book club!  With their NYT best selling books that weigh more than my dog!  This month it's The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.  If I were smart, I would have read it weeks ago.  I actually did take it on a little trip last week, but there were Kindle books on my phone, like Ungifted and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, begging to be read.  You can see how I didn't get around to this.  When choosing between a misfit and his robot or a artful tome recounting the interconnected lives of several people at a fictitious college, you can see that I made the right choice.  But with just over half the book finished and book club in two days, I'm struggling.  Plus, the two books that I put on hold at the library came in this week.  I have fun books staring me in the face while I read this "real" book.  Doug looked at me while slogging through this book the other day and started laughing.  He said normally when I read that I look happy or excited or involved, and with this book I just look sad and tired.

It's not that this book isn't good, it's just slow.  I'm a fan of intricate and fully developed characters.  I'm a fan of different narrators and points of view.  I'm even becoming a fan of baseball, but added together I'm just getting bored.  I'm waiting for this book to go somewhere, and so far, it's just not happening.  I'll hang in there since I'm determined to finish a book club book, but I think that I will bow out of book club next year.  It's just not my scene.

To all of my fellow procrastinators out there--fear not!  All this work will get done.  Someday.  Probably not today, but maybe next week, after a long weekend full of napping.  Maybe.

Happy Reading!

Skimming

I am a huge fan of skimming.  As a busy reader, I don't always have the kind of quality time I would like with all of the books begging for my attention, especially when I was working.  So, I employed the skim.  I figured that it let me get a good enough picture of the book to book talk it and recommend, or never speak of again.

My system of skimming is one that I honed during grad school, when I was assigned at least 2 YA books per week, along with my 3 other grad classes.  Note:  I was crazy in grad school and did the whole program in 12 months, which is fast.  I honestly would not recommend that to anyone, not that it's that terrible hard, but more so because grad school was fun and I wish I'd had more of it.

How to skim like a pro:

1.  Read the first chapter-this most often establishes all the biggies like character, setting, and main conflict.
2.  Read the first and last paragraph of every chapter.  This is usually a quick and easy way to find and resolve cliff hangers.
3.  Read the first sentence of every paragraph.  Again, gives you an overview.
4.  Read all dialogue.  This will give you the high points of the plot.

Now, this system has served me very well.  That's how I got through The Golden Compass.  Come on, there's a six page bear fight in that book, and all I needed to know was who won.  I also think this is the system that I used on Crime and Punishment in high school, because I couldn't tell you two things about that book today.  When used on middle grade chapter books, this is a very effective system to blow through a bunch of books in a short amount of time, and it's a great librarian tool.

I admit that I often skim my book club books.  My book club books are often books that I would never pick up, or even know exist because they are real big-kid books written by literary type authors that all live in some writing commune in Vermont or something.  Okay, that might not have been too nice, but that's how I feel.

Anyway, this Thursday we will be talking about The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.  I was looking forward to this book.  The short summary is that a girl name Rose can taste the emotions of the person that baked the food she eats.  This reminded me of Savvy by Ingrid Law, which I loved!  But, this is not a middle grade book, this is a literary adult novel, so no such luck.  Instead of a book about Rose's ability and how she uses it, or grows into it, it's more a book about her family denying their feelings and falling apart.  It's a short book, but it's heavy and there was nothing in it that made me what to read it.  I just did not care about these people at all, what so ever.  Blah.

And, the worst part was that my skimming technique was not effective because there were no quotation marks!  Somewhere my high school lit teacher is crying.  It was so annoying, and I think just served to keep the reader even further from the characters.  It was like the author didn't even feel like putting the work into it, so why should I?

Ugh.  So that's my fail in skimming.  Actually, I did still skim, it was just a little less precise, so I probably missed a bunch of stuff that might make this book redeemable, but judging by the GoodReads reviews, there is precious little here anyway.

I hope that my skimming technique works for you!  I'll likely be employing it again soon as I blaze through Caudills.

Happy Reading!

The Night Circus

 

The Night Circus is the book for my August book club.  I was very excited to read this book because I heard great things, and the cover is amazing.  Yes, I do judge a book by its cover.  Designers spend lots of time working on those covers, so they should be rewarded.

Where do I even start?  The beginning I suppose.  

A young girl is dropped off at the room of a magician and told that she is his daughter.  Upon discovering her innate magically ability, he binds her to another magician and his unknown student in a dangerous competition.  The two students grow and learn without understanding what, when or where this competition will be.

Finally a venue is chosen.  A traveling circus that appears from nowhere and disappears just as quickly.  But they are not the only ones involved in the circus, as there are acrobats, a fortune teller, a contortionist and twins, born on opening night, amongst others.  Now, all of their fates are intertwined in a competition that long out lives the expectation and begins to take on its own life.  

For the sake of the circus and all those involved, even the spectators, the competition must somehow cease, but how can a competition end when there are few rules and an unknown goal?

The plot is thoroughly engaging, but every word brings you to the circus.  The tents are described so perfectly, the food is amazing, and all the spectacles become real to the reader.  Everyone that reads this will become a revuer, a circus groupie if you will, hunting down the circus and begging for more. 

There is so much involved in this book that it is hard to put into words, but it was fantastic.  The chapters are short which makes it perfect for busy readers, since you can start and finish a chapter in a short sitting.  Also, each chapter heading includes the date, so be sure to pay attention to this feature since the chapters do move freely in time.  I should have paid more attention to this as well because I felt a little lost sometimes.  

Overall, this was an excellent book club selection, especially for the summer.  While this isn't a fluffy beach read, it is engrossing, so if you are sitting out, be sure to wear your sunscreen otherwise you'll look up 200 pages later and be sunburnt.

Let me know what you thought of The Night Circus.  Follow me on Good Reads under Miss Tiffany, or on Twitter under misstiffreads.  Or, just comment!  

Happy Reading!

Success Part Two

You might remember this post from several weeks ago when I celebrated the success of convincing my book group to read When You Reach Me and Wrinkle in Time.  Well, we met up last week to discuss and the the verdict was:

Everyone loved When You Reach Me!

The overall opinion was that WYRM had an interesting plot, good characters, pretty exact setting, and a good plot twist.  Also, since it was a fantasy based in reality, it wasn't difficult to follow, although everyone admitted that thinking about the time travel made their head hurt.  We had a great discussion about Miranda and her mom, friends, the laughing man, the origin of the book, everything.  I was so happy and relieved.  Since this is one of my favorite books, I really hoped that it wouldn't get torn apart, but turns out, WYRM holds just as much interest for adults as for children.

On the other hand, Wrinkle in Time was met with lukewarm approval.

I read WIT as an adult, after reading WYRM actually, and I felt the same way about it now as I did a few years ago-it feels overly complicated, yet simplistic.  I feel like the characters lack depth but the whole thing with jumping planets and fighting the black thing is too complicated.  Also, when comparing WIT to WYRM, I will always choose the latter.  I care so much more about Miranda and her friends than Meg and her family.  Also, Charles Wallace is just a creepy little kid, whether he's possessed by IT or not.  Also, since WIT in true fantasy with very little reality, it's harder to follow.  Those that read it as children remember enjoying it, but they also admitted that this was the first piece of science fiction or fantasy that they had read.  Now, with the flood of children's fantasy available, this isn't quite measuring up.  

Part of the shortcoming of WIT could be that it is part of a larger series, so not all questions are addressed.  Like why is Charles Wallace so smart, why is Meg in the middle, what is the black thing?  I can only assume that the series takes on these questions and gives satisfying answers, whereas WYRM throws out questions and answers all in one book.  Also, children are more accepting of random plots.  If you tell a child in a book that the sun is purple, fine, in this world the sun is purple, but adults tend to want more explanation of that.  This makes me wonder if WIT is one of those books with an expiration date.  If you have not read it by 12 years old, there's just no bother.  I've felt that way about several books.  I can't understand the appeal because I am not in the right frame of mind.  The Book Expiration Date Hypothesis is a discussion for another day, so I'll put a pin in it.

But the exciting part is, this book club lead to a great discussion about all things children's and YA lit.  We touched on Hunger Games and Twlight (for a second) and how this is becoming a serious area for adult readers.  I'm excited.  I feel like I might have changed minds, at least a little, about children's and YA lit.

There was one funny moment.  I had been explaining about the whole background of the books, the Newbery award, their place in current reading trends, then mentioned how I do not read adult books.  One women asked me why I only read kid's books.  My friend decided to share the secret that I'm basically a weirdo that can't read, which got a big laugh.  Really, I'm just fan and love reading kids books, but it is funny to talk about with a bunch of literature snobs.  

I invite you to give it a try!  Be bold!  Read a kid's book!  Walk into the children's section of your library with your head held high and exclaim "I like Children's Books!"  But don't exclaim too loudly, or you might be shushed.

Happy Reading!

Success!

I am part of a book club that loves to read these literary tomes (at least they feel like that to me) and I almost exclusively read children's and young adult books.  So, last night I went to book club with a crazy suggestion for our summer reading-When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle.  And you know what, it worked!

I think that most of the women voted due to a nostalgia for A Wrinkle in Time, and it will be very interesting to see what they think of it as adults.  A few of the younger moms had heard of When You Reach Me and were actually pretty excited to read that book too, and a Newbery Award never hurts. 

My When You Reach Me story is this.  I read this book right when it came out and was instantly in love.  The whole time travel story and story behind the story (a man with amnesia reveals events that haven't happened yet under hypnosis) was very engaging to me.  I loved the misunderstood, bad boy Marcus.  He's brilliant and unusual and flawed, and just a great character.  And the Laughing Man is such a cleverly drawn character, and in his one moment of lucidity, he says "It's alright.  I'm old and she's gone now."  That one line follows me everywhere.  That one line tells me how much he loved his wife and what he was doing to be with her.  Maybe I'm overreaching with that, but the whole story is wrapped up in that one line for me.


I only read A Wrinkle in Time after I read When You Reach Me, so I am excited to read it again and see what I think about it.  I would like to take more time to read it, because it really didn't leave any kind of an impression on me, other than the part with the little boy and the ball.

So, we'll see how the book club goes in July.  Hopefully I can bring people to my side and start a splinter group of rogue children's book readers!

Happy reading!