Tell Me What to Read: Round 17

And, here we are facing December. I am plowing through Cutting for Stone, but I must admit it's rather slow going. Also, I've allowed myself to get caught up in the glory of the Harry Potter books again, so there is that.

Let's not focus on my shortcomings, numerous as they may be, though. Instead, suggest a book for me to read. You know the drill:

1. Comment with the title of one book you think I should read (any book you want). One title only, please, lest my brain explode.
2. I'll select one comment at random and announce it on the blog within the next week.
3. On the off-chance that I've already read the book you select, I'll contact you and ask for a follow-up suggestion (make sure there is a way to contact you either by blog or email).
4. I'll get a copy of the book and read it by the end of December (ish).
5. I'll write a review of it here. Even if I hate the book, I will not hate you.

Four Months

Ella,

Oh, you are one cute little thing. Your dad and I just cannot get enough of you. You are so much more interactive now, smiling and laughing and responding in ways that blow our minds.

You learned to roll, much to your pleasure sine you no longer are forced to stay on your stomach. You are not a fan of tummy time. Not a fan at all.

Your head continues to outpace your body by a good 25%. Even more amusing is your teeny little neck.  It never stops delighting me to see you keep your head up on that wobbly little neck.

A year ago, we spent Thanksgiving in New York City. It was the epitome of a child-free vacation - we stayed in a swanky hotel, ate out, slept in, stayed up late, shopped, saw a show, and generally just lived it up.

This year, we stayed home for Thanksgiving, having our annual dinner with Band Ralphie and keeping things pretty calm. And, truth be told, I would take a quiet weekend with you every time over a weekend in New York City. I never thought I'd be the mom who would say that.

But then, I never thought I'd have a baby like you.

Love,
Mommy

No Need to Think Hard About What I'm Grateful For

Would You Rather

I know, I know, the "Would You Rather"s tend to belong squarely in Bart's camp and generally I get mega-stressed out when he asks me "Would You Rather" questions. I think he probably views this as one of my greatest shortcomings as a wife. Moving on. . .

Kayla (she has a new blog. . .check it out) and I were talking about books the other day and I mentioned some books that we were written under a pen name and she commented that if she were ever to write a book, it'd be under a fake name, since she'd be too embarrassed to write under her real name.

Both of us, almost simultaneously, said "Stephenie Meyer!"

Which leads me to wonder - if I could choose to be one kind of author, would I rather be the kind that is generally labeled as a lousy writer, but makes a ridiculous amount of money on both books and subsequent movie deals (Stephenie Meyer, Nicholas Sparks, etc) or someone considered to be a brilliant writer, but whose books never really take off in the public marketplace and didn't make much money?

On the one hand. . . I certainly like money.

On the other hand, I do not care to be the poster child of the downfall of American literature either.

What would you choose?

Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer and Josee Massee

I love a clever book. And Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse is a clever book. This collection of fairy tale poems delights me every time  I read it.

Each page has two poems about a certain fairy tale. The catch is that the second poem is the same as the first, just starting with the last line and going to the first.

The two poems use exactly the same words, but somehow, like magic, the first one is from one point of view, and the second tells a completely different story.

Confused? Here's an example of one of the pages, this one taken from the story of Little Red Riding Hood (click to enlarge):

The poem on the left is from Little Red Riding Hood's view, the second from the wolf's. Isn't that FUN? I read one or two to Bart and he was so amused by them, that he requested I read a few more of them (Sleeping Beauty v. the Prince is one of my favorites - both of them grumbling about life in a fairy tale).

And the illustrations are just gorgeous - bright and full of color. They are a perfect mix of modern and traditional. Ella stares at the pictures while I read the poems to her, so I'm saying she loves them (someday, when she can talk, I'll ask her what she actually thinks).

What I particularly like about this is that it can appeal to younger children who just enjoy the pictures and the poems, while older children will really get a kick out of how clever it is to have the same poem read two ways and take on completely different meanings.

I did a pretty fun unit on poetry last year and I'm kicking myself for not having included this title (and style). What was I thinking?

Copy received from publisher

Baby Announcement

After my post about Christmas cards earlier this week, I thought I'd share the baby announcement we sent out, for the two of you that are interested.

 I really love that baby.

The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White

9 of 10: Following Rebecca's stay in Vietnam as a nurse and then her efforts once she returns home to put her life back together, The Road Home is funny, heartbreaking, and terrifically written. I loved every page of it.

Angie of Angieville recommended this book at least a half dozen times for Tell Me What to Read. Of course, it never got chosen, and of course, I never had the foresight to go pick it up myself.

And then, in an email conversation with Jeanelle about Sarah Dessen, she asked if I'd read The President's Daughter by Ellen Emerson White. I hadn't, of course, but the title alone made me interested and I vaguely recalled that it was the same author that Angie kept plugging.

My library had The President's Daughter on the shelf and, suddenly, two weeks later, I'd read the ENTIRE President's Daughter series.

Which clearly indicated that Angie might be onto something with the whole The Road Home suggestion.

This is all a long and meandering way to say that I am suddenly a huge Ellen Emerson White fan. Tragically, many of her books are out of print (The President's Daughter series was just rereleased in 2008), so I'm using the magic of inter-library loan to get copies of some of her other books that I'm now dying to read.

Rebecca is a 21-year-old nurse working in an army hospital in Vietnam. Before the book begins, she was involved in some sort of accident over Christmas that included some causalities and although you get very few details about it all, it is clear that it has absolutely destroyed Rebecca. It quickly becomes obvious that she was, prior to it, funny, light-hearted and energetic. Now she can barely function.

Only two things really keep her going - one is Major Doyle, the chief nurse at the hospital, who has really taken to Rebecca, and the other is Michael, a foot soldier she met in Vietnam whose letters make her feel more alive.

Of course, having someone she cares about on the front line doesn't exactly make for a calming, restful existence.

It also becomes obvious that things with her family back home are not good either, but, like the Christmas accident, there isn't a lot of detail. The main point is that Rebecca has a lot to deal with here.

And then, her assignment in Vietnam is complete and she is sent home. Which, in a lot of ways, is even more terrifying then Vietnam. After what's she's seen (and as an ER nurse on the front lines, it's a lot), she knows she won't be able to just slip back into her old life as if none of this ever happened.

One of the things I found fascinating about this book is that there are lots of things going on that are referred to off-handedly but are never explained in depth. You can gather, eventually, what is going on, but there is never that "let me sit down and explain to another character and thus to the reader exactly what happened." And you don't need it. It's more engaging to watch it play out like a real relationship with a person would - you find out things here and there with brief comments, but you don't sit down and demand the entire story. This is the case with the Christmas accident, her relationship with Michael, her brother's absence, the conflict with her father, and the death of her childhood friend Billy.

This book (and her President's Daughter books) is filled with a dry wit that I find irresistible. The dialogue is so amusing, I kept rereading passages just to laugh again at the funny, funny comments. This book deals with some weighty subject matter, and yet the writing keeps it from being just unbearably depressing. Which is not to say that it trifles with serious issues - it doesn't.

And these books are smart. They are filled with references to classic books and movies, many of which I'm sure went right over my head, but wow, when I caught one, oh, did I feel like a smarty-pants.

There is a fair amount of swearing in this book, but it's not as if the f word is constantly being thrown around. It didn't detract from the book for me, but I like to give a little warning.

Interestingly (to a librarian), this book is categorized by the publisher as juvenile, but the Austin Public Library had it shelved in the adult section (which I didn't notice for a while because I just picked it up from the hold shelf). With a 21 year old protagonist, it really could go either way.

The Road Home is actually a companion book to a series she wrote under a different name (Zack Emerson) which follows Michael and his company. In the third book, apparently, they meet up with Rebecca and after that series was complete, Ellen Emerson White went back and wrote this one to follow-up on Rebecca's character.

You better believe I'll be reading that series as soon as I can get it from inter-library loan.

Book borrowed from my local library

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

We aren't sending Christmas cards this year.

Bart has wanted to send them since we got married and last year, we finally did.

We had some very specific ideas about what they should be like (include a letter, be on high-quality paper, only have one picture, etc., etc., etc.,) and we were both happy with the final result. We got many lovely comments on them and we deemed it a success.

I assumed we would do them again this year, but as we started getting down to the wire to have Ralphie take our pictures and Bart kept hedging, I finally asked if he didn't want to do them this year.

He didn't, mainly because we'd just sent out baby announcements two months ago.

And really, in the age of the Internet, Christmas cards aren't what they used to be. It used to be a way to keep up with someone you rarely or never saw, or see how everyone's children had grown up, or what fun things friends and family were up to.

Now, chances are good that most people have a blog or use Facebook. For people like us, this is certainly true - we know the details of the lives of nearly everyone on our Christmas list. When we sent out baby announcements we knew full well that virtually everyone had already seen pictures (many pictures!) of our baby, how much she weighed at birth, and, likely, the details of delivery.

It was fun to send out the announcements, but it was not as if people needed the announcement to find out she was born.

And Christmas cards seem much the same way to me - a delightful tradition, but more a tradition than something with practical benefits. You can contact and share stories, updates, and pictures much less expensively and much more easily through the internet than through the postal service.

But of course, opening a PDF file doesn't have the same spirit of holiday cheer that comes from opening an envelope in front of your mail box.

Maybe we'll send them again next year. I don't know.

Wardrobe Thoughts

When Bart saw Ella wearing this, this morning, he said "Grandma sweater."

I said, "DARLING. Also, on sale for $4."

Ella said, "Hey guys, have you seen my neck?"

 

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

7 of 10: I have such mixed feelings about Anna and the French Kiss. On one hand, it was delightful; on the other hand, it was kind of.  . . formulaic. And this coming from a person who could read 4,563,215 teen romances and still want more.

This book has been getting mega buzz in the blogosphere. So much so that, for the first time in my life, I actually emailed the publisher and asked for a copy. Because you can only read so many reviews that compare a book to Sarah Dessen before you absolutely must read it.

The downside is, of course, that then you will spend the entire reading the book comparing it to Sarah Dessen. And as I've learned in the last two years since I drank the Sarah Dessen Koolaid, that is a comparison that rarely ends well for other books.

Anna is spending her senior year at a boarding school in Paris because her father, who has recently become quite rich, thanks to a number of Nicholas Sparks-type books and the subsequent movies, decided it would really broaden her horizons (or, more likely, be an impressive thing to mention off-handedly: "Oh yes, my daughter is studying in Paris"). Anna is not at all thrilled to be uprooted from her home, her family, her best friend, and the maybe-just-about-to-go-somewhere romance with her co-worker, but her dad has already paid for it and "no" isn't really an option.

And so, just like that, she's suddenly living in Paris. She's homesick, of course, and that's compounded by the fact that she speaks almost no French at all, so going anywhere seems terrifying to her. Fortunately, the girl in the next room befriends her and brings her into a small group of friends, one of whom is the very popular and good-looking St. Clair.

Who, to no one's surprise, has a girlfriend - a girl who graduated the year before and now is attending a local university nearby. He's very welcoming and friendly to Anna and he has great hair (I swear, his good hair must have been mentioned at least fifty times, and this is no exaggeration). He's also three inches shorter than Anna which is only mentioned in passing, but was something I just had to ignore. Perhaps it is because I am only just under 5'4" and a guy three inches shorter than me would be very short indeed. Whatever the case, I had to just readjust St. Clair to be about 5'10" in my mind.  Let us return to the book and leave my many personal issues behind us.

Anyway, they become quite close friends, but Anna is never sure whether or not he is just truly friendly or if he actually likes her. And she'll think he does and then she thinks he doesn't. And this goes on for nearly 400 pages. I mean, really; must we play such games?

I really liked Anna. As a person who perpetually lives in fear of getting in trouble, it warms my heart to occasionally see a character who displays that same traits (I can't tell you how many books make me want to shake a character and say, "Are you out of your MIND?! Don't you know that stealing a car and driving it without a license is probably a VERY POOR IDEA?!"). Anna hates the idea of ditching school, but also doesn't want to let down her friends. She is very reluctant to go drinking, even though at her age it's legal in France.

I did have a hard time buying the fact that she was the mega-film buff she is and had no idea that Paris was a big film city (on the topic of movies, the best line of the book came when she asked her friends go to see an old movie with her and one of the girls says she doesn't really like old movies: "The acting is so, 'Hey buddy, ol' pal. Let's go wear our hats and have a big misunderstanding.'"). Classic.

I appreciated how realistic her homesickness was and how, when she returned home, after longing to be there all semester, it doesn't really feel like home either anymore. And her little brother and mom, after being so excited to see her, are quick to give her a hard time about the changes in her since living in Paris and she feels like she doesn't quite fit in anywhere now. Isn't that the way life is?

And the Paris in this book seemed so real to me - I thought the setting was just masterfully done. 

I am perhaps a reader who generally likes things spelled out for me, but this one seemed a little bit crazy obvious in places to me. When she would come to some realizations, I'd think "Are you kidding? We've all known this for 100 pages. Why is this a big revelation now?" I think the main problem was that there just wasn't quite enough other substance to the storyline to drag on the "does he like me, does he not" for four hundred pages.

Not to mention the fact that some of the big plot twists were so obvious you could see them coming from the first quarter of the book. And, as I've mentioned before, I am NOT the person who guesses plot twists. I'm all "wait, HE'S the murderer?!" every time. 

And it kind of sat wrong with me that St. Clair first admits that he likes her when he's completely drunk (he's just had some really terrible news and is dealing with it in that time-honored tradition of getting absolutely smashed). Wes would never have done such a thing.  

It was a fine book. There were moments I genuinely enjoyed, parts I thought were very well-done, but it just didn't quite achieve the magical sweetness that I want out of a teen romance.

Also, I really am now wishing that I'd gone to boarding school in Paris.

Advance copy received from publisher by request

Being the Reader

I've been reading Keeper by Kathi Appelt the last few days and I keep thinking about when I read her first book, The Underneath, a couple of years ago.

I wasn't the biggest fan of that book. And it had nothing to do with the book itself.

I had checked it out on CD at the library and was listening to it while I commuted. And for some reason, my CD player did NOT like these CDs. It couldn't restart when I'd turn the car back on. It would struggle to progress to the next track. After several days of this, I was just beyond frustrated. Spending half your commute jiggling the rewind/fast forward key, taking the CD in and out, and listening to it spin, spin, spin is the kind of thing that makes me pretty insane.

And then, on a particularly cold day, I left work and second after starting the car, it just died. For no reason that I could tell. And then it started working again, but now I was plagued with paranoia. The whole way home, I couldn't concentrate on the book because I was so focused on making it home safely (spoiler: I did).

When I think of The Underneath, I can't help but associate all that frustration and irritation with it. I can't think about the beautiful writing or the symbolism of the story; I can only think about driving along in the cold, fearful that I was going to get stranded. Of course it wasn't my favorite book. And all for reasons that Kathi Appelt had zero control over when she wrote the book.

(Needless to say, I'm playing it safe with Keeper, reading a nice non-skipping hardcover on my couch, which is unlikely to stall).

I think about this a lot - which books might I have liked more if they'd been stand alone, or if I hadn't been comparing them to other works by the author or if I hadn't just read a story that was fairly similar. Which books did I love because a character had something small and inconsequential in common with me? Which books did I read on vacation, feeling happy and content? Which book was recommended to me by someone I love and want to please and which book has been badmouthed by someone who's opinion I trust and respect?

As a reader, you bring so much to a book, that it's hard to judge it completely objectively. I don't have writerly ambition, but if I did, those sorts of things would make me even more afraid.

CSN Giveaway

As promised, I'm hosting a giveaway for a $75 gift certificate to CSN Stores, where you can buy, I am convinced, anything you can conceive of, from bathroom shelving to, hmm, I don't know, immersion blenders, perhaps? (If you win, promise you won't buy that immersion blender. I forbid because I care).

To enter, go leave a comment on the giveaway post here.

Matched by Ally Condie

9 of 10: This dystopian novel was just begging me to like it. The Giver plus romance? Sign me up. Matched turned out to be even better than I'd expected.

I joined The Giver party late - I didn't read it until I was nineteen. I had no idea what to expect from it (I'm sorry, people, but it really does have a ludicrously terrible cover, I'm afraid). But when I finally did read it, I loved it. It was one of the first dystopian books I'd read, and I fell in love with the genre mainly because of this book.

So when I received an advance copy of this book and the letter that went along with it said it was similar to The Giver, but aimed at young adults and had a romantic story line, well, you know I was sold. I read it within a week of it arriving.

Cassia is called up for her Match Banquet the day of her seventeenth birthday. In the Society, everyone who wishes to be married is matched with their future spouse sometime between their seventeenth and eighteenth birthday.

Cassia is nervous, of course (my personal idea of purgatory, actually, might be seeing the face of the person I was supposed to marry in front of my friends and all my family for the first time. Ugh), but she's excited too.

And then, she ends up being completely shocked when the person she is matched with is one of her closest friends, Xander. They've known each other all their lives and he's handsome and funny and smart and nice. She is thrilled. (Also, being matched with someone that you know is extremely rare, so it's kind of a big deal).

Each person is given a silver box with a microcard that contains information about their match and Cassia gets one too, even though she knows Xander personally and doesn't need to know how many siblings he has, what his favorite color is, or when his birthday falls on the calendar. Still, she is curious about what kind of information might be on there, and so the next day, when she is home alone, she plugs the card into the computer to read up on him.

Except the face that appears on the screen is not Xander. It's another boy, named Ky.

And she knows him too. He was adopted by the Markham family (who live just down the street) years earlier when the Markham's son was murdered in a rare occurrence of crime in the Society. Ky, who is the Markham's nephew and lived in the Outer Provinces (read "Hicksville"), had lost his parents and so was sent to the Markhams to be raised as their son.

Ky was a nice kid although somewhat quiet and he has already left school and been placed in his occupation, which is food disposal, a very low-end job, which came as a surprise to everyone since he seemed bright enough.

Cassia is a little ill over the whole thing because it's so strange. Why did a different person show up on her microcard? Who was she supposed to be matched with? When an official pulls her aside during free time the next day to assure her it was a mistake and they're trying to find out who placed Ky's information on her card, Cassia is relieved that she's still matched with Xander and she can move forward with her life.

Except now she's curious about Ky. Especially after the Official dropped a few clues about Ky's rather mysterious past. It's like when someone tells you that so and so likes you - you suddenly notice them a lot more. 

And there are other things going on - the increased scrutiny by the Officials, her grandfather's secretive gift to her of Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" poem (a poem which she's never heard, since the Society chose 100 poems to keep and destroyed the rest), her mother's increasing travel for work - that cause Cassia some unease. Is this because she's, for the first time, breaking a few rules or is something bigger going on? She doesn't know.

I'll admit, at first I thought, "Eek, is this too much like The Giver? Is it just a knock off?" And yes, there are many similarities - the arranged marriages, the assigned jobs, the pills - but it is very much its own story and goes its own direction, which thrilled me to no end.

One of my own personal standards for quality of a book is how I tell Bart about it; if I suddenly find myself spending thirty minutes telling him all the details of the book, getting excited all over again about the characters and the setting and the plot, I know it's a winner. This book was one of those - after telling him about it, I was all anxious to go read it again (Bart refuses to read it because Matched is the first of a trilogy and he does not like to read a book where he has to wait years for it to be concluded). 

This book is . . . really good, one I see myself passing around to friends and recommending when someone needs a book title. I've read a tremendous amount of lousy books this year - so many of the new YA titles have been very disappointing - but even in a good year, this book would have been a standout.

And now I'm desperately waiting for the next installment. Maybe Bart's method is better after all.

ARC received from Penguin/Dutton

The Hole in the Wall by Lisa Rowe Fraustino

6 of 10: I've already given the award for Most Bizarre Book of the Year to Amy's Eyes, but The Hole in the Wall certainly does make a valiant effort. At the end, I'm still not all that clear on what it was all about.

In library school, it would be nearly impossible to graduate without hearing about Ranganathan's five laws. I won't bore you with them all, but one of them is "every book its reader." Meaning, of course, that every book will appeal to SOMEONE.

Whenever I hear this, I think of Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from Wayside School. My two lovely sisters ADORED these books. I? could hardly get through them. They were just so WEIRD (a rat dressed in a bunch of rain coats so he can pass for a kid? Weird). And I have noticed that my tolerance for weirdness in books tends to be quite low.

Which is all to say, if you like books with a high dose of the weird, you'll probably like this book. If you are like me and cannot get behind rats in raincoats, you may want to pass.

Sebby is the main character, living with his family in fairly abject poverty. His dad has become an alcoholic (for reasons that I didn't ever catch) and his older brother ran away from home months earlier. The town they live in is being bought up, chunk by chunk by some "local boy makes good" type but everyone is a little distrustful of what he's using the land for (some sort of mega-secret mining project).

As if Sebby doesn't have enough on his mind, suddenly things get super weird, what with the chickens disappearing, his stomach becoming hard as a rock (and also, strangely magnetic), and colors coming out of the wall. And he's pretty sure they're all tied together. And he's even more sure he wants to find out how they all relate.

The book started out quite slowly for me, mainly because everything was so weird, but the last twenty pages, I suddenly found myself quite enjoying the book. The characters are likable and real (well, as real as a guy who is magnetically attracting chickens to his stomach can be) and you want things to turn out well for them. Plus, the revelations at the end are surprisingly fun and appealing. But it was kind of a long walk to get there.

This book reminded me a little of Scumble (the companion book to Savvy), with it's modern and yet timeless setting, in a unspecified location. I sometimes find this a little unnerving - it's hard to focus as much on the characters and the story when my mind is darting around trying to find somewhere to LOCATE this story.

Mainly, I felt like the oddness of this book kept me from connecting enough with the characters to really care enough about what happened to them. And so many of the characters had too little back story, like his friends who mysteriously disappear or why the father turned into an alcoholic.

Yes, I'm afraid this book was just a little too bizarre for me. 

Advance Copy received from Blue Slip Media

What I'm Going to Read: Round 16

A winner! A winner! We have a winner! Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghes, which has been suggested approximately two million times, this time by Melanie and Becca. (Melanie's was the winning suggestion, should you care about such details).

The downside is that this book is quite popular. And by "popular," I mean "I am number 71 in line at the Austin Public Library." 

This is what Ella thinks of being 71st in line:

The plus side is that my local library only has two people in front of me, so it's somewhat possible that I'll get to this book before the end of the month. Cross your fingers for me. 

Other fine suggestions which have me running to the request page of my library:

• Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger (Katie) 
• I Am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak (Chrissie and G) 
• The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman (Keira of LoveRomancePassion) 
• The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman (Kristi) 
• The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer (smalldog) 
• Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (Mary)
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman (NGS)
• Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay (Jenn)
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Sherry) 
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (Nicole) 
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Merry) 
• Wish You Well by David Baldacchi (Lisa)
• Two-Part Invention by Madeleine L'Engle (RA) 
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Katie) 
• A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Luis Stevenson (Carly) 
• Forest Born by Shannon Hale (Gretchen) 
• Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Jenny) 
• Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins (Bart) 
• Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood (alisonwonderland) 
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (Maria and Miri)
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (Melissa) 
• Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas (Leslie) 
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (Michelle)
• Smile by Raina Telgemeier (Jessica) 
• Schooled by Gordan Korman (emandtrev)
• Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman (ACQ)
• The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (Mia) 
• Promise Me by Richard Paul Evans (Tristen) 
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (Saskia)
• The Island by Elin Hilderbrand (Kathleen)
• The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare (lifeofadoctorswife)

Of these, I've read:

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
• The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare

Let Us Pretend You Still Care About Halloween

The Halloween festivities went on and on. Just the way I like a holiday.

I am completely sold on having children because it means there is dressing up. And it doesn't have to be me. Win-win. Indulge me while I share ten trillion pictures of my baby as an owl:

We had a big church party on Saturday evening, complete with a chili cookoff, carnival games, and Trunk or Treating. Which, hilariously, I was in charge of. Let me tell you, there were no centerpieces and no decorations. But there was plenty of food and excellent company. So I count it a success.

And I made nearly 200 mini cupcakes for the cake walk. I used it as an excuse to buy myself one of these things, which has improved my quality of life 1000%.

The problem with being in charge, is that people come and ask you questions and you have to make up an answer really fast and pretend you have put great thought into it. I haven't yet mastered doing that without making a concerned face:

We went to Ralphie's for Halloween dinner on Sunday, where I ate way too much stew and I made these pumpkin scones. I'd made them before and they were divine. This time, they didn't cook all the way through, so they were kind of more like pumpkin muffins, rather than scones, which I'm totally over (that is such a ridiculous lie - I am still mega-disappointed. I hate it when things don't turn out. The banana bread that was a horrendous flop five years ago? I'm still peeved about). Both times I made them without the glaze and without the butterscotch chips.

Also, I wore orange shoes:

I mean, when else can you wear orange shoes?

Lockdown by Walter Dean Myers

7 of 10: Lockdown is the story of a young teenager in juvenile detention, trying to get his life back on track. It's neither as depressing as it could have been or as eye-rolling optimistic as you might expect.

This book was kind of the opposite of One Crazy Summer for me. I expected to love that one and ended up liking it. In the case of Lockdown, I expected to hate it and ended up quite enjoying it. Oh that "can't judge a book by it's cover" saying - it will always come back to bite you.

Reese is serving a two year sentence in a juvenile detention facility for stealing a prescription pad from a doctor's office and selling it to a drug dealer who, when he was arrested, sold Reese out in about three seconds.

The jail staff sees Reese as being a little bit more together than some of the other inmates, someone who might actually have a future and so they use him in a work-study program where he spends a few hours a week at a retirement center, mainly just helping clean up and do janitorial kind of labor.

But despite threats that he'll get his privileges taken away or have his sentence extended or perhaps get shipped off to an actual real adult prison, Reese has trouble staying out of fights. This makes the wardens CRAZY because they worry it'll sabotage the work-study program for the future. They keep telling him that he has a future and that these other boys know it and want to keep him from straightening his life out because it puts the blame back on them for not being able to hold their own lives together.

Reese recognizes all this, but it's hard to think about those things when someone is giving him a hard time or picking a fight. And of course, there's his nagging concerns that when he DOES manage to get out, he won't be able to stay out of jail, what with everyone in his neighborhood doing drugs, and his family's mess of a situation (his mom is a drug user and his dad was physically abusive before disappearing entirely). And he's too young to get a job and move out. Plus, he has a younger sister who really wants to make something of her life and he's determined to help her do that if he can.

And he's starting to make a cautious friendship with an old man at the retirement center. At first the man is very racist, but eventually they warm to each other and Reese starts to realize that everyone has issues to deal with.

It may come as no surprise to you that I have no experience being a black teenage boy from a poverty-stricken family with an abusive father and a drug-using mother, but from my comfortable middle-class couch, this seemed like a remarkably realistic book.

Sometimes books like this just irritate me because you feel like it's all the main character's fault, but this one does a remarkable job of making Reese a sympathetic character, while owning up to his own flaws.

There is some swearing in this book, but it's pretty minimal, which both surprised and pleased me. Sometimes these kinds of books can be insanely language-heavy in an attempt at realism and I appreciated that this was not one of them.

With three books now read from the finalists, my vote still sits with Mockingbird, but this wouldn't be the worst choice either.