Forging an Art

One of our teen patrons, preparing to re-take the ACT (“I didn’t think staying up all night on Friday would make a difference in my score”) alerted me to this site, which boosts your vocabulary while donating to the hungry:  Free Rice

Brought home the second volume of Flight yesterday as well as the fourth – when he finished the second, the LC said, well, I really like to read these in order, so where is three?  Three, I explained, is on its way from one of the branch libraries.  He sighed.  “I can’t read four without reading three first.”  Not sure if this is the autism or the 16 year old boy speaking here, but probably both.  The cat happily used volume four as a seat cushion when the book was left on the table.

Just posted new review at FBS for Lavinia, Le Guin’s latest.

The LC just finished the second in this series, Betrayal on Orbis 2.  When asked for an opinion, he characteristically stated “it was good” but also that he took a couple of days to finish it, when if something is “really, really good” he’ll read it in a day.  Normally he hovers in fantasy-land, preferably involving dragons, but the first title of this science fiction series by P.J. Haarsma left him asking if I could bring home the sequel, which was yet to be published at the time.  There will be more of these, he assured me, and asked if I could keep an eye out for them.

Writing the Lavinia review today, and should have it up by the end of the week.

If you are not an eight year old girl, I warn you, you will lose.

I mention this because my own smallish child spent way too much time yesterday morning doing just that.

I do intend to keep this journal focused primarily on books and related subjects (I’m not sure what that might include so we’ll see what happens) but, as my grandma says, the road to hell is paved in just this manner. I might mention one of my children (herein referred to as Small Child and Large Child, as they are 8 and 16) or whatever else is on my mind at the time of posting, but books are the bomb. I can’t get enough, and the LC and SC can’t get enough either. I usually prefer historical fiction and fantasy, and nonfiction in the realm of history (English) or car racing. The LC adores fantasy, mostly dragon related, and I will include his comments on his reading here, too. Those comments may and probably will be limited to “very good” or “it sucked” because he is a sixteen year old boy. He just finished The Door Within trilogy by Wayne Thomas Batson within a matter of days (all three books in about three days) and said they were “very good,” so there you go.

I have written one book review for FBS – The Golden Rose – and am working on one for Lavinia by Ursula LeGuin, with whom you can never go wrong. I am reading Cozzens’s Guard of Honor on the advice of my dissertation advisor, also with whom I can never go wrong, and Enacting History in Henry James by Buelens.