A Winter's Respite Read-a-thon Wrapup

This is hosted by Michelle @ Seasons of Reading and True Book Addict, Castle Macabre and The Christmas Spirit blog.

I finished 2 books last week, The Shack and Magic Steps. I read 376 pages in The Shack (large print version) and listened/read roughly 100 pages in Magic Steps.The Shack was pretty intense and I am still thinking about this book. We have book club tomorrow night and I will be interested in seeing other people's thoughts. Magic Steps was a reread for me and I love the series! I also managed to start The Blue Sword and read 100 pages in it. This one is also a reread, but it has been years since I read it and I don't remember anything. It is good so far and will work for a couple of different challenges I am doing this year. Overall I read 576 pages and chatted a bit on Twitter, so not too bad. How did you do?

Thanks to Michelle for hosting!

The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow

This was my first nonfiction read for the Nonfiction Challenge and was also my read for the Full House challenge for the category of Thought Provoking Book. This was a book club book that I would not have picked up on my own, but I am glad we read it!

Gotham

This is written by Jeffrey Zaslow, who most people know as the person who helped to write The Last Lecture. I have not read The Last Lecture, but I did enjoy his writing style in this book. A man writing about female friendships seemed strange to me. Could he capture what it is really like to have a lifelong female friend? Would he just make the usual snide comments about PMS and menopause when the women were emotional? Would he try to explain everything away or would he actually listen? He really seemed to present the women as they see themselves, but also providing a bit of push when they wanted to downplay items. He is interviewing the women in their 40s and talking to them about a friendship that spans elementary school to adulthood for some and high school to adulthood for most. 10 of the 11 women were still living at the time of the book, one died mysteriously in her 20s, but the other 10 still think of her on an almost daily basis. Zaslow looked at letters, diaries, pictures, and gathered oral recollections from the women, their friends, families, daughters, and people from their high school to show how important female friendships are and to see how these women have managed to keep their friendship going so long.

You can't help trying to identify with a particularly woman and then thinking about how you are not like others. To me, Jenny, who is married and just starting to have children, would be the one that reminded me of myself now. If I start a family now I will be in my mid 30s and been married 8 years, just like she was when she had her first child. The same ideas of is it too late and having to adapt after going that long without a child, resonate with me. I also identify with Sally, who was treated a bit badly by the friends, who wanted her to be more outgoing and more talkative with boys and how ostracized her for a time. This has happened with me and my friends. They would get tired of me and the fact that I did not date much and was not as cute as they were and would drop me for awhile. When their boyfriends broke up with them or other girls were mean to them, they would come back to me. It still happens with a few of them, but I have some stronger friendships with people in my circle and have come to accept the "mean" girls as they are. I think for any woman who has spent a decade or two with her friends can relate to this book.

The women's stories were fascinating and at times ordinary, but still likable. The sections on the studies of friendship were a bit dry and statistical, but parts of them were interesting. It was only at those points that I doubted Zaslow's ability to tell the story of female friendship. He felt the need to tie it to those facts and to make sure this was a fact-based analysis. While statistics are important, friendship is something that is so much more. These brief sections were the only time I lost interest and he did quickly get back to the narrative.

Would this have been stronger if written by a woman? That would be the question I would have if I saw a guy writing about women. I think he did fine with it. He has three girls and is strongly attached to his wife, so I think he probably discussed this in detail with them. I also think he brought out more from the women than if they were talking to another woman. When I talk with other woman, I both complain, but gloss over my faults. I think when we talk to men, we are more honest with words, but less so with emotions. I wish Zaslow had asked his wife to talk to the women too to gain the emotional insight, but his use of private emails and diaries did help with this a bit. I think he managed to leave out his own bias quite a bit, so overall he did well.

This really made me think about my own friendships and that I am lucky to have friends from elementary school and college who know me and love me. It makes me think about past hurts, past joys, and hopeful futures. 3.5 cups of cocoa and a very interesting read.

Story Sprites Round 3 Challenge Signup

So I noticed this challenge on Rachael's blog, Rachael Turns Pages, as a challenge she signup for and I thought it looked really fun. The Story Sprites challenge is hosted by Great Imaginations and here is a link to the signup. The goal is to complete a path by April 1st. You pick a color and complete those squares. You can do more than one path if you want. I am having a hard time choosing which path to take! I think I am going to try for purple, but I may try for more than one color if I get on a reading kick. Thanks to the bloggers at Great Imaginations for hosting!

Reading Bingo Challenge Signup

So I could not help signing up for a couple more challenges. Jessi's Reading Bingo had been on my eye for a bit.




This is hosted by Jessi at Novel Heartbeat and you can signup at this link. I love book bingo challenges and this one looks like one I can complete. I will try for a line or two, but I would love to do a coverall! Thanks to Jessi for hosting!

Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce

This was my first Reading Assignment book and my book for January. It also works for the Flights of Fantasy challenge and for my Full House challenge as Would Make a Good Movie. I hope to read the rest of the books for the Prequels and Sequels challenge, but as the first book, it does not count for that.

Simon Pulse

So I love Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens series and mentioned that on Twitter, so a few people recommended Alanna to me. I know Amy from Tripping Over Books and Kristen from The Book Monsters both raved about the book, so I had to pick it up. I made it one of my reading assignment books, because I knew I would make sure to read it then. I loved it!

Alanna and her twin, Thom, want different lives than the one their father has planned. Really their father ignores them most of the time, but does decide that Thom will be a knight and Alanna will go learn to be a lady. He does not care that Thom wants to be a sorcerer and definitely would not let Alanna become a knight. He has never even thought about the magic that they both have and usually leaves the servants to deal with them. Alanna hatches a scheme that she and Thom will trade places. Thom will go with Maude, who has trained their magic and how is supposed to take Alanna to the convent, and Alanna will go with Coram, pretend to be a boy and try to become a knight. While practicing their magic, Alanna has a vision of a black city, which could be a bad omen for the switch, but instead pushes the two servants to support the switch. They do and Alanna is able to train as a page and to get the chance to be a squire when she turns 14. While at Duke Naxon's, Alanna trains with the Duke's son, the Prince, and other boys who quickly become her friends, well all of them, except Ralon. Ralon bullies her and Alanna knows to prove herself, she must defeat the bully. She will have to defeat him, an illness, and her own changing body to try to achieve her goal. She must find friends along the way, friends who will keep her secrets, if she can survive her years as a page.

Alanna is only around 11 at the start, so she is not yet growing into her female body, so it does seem plausible that she could pass for a boy. I loved how strong she was and how she faces her own battles. I also liked Jonathan, the Prince, and George, the Rogue, King of Thieves. The boys feel the need to protect her(him), but also let her try her own strength. I also like the magical elements, which we only really get a glimpse of at the end. Magic was the interesting part of the Circle books, so I am interested to see how it plays out in The Song of the Lioness series. I really enjoyed the world of Tortall and can't wait to get started on the next one in the series. It was really an easy and fast paced read. 5 cups of cocoa.

A Winter's Respite Read-a-Thon Midweek Check in

So far I have read 173  pages of The Shack and listened to 2 CDs of Magic Steps. I was without Internet for a few days staying with my parents so that I could get to work quicker. The Shack is interesting, but not exactly what I thought it would be, but it should make for an interesting book club discussion!

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I am taking part in Lynn at Smoke and Mirrors and Bex at An Armchair by the Sea's Little House Read-Along hosted at this link. Each month a different Little House book is assigned and January's book is Little House in the Big Woods. All of the original Little House books will be rereads for me, but a few of them like On the Way Home and West From Home, I don't remember reading. I have also not read Pioneer Girl or A Wilder Rose at all, so those will be new for sure. I repurchased the whole set last year, so I will have the original books. I believe I also have On the Way Home and West From Home at my parents'.

Harper and Row

Laura Ingalls loves her home in Wisconsin and loves living with her Ma, Pa, Mary, and Baby Carrie in their log house in the Big Woods. Her grandparents, aunts, and uncles live just a few miles away and it is easy to take the horses and wagon there in a day. Laura is a bright child who is a little more mischievous than her beautiful blond sister Mary, but knows she must mind her Ma and Pa. Living in the 1870s, she is entertained by playing with corn husk dolls and a Christmas present of a rag doll. It was a simpler time, but one that had its own challenges. There were bears and panthers in the Woods, a quickly changing world with new machines, and her family had to make a living off of their land. Laura's straightforward and easy to read style makes it easy to see why this is a classic.

Historically, this book provides information on how they made straw hats, certain foods, remedies for stings, how to load a rifle and how they made bullets. It provides great insight into things we don't do any more. It also shows us how the family dynamic worked back then. I loved learning how Ma braided hats and made hulled corn and loved hearing Pa's stories to the children.

Being that this is set in the past, prejudices do come out. In this one, they are not as overt as in later books, but I know the series itself is often chastised because of the treatment of Native Americans. Pa makes a remark about playing "Indian" in this book and sings about a "darkey" at one point. When I was a child I did not notice this and when my parents read it to me, they read it as is and did not talk about prejudice in the past. I will say I love the series and it is a childhood favorite of mine, but if I read it in a classroom or to children, I may mention that there are words and ideas that we know are not true now, that they did not know back then. I do this when talking about Martin Luther King Jr and The Civil Rights movement and reading books that talk about the hate. I don't think the books need to be censored and I think children are smart enough to understand that times change.

This is one of my favorites in the series and the one I have reread the most. I think about how different life was back then, but also how things like love and family are timeless. I think sisterly squabbles and Laura worrying about her brown hair make this a read that children even today can relate to. As an adult reading it, I love hearing about the past, hearing about how they live off the land and could be self-sufficient. I love seeing the love of the family and their joy in the simple things of life. Laura is my favorite character in this one and I love how she is even honest about her childhood behavior. 5 cups of cocoa!