Chaos Is A Friend of Mine

Thankfully Reading Weekend Wrap-Up

Another Thankfully Reading Weekend has come to end. I read one book over the weekend - Extras by Scott Westerfeld. I really enjoyed it - a review will be coming soon.

Also this weekend Travis redid the boys closet and painted their room. (Which meant I spent much of the weekend corralling the boys to keep them out of his way.) I'm so happy with the closet - it has so much more space for clothes now. I don't have their room totally put back together yet but here's a couple pictures of their closet:

Thankfully Reading Mini-Challenge #1

The first challenge for the Thankfully Reading Weekend is hosted by Jenn of Jenn's Bookshelves. She challenges:

Write a post about the book you are most thankful for.  This could be a book released this year or twenty years ago.  Your post should include why you are thankful for that book.

My answer is slightly embarrassing but I'm going for it anyway. The book that I'm most thankful for is:

After my son West was born four and a half years ago, I was completely overwhelmed with being the mom of a two-year old and a baby. I was lucky to pick up a magazine for few minutes a day. Reading books, one of my favorite pastimes, became a distant memory. Until the day two years ago that my friend Capello brought me the book Twilight and told me that I WAS reading this book whether I wanted to or not. In addition to waking up my inner fifteen year old girl, reading Twilight brought back my reading mojo. After I finished the Twilight series, I started reading again on a regular basis - all kinds of books, not just fluffy vampire ones. Now reading is once again a huge part of my life. Thanks Twilight!

 

Thankfully Reading Weekend Kickoff

I started my reading off today by taking my boys to Fun Run, an indoor play place and imagination village. While they jumped in bounce houses and played dress-up, I got quite a bit of reading done. And while we were gone, my husband started redoing the closet in the boys' room. He was glad to have us out from under foot. These are the two books I hope to finish this weekend:

I'm a slow reader (compared to some in the blogosphere at least!) so I'm trying to keep my expectations realistic. This is no pressure event after all!

 

Another Bittersweet Goodbye

Little Chief left us Tuesday to live with one of his relatives. It's a good move for him - I've met the relative a couple of times and she loves him a lot and will take very good care of him.

The thing I'll remember most about Chief was that he was the gruntiest baby ever. He grunted constantly - he sounded like an 80 year old man trying to get out of a chair. I've never heard a baby grunt like he did. Also, he only slept about 2 hours between feedings at night so even though I miss him, I really love getting full nights of sleep again.

Sunday Salon - Challenge Update

I thought I'd do an update of where I'm at for my challenges. I have just over a month to complete them all before the end of the year. (Click on the images if you'd like details about the challenges.)

I signed up for three books in the South Asian Author Challenge.

1. Half Life by Roopa Farooki

2. Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier

3.

What's In A Name 3 Challenge:

Food -The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Saldana

Body of Water -

Title -

Plant -

Place Name -The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker

Music Term -

I signed up for Honorable Mention (1-3 books) for the Books Won Challenge. I won a prize pack of picture books from Booking Mama a few months ago and the boys and I have read them all - I just need to sit down and write something up about them.

 

The last challenge is the Amy Einhorn Perpetual Challenge. This one is easy because it goes on forever! So far I've read:

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

2. The Gendarme by Mark Mustian

 

Thankfully Reading Weekend 2010

Jenn from Jenn's Bookshelves, Candace from Beth Fish Reads and Jen from Devourer of Books are hosting the Thankfully Reading Weekend again this year. You can sign up at Jenn's Bookshelves by clicking on the turkey. It's very laidback - here are the details as outlined on Jenn's blog:

There are no rules to the weekend, we’re simply hoping to devote a good amount of time to reading, and perhaps meeting some of our reading challenges and goals for 2010. We thought it’d be fun if we cheered each other on a bit. If you think you can join in, grab the button  and sign on to Mr. Linky. If you don’t have a blog, use the comments!

During the weekend, come back and link any Thankfully Reading Weekend posts to the Mr. Linky we’ll put up here on Friday, November 26. Feel free to link as many posts as you’d like. On Sunday will put up another Mr. Linky for your wrap-up post.

We’ll also be checking in on Twitter using hashtag #thankfulreading. Join in for the weekend or for only a single day. No rules, no pressure!

This year, we will be doing some fun Thankfully Reading mini-challenges over the weekend.  Be sure to check back Thanksgiving weekend for more details!

My husband has a long list of projects that he wants us to accomplish over Thanksgiving weekend - exciting tasks like packing and organizing all the clothes the boys have outgrown - but I'm hoping to sneak in some reading time as well.

Book Review: Airhead

Airhead by Meg Cabot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Emerson Watts (Em) is a tomboyish gamer, not a party girl. She begrudgingly accompanies her younger sister to the grand opening of the Stark Megastore so that her sister can see her celebrity crush, Gabriel Luna and her idol supermodel Nikki Howard. While waiting in line for Gabriel’s autograph, a flat-screen TV falls from the ceiling and lands on Em. She wakes up from a coma a month later and learns that her life has been forever changed.

The back cover of this book is really vague (like my description above) so I had no idea what to expect from this book. I just picked up it because I’m on a personal mission to read/listen to all of Meg Cabot’s books. I was surprised to discover as I listened to this book that this book is partly science fiction. It’s definitely not hard science fiction but if you don’t think about how unrealistic it is and just go with it then it’s a very fun read. I don’t want to give too much away – part of the fun is not knowing what happens ahead of time.

This book is the first of the Airhead series – I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the books in the series.

Book Review: You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Heather Sellers suffers from a rare neurological disorder called prosopagnosia or face blindness. She can’t recognize people by their faces. She wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her thirties – growing up she knew something was wrong with her but assumed she had some kind of mental illness. Adding to the confusion she experienced growing up was the fact that her mother was a paranoid schizophrenic and her father was an alcoholic who wore women’s underwear.

This book is a fascinating memoir. Heather does an excellent job of explaining her disorder in laymen’s terms and conveying the confusion she experiences on an everyday basis. Also, she describes her unusual parents so vividly, I felt like I could see and hear them. She does a great job of capturing her mother’s fluctuating moods in the manner in which her mother speaks.

I’ve always been fascinated with how the brain works and mental illness. This memoir is not only the story of Heather and her quest to make sense of her world but also a great character study of her parents, especially her mother. I found myself thinking about this book a lot and talking about it with other people more than I usually do with books I’m reading. I think it would make a great book club selection – there are so many facets of Heather’s life that would be great discussion points.

This is one of the best memoirs I’ve read, right up there with The Glass Castle. I highly recommend You Don’t Look like Anyone I Know.

(I received this book courtesy of the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)

The Very Lonely Puppy

Our family watched the movie Ramona and Beezus last night. This was the first live action movie Cash had ever watched and he had a lot of questions afterwards about how movies are made. And of course he wanted to make one himself.

Today, Travis helped Cash make his first short flim. Cash wrote and directed the film and Travis edited it for him (under Cash's watchful eye).

Kid Konnection: Beezus and Ramona

Cash, my six year old, has really gotten interested in chapter books in the past couple of weeks. The first one we read together was Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. Before we were even halfway finished with it, he declared it his favorite chapter book ever. Did I mention it was the first chapter book we read?

I thought it would be fun to have Cash review each chapter book we read from a kid’s point of view and I’ll review it from the parent’s point of view. I just started with three simple questions for Cash this time. If you can think of any more, I'd love to hear suggestions.

Cash’s review:

What did you think of this book? It was good.

Who was your favorite character and why? Ramona because she does silly stuff like put her doll in the oven.

What was your favorite part of the book? When Ramona put her doll in the oven.

Mommy’s review:

Four year old Ramona is always messing stuff up and driving her nine year old big sister Beezus crazy. This book was published in 1955 and has stood the test of time. I remember reading Ramona books when I was little and loving them so I was thrilled when Cash wanted to read this book. He loved it. He can relate to Beezus because he has a four year old little brother who can be pretty ornery just like Ramona. I can relate to Ramona’s mother feeling exasperated and not knowing what to do with her at times! This was a really fun book to read together – Cash was literally laughing out loud. In addition to being entertaining, this book has a very nice message about how it’s okay to not always feel loving toward your younger sibling when they are driving you crazy and offers hope for the older sibling that things will get better as the younger sibling gets older. I highly recommend this book.

(Every Saturday, Booking Mama hosts a feature called Kid Konnection -- a regular weekend feature about anything related to children's books.)