Ahhh...

A walk after work in perfect weather and the sun still shining at 7pm... the faint smell of sage in the air.  I love Colorado.  I love approaching warm weather. 

Book Review: Howl's Moving Castle

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Originally Published in: 1986

Read in: March and April 2009

Howl's Moving Castle was my first read for the Once Upon a Time III Challenge.  I have been wanting to read this book ever since I first saw the movie version by Miyazaki, which I regard as one of my favorite movies of all time.  Of course, the book was written years before the movie and I wanted to see how the two differ. I found that they differ quite a bit!

Sophie, the main character, lives in the kingdom of Ingary, where magic is commonplace.  Her two sisters are sent away when their father dies and Sophie is left to work in a hat shop along with her stepmother.  After a brief encounter with the wizard Howl (although Sophie doesn't know it is Howl at the time), Sophie meets the Witch of the Waste who places her under a spell that makes her 90 years old (note that she also can not tell anybody about the spell.)  From here, she decides to make a life of her own and ends locating Howl's castle, which is a huge oddly shaped building that moves all over the place and has a magic door that opens to different locations in Ingary. Sophie moves in under the guise of "new cleaning lady."

Sophie meets Calcifer, a fire demon who moves the castle and has a spell cast on him, as well as Howl's apprentice, Michael (Markl in the movie) who falls in love with one of Sophie's sisters. The main demon of the story, both for Howl and Sophie is the Witch of the Waste.  When Sophie falls prey to her, it's up to Howl to save the day.  Basically it's a coming of age story for multiple characters, with a magical twist.

I thought the book was great.  I love Ingary and found most of the characters believable, even in a world of magic.  I'm glad I watched the movie first because the two differ so much (Miyazaki must have used a lot of creative license) and I rather like an alternate way of going about things.  I might get around to reading the sequels eventually.  Diana Wynne Jones seems to be a great writer.

Book Review: Brideshead Revisited

Author: Evelyn Waugh

Originally Published: 1945

Read in: February - April 2009

Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited was my first read for the 2009 Classics Challenge.  The story is narrated by a man named Charles Ryder.  Charles meets a fellow student named Sebastian Flyte while studying at Oxford.  Sebastian is a fun-loving and needy guy who brings a teddy bear named Aloysius with him everywhere.  The boys form a very close relationship to the point that Sebasitan rescues Charles from his abysmal, yet comical life with his widower father during the summer holiday.  Charles is brought to the family's home called Brideshead, after a first brief visit at Christmas earlier in the year.  There he gets to know Sebastian's very interesting family, whom are all very different personalities and varying degrees of Catholic, something that Charles has never previously considered.

As Charles and Sebastian's schooling progresses, Sebastian begins to find more comfort in alcohol than Charles, to the point where he flees his normal life and travels to Morocco, and then a Tunisian monastery, where he becomes a charity case.  Even Charles can not bring him back, so Charles distances himself from the family.

The above only encompasses the first section of the book, so there are more serious encounters in store for Charles and the Marchmain family.  What I like most about this book is the range of emotions.  There is comedy, drama, love, very vague homosexual undertones, religion, loss, and much more all wrapped up in British formality.  Even though the book took me quite a while to complete, I enjoyed every minute of it.  I plan to read more Waugh, only in the distant future, as I have quite the pile of British literature at my fingertips at the moment.

Giving In...

I can't resist another challenge.  Carl hosts the best challenges, but I was reluctant to join since I wasn't able to complete the R.I.P challenge last fall (marriage got in the way.)  Now that I'm a bit more settled in Colorado, I think I can complete it.  I participated in the Once Upon a Time II challenge last year and I'm looking forward to Once Upon a Time III this year!  Plus, Carl has given us "the journey" option, which only commits us to one book to complete the challenge. By all means, I will do my best to complete more, but I can guarantee commitment to one book for sure.  So below is my list of potential reads.  I can't wait and thanks again Carl!

1.  Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

2.  The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke (I completed Jonathan Strange for last year's challenge)

3.  Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare

4.  Something by Tamora Pierce

5.  Brisingr by Christopher Paolini (I've read the first two, so I should read the third)

6.  Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

7.  The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Off to read...

Classics Challenge 2009

Well, I almost didn't see Trish's Classics Challenge 2009 post until too late.  I'm planning on reading classics all year, so I'm definitely in.  I hope to complete the "entree" section (5 classics) but will do my best to read as much as possible.  Here's the reading list in which I plan on using for the challenge.  

1.  Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (I will only use this if I don't complete the book by the end of March)

2.  Howard's End by E. M. Forster

3.  Villette by Charlotte Bronte

4.  The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

5.  Vanity Fair by William M. Thackeray

6.  Middlemarch by George Eliot

7.  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

8.  The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence

9.  Animal Farm by George Orwell

10.  Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert

11.  The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

12.  Nana by Emile Zola

13.  To the North by Elizabeth Bowen

14.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

This list is by no means all-inclusive.  These are simply books I own and haven't gotten around to reading just yet.  I'm looking forward to the challenge and thanks for hosting this again, Trish!

A Wish

I want to take a ride on the cat bus...

Goodness

Good Reads

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban-- I'm on my quest to reread the series before HBP comes out in theaters this summer.  This is also the first time I've reread the all of the books since she completed the series.  It is just as wonderful as I remembered and I'm looking forward to one day planting my butt on the couch and having a 5 movie marathon.
• Brideshead Revisited-- I'm about halfway through this British classic and I'm in love.  Not only do I appreciate the book itself, but am intrigued by the characters and all the mention of Catholicism.  I might post a full review when I'm finished.
• Various other reads-- I'm also chugging my way through the teen Alice series, which is like crack, and I want to see how things turn out.  Also on my shelf are various nutrition books, books on fertility (long story but it has multiple purposes), books on canning and preserving, and books cake decorating.
  
• Upcoming goodness-- I think my next classic will be Forster's Howard's End.  I also need to read one of two Agatha Christie novels for the year, so I'm going to go in the order she wrote them and read The Secret Adversary.  I would also like to try the Western genre to expand my horizons and Lonesome Dove came highly recommended.  We'll see.

Good Times

• Jon turns 28 this coming Monday.  I'm looking forward to making him a Wall-E cake and just having a nice quiet, peaceful birthday celebration with family.
• My parents are going to visit the second week of April.  I'm going to work my butt off the end of this month so I don't have to take much official vacation time.  It looks like I'll have three days to (finally) explore Colorado with them.  I don't mind playing tourist in the least!  Celesti@l Se@sonings factory here we come!
• Wii Fit!  We've had it since February, but are waiting to actually open it in April.  Talk about discipline!  I love our Wii and am looking forward to exercising when I want (I have a knack for wanting to take a walk when the weather is crappy.)
• I'm enjoying a day off today.  I worked another marathon recently, and have enough hours to take today and Friday off to stay even with my hours.  I'm off to make bread.

Adding Insult to Injury

I'm busy and stressed right now.  To add insult to injury, I've had this stuck in my head for days!

Help!

Impressed

A graphic designer from my parent's hometown has come up with this.  I am so impressed. Taking pride in your home town is such a rare thing these days.  This web site makes me super nostalgic for Quincy.  I feel more ties there than I do to my native Lilburn, Georgia. Looking at the pictures of very unique landmarks reminds me of riding around the town with my dad, grandfathers, etc. and listening to their stories.   The landmarks were also one of the major reasons I wanted to get married there.

The site also features one of the saddest, but most intriguing stories of the town.  I remember first learning about the story as a kid while walking in the graveyard near my grandparents' former house (they are now buried in the same graveyard.)  It has haunted me since.  I even made a point of researching it further when I interned at the university library a few years back.

I'm so impressed that young people are taking pride in their towns.  I hope to see more of this elsewhere in the future.

Tagged

Two Surveys (and hey, another post in January)

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. I miss my old dog, C. J., daily.  I know my parents feel the same way as me, only probably more.  I really love my dogs now and anticipate growing into the same sort of relationship with them, but I miss sharing sleep time with C. J. and his crotchety moods.  He was a good dog.

2.  I am currently experiencing a professional crisis of sorts.  I will leave it at that.

3.  Baking is my true passion.  I love baking anything from bread to cakes to pies.  While it's not the best thing for a slim waist line, I do feel better about eating my own sandwich bread each week instead of the cardboard one purchases at the store.

4.  For completely renouncing high school after I graduated, I still maintain friendships with people from high school and have also married somebody I met in high school.  I'm not the type to attend any sort of reunion though, so don't expect me to come busting through the doors next year.

5.  I'm going to copy Camille on this one and say that I too did not get the WOW experience from college.  I think it was definitely my fault though, for never being myself.  And I never made the right choices... okay, I was never sloppy drunk, but I made decisions based on what I thought I should be rather than who I actually was at the time.  Ahhh introspection.

6.  While I keep up with absolutely nobody, I still look back on drum corps as a wonderful experience.  Could I do it today?  No.  Well, I physically couldn't do it today either.  It was a great "push yourself to the limits" type of experience though.

7.  I am a librarian, but I despise most librarian puns and stereotypes.  It's not that I'm trying to defend the profession, because I don't really care that people think that I sit around and read books all day, but the cutesy factor with comic strips, youtube streams, etc. that are sent around among librarians and the library community is just lost on me.

8.  2007 was a wonderful travel-packed year.  I remember that summer in particular fondly as the first time I fell in love and saw many beautiful Western states.

9.  I tend to prefer short, long-bodied dogs.  I love my dachshunds and I also think corgis would be an excellent breed to own.

10.  While my brother and I are generally polar opposites, we both struggle with showing our emotions to the general public.  He has gotten better since he has had a kid, and I hope the same will happen for me one day.

11.  Since I have moved to Colorado, many opinions and views I previously held have completely reversed.  

12.  I will never identify with a political party.  Every time I try, I get angry with said party and feel the need to reverse my views.  I always feel the need to retreat when one party has a strong presence.  

13.  I have never had naturally long nails in my life.  I just can't do it.

14.  I struggle with change way more than I thought I did.  I will never consider myself mature, and my lack of adaptation is one of those reasons.

15.  I have lived in three states: Georgia, Indiana, and Colorado.  I have only been a resident of Georgia and Colorado though.

16.  One of my greatest enemies is my mind.  I am a, now proven from taking a strengths test, thinker.  I have great ideas, but they take time.  I also run way too many scenarios in my head.  Some of these scenarios are not logical and make bad situations much much worse.  My mind has been in overdrive lately.

17.  I think I would like to live in the Northwest someday (Washington or Oregon.)

18.  I would like to have at least one child before the age of 30.

19.  I believe in fate because I feel like it brought my husband and I together.  Jon and I were living in completely different states (the grad school years) and we just happened to graduate at the same time and also just happened to move back to Georgia after grad school.  After re-meeting him, it blew me away how much we had in common and how perfect we were for each other (okay this occurred about 5 months after we met again.)  Had we not gone to some high school homecoming together back years and years ago, we might not have made any sort of reconnection.

20. I can not eat in many of the chain restaurants I used to frequent as a teenager.  Most make me sick because everything is so processed and over seasoned.  I can still eat fast food though.  Weird.

21.  My favorite soap scent is English Lavender.

22.  I look awful in a cap sleeve shirt.

23.  If I had to live in another country it would definitely be somewhere in the UK.  I'm such an anglophile.

24.  My favorite thing about Jon is his laugh.

25.  I'm working on being proactive and taking charge of my life.

Second...

Here are the rules:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 2 to 5 sentences, along with these rules.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual book. Pick the CLOSEST!
6. Tag five other people to do the same!

"About 10 minutes before the end of the kneading cycle, check the dough and adjust its consistency as necessary with additional flour or water; the finished dough should be soft and supple, not sticky."

From The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion

New Discovery

So I've never been much for anime.  Well, I didn't know what it was really about and still didn't even like it very much when I help out with the library's anime night (they showed Bleach.)  Hubby is really into anime and when he realized that I will be hosting these anime movie nights once a month, he decided to ease me into it with some Hayao Miyazaki movies.

Wow.  I have only watched three of them, but I am completely blown away.  If you don't think you're into anime, but want to give it a shot, start with these, and not the TV shows or the manga converted into anime.

Jon first showed me his favorite, Castle in the Sky.  

This is a beautiful movie is basically about a boy and girl's quest to find a mysterious floating castle called Laputa.  Of course this quest is met with much hardship including multiple factions pursuing a crystal that the girl carries with her (one of these factions ends up being good and helping the boy and girl.)  My favorite scenes are when the children actually reach the castle and visit its beautiful gardens.

Next up was Howl's Moving Castle which quickly became my favorite.

  

This movie is loosely based off of a Diana Wynne Jones novel with the same name.  It's about a woman named Sophie who has a chance encounter with Howl after being pestered by some men in an alley.  When the Wicked Witch of the Waste discovers that Howl has taken a liking to Sophie, she curses her so she is a ninety year old woman.  She also is unable to tell anybody about the curse.  Fearing her family won't believe her, she heads out to the waste and ends up living with Howl, a cute boy named Markl and a fire demon named Calcifer (he moves the castle Howl lives in.)  First, this movie is incredibly visually beautiful.  The scenery is amazing and the town is reminiscent of old German villages.  Second, I love the humor dispersed throughout the movie.  Third, I love watching Sophie and Howl come into their own by the end of the movie.  I think it ranks as one of my favorites of all time.

I finally watched perhaps his most famous movie, Spirited Away.  

This movie is about a girl and her parents who are moving to a new house when they get lost and end up at what they think is the ruins of an amusement park.  In fact, they have entered the spirit world.  Her parents eat the food and turn into pigs and it is up to the girl, named Chihiro (she becomes Sen after a witch named Yubaba takes her name in exchange for work) is forced to work to get her parents back.  She gets help from a new friend Haku and Chihiro's loyalty to him is key in the story.  This is another beautiful film and I can see why it won an Oscar.

I plan on watching all of his films in the future and I look forward to exploring the more artistic forms of anime in the future.

2008 Review

I know I haven't reviewed December books yet, and I'm honestly not sure if I'll get around to it! But I will list my ten favorite books of the year.  They have been reviewed in earlier posts, so I will not review them again.

1.  A Room With a View by E. M. Forster

2.  The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

3.  Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

4.  The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman

5.  Persuasion by Jane Austen

6.  American Gods by Neil Gaiman

7.  I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

8.  The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

9.  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

10.  Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I don't feel the need to sum up 2008 (other than books of course.)  It was a high-low year with a lot of great points and a lot of very sad and disappointing moments.  I hope there will be less of the latter in 2009, but we take things as they come like most people.

This year, I've come up a with a reading strategy.  I will strive to read one classic per month (this might be difficult since many are very long,) one graphic novel per month (an area in which I am lacking,) and one (reread of course) Harry Potter book per month (because by the time I'm finished, I'll be ready for the movie.)  Whatever I can fit in between will be lovely too.  I also have to read a bunch of leadership books, which I will not review because they are likely going to be boring!

I've been doing a ton of thinking lately reevaluating certain areas (okay area) of life.  Not to worry, this has nothing to do with my married life.  After all of this thinking I still remain confused and unhappy and it's basically up to me now to change it.  There might be more on this later, but I doubt it. Just know that I am trying my best to get through this and in the long run, it's not that big of a deal.  I do, however need to vent and am trying to find the right outlets for now beyond my mom and Jon and garbled emails to Adrian.

Hmmm...

I need to vent.

Classics Challenge: Wrap-up

Boy am I happy that this challenge lasted six months.  My pre-wedding lack of reading would not have allowed me to complete the challenge if it had been shorter (I was not able to complete this year's RIP.) But luckily I was able to read on in November and  December.  I changed my line-up midway through the challenge (what was I thinking with all of those chunksters?) but thankfully there are plenty of unread classics out there.

Here is a list of my completed books:

1.  The Handmaid's Tale (my modern classic)

2.  Wuthering Heights

3.  Frankenstein

4.  A Christmas Carol

5.  The Good Earth

6.  The Great Gatsby

My favorite book of the challenge was Wuthering Heights and my least favorite was The Great Gatsby.  I would love to participate in this challenge again.  I love the classics and this motivates me to read them.

Thanks Trish for hosting!  Great job!

Book Review: The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Originally Published: 1925

Read in: December 2008

Another book I have never read that most people read in high school is F. Scott Fitzgerald's  The Great Gatsby.  The majority of my classmates read this novel in my junior year of high school.  I'm not sure what we were reading in Mrs. King's class (I had amazing junior and senior year English teachers and I thank God daily that I chose the AP route) but it wasn't this book.

I can recall most of my classmates not liking the book very much. Maybe it is my lack of literary training, or my general preference for British literature, but I tend to agree with my 16-17 year old friends of yore.  I found the book slow and quite frankly boring.  Luckily it's small stature made it more bearable than some though and I was able to complete the book in a short period of time.

The story is told from the point of view of Nick Carraway, who rented a small cottage near the great and wealthy Jay Gatsby.  Nick meets Gatsby for the first time when attending one of his many lavish and popular parties.  A strange friendship then forms because Gatsby is in love with Nick's second cousin once removed, Daisy.  Daisy has a past with Gatsby and is married to a man named Tom, who is cheating on her.  Much of the action in this book revolves around these complicated love scandals.

At first I found this book confusing.  I was having trouble keeping up with all of the characters.  It picks up a bit about 100 pages in when the reader finds out more about Gatsby and his controversial rise to fame and fortune.  I found none of the characters enduring, which is not something I think Fitzgerald was aiming for, but I didn't like this quality nonetheless.  Overall I don't think I will be rereading the book anytime soon, and while it is indeed a classic, it's not necessarily my cup of tea.

This book completes the Classics Challenge!  A wrap-up post to follow...

Book Review: The Good Earth

Author: Pearl S. Buck

Date Originally Published: 1931

Read in: November/December 2008

My last two novels for the classics challenge are books that many of my high school classmates read, but somehow I missed out on them. I remember kids reading Pearl Buck's The Good Earth in ninth grade social studies classes.  My teacher did not assign this book.  I decided to read it because it won the Nobel Prize and it's a novel commonly assigned to teens in their courses.

The book follows the life of Wang Lung from the time of his marriage to the time of his death, during pre-revolutionary China. [Spoilers Below]  I was immediately drawn to the affairs of his family.  He experienced many hardships as a young man, mainly because of a meddling uncle and a drought. But with persistence and dedication to his land, he became very rich.  My favorite character by far was Wang Lung's first wife (he later takes a concubine), O-Lan, who birthed her own children (literally by herself) and was a steady force for the family.  Sadly, Wang Lung does not truly appreciate her until she is dying.  His tribute to O-Lan's death was a beautiful moment in the book.  While Wang Lung is tied to his land, his heirs are not.  Perhaps this is attributed to the revolution (which is only somewhat evident in the background) or because his sons were raised completely different from himself, in a life of luxury.  The sons' discussion to sell his land, nearly devastate Wang Lung near the end of his life.  While the sons reassure their father that they won't sell it, they smile in agreement behind his back to go against Wang Lung's wishes after his death.  [End Spoilers]

I thought this was a beautiful book.  If you're looking for a light and short classic read, I would highly recommend it.

Season of Giving

While there are many things in life that I'm frankly miserable about, Jon and I are very fortunate to have a secure living at the moment (knock on wood.)  Since last Christmas, we've been talking about donating to causes and we've finally taken the leap and have done just that.

This year we donated to two causes.  The first is fairly obvious.  I love Christmas... probably because I had such great childhood experiences.  Toys for Tots, a foundation of the USMC, is a wonderful program who is dedicated to helping kids during this time of the year. I hope we were able to help in some small way.

 

The second cause is very near and dear to our hearts.  The DRNA is a very special organization dedicated to placing dachshunds in loving homes.  Our children are far too spoiled to know how severely mistreated dogs can be, especially if they have the slightest medical problems.  We donated an emergency room visit this year and hope to give much more in the future.  Unfortunately, dachshunds are overbred to the point where you see a lot of them in animal shelters (this was not the case a few years back.)  I almost felt bad about getting our guys from a breeder, but I wouldn't give up Quincey and Meadow for the world, or our great experience with the breeder.

Anyways, if you are fortunate enough, I hope you consider giving to a cause this Christmas.  

November Books

Well, I feel like I made up for my reading rut this month.  I completed a whopping 8 books.  For the eighth review, see this post. Most of them were short and sweet, though, so I felt like I accomplished a lot.

First up was the second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Subtle Knife.  This book continues exactly where The Golden Compass ends.  Introduced in this book, is one of my favorite characters, Will Parry.  Will is from our own world and is one of my favorite boy characters in all of literature.  This book is great because the reader travels to different worlds and also gets a better sense of the big picture and where Pullman is going.  This is both a former co-worker and my husband's favorite book in the trilogy.  I'm still completing my personal favorite, The Amber Spyglass.  I read it during my meal breaks at work, so it is slow going.

Next up was a book I've been meaning to read for a while, Small Steps by Louis Sachar.  This is a continuation of the book Holes although it focuses on a different character named Armpit. Armpit lives in Texas and is trying to rid himself of his bad boy image by taking small steps.  Unfortunately, trouble finds him in a ticket scalping scheme.  Through this, he meets a famous singer, who has many problems of her own.  A series of misunderstandings takes place before things are resolved and Armpit can continue his small steps.  This book was "meh."  It was a quick read, but not nearly as exciting as its predecessor.

Next up was Amy Kathleen Ryan's Vibes.  I actually saw the author speak at the Colorado Association for Libraries conference.  She was very engaging and talked about how this, her second book, was marketed better than her first novel for teens.  Vibes is about a girl who is convinced that she can read minds.  She is weird and not popular and is comfortable with this situation until she is assigned to a year long project with an older popular boy, who just happens to be her estranged best friend's older brother.  She is also dealing with her (also) estranged father's return from Africa, and the discovery that he has found another woman.  The main character is very endearing and this novel is a great example of how books inspire empathy.  This was an excellent light read.

Up next was the book that inspired the movie (which I have yet to see) Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.  This book is awesome.  I wouldn't recommend it though if you happen to be offended by strong language, because there is plenty of it.  While I refuse to believe that all teens stay out all night partying with bands (it makes me again realize just how boring I was as a teen) I thought it was a very true representation of the current teen culture.  Most of the songs are not real, so don't go searching your favorite music site for them because the bands don't exist.  Overall, if you're looking for a quick, action-packed book, without blood, guts, and gore, than this is the book for you.  I loved it.

I then decided to dive into some nostalgia and read the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.  I read a few of these books back in middle school and thought it would be fun to read the series again, because now I can read more (she still publishes these.)  The Agony of Alice details the life of Alice during her 6th grade year.  Alice moves to a different town in Maryland, which of course means that she goes to a different school.  When she finds out that she is assigned to the frumpy teacher instead of the beautiful teacher, she becomes a brat and rebells in various fashions.  By the end of the year though, she has learned from her mistakes and comes to admire the frumpy teacher.  She also acquires new friends and even obtains a boyfriend by the end of the year.  This book is cute.  I distinctly remember being read this book in sixth grade, especially the part where Alice first menstruates.  It was an awkward moment listening to my teacher skirt around that!

My absolute (and unexpected) favorite read of the month was Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child.  I read her A Swift Pure Cry earlier in the year and was extremely saddened to find out that she passed away in 2007 from breast cancer.  I had nightmares the first night I started this book, and felt deeply affected by it the entire time I read it.  The novel takes place in Northern Ireland (near the southern border) during the early 1980s.  While illegally digging for peat with his uncle, Fergus discovers a body in the bog.  After the body is excavated, Fergus and a team discover that the bog woman is from the bronze age and her body had been in the bog well preserved for a very long time.  As Fergus struggles with his A levels and a brother on hunger strike in jail (think Northern Ireland in the early 80s) we learn the story of the ancient girl through Fergus's dreams.  While this book has some very sad parts, I thought it was beautifully written and I'm sad that Dowd is no longer with us.

Last, but not least, was another Alice book (expect a lot of these in the future.)  It's the summer between sixth and seventh grade and Alice is struggling with the demands of having a boyfriend and all that comes with it.  She also continues her friendship with two girls she met in sixth grade, Elizabeth and Pamela.  Alice notes her jealousy of her friends' looks and often remarks on her own lack of grace.  She often wonders why her boyfriend Patrick is even interested in her.  She experiences many firsts during the summer and enters junior high semi-confident from these firsts, yet somewhat uncertain of the future.  Again, a cute book

Well, that is it for November.  December will not bring as many reviews, but it's all about quality, not quantity, right?

Book Review: A Christmas Carol

Author: Charles Dickens

Date Originally Published: 1843

Read in: November 2008

I have loved this story since I was a kid.  My first encounter was Mickey's Christmas Carol that we recorded from TV and I am kind of embarrassed to admit that I still imagine the D!sney characters in place of Victorian figures.  My elementary school performed the play and I remember singing songs with the school's chorus and danced in the "hoedown" scene for our production.  Fortunately, one person reading this blog will remember this production as well.

Sadly, this is my first encounter with the actual story, but I loved it just the same.  Thankfully, my previous encounters stayed true to the actual work.  The story details a grumpy old miser who is extremely adverse to charity and merriment in general.  On Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of a dead business partner, as well as ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future who help him reverse his miserly ways. I won't say anything more because most people know the story and if they don't, I sure don't want to ruin it for them!

I loved this book.  It was a quick and easy read, and I plan on reading it during the holidays for years to come!

More For Your Viewing Pleasure

This is a much better picture of a cookie tray (this was made for hubby's work.)