|
|  |
|
This post is from from my other blog here This photo at Studeo is one of the most endearing sights I’ve ever seen. The smile, the cape, the mane. Awesome.
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Don’t you wish reading and sleeping could be two completely interchangeable activities as far as our bodies’ well-being is concerned? If, instead of sleeping for six or seven hours, you could sleep for three hours and read for four, and be just as refreshed and healthy as if you’d slept all night?
That’d be cool.
Scott brought me home another winner from the library on Saturday, increasing my so-many-books-so-little-time torment. I’m still reading Gilead, ever so slowly, savoring the syllables, the quiet depths. But now I’m also reading—gulping—Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis. This fascinating ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here (As with my garden notes, I like to jot down these lists from time to time so I’ll remember what everyone was up to at this season or that.)
Jane, age 13 3/4—
• reading Agatha Christie until her eyes fall out
• crocheting (matching skirts for Rilla and herself—Rilla’s is finished; ain’t it sweet?)
• listening to Abba
• coloring in her Tesselights stained glass coloring book
• playing catch with her daddy
• reading Dragonsinger, lots of Josephine Tey, Homeless Bird
• exchanging smiles with “Somebaby,” as she calls him
• singing with Rilla
• picking lettuce for salad
• taking a watercolors class
• practicing for piano guild
• telling ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here This post is for me, just so I’ll know what was blooming when. Also I think my mother will like to hear how fruitful her labors were this winter and spring.
I’m laughing at the bare mulch behind the children in the pictures on my last two posts. That’s the only part of the yard where things aren’t awash in flowers, but it’s where we sit in the afternoons because that’s the only bit of grass with shade. And the mulch bed is bare for the same reason there’s shade: the neighbor’s pepper trees tower over the fence, blocking all afternoon ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Yvonne asked,
“What brand are your sketchbooks? They look wonderfully sturdy and kid-friendly. I have never thought to take watercolors outside, your pictures make it look so simple (much simpler than inside painting) I must try it.”
We’re using these 8×8″ recycled sketchbooks from Stubby Pencil Studio. We like the small, square shape and the sturdy cardboard covers (plain brown, easily decorated). I bought them to give the kids for Christmas and forgot about them. I remembered I’d also bought and forgotten these neato-bandito “Smencils“—#2 pencils with yummy scents like cinnamon, orange, and root beer—and when I dug the box out from ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here A passage for the commonplace book:
I saw a bubble float past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening toward that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst. So I looked down at the yard and there you were, you and your mother, blowing bubbles at the cat, such a barrage of them that the poor beast was beside herself at the glut of opportunity. She was actually leaping in the air, our insouciant Soapy! Some of the bubbles drifted up through the branches, even above the trees. You two were too intent on the cat to see the celestial ...
Click here to read the entire blog post
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here From Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, that is. It turned out to be a biography of Mötley Crüe. And so, there in the title of his collection of a year’s worth of literary columns, Nick Hornby has given a nod to what seems to be the high and low points of his year’s reading. Marilynne Robinson’s The Housekeeping vs. Mötley Crüe: The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band.
I just took a look at my 2008 book log to see what my own high and low of last year would be, and it can’t be done! There wasn’t a ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here …I am glued to Turtlemama’s baby hamster posts. (Scroll down to the bottom and work your way up.) Her daughters’ dwarf hamsters surprised the family with six pink, hairless little babies. Turtlemama is posting daily updates and observations as they grow. Fascinating.
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Well, it hasn’t all been Nick Hornby this month. Last week I read two of the books from my March TBR stack and both of them were the kind of book you fall into headfirst and feel dazed when, hours later, you come up for air. That’s about the only thing they have in common. The first was Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. I bought a copy last year when Jane was reading a lot of books from the Ambleside Year 7 list. We don’t “do” Ambleside but we mine those booklists for all we’re worth. (Thanks again, women-behind-Ambleside, ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here “I have always prized the accessible over the obscure, but after reading Housekeeping [by Marilynne Robinson] I can see that in some ways the easy, accessible novel is working at a disadvantage (not that Housekeeping is inaccessible, but it is deep and dark and rich): it’s possible to whiz through it without allowing it even to touch the sides, and a bit of side-touching has to happen if a book is going to be properly transformative. If you are so gripped by a book that you want to read it in the mythical single sitting, what chance has it got ...
Click here to read the entire blog post
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here (This post is a follow-up to this one.)
Ah, now we’re coming to it. I’ve reached the essay in which Nick Hornby includes a novel called Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson in his list of books he purchased that month. This is bound to be the Housekeeping that takes on The Dirt in the title of his essay collection. But I don’t know anything more about it yet because he didn’t actually read the book that month. We’ll have to live in suspense a while longer.
The “Books I Bought This Month” lists are one of the things I love about these essays. ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here So I’m halfway through Housekeeping vs. the Dirt , my new collection of Nick Hornby’s essays on books and reading. I haven’t yet come to the bit I assume will be there, a passage or series of passages illuminating the title—you know, the name that made everyone think my husband was taking his life into his hands by leaving the book on my pillow as a sort of gentle hint. (NB: Scott would be the last man on earth to do such a thing. He was a stay-at-home dad for eight years: he knows what it takes to run this place.)
In ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here I’m bumping up this question from the comments because I thought some of you might be able to answer more authoritatively (pun intended) than I.
Dani Joy asks,
“I recomend your books to parents with young girls but do you think my boys might like to read the books? I haven´t thought they would but I haven’t read them yet either.”
The feedback I’ve gotten from parents, teachers, and, yes, boys!, over the years has been gratifyingly enthusiastic. I’ve been told there’s enough grit and adventure in the books that they appeal to young male readers as well as girls. Martha and Charlotte ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Scott just sent me the link to this LA Times article about the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney.
In a recent interview, Heaney said he was often asked what the value of poetry was during times of economic recession. The answer, he explained, is that it is at just such moments of crisis that people realize that they do not live by economics alone. “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness,” Heaney said.
At first, that may seem like a quaint observation — one of those poet-as-holy-fool lines. Yet an effort to “fortify your ...
Click here to read the entire blog post
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Let me count the books.
After Scott left for the day, I found this on my pillow.
’Cause I’d said I was dying to read it.*
Yup, he’s a keeper, all right.
*Updating this with a Q-and-A from the comments, lest all my readers think Scott has lost his mind!
Q: “Was it a hint that the house was messy, was it exactly what you wanted, or was it a way of saying it´s ok honey, I love the house just the way it is?”
A: The answer is B—it was just what I wanted.  The book actually isn’t about housekeeping at all; it’s a ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here With all the Susan Boyle links everywhere, it’s not surprising I’ve got the Les Mis soundtrack playing in my head. Turns out it can be really distressing to one’s husband and children when one absentmindedly belts out “I Dreamed a Dream” while washing the breakfast dishes. And not just because I’m no Susan Boyle or Patti LuPone.
“I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living…”
Whoops! Sorry, guys. It’s just lyrics. I don’t really think we all live in a yellow submarine, either.
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here 
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here We were in Barcelona. I can’t believe it’s been a year.
My Barcelona journal. Hooray for blogging because I’d never have written all that down otherwise.
“It was a glorious experience. I had no idea what a jewel Barcelona is. While Scott worked (poor thing), I soaked myself in museums, architecture, Gaudi. Everywhere I turned there was art. Our evenings were spent in the company of some of the world’s best comic book artists and writers, and I thoroughly enjoyed the long and lively discussions that lasted until the wee hours of the night. We slept little and laughed much. I fell ...
Click here to read the entire blog post
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Huck thanks you very much!
(Those shoes, I could die!)
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here I took a little blog break for Easter. Meant to leave you with a pretty picture on top, but forgot and what you got was Hugh Laurie. Ah, well. It’s a nice face.
I can’t believe we’re halfway through April already. Slow down, life. Not that we’ve been excessively busy. Pretty mellow here of late, really. Last week all our usual activities were canceled for spring break. We hung out at home, played lots of Legend of Zelda, made pizza (thanks again for the help—I think we’ll make another one for dinner tonight), worked and played outside in the yard. The ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here  Did anybody see it coming?
(Warning: We’ll be spoiler-ing in the comments.)
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here …faster than it shrinks.
One step forward, two steps back, so the saying goes. Only in this case it’s: one book behind me, half a dozen ahead. I finished Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict today, about which more later, maybe (I didn’t love it), which was one of the fourteen books from the TBR stack I shared in March. But after a stroll through blogland today, I find I have added (gulp) six more titles to my library hold list.
Tomorrow I’ll come back and add links to where I read about these. For now, in the last minute before LOST, ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here …she thinks baby talk sounds like “google ga-ga.”
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here While I was working on my book review master list, I came across this post about a book that, four years later, remains a family favorite. I read it to our Shakespeare Club, too, last year when I was launching the group, and that bunch of nine- to twelve-year-olds (at the time) guffawed all the way through it.
One Day in Elizabethan England by G. B. Kirtland, illustrated by Jerome Snyder.
Zounds! It’s a pity this book, originally published in 1962, went out of print. I’m writing about it anyway because many libraries carry it, and a quick Google search turned up ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Rilla is standing on a stool, flicking the light on and off, using, so she tells me, “the light flitch.”
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Jane just entertained Rilla for fifteen minutes by writing letters and names with her finger…IN THE DUST ON OUR TELEVISION SCREEN.
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Someone got to my blog the other day after googling “Melissa Wiley tortilla soup.” Do you think she added my secret ingredient?
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here I need to use up some mozzarella and was thinking about making a pizza tonight. A Google search for “pizza dough” turns up almost 900,000 hits. I want something tried and true—and EASY—so I thought I’d ask you lovely Bonny Glen readers. You’ve never steered me wrong before! Got a favorite recipe?
Thanks!
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here I’ve begun to compile links to my book reviews on one page for easy access. With four years’ worth of recommendations in the archives, this will be a long term project. So far I’ve got about four months’ worth of review on the page. Got a long way to go, but if you’d like a sneak peek, here it is.
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Halfway through lunch, Beanie lets her book fall to the table. She sighs contentedly.
“I LOVE Einstein,” she announces.
She’s reading our small collection of Childhood of Famous Americans biographies, one by one. So far: Amelia Earhart, Sacagawea, Albert Einstein.
“Do you know why I like these books so much, Mommy?” she asks. “Because when I finish one, I feel like I know the person in real life. I feel like Albert Einstein and I are real friends.”
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here Spent much of this afternoon rocking a sleeping baby and finishing The Mysterious Benedict Society. Loved loved loved it. But then you knew that already.
We’ve already got the sequel on reserve at the library.
Funny aside: Scott was tickled that the book’s cool cover art was done by Carson Ellis, the same person who did the jacket art for his Decemberists CD. Connections!
|
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here  I’m halfway through The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, and already I know this is a keeper. Figuratively speaking, I mean, because the copy I’m reading doesn’t belong to us. It’s the kind of book you want to own a copy of, the kind the kids are going to fight over when they grow up and start claiming favorites from these overcrowded shelves. So good, this book. I can recommend it wholeheartedly even before I read the second half.
It’s a mystery, full of puzzles, loaded with quirky characters in tight spots. Reynie Muldoon, our young hero, is an ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here What a great week.
My parents drove out from Colorado with my sweet almost-13-year-old niece. (Thanks, sis, for letting us borrow her.) We didn’t do anything big, just hung around the house mostly, spending time together. It was lovely. My mom and dad took the four big kids shopping for Easter clothes (woohoo!), took all the kids to the park, took the big girls swimming at the hotel pool—that kind of thing, mellow and close to home. As for me, I got to putter around the house with the baby during those outings, which is exactly what I wanted to be ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here  I haven’t made much of a dent in that stack of books.
14 books in the stack.
I’ve read three books since posting that picture—only one of them (The Sherwood Ring) was in the pile. And another of the three (The Plain Princess) was very short, a fairy tale really. (Sweet and pleasant, very similar to my favorite George MacDonald story, whose name I am suddenly blanking on. The one about the Wise Woman who takes in the spoiled princess and the arrogant shepherdess girl.) The third, The Polysyllabic Spree, was a library request that came in and catapulted immediately to the ...
Click here to read the entire blog post |
| |
|
This post is from from my other blog here No foolin’—Gregory K. starts his month-long poetry fiesta with a bang: a brand-new, ne’er-before-seen poem by this country’s first Children’s Poet Laureate, the great Jack Prelutsky. You just gotta book on over and see!
|
Archives
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
|
Member » 
18:10
2 Visits
and 
by Stephanie Spinner.
by David Gilmour.
by Vivian Vande Velde. 
by Mike Costa and Fiona Staples.
by Neil Gaiman. 
by Cynthia Lord. 
by Phyllis McGinley.
by Elizabeth Marie Pope.
by Nick Hornby.
