Going, going, gone!

Gone for a week at the beach!!  *See* you all when I get back!  Have a fantastic week!

Friday Fill-in

1. Oh, I can’t wait until I have a full night’s sleep!
2. Organic milk and apple juice is the first thing I see when I open my refrigerator.
3. I never leave home without my pocketbook!  My life is in there!
4. If I were a condiment, I would be catsup because that way I could be sure Ellie would eat!
5. People asking me what I’m doing, when it is REALLY obvious is really high up on my list of pet peeves.
6. The last thing I thought of before I went to bed was I hope Wesley doesn’t wake up soon!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to reading some Harry Potter tomorrow my plans include taking a friend’s bridal portrait (and I’m SO nervious!) and Sunday, I want to relax, but it looks like I’m going to a birthday party!

10-Months-OLD

Can you believe it? My, how time has flown by. Already, I can see the baby fading away, slowly being replaced by the little boy he will all-too-soon be. It went so much faster than Ellie’s babyhood.

He is such a delight too. He is insanely curious. He laughs with absolute glee at the most seemingly mundane things; reminding me constantly to find delight with the simple things.

Everything goes in his mouth. We have salvaged seashells, crayons, holly leaves, and all kinds of other no-nos out of the recesses of his mouth. He manages to hide the biggest things in there too.

And best of all, he absolutely adores his big sister. And the feeling is mutual.

Another List; Because I Love Them!

Found at Sarah Miller’s and Booknut 

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (Can I double underline 21 and 22???)
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (Ugh, I read half of it.  I’ll never read the other half! Drool! Boring!)
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt (Double underline this one too!)
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom  (Why?!?!?!?!?!)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Fourth

Hope everyone had a great Fourth! We did. I took the kids to a parade early that morning. It was little more than a neighborhood parade; children in their tiny, motorized cars, people parading their dogs (and 1 llama!), a couple fire trucks, and such. But it was fun and there was lots of great food.

Later we went swimming and had a cookout. Then we went to see the fireworks. I attempted to take pictures. Here are a couple of my favorites. I took over 100, but only had about 8 that were decent.  I think those 8 were rather good though.  There are more in my Flickr account if you want to take a looksee.  I’ve also added Zoo pics.

In other news; I’m on book 3 of the Harry Potter series. I’m attempting to read them straight through for the first time. So far it’s been an interesting experience. It’s been a few years since I read the early ones and I’m surprised at the difference in the writing. She improved greatly as the books go on. I was also surprised at the hints left through out (SPOILER ALERT), even so far as having Harry say something to the effect of “Voldemort put part of himself inside of me?” (END SPOILER ALERT)

I’m also left wondering just how much longer would the first 3 books have been, if she had been given the free rein she obviously was with the last 4. They are so much shorter!! I wonder if they were edited for the audience, since before HP 4, publishers seemed to think kids wouldn’t read a book that long. Too bad she can’t do a Special Writer’s Edition, like they do with movies.

Mwah!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist!

Updates on the home-front

Seems like I haven’t done a baby update lately.  Here are a couple of pictures my SIL took of Wesley this weekend. 

Click to make them bigger…I think it’s worth it

Gosh, it’s so hard to believe he’ll be 10-months-old soon.  Where does the time go?  He’s learning new things so quickly now.  He’s crawling, cruising around (i.e. walking) holding on to couches, chairs and tables, he talks, he waves.  Just as it was with Ellie, he does something new and fascinating every day.  I wish you could hear him say “Hey derrrrrr!”  It’s so cute!!!  Maybe I’ll video it sometime…

In book news, the latest in the Fables series entered my house yesterday.  It’s huge!!!  I can’t to jump in!

Friday Fill-Ins

1. Birthdays are when I hope to get new books, but so rarely do.
2. Fall is my favorite season because it means the summer’s heat and humidity finally go away, football starts, and the trees turn to lovely reds, oranges, and yellows.
3. I feel my best when it’s Saturday and I don’t have to go to work!
4. Rice is my favorite food!
5. First impressions are often unfair and incorrect.
6. The best piece of advice I ever received was keep your mouth shut!  I have a tendency to speak before I think.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to reading, tomorrow my plans include going to the Farmer’s Market and taking Ellie to see Wall*E and Sunday, I want to read, read, read!

In other news, I finally finished one of my long term reads; Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber, the second in her Outlander series.  Wow, I feel like I just finished a huge book marathon.  And of course, I promply jumped into number 3; Voyager.  There is just something about these books…and they are great read in little spells over a long period of time.  At least they are for me.  I’m hoping to make it all the way through the series this year.  Of course, it took me the last 6 months to read the first 2!

Zooishness

So, Friday, we loaded up some sandwich stuffs, some drinks and chips, all the kiddos (mine and my niece and nephews) and headed up to the NC Zoo. It was a pretty good day to go; not too many people, not WAY TOO hot (just moderately), and just a little humid. The wee ones had a blast and I think the adults did too. Here are a few snaps from our big day.

A pretty Painted Lady, so my SIL told me.

Is he relaxed, or what?

Eek! Yucky corn snake!

He kept baring his teeth at the people, but would quit when I’d try to take a picture. Drat!

Ellie’s favorite thing, of course.

Pretty kitty! Ellie was disappointed they didn’t have one with a full mane. I think this one was too young.

Sovay by Celia Rees

Book Description

It’s England, 1783. When the rich and beautiful Sovay isn’t sitting for portraits, she’s donning a man’s cloak and robbing travelers—in broad daylight. But in a time when political allegiances between France and England are strained, a rogue bandit is not the only thing travelers fear. Spies abound, and rumors of sedition can quickly lead to disappearances. So when Sovay lifts the wallet of one of England’s most powerful and dangerous men, it’s not just her own identity she must hide, but that of her father. A dazzling historical saga in which the roles of thieves and gentry, good and bad, and men and women are interchanged to riveting effect.

I’m sure it’s pretty well known around here how much I enjoy Young Adult fiction.  It isn’t SO TERRIBLY long ago that I was a young adult myself.  (I would hope that technically I am young!)  And, even though it hasn’t been that long (really, it hasn’t! I swear!) I can see a some big changes in the genre.  One of the most noticeable to me, is the evolution of strong, independent, intelligent female characters.  Of course, I may have been reading the wrong books, but anyway.  Sovay is no exception.

Sovay is based on an old folksong of the same name:

Sovay, Sovay all on a day
She dressed herself in man’s array
With a sword and a pistol all by her side
To meet her true love to meet her true love away did ride.

And as she was a-riding over the plain
She met her true love and bid him stand
Your gold and silver kind sir she said
Or else this moment or else this moment your life I’ll have.

And when she’d robbed him of his store
She says kind sir there is one thing more
A golden ring which I know you have
Deliver it deliver it your sweet life to save.

Oh that golden ring a token is
My life I’ll lose the ring I’ll save.
Being tender-hearted just like a dove
She rode away she rode away from her true love.

Oh next morning in the garden green
Just like true lovers they were seen
Oh he spied his watch hanging by her clothes
And it made him blush made him blush like any rose.

Oh what makes you blush at so silly a thing
I thought to have had your golden ring
It was I that robbed you all on the plain
So here’s your watch here’s your watch and your gold again.

I did intend and it was to know
If that you were me true love or no
For if you’d have give me that ring she said
I’d have pulled the trigger I’d have pulled the trigger and shot you dead.

As you can imagine from that colorful song, that the book would be just as colorful. And, for the most part, it is.  I greatly enjoyed this romp through 1794 England and France.  Rees takes the reader skillfully through the height of the French Revolution and brings new clarity, for me anyway, about just how terrifying those days were for the guilty as well as the innocent.  The threat of prison, the horror of prison, the eventual trip to the guillotine was all made more real to me than I can remember before.  There is lots of adventure, a little romance, and the love of family and country.  The ending wrapped up just a little too neatly for me; there were a few loose strings, but I’ll forgive Rees that.  This was a highly enjoyable character and read.  If you have read Rees before (I’ve read Witch Child and enjoyed it as well) you will enjoy this one as well.  Definitely recommend.

*EDIT* One thing I forgot to mention.  This book is marketed for 12-years-old and up.   I’m not exactly sure I agree with that.  There are prostitutes, but more specifically, there are young BOY prostitutes.  There is no explicit sex scenes or anything, but it is made clear that they are boys and that they are there for men.  I know I wouldn’t know how to begin explaining that to my daughter, nor do I think I would want to at so young an age.  I would think it would be better for a child of at least 14.  But that’s just me.

Sovay has already been released in the UK, but will not be released to the US until August 19.   You can read more about Sovay and Celia Rees at her website.

If you have reviewed this book let me know in the comments and I will link to you.

Other Reviews:

Kiss the Book | Bookwitch | Freya Sykes |