What Arrived and
What I Read Last Week
In a word...Cybils.
Cybils, Cybils, Cybils.
The post office delivered Cybils in the morning.
FedEx and UPS delivered Cybils in the afternoon.
And what did I do?
Read Cybils.
Thought about Cybils.
Cybils, Cybils, Cybils.
I'm at 76 books read,
with 17 left to go.
|
What I Am Reading Now 
On this last day of my Thanksgiving break,
I'm Thankfully Reading.
It's not too late to join in!
|
What I Read Last Week
Last week was one of those fabulous reading weeks where you feel like a Higher Power is mysteriously and mischieviously guiding one's book choices.
First, this book arrived in the mail from the publisher for review:
It's Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer by Antonia Murphy. Murphy and her husband move to New Zealand and gradually and oddly become farmers. I don't know if New Zealand animals are strangely more...well, let's call it "zestful" than American animals, but the goats, sheep, cows, llamas, and chickens that Murphy takes into her farm family are the most shockingly nasty animals I've ever seen. Some spit, in crude and barbarous ways, often right into the faces of their owners. All of them excrete, of course, and it always seems to occur in plain sight of their human farmer friends, occasionally on the carpets and couches of said friends, and in ways that are quite vile. And all of them reproduce, most of them in horrifying ways that, were they humans, would get them long prison sentences. It's all quite terrifying and shocking to this citified reader.
What do I read next? How is this for weird? I learn that my online reading group, 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, has Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder next on its slate. I obtain a copy from my library.
Farmer Boy. You probably know of it. Farmer Boy is the true story of the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder (she of Little House on the Prairie fame). Almonzo Wilder grows up on a farm in upstate New York in the 1800's.
It's quite another world from the alarming animal world of Dirty Chick. Almonzo's family raises the same animals as the family in Dirty Chick. (Maybe I should say that again, with emphasis this time: Almonzo's family raises the same animals.) But these are not the manic, passion-filled wild things from Dirty Chick; oh no, these animals are calm, gentle creatures who willingly submit to sharing milk from their bodies and giving up their lives to their beloved human owners. If the animals of Farmer Boy defecate or reproduce, they must do so quietly and placidly, perhaps behind a discrete fence or in a remote pasture somewhere.
This leaves me with many questions. Could it be that farm animals of the past were much more disciplined than our contemporary farm animals? Or are the farm animals of New Zealand somehow temperamentally more passionate than the staid farm animals of America? It's quite mysterious.
And, oddly, I loved loved loved both of these very different takes on farm life.
|
What Arrived Last Week
The Cybil books are starting to pour in....
     
One more week of school and then I'll have all week to read and review.
|
What I Finished Last Week  
It's a good week when you find yourself reading not one but two very good books.
In Flirting with French, author William Alexander makes a fervent attempt to finally master French. He tries all the recommended methods: Rosetta Stone...a tutor...classes...even immersion. He's quite discouraged by the results...initially. But, after further testing, he learns that though his French is not really letter-perfect, he has improved considerably and, even more importantly, his memory and other late-in-life-learning skills have improved. I loved going along with Alexander as he made his way through the world of French language acquisition.
Who knows reality better than author Laurie Colwin? In Family Happiness, Polly is a happy wife and mother, with a large extended happy family. But let's look again. Is Polly really so terribly happy? And, if she is, why is she have a secretive affair with a reclusive painter? And how does her extended family fit in to her troubles? A very real look at life and families and relationships and, yes, happiness.
|
Last Week
Books and book-ish things poured into my mailbox and e-mail last week. Such are the lovely parts of celebrating one's birthday with book-ish family and friends.
Here's what arrived:
     
...along with two wonderful gift cards and a very-cool praying mantis puppet! Thank you, all!
Also...
I joined in for the Literary Blog Hop and gave away a copy of Lila by Marilynne Robinson from Book Depository to
I posted about rereading and vowed to do so more often.
I lamented the demise of my high school.
I shared photos from The Texas Book Festival in which I stayed in a Tiny House and met many authors.
|
This Week
Last week I read all of these books:
  
along with twelve more Cybils nominees, bringing my totals for the Cybils at 37 out of 93.
This week, I am reading:
  |
