Books read in March 2013

Whew!  A lot of books fiction and non-, and all reading levels this month, thanks to Spring Break.  If you want to check out just my favorites look for Beyond Magenta (nonfiction about transgender youth) Handbook for Dragon Slayers (middle reader that's full of fun) Rules for Becoming a Legend (novel about a small-town high school basketball sensation and his troubles) and the Warmth of Other Suns (fascinating nonfiction about the great migration of African Americans out of the South to points north and west.)

Young Adult
Insurgent
Veronica Roth
Ah the second book, where the trilogy either comes together or falls completely apart.  It was the latter in this case.  "Really?" I found myself asking multiple times.  I could give you specific examples that would contain spoilers, but I just don't care that much.

The Port Chicago 50
Steve Sheinkin
Read for Librarian Book Group
Compelling tale of 50 African American Navy men during World War II.  Examines segregation, racism and workplace safety factors.  Well written.  And frustrating.

Charm and Strange
Stephanie Kuehn
Read for Librarian Book Group
I was lukewarm about this winner, especially because it beat out Sex & Violence which was one of my favorite books this/last year.  I found the writing to be claustrophobic, which made me want to keep reading, but I found the back-and-forth between present and past to be confusing and characters weren't fully developed.  Also, plot points wandered off in places.

Beyond Magenta
Susan Kuklin
Read for Librarian Book Group
Highly recommended!  Interviews with transgender teenagers of all stripes.  Great for educating yourself about how these teenagers navigate adolescence and early adult life, as well as introducing transgender issues.

Middle Reader
Searching for Sarah Rector
Tonya Bolden
Read for Librarian Book Group
This book was confusing, mostly because it tried to tell Sarah Rector's story, which was interesting. I think the framing device was not right as (this is not really a spoiler) it seems Sarah Rector was never actually missing.  I found it good for details about striking it rich off of oil in Oklahoma, the former slaves of Indians and also the many swindlers who wanted to take the money, but the whole book never gelled.

The Handbook for Dragon Slayers
Merrie Haskell
Read for Librarian Book Group
Great middle reader of a girl (who happens to be a princess) finding her way in the world despite her limitations.  Good setting of somewhat medieval Europe (but with dragons.)  I've already recommended to a smart fifth grader who keeps reading YA books I think she would appreciate more in three or four years.  It would also make a nice companion to Amy Timberlake's One Came Home

Zane and the Hurricane
Rodman Philbrick
Read for Librarian Book Group
Boy from New Hampshire visits his grandmother and gets to battle through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  I found this to be gripping and full of rich, vivid detail.  It's also short, which makes it good for kids who aren't into the whole book thing.

Grownup
King Lear
Wm. Shakespeare
Ah Shakespeare, how your words don't move me and instead drive me to a live performance. I wasn't a fan of Lear, big old meanie, so you can guess how much I liked this.

It occurs to me if someone strung together all my Shakespeare Reviews they would be a prime target for making fun of.  Fear not! I actually enjoy the performances!

Rules for Becoming a Legend
Timothy S. Lane
Our boy Timothy S. Lane has written a firecracker of a book about basketball and small town living and how the two intersect. So maybe you aren't a fan of basketball?  This book is still for you.  You've got three generations of well-written characters to spend time with. You've got layers of small-town gossip, rumor and action.  You've got a compelling story, not just of basketball, but also relationships and heartbreak and legend.  You've also got a great sense of place in "Columbia City" the town standing in for Astoria, Oregon.  Just as Friday Night Lights isn't just about high school football, and Rudy isn't just about Notre Dame football and Hoop Dreams isn't about inner city basketball and The Art of Fielding isn't just about college baseball, this is about a lot of things besides basketball.  And even if it was just about basketball, it's so well written, you wouldn't be too sad if it was.

Hyperbole and a Half
Allie Brosh
The kind of funny that shouldn't be read on the train because it's hard to contain your laughter.  I love the internet, because without it, I very much doubt this would have been published in a book.

The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson
Read for Kenton Library Book Group
Much like the book the Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, I groaned at seeing how very large this book was.  And much like the Mitfords, I loved every minute of it.  Wilkerson tracks the great diaspora of African Americans living in the South to all points north.  Demographically, this happened between 1910 and the 1970s.  Wilkerson interviewed over 1200 people who migrated  and her book combines the personal narratives of three people while she sets the stage with historical data and bits and pieces of other people's stories.  It's compelling, engrossing, frustrating and heartbreaking. It patiently makes the point, over and over again how we are not a country that gives every citizen a chance to succeed. And it made me wonder how much more successful we would be if we did give everyone the same chance. This book was life changing and I highly recommended it.

Picture Books
Thomas Jefferson: Life Liberty & the Pursuit of Everything
Maira Kalman
Read for Librarian Book Group
She makes pretty pictures.  And she talks about Sally Hemmings in an age appropriate way.

Little Poems for Tiny Ears
Lin Oliver & Tommie dePaola
Read for Librarian Book Group
I loathed these poems.  And the illustrations weren't my type either.  Way too cutesy.

Baby Bear
Kadir Nelson
Read for Librarian Book Group
Pretty illustrations.  Text was not fabulous.

Hi, Koo
Jon J. Muth (sp)
Read for Librarian Book Group
Eh.  It bugged me his Haiku were not 5-7-5.  I liked the illustrations.  Cute little "find the alphabet game" incorporated in text.

Dream Dog
Lou Berger & David Catrow
Read for Librarian Book Group
The illustrations were very Seussian (though I found the father to be leaning toward a slightly offensive stereotype) and I liked the dream dog.  I was not at all happy with the ending.

Postcard from Texas

But the postcard itself is from California, where Marie visited for her 35th birthday.

Three sentence movie reviews: We Bought a Zoo

Cameron Crowe has made more than a few films in my personal pantheon (including my tied-for-favorite-film-ever-made Almost Famous*).  So I guess he gets to slack and make a pleasant film with no surprises and a nice plot.  I was entertained, but not in love.

Cost:  Free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2011/we_bought_a_zoo.html

*Tied with Singing in the Rain

Three sentence movie reviews: The Grand Budapest Hotel

This had everything I like in a Wes Anderson movie, but I can't say I liked it.  Maybe I was tired, but the plot didn't grab me and I kept closing my eyes for brief periods.   The acting was good, the sets were good, the costumes were there, the sense of whimsy was present, but it just didn't work for me.

Cost:  Free thanks to Oscar Party winning prize.
Where watched:  Regal Lloyd Center 10, with S. North.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2014/grand_budapest_hotel_ver2.html

Parking lot disorientation.

The movie theater is on the right side of this picture, in line with that tall building in the middle.  The last time I was here, there was just a huge parking lot and the orientation was different. Now?  We have a diagonal path for the pedestrians (yay!) and lots of bioswales for the rain to escape too.  It was disorienting, but fun!

Three sentence movie reviews: 10 Years

I'm giving another shout-out to this quiet little film, which I liked just as much the second time around as I did the first.  It's not life-changing, but it's fun to watch and I've had worse times at the movies.  Plus, it's packed full of people you will recognize, (but from where?) including Oscar Issac, who everyone loved in Inside Lleweyn Davis.

Cost:  I think I paid $7.00 to buy it?
Where watched:  at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/index.html

Note that this is a hideous poster.  Don't judge by the poster.

Essay: What I need to be creative.

It’s spring break and I have finally started sewing the two dresses I originally planned to have finished for the first day of school.  The first day of school plan didn’t happen, and I assumed that after the big exhaustion that is September, I would have them finished by the end of October, at the latest.  As you can see, that didn’t come to pass. In the months since I completed my last sewing project—the uniform aprons—I’ve had no energy to put in the direction of sewing.  My creative spark has been drained.  That got me thinking about what I need to be creative.

There are a few areas in my life that I see as my creative realms:  sewing, writing and gardening.  I think that this last fall/winter/spring, writing has really sucked up all of my creative allotment, leaving no room for sewing or gardening.  I’d like to achieve more of a balance among the three, but not at the expense of the amount of writing I’ve been doing.  It sounds like a tall order.  But here’s what I need to be creative at all.

A regular routine.  I first learned the power of a routine from Flylady (www.flylady.net) and her lessons have been reinforced by HabitRPG.  (habitrpg.com).*  Both of those philosophies encourage me to do things regularly, before they become overwhelming.  When I was writing the first draft of the novel I’m working on, I felt like writing 500 words per day was a pace I could keep up and so my routine was that every day I had to write at least 500 words.  If I wrote more, that was fine, but if I missed a day, there was no writing 1000 words the next day to make up for it.  Each day gave me one chance to do my daily writing, so I had to make the most of it.  Most days I enjoyed the writing, so I didn’t need to have a hard and fast time to write, but I did try to do it “first,” either first thing in the morning—writing usurped exercise when I realized that I wasn’t motivated to go out in the cold and exercise—or first thing when I sat down at my computer for the evening.

The details of my life need to be under control.  This was also learned from Flylady and is supported by HabitRPG.  The dishes must be dealt with, the house must meet a minimal clean state, my finances have to be in order and I have to have adequate food and regular exercise.  If those things have spiraled out of control that energy tends to take over and kill any creative energy.  When things have gone undone for too long, I procrastinate more, avoiding both the undone task and the fun creative thing I would rather be doing.  I can get very stuck this way, and HabitRPG’s daily tasks really do a good job keeping me from falling into that black hole.

I can’t be obsessed with anything.  A short list of things I’ve been obsessed with in the past year:  The TV show Veronica Mars, Just One Day/Just One Year by Gayle Forman.  Every book by Gayle Forman.  The TV show Friday Night Lights.  Channing Tatum.  This is an area I don’t really feel like I have much control over, which disturbs me.  We don’t have cable, because it’s expensive and I would rather not be swept up in TV.  But I do get entire seasons of TV series from the library and am not very good at putting the brakes on them when I’m enjoying the narrative.  The same goes for books.  Sometimes I’m successful in setting limits, but not as often as I would like.  When I put a lot of energy into whatever I’m obsessed with, not only do I reduce the time I can be creative, I also tend to skip those all-important details which leads me down a very bad path.  I’ve got the first season of the New Girl arriving soon, and I hope I can keep things under control.

Easy accessibility.  I don’t like to spend a lot of time getting ready to be creative, I just want to jump in and do it.  With writing, it’s pretty easy, because I just turn on the computer and go.  With gardening, it can be more difficult because the three minutes it would take me to get out the tools for the day can be enough of a block that I can’t make myself start.  Sewing is even more formidable because six different things must be retrieved before beginning, then put away when I’m done.  For gardening, I’ve taken to leaving out the three most essential things I need.  With sewing, I try to make a ritual of the setup and break down.  Last spring I fell into a pattern of getting materials out on Friday after school and putting them back Sunday afternoon and that was helpful.  It wasn’t something I could do after summer, so I guess I need to refigure how I approach that.

Time.  If it’s something I’ve not done before I need a lot of time.  And it’s not even time to do the thing, what I need is vast amounts of time to roll the thing around in my head before I even begin.  I see this a lot with sewing.  If I have a complicated pattern, I need to give myself the space to read the directions and then walk away for a few hours or even a day or two.  This can be a problem when weekends are packed full of activities that aren’t sewing.  Thus, I tend to start big creative projects (sewing, home repairs, gardening) on my vacations.  When I need to do something and don’t have a ton of time, I try to focus on the smallest part of the next step and not think too far ahead.

So that’s what I need to be creative.  Knowing all this doesn’t mean I’m super successful in all my creative endeavors, but knowing these things about myself does keep me more productive, rather than flailing.  And you?

*I wrote an essay about the basics of HabitRPG which you can read here.  The site is even better now than when I wrote the essay.  Or you can read about it by just going to the site.