simply janet

Fire by Kristin Cashore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It’s a rare book that can keep me up past my bedtime, but this one did. Like Kristin Cashore’s Graceling before it, there’s something about the Seven Kingdoms stories that keeps me reading. Fire reads a bit more like a romance, however, which did dampen my enthusiasm a bit. And, like Graceling, there are several themes in the book that keep me from confidently recommending it as a Young Adult read. Bottom line is that for me, a good story (even a predictable one), still trumps minor annoyances like Kristin Cashore’s author’s odd choices for character names.

I’d recommend it to anybody who enjoys well-crafted mythical worlds.

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THE READING MOTHER

Strickland Gillilan

I HAD A MOTHER who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth,
“Blackbirds” stowed in the hold beneath

I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Celert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness blent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-
Stories that stir with an upward touch,
Oh, that each mother of boys were such.

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a Mother who read to me.

While it’s highly unlikely that my grandmother (pictured above with my cousins) would have been reading any medieval or European folklore, I still love this photo and seeing my grandmother with my cousins. She died about 5 years before I was born and my sisters and I grew up without our grandparents in our lives. My mother didn’t value reading as much as she valued having a well-run household, so there were always duties we might be avoiding if she found us reading. When she became a grandmother, however, she was a lot more likely to read to her grandchildren.

I’m making a list of books to read during the holiday break that begins next week; I’ll share them here as we get to them.

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This has been on my list for a while and I finally checked it out at the library to preview prior to possibly purchasing it in Kindle format. I love the logical arrangement: Doughs, Batters, Stocks and Sauces, Farcir, Fat-Based Sauces, and Custards.

A culinary ratio is a fixed proportion of one ingredient or ingredients relative to another. These proportions form the backbone of the craft of cooking.

Ruhlman makes it sound uncomplicated and logical and helps to demystify processes that might otherwise seem mysterious. After reading his book, I now know a few kitchen items that I need to buy: a kitchen scale, butcher’s twine (for trussing a chicken), and cheesecloth. Otherwise, armed with these clear ratios, I can make just about anything I’m craving:

Cookies – 1 part sugar : 2 parts fat : 3 parts flour

Naturally, he expands on the ratios and even changes them to create the desired result. It’s not a recipe book with a lot of photos or illustrations. Those are used sparingly, if at all. But each section does contain plenty of recipes and substitutions.

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Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Several months ago, when my son mentioned Orson Scott Card, I purchased a copy of Ender’s Game at a secondhand book store. He didn’t really dive in to the book right away and I’d forgotten about it until Amazon offered a Kindle version that cost under $6. (For what it’s worth, as of today, all the big 3 online e-book stores offer this for under $6).



I loved this book and as soon as I finished it, I interrupted my son’s homework to tell him that this should be the next book he reads — and I don’t recommend books lightly, especially to my kids. It’s not for everybody, but if you enjoy the Young Adult (YA) Science Fiction genre, this is a must-read. While reading it, keep in mind that it was originally published in 1985, at least 5 years before a very crude version of the internet was publicly accessible. The initial story was conceived by Card in 1977 and was surprisingly prescient given his futuristic vision of online role-playing games, for instance.



This book, along with the latest installment of the Hunger Games series, has provided a context for talking to kids about war and those who would seize and use power in order to control others, while some would choose empathy and forgiveness. It’s full of thought-provoking concepts and portrayed by innocents — children who are forced (by adults) into being tools of destruction.



As always, battle scenes and combat strategy — especially these in null gravity — are really hard for me to visualize, so I had a difficult time getting through some of the battle scenes because I just didn’t understand the strategic maneuvers. Ultimately though, there’s no quiz to see how well you understood the battles and it’s not critical to understanding the wider implications, so just enjoy Ender and his story.



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Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ll never look at sheep the same way again.

Three Bags Full was unexpectedly enjoyable — and while I typically don’t enjoy mysteries or anthropomorphic novels, this was a worthwhile departure for me. If you enjoyed the dimwitted sheep in Babe (the movie), in Three Bags Full, these sheep are intelligent and observant, and ultimately able to help solve the murder of their beloved shepherd. There were some comical moments during their encounters with humans that were so well-written that it didn’t end up being silly.

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Inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s Late Bloomers.

Books I’ve finished this week: Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli, Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead – all of them are 5-star books and highly recommended

Seven days . . . what a difference it makes:

I have had a wonderful holiday — how about you? There were a few days during all the pre-holiday madness that I thought I was getting sick, but I’m grateful I didn’t. It was just my body telling me to slow down and rest. So I did — and it helped.

I’ve been reading a lot — and re-reading some old favorites. If you have kids in your life, I can’t recommend this book enough. I first read it when Erica was two years old and it helped guide me in choosing read aloud picture books. Eighteen years later, those books are timeless and still richly entertaining and satisfying for the boys. I’ve not been reading aloud as much as I should, but that’s going to change in 2010. I also ordered The Book Whisperer, by Donalyn Miller and can’t wait to read it. I’ve gotten so much out of her blog and it’s helped me to source good books for my oldest son.

And just for me, the biggest treat was reading Amy Tan’s The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life. She writes a lot about her mom and the grandmother she never knew except through stories and portraits. Reading it was personal, poignant and real. Like Amy, I never knew my grandmother, but her presence is felt through what my mom shares about her own life and the choice she made to marry an American and leave Japan — and her mother. I’ve often wondered about my grandmother’s perspective and wished I could have known her. In her book, Amy acknowledges that there’s a level of “knowing” her grandmother that’s experienced in dreams and intuition and she channels that in her writing. There are stories that need to be told and perhaps the granddaughter is the one to finally tell them. I’m hopeful.

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There’s not a lot I hate. I hate racism and sexism. I hate abuse of power. And with a red hot passion, I hate the Accelerated Reader (by Renaissance Learning) when it’s being used incorrectly. I hate when its use in schools (Conroe ISD, I’m looking at you) is MANDATORY and a student’s grade is tied to their participation in the Accelerated Reader (A/R) Program. And I will continue to hate it until it’s a voluntary program that doesn’t carry unreasonable, exclusionary incentives. I’ll definitely continue to hate it unless and until it generates within my children a sincere and lifelong desire to read good books. And I can assure you that I’ll hate it whether my kids do well or poorly on A/R “quizzes.”

I believe it should be used as an assessment tool only, and/or an optional and fun tool for kids to gauge their comprehension of their favorite books — books they would have been reading anyway regardless of how many “points” were associated with it.

Here’s a succinct quote from the website for The Read-Aloud Handbook (my all-time favorite book about reading and choosing quality books for your family — and incidentally, the book I used as a guide when purchasing at school book fairs)

As I see it, the real problem arrived when districts bought the programs with the idea they would absolutely lift reading scores. “Listen,” declares the school board member, “if we’re spending $50 grand on this program that’s supposed to raise scores, then how can we allow it to be optional? You know the kids who’ll never opt for it—the ones with the low scores, who drag everyone else’s scores down. No—it’s gotta be mandatory participation.” And to cement it into place, the district makes the point system 25 percent of the child’s grade for a marking period. Oooops! They just took the “carrot” off the stick, leaving just the stick—a new grading weapon. . . .

I just spent my entire morning going through our books to identify whether we own books in my child’s “reading level” (determined by testing that takes several weeks of a teacher’s instruction time). And we do own many — I just had to identify the number of points each one carried. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of books purchase through school book fairs (you know — the ones that benefit the school library and increase their collection of good books?) and I’m not surprised that I already own several that fall in to his range. The frustrating thing is that I was told that my son couldn’t take an A/R quiz unless he had checked out in the school’s library. Nevermind that we already own the book or could purchase a book. Whatever — it doesn’t matter now because I’ve already made the decision that it’s the one rule I’ll not comply with — I’ve spent many hundreds of dollars over the years accumulating books that I’ve moved across a few states over the last decade. If there’s an A/R quiz for a book we own and he’s reading it (and enjoying it), then he should be allowed to take a quiz on it.

Before taking a quiz, he has to fill out a graphic organizer along with the “in-class log” — two barriers to quiz-taking that I’m still not comfortable with. He has a designated day every week on which he is “guaranteed” an audience with his teacher to go over his progress and his goals and then to take a quiz (or quizzes) on the computer, and is supposedly allowed to take one any time and any day he is ready (as long as he’s completed an activity sheet/graphic organizer and also filled out the log).

So my challenge is working within this system (while following the “rules” and encouraging my children to do the same) and engaging my kids with good books to read while at the same time confining them to a reading level that might or might not contain books in which they have an interest. Luckily, I’ve found some excellent books on the Kindle. The issue hasn’t been about the lack of good books — it’s the lack of district support for reading those books (“Oh, I’m sorry, that’s above his reading level. He can’t take a quiz on that one”). And now I’m anticipating some resistance to the idea of allowing my boys to read “A/R” books that I purchase for the Kindle when there’s no physical book to take to school with them. But if the book has a quiz available and it’s in their reading level, and they’ve followed nearly all the rules, then I think they should absolutely be allowed to take the quiz. Did I mention I hate this?

Edited to add: Read #7 from this page on the Conroe ISD site. What a blatant contradiction of their mandatory A/R program (and it also contains a grammatical error)

I fully support the concept of promoting Sustained Silent Reading (“SSR”) in schools and at home and would love to see the A/R program used as the foundation to support SSR.

This first back-to-school week for my kids has gone well. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and emails on my previous post. Back-to-school week has also been my first “back-to-me” week. I had low expectations for filling my time the rest of this month because things will step up gradually beginning in September. I have big plans but wanted to bookend those plans with some silence and stillness first. And the photo? Last week was supposed to be my haircut, but it was postponed. Big changes should require a hairstyle change too, don’t you think?

I’ve continued to read a LOT, though that has leveled off as well. Meanwhile, my Kindle has been hijacked by either my husband or my oldest son and since they’ve been reading more, and I’m finding turning to my stack of “actual” books — including library books.

If you’ve been keeping up with me at Goodreads, you might notice that I’m reading a couple of books that have been on my “To Read” list for ages: A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table and The Soup Peddler’s Slow and Difficult Soups: Recipes and Reveries. I’m also looking forward to reading The Wordy Shipmates. (I’m back to reading some nonfiction in between the novels). Finally, I’m hopeful that I’ll get a lot out of this book too: SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck. I’ve hit a wall with this summer’s de-cluttering and organizing and I hope that this book will address one of the next steps I need to take – dealing with issues of old magazines! I have Blueprint, Domino and a handful of Mary Engelbreit magazines that are taking up an entire shelf of one of my bookcases. I want to reclaim the space, but for some reason, can’t bring myself to just recycle those magazines. Of course, if anybody wants them and is willing to pay the shipping, I’ll send them to you. That’ll be the ideal solution.

So in my last entry, I mentioned my renewed passion for reading — it’s still going strong. I’m on the sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) while I’m also reading The Blue Zones, a fascinating book about longevity. Although I purchased it to read on my Kindle, many of the other books I’ve been reading are from the bookstore or the library — places I’m going more now that I have a Kindle. Reading begets more reading (for me anyway) and leads to total absorption in subjects that interest me.

Although I acknowledge I have little control over how long I live, I’m interested in learning about what I can control in order to preserve the quality of life I would like to have, and I would like to do that in a balanced and holistic way. So far, I like what I’m reading.