I finished House of Stairs by William Sleator in one evening, an almost unheard-of feat for me, a slow reader easily distracted by the Internet.
Cool.

"It was a beautiful place we came to," he said, skipping over the endless roads.  "Nothing like the true Delta.  Nothing.  It was like the days in spring when you find everything has flowered and nothing has begun to die, so it seems that's the way the world must go on:  always just breaking into blossom, and the air full of soft, sweet smells, and colors to wring your heart, after all the white and grey of winter.  That's what this place was.  Day after day after day."

Isn't that lovely?  That's how it is outside, today.  Spring.


(from The Sorceress and the Cygnet)

We finally had our school author visit this week! 


Wow, what a long post.  Feel free to skim. 

...you have let me down. Badly. Smocking? Seriously? Seriously? Everyone repeat after me, please.

"Once I am over the age of ten, I swear I will not wear smocking."

Thank you.

Am I being unreasonable?

Also, WTH?



Do they mean not even I have my name, or I'm the only one? Hmm...

I slogged through Small Gods by Terry Pratchett and in the end it managed to delight me and surprise me a little bit.  The Discworld books are always fun and almost always make me stop and think in the end.  This time it was about faith.  The religions in the book are contrived; mocking the type of religion a lot of people have, where faith is only done by rote in an effort to look out for oneself.  In Small Gods, gods exist only if humans believe in them.  Brutha has a blind faith in the god Om and that faith brings Om back into power, but Brutha's faith is only complete and powerful once he questions it and sees through the things others have done in religion's name--things he once would have gone along with, without considering why.

Some of the ideas made me cringe a little, but hey, if faith can't stand up to some poking and you never examine it carefully, then what good is it?

I've also been reading Some of the Kinder Planets by Tim Wynne-Jones, which I borrowed from the mwt library.  It's out of print, but he's written lots of other books, including the Rex Zero ones, and A Thief in the House of Memory and The Boy in the Burning House, both of which I've heard good things about.  Can he possibly be related to Diana Wynne Jones, only with an extraneous hyphen? Anyway, the short stories are so good that they make even a non-writer like me think of writing.  He makes it seem that effortless, taking ordinary situations and making them extraordinary.

Edit:  Some of the Kinder Planets does not seem to be out of print, according to Amazon.

Have I mentioned that I am a champagne junkie?  A champagne ho?   I love love love the stuff.  A surprise bottle of it showed up in the refrigerator.  Woot! 

A quick and easy meme, taken from pcw_rcw .


1. My Username is _____ because _____ .

2. My personal LJ is entitled _____ because _____ .

3. My personal LJ is subtitled _____ because _____ .

4. My Friends Page is called _____ because _____ .

5. My Default Userpic is _____ because _____ .



I tag YOU.  If you're reading this, go for it. 

I went on a short cruise this week. 



Ah, tackiness, thy name is Carnival Cruise.

The azaleas in my front yard are blooming.





Along with the phlox by the mailbox.

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, is wonderful. 


Off on a trip tomorrow!  Back on Monday!
         

Read a couple of things recently and enjoyed them both.

Sourcery by Terry Pratchett, one of the Discworld series, is the funniest one I've read so far.  The plot wasn't much to speak of, but the book was hilarious.  I love his style of writing and will keep reading my way through the series.  They are always fun, light reading, this one lighter than most.

I finally read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and will be adding it to the library's collection as soon as I get back to school tomorrow.  For those who have read it, I don't need to tell you that every word is brilliant.  Speak tells the story of Melinda, a high school freshman with a secret.  At first, all we know is that she is an outcast at school, shunned by her friends after calling the police during a wild party.  Melinda's voice is funny, scathing, and filled with pain.  She is terribly unhappy with all aspects of her life--friends, family, her looks, her weight, and we soon discover that she is in agony and depressed after being raped at the party.  She barely speaks to anyone but over the course of the school year, with the help of her art teacher, begins to come to grips with what happened to her.  Ms. Anderson nails the voice of a high school girl.   Everything in the book is commonplace, but it all carries deeper meaning; the trees, seeds, snow, Melinda's closet, The Scarlet Letter, the role of art and plays, free speech.  It's just awesome. 

Happy Easter, all!

I'm off to do something fun (I hope) next week.

My state provides funding for the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching, which offers classes and seminars in the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state, near the campus of Western Carolina University.  Teachers can apply to go to week-long classes and the program pays to put you up in their facility and funds a substitute teacher while you're gone.  A group of us are going to learn more about using things like wikis and blogs as teaching tools.  We get to use Western's library and fitness center.  It's a beautiful area and I'm excited about going--I've been to Asheville before, but never to Cullowhee. 

I'll still be around, though.  Virtually, that is.  

I just can't resist them.

The book club met today.  One member is the silliest, most boy-crazy girl I've met in ages.  She doesn't always make it to the meetings but when she does she gets all the guys in an uproar and we never accomplish anything.  She's a nice, smart girl and everyone seems to like her.  Being the center of attention is what she lives for.  She tends to wear rather low-cut tops.

She and some friends are writing a fantasy book.  She asked if she could read the prologue to the group, and of course I said yes.  Well, you can imagine.  It was...yeah.  They put themselves into the book as the main characters and were fighting demons and evil magicians and such.  Very dramatic.  At one point it went like this:

The Maiden Bree:  The evil demon grabbed the shining sword out of my hand.  He cackled, 'I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too!'  (Not verbatim but you get the gist.)  I clutched my bosom and cried out for my friends to help me."
Innocent Seventh Grade Boy:  Wait, wait.  This doesn't make any sense.  I thought the demon couldn't touch the metal of the sword.  That's what you said before. 
The Maiden Bree:  Well, duh, Jay, he touched the hilt.  It was made of jewels.
Innocent Seventh Grade Boy:  Oh, ok.  But why did that make you grab your butt?

*several moments of complete silence*
*everyone looks at The Maiden Bree*

The Maiden Bree:  Um...Jay...your bosom is not your butt.
Innocent Seventh Grade Boy:  It's not?  Well, what is it then?
The Maiden Bree:  *points at her bosom*
Innocent Seventh Grade Boy: *turns red*  ...oh.

*everyone dies laughing*

It was brilliant.  :)

A few quick things.

I got a $1000 grant from IBM to buy a collection of books for our super-low readers, written on a K-3 grade level.  Yay.  I think they'll be excited to see we have books just for them.

An exciting day yesterday.  I swear I'm not making this up.  First, one of our 7th grade students went into labor.  The receptionist was timing her contractions until the squad came for her.  She didn't have the baby; labor stopped and the principal asked her to please go home and stay there.  13 years old.  :(((((((  Then, a student broke the one mercury thermometer in the school.  He got mercury on him so they had to call the authorities.  Haz Mat people came in their yellow suits to decontaminate.  The kid had mercury on him so they had him change into his gym clothes and took everything, including his underwear.  The teacher is pregnant, so they had to make sure she wasn't contaminated.  Quite the exciting day.  And people wonder why teachers can't seem to just teach.  At least the labor stuff is extremely unusual.  We've never had a student in labor before though there have been a few pregnancies.

I had to go sit in a doctor's office yesterday for a few hours (I told you it was a busy day) and had to face something about myself (only my dysfunctional personality--not a health issue, sorry Willow).  The waiting room was small and packed.  The chairs were uncomfortable.  All I wanted to do was sit and read The Virtu.  There were three conversations going on in the room and I thought I was going to lose my mind.  Seriously, I thought I'd have to go stand in the hall.  I cannot abide small talk between strangers.  Yes, the government sucks and health care sucks and you don't feel good but I just want to read my book.  I am the most antisocial person ever born.  It's a tremendous character flaw but I can't help it.  It was painful, as were the chairs.

I'm off to Ohio tomorrow to visit my family for the weekend and OMG the weather!!  TEN inches of snow are predicted!  Gah!  Must go hunt up boots.

Reaper Man:  Another fabulous Discworld book.  It was good throughout and the end was better than fabulous.  How does Terry Pratchett write books that are funny and clever, then suddenly they are profound and touching and very wise?

Melusine by Sarah Monette:  I liked it.  It reminds me very much of Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner books.  Hunky, tortured heroes, lots of action, evil magicians.  I've started The Virtu, the second book in the series.  My one complaint has to do with the language.  The setting is an exotic fantasy one and the author uses lots of made-up words to mean dates and periods of time.  The terms are never defined by our standards, which is fine.  It was kind of fun to try to figure out what they meant.  But Mildmay speaks in a lower-class vernacular, with lots of swearing and that got repetitious after awhile.  He uses phrases that seemed jarring to me, "barbecue sauce" and "numbnuts" are two that  come to mind.  Those are minor things, though, and I especially liked the way the narration went back and forth between the two men.  It kept things interesting.

The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley:  This one really wasn't my thing.  Something about the heroine put me off.  The book reminded me very much of the movie "The Village" with the same sort of menacing, unseen evil always there, waiting to pounce.  It was beautifully written, however, and the main character's voice was unusual and well done.

Fascinating--and very long--article by Ursula Le Guin. 

Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading

Being at the beginning of a book challenge, I found this particularly amusing.

It's not often enough that Library of Congress Subject Headings make the newspaper.

The front page, no less!  This is the Washington Post version.

I'm trying to post about the books I like, so a few words about Mort by Terry Pratchett.  It's the fifth Discworld book I've read, and my favorite so far. 

Stolen from everyone else...

( Who comments the most on this journal? )

Can you tell I make a point of answering everyone who comments on my lj?