The Wrath of Mulgarath (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 5)
The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Junior Edition
The Nixie’s Song (Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1)
Phonics Comics: Alien Alert (Phonics Comics)
Nasty, Stinky Sneakers
On the Dog (Andrew Lost #1)
In the Bathroom (Andrew Lost #2)
Phonics Comics: Alien Alert (Phonics Comics)
Phonics Comics: Monster Madness (Phonics Comics)
Phonics Comics: The Far Out Fairies (Phonics Comics)
Frog and Toad All Year
Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Eldest
Dragon Rider
Anne of Green Gables
A Light in the Attic
The Field Guide (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 1)
The Seeing Stone (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Book 2)
(Medabots: The Complete First Season was provided to me by Special Ops Media for the purpose of review.)
Enter the world of Medabots, where kids have the ultimate power — and supercharged robots. Fueled with artificial intelligence and a specialized arsenal of high-powered weapons, the Medabots compete against each other in exciting Robattles, with the winners acquiring Medaparts from the defeated Medabot. But more than anything else, these challenges are about courage and mind power, where the soul of the Medafighter and Medabot combine to emerge victorious.
The kids never watched Medabots on TV, but it looked like something they would be interested in, so I said we would review the first season DVDs. Medabots: The Complete First Season
Noah’s review: “Medabots is so, so, so cool. It’s about these kids who get these pet robots and train them to fight each other. Five stars.”
Jonathan’s review: “I think it’s great - five stars!”
Josiah’s review: “It’s cool. I like how powerful they are. I like what they look like. I like their attacks. My favorite Medabot is Spidar. Five hundred stars!”
Measle and the Dragodon
The Carnivorous Carnival (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 9)
The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 10)
I finished What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England
Pool is absolutely thorough in his description of 19th century life. The section titles include:
~ The Basics: explaining currency, measurements, the calendar, and the basics on England and London
~ The Public World: all the titles, social etiquette, calling cards, rituals, sections on the government and the Church of England, and much, much more
~ Transition: Coaches, Horses, the Railroad, the Mail
~ The Country: Life on the farm, who’s who in the country, local government, etc.
~ The Private World: marriage, sex, homes, food, furniture, clothing, and the hierarchy of servants
~ The Grim World: orphans, the workhouse, disease, doctors, and death
The above makes up part one of the book; part two is a detailed glossary of all those terms that we get stuck on when reading the likes of Vanity Fair, Great Expectations, and, of course, Austen’s works. This book will take up a prominent spot on my upstairs bookshelves, because I know I’ll be referring to it many times in the future.
I don’t have an iPod, but I do have an MP3 player that has a shuffle feature, so I am going to play along with this fun meme I saw at Praise the Lord and Pass the Prozac.
Here are the instructions:
1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question.
4. NO CHEATING.
Q: What does next year have in store for you?
Show Me the Way to Your Heart - Sara Evans
Q: What does your love life look like next year?
Cinema Paradiso - Josh Groban
Q: What do you say when life gets hard?
Blessing in Disguise - Christine Dente 
Q: Song that reminds you of good times?
Tim McGraw - Taylor Swift
Q: What do you think when you get up in the morning?
Never Going Back Again - Fleetwood Mac
Q: What song will you dance to at your wedding?
Already married, but here’s the song that came up: Bold Riley - Kate Rusby
Q: Song that reminds you of your first kiss?
Bless Me Indeed - Mercy Me
Q: Your favorite saying?
No One Like You - Barlow Girl
Q: Favorite place?
I’ll Take Care of You - Steven Curtis Chapman
Q: Most Missed Memory?
Starts With Goodbye - Carrie Underwood
Q: What song describes your best friend?
The Sleepless Sailor - Kate Rusby
Q: What song describes your ex?
The First Cut is the Deepest - Sheryl Crow - ha!
Q: Where would you go on a first date?
When God Fearin’ Women Get the Blues - Martina McBride
Q: Drug of choice?
The Power of a Moment - Chris Rice
Q: What song describes yourself?
Let Me Go - Susan Ashton
Q: What is the thing you like doing most?
The Maze - Taylor Hicks
Q: The song that best describes the president?
China Grove - Doobie Brothers
Q: Where will you be in 10 years?
Only Getting Started - Steven Curtis Chapman
Q: Your love life right now?
Scribbling in the Sand - Michael Card
Q: What is your state of mind like at the moment?
Whiskey, Yer the Devil - An Dochas - lol
Q: How will you die?
Heaven Knows - Kathy Troccoli
That was fun - let me know if you play along!
…there is a new episode of House - finally!
Shannon of Rocks in My Dryer and Bloggy Giveaways fame is hosting the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival. Click on that link to go to the ginormous list of blogs participating and giving away prizes. If you want to participate, click here for the guidelines.
Now, what would you expect me to be giving away? Books, of course! Six pre-read, gently-used books. That means there will be six winners! All you need to do to enter is leave a comment on this post telling me your top three picks out of these books:
~ Abide with Me
~ The Jane Austen Book Club
~ The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction
~ The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
~ Echoes
~ The Copper Beech
Now, leave a comment here before Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 12:00 am PST. I will use a random number generator to draw six names sometime Saturday. (Duplicate comments will be deleted, so just one, please.) Don’t forget to tell me what your top three picks are! That way when I draw names, I can hopefully match you with a book that you’re actually interested in reading. Good luck! And be sure and check out all the other giveaways - some have much more extravagant prizes than I’m offering.
- The good news? It’s not 10 degrees outside anymore. On the other hand, it’s snowing, and has been all morning. The forecast reads like this: Monday - snow; Tuesday - snow; Wednesday - cloudy; Thursday - snow; Friday - snow; Saturday - snow - well, you get the idea. I know I’ve only lived here 11 years, but this has got to be some sort of snowfall record. It has to be - because I’d hate to think this is just a normal winter, and the last few have been abnormal. When is spring, again?
- Remember how I said we had discovered a great Sci-Fi channel series through Netflix called The Dresden Files? Well, it turns out it only ran one season. Phooey. On the plus side, we’re really enjoying the Tom Hanks / HBO-produced miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.
- National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets is great - we went Thursday night. It’s fun and action-packed and has some history thrown in. Yes, you have to suspend your disbelief. No, it’s not deep or profound - but sometimes you want to go to the movies just to be entertained. And I appreciate having a PG rated movie that the kids and Kevin and I all enjoyed together.
- I added a “Josiah’s Reading” page to the blog. How cool is that? My six-year-old is making his way through Frog and Toad All Year. I couldn’t find the next 1st grade reader, so I pulled this out, and he is reading it - and laughing at Toad’s sledding adventure.
- The kids took part in a Pinewood Derby for Awana yesterday at church. Jonathan and Noah both brought home 3rd-place trophies in the speed category. Josiah was disappointed, and said to Jonathan, “Can we share your trophy?” Jonathan replied, “Sure!” I loved watching them cheer each other and their friends on.
- Missoula Children’s Theater is coming in two weeks, and Natalie is going to audition for their production of a musical adaptation of The Little Mermaid. (Not the Disney story, but the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale.) They bring the entire production except the cast, and hold auditions to cast 60 local K-12 students. Then the kids rehearse every afternoon and evening that week, and on Saturday they do two performances. I’m nervous for her. She has a good attitude, though, and said, “Even if I don’t get a part, it will be fun just to audition and see how it works.”
- We’re almost caught up on our school schedule. We will be where we should be by the end of this week. Then my sister and her two boys are coming up from Post Falls to spend the weekend, so we will be spending Saturday at Mom and Dad’s. Josiah will sleep over that night with his best friend, cousin Peter, and then the rest of us will go back Sunday afternoon to watch the Super Bowl. Go Giants!
- We skipped church today, since it would have required massive shoveling at an early hour to get us out of the driveway. Kevin shoveled earlier, and now the kids are out to shovel again - and play, of course.
I thought I had answered every book meme out there, until I saw this one at The Sleepy Reader.
Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
The Iliad and The Odyssey. I know they’re supposed to be the foundations of Western literature, but I just have no interest. I’m sure we will be studying them when the kids get older, though.
If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?
Can I just sit and look at Mr. Darcy, Connor Larkin from Trinity, and Kerbouchard from Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum? No? Okay, then I guess I would choose to have tea with Elizabeth Bennett, Anne Elliot, and Elinor Dashwood - so I could find out how things went after their respective weddings.
(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?
I have to agree with Amy - Moby Dick.
Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?
I don’t think I’ve ever done that.
As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book?
I can’t think of any. I have, however, went to read a book for the “first” time and found out I’d already read it.
You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP).
Is the idea to just recommend a good read or recommend books that will help make the person a better leader? I guess I’d pick Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour and That Distant Land: Collected Stories by Wendell Berry, because I think those would fulfill both goals.
A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?
Italian. I’d love to be able to read anything written in Italian - out loud.
A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
Anne of Green Gables. I’ve read it probably ten times, and I have loved it every time. I’m reading it aloud to Nan right now, and I am remembering how much I adore it.
I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?
Probably the biggest thing is that classics are called classics for a reason. Until a couple of years ago, I resisted reading anything I was told I “should” read. A little bit of book rebellion, I guess. Now I know that if a book is considered a classic, I’ll almost always like, if not love, it.
That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.
Lots and lots of bookshelves, plenty of cushy reading chairs, a well-stocked wine cabinet, and all the books on my Master To-Read List. Oh, yeah - and time would stand still when I was in there. That way, I could sneak in and read for as long as I wanted, and when I left, no time would have passed.
Anyone else want to play along?
Since I can use books from my A to Z Challenge, I decided to join the Chunkster Challenge 2008, being hosted by Dana at So Many Books, So Little Time. The idea is to read four books between January 7th and December 20th of this year. But not just any four books - each book has to be over 450 pages long. The cool thing is that this challenge offers prizes - one per quarter - if you post your reviews and link them at the Chunkster Challenge blog. So, here is my list:
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Women in Love - D. H. Lawrence
I love to eat: Nutty Chicken Alfredo from Stefani’s Oak Street Grill, a local restaurant.
I hate to eat: Peas.
I love to go: To the movies.
I hate to go: Grocery shopping. (I agree with Crissy on this one.)
I love it when: One of my kids is lost in a good book.
I hate it when: I don’t have time to read.
I love to see: A clean house.
I hate to see: Snow after January 1st.
I love to hear: Josh Groban sing in Italian.
I hate to hear: Whining.
Hat tip: Crissy at Soliloquy
There is not one person in our house right now with a fever. It’s been ten days. I know that doesn’t seem very long, but remember, we had a different strain of the flu over Christmas, too. I’m telling you this: next year we will be first in line for our flu shots.
We have some fun things planned for the rest of our week, which I’m looking forward to after being stuck at home this long. Thursday night I’m going to take the kids to see National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets. Friday afternoon we’re going to Michelle’s for our play date that we missed last week. And then Saturday the kids are competing in a Pinewood Derby for Awana. In between all that, we’ll try to get caught up on school.
The kids are looking forward to going out to play in the mountains of snow in our front yard, but it’s very cold and they are all still coughing. Poor Noah started crying this morning when I told him he couldn’t go out cause he hadn’t been fever-free for 24 hours yet. He proclaimed this the “suckiest winter ever” - and he’s not even allowed to say that word. The poor guy. I felt so bad for him, I didn’t even get him in trouble.
~Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions
