The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #5

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE.

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

(Description taken from Goodreads) An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family 

Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.

Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson's insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry of this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.


Book Beginnings: October, 2007. The Santa Ana winds are shredding the bark off the eucalyptus tress in long white stripes. A friend and I risk the widowmakers by having lunch outside, during which she suggests I tattoo the words HARD TO GET across my knuckles, as a reminder of this pose's possible fruits.

The Friday 56: I am not interested in the hermeneutics, or an erotics, or a metaphorics, of my anus.


What are you reading this week? Have you read this book? What beginnings make you interested in continuing a book?

On books about realistic moms

Moms are often given a bad rap in books - especially YA books. The mom is mean and evil or nonexistent or (at best) can't understand their child. Books about parents of adult children are even more confusing as that relationship becomes more nuanced and distant. Here are a few books that represent moms realistically and might give some power and strength to moms out there:

• Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb - Ronica Vestrit is a mom who is trying her hardest. She's spent years managing the family business while her husband sails around trading, while still trying to raise her two daughters well. Once her husband passes, Ronica is tasked with making some tough decisions, especially regarding her daughters. She makes plenty of mistakes and has a lot of learning to do about her children, but she's willing to admit to her mistakes and to give her daughters opportunities to make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons. Ronica is the kind of mom so many people have (or should have)- tough, no nonsense, and independent, but still humble enough to admit her shortcomings. Ronica's story arc throughout the series helps you (and her kids) see her as an active member of the family, not just as the mom.

• Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki - Told from the viewpoints of a wealthy mother struggling to connect with her children and a young artist trying to emulate her own mother, this story is all about motherhood. Lady Daniels is trying to write a memoir about raising her selectively mute teenage son while struggling to connect with him and tolerate her other toddler son. Esther has just graduated from college and been hired as a nanny by the Daniels, all for the purpose of spending the summer on her most ambitious art project ever - becoming her mother for the summer to better understand the woman who helped raise her. This story tells all about motherhood and learning about yourself, with all it's complexities and difficulties.

Pieces of Happiness: A Novel of Friendship, Hope and Chocolate by Anne Østby - Five friends retire together to Fiji and work to support each other, especially as they all go through the growing pains of growing old. Most relateable is Sina, whose relationship with her adult son is struggling as he continues to mooch off her and she struggles to set boundaries. This story shows some of the difficulties of being a good mom while sometimes having to play the bad guy in order to help your child grow.

• My Monster Mama Loves Me So by Laura Leuck - This lovely and delightful picture book helps children to identify ways that they can tell their mom loves them - and is still an adorable read for adults.

Have you read any of these books? What realistic moms do you enjoy reading about? What books give you a positive look at parenting? What books can you relate to as a parent?

April 24-hour Readathon!

GUYS! I just signed up for my first Readathon and I couldn't be more excited.

Every April and October, you can participate in Dewey's 24 hour readathon. Basically, you read ALL DAY, take breaks to tweet and blog, and eat lots of treats. It's a great opportunity to interact with the blogging community and to catch up on your TBR. This year, the readathon takes place on April 28th (mark your calendars!). And stay tuned on here for reading updates on the 28th (or check my Twitter for a live feed of my reading!)

As I was wondering how to prep, I came upon this Ich Lese Blog post about how to prepare for the readathon. She suggests going through your TBR and getting a diverse set of books so you can jump around to different things as you get bored or tired. She also suggests stocking up on treats, which I highly recommend. In light of this wonderful advice, here are a few books (and snacks) that I'll be getting for the April 28th readathon (if I don't get around to them before that...).

      

    

And now the snacks...

    

  

How do you prep for a readathon? What books are you planning on reading for the upcoming readathon? What snacks are you going to get? How many readathons have you participated in?

Series Review: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

I first read the first Mistborn trilogy years ago at a time when I had forgotten how much I love fantasy. This series definitely re-awakened that love in me and got me reading fantasy again and for that, I will always love it. After this series, Sanderson wrote another trilogy in the same world with the same magic system, but hundreds of years after the events of the first trilogy. He's apparently now working on a third trilogy in the same world with the same system. While these books are all considered part of the Mistborn series, I'm breaking them up by trilogy - and today, we're starting with the first trilogy. Here is the description from the first book (taken from Goodreads):

In a world where ash falls from the sky, and mist dominates the night, an evil cloaks the land and stifles all life. The future of the empire rests on the shoulders of a troublemaker and his young apprentice. Together, can they fill the world with color once more?

In Brandon Sanderson's intriguing tale of love, loss, despair and hope, a new kind of magic enters the stage — Allomancy, a magic of the metals.


PROS

• UNIQUE MAGIC SYSTEM - This magic system blew my mind. Some people are born with the ability to ingest certain kinds of metals (just little flakes of them - not eating a block of titanium for breakfast) to use in various ways (i.e. pushing or pulling metals, influencing feelings, etc). A small group of these folks are able to ingest all the metals to use all the powers - and these people are called mistborns. It's an incredibly specific magic system that is a lot to understand when told outside the story, but Sanderson does an excellent job of making it easy to understand within the tale.
• MEMORABLE CHARACTERS - Our main character, Vin, is tragic and tough and such an excellent heroine, especially as she develops and gets more in touch with her feelings. Kelsier, her mentor, is heroic and a bit reckless while still being a genius and revolutionary. Their band of misfits changes as the trilogy progresses, but each character is unique with memorable (and realistic) characteristics that make them grow dearer and dearer to the readers as time goes on. In addition, each character has an arc and has chances to grow and change throughout the books - for better or for worse. It's wonderfully refreshing to have characters as static as much as these characters are.
• PLOT TWISTS - Sanderson is well-known for his twists and that was one of the impressive parts of this series to me. The first book all deals with trying to overthrow a despot. The remaining books confront the consequences of the characters' actions. Perhaps all is not as it seems, especially as you compare the beginning of the first book to the end of the third. The plot twists blow your mind - and completely make sense within the story.
• TAKE PLACE IN A LARGER UNIVERSE - Sanderson is a unique writer in that he connects all his writings. Most of his work is connected by being in the same universe - or the Cosmere. As you read more of his work, there are small connections you can make. And it's rewarding to see characters or magic systems you loved being mentioned in other books.

CONS

• SO MANY DETAILS - Sanderson's fan base is dedicated and really really REALLY in-depth. If you don't believe me, spend five minutes on 17th Shard's forum (the official fansite) - these people tear apart every word in each book to try piecing together what will happen in the future and all the details of each magic system. And this is the kind of series where you can do that. Even after reading most of Sanderson's work, I'm still a bit fuzzy on a lot of the details of how things ended up and why certain events were significant. While this confusion never detracted from the main plotline, it certainly made it difficult to completely understand the magic system or what exactly is going on for each character. Now, for some readers, this would be a pro, not a con. But for me, I don't want to have to read a paragraph 20 times to understand some small detail that hints at another book's future. I want to enjoy the series and the story and the people. 
• BITTERSWEET - Each book ends on a twist, but some of those twists make you really really sad. Like the end of this series - some things work out perfectly and some people you really like die and it's so sad, but somehow not as sad as it could be and you're really glad they succeeded in some things, but it isn't as happy as you want it to be and there are too many emotions to handle.

Have you read this series? What are your thoughts on it? What pros and cons would you add? What makes you want to read an epic fantasy series?

Music Monday #5

Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE

I've loved participating in this meme - not only does it give me an opportunity to talk about one of my great loves (music snobbery for the win!), but I get to learn about new music from other people's posts and it just makes me happy.

Lately, I've been really into this song by Gotye - it's older, but new to me and I'm so glad I got exposed to it.

This next song is very very different, but I've been appreciating it lately in a very different way than the Gotye song. I'm still not entirely sure what this song is about, but it keeps getting stuck in my head - and I'm so grateful I discovered it.

What have you been listening to lately? Do you listen to the bands I'm sharing today? What music recommendations would you give me based on these songs?

On books to read if you enjoyed "Wild Bird" by Wendelin Van Draanen

If you enjoy realistic contemporary YA about character overcoming shortcomings and learning from their mistakes, this is the blog post for you. If you're just someone who recently loved Wild Bird, you're also in luck - there are actually some similar books out there! 

3:47 a.m. That's when they come for Wren Clemens. She's hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who've gone so far off the rails, their parents don't know what to do with them any more. This is wilderness therapy camp. 

The Wren who arrives in the Utah desert is angry and bitter, and blaming everyone but herself. But angry can't put up a tent. And bitter won't start a fire. Wren's going to have to admit she needs help if she's going to survive. 

In her most incisive and insightful book yet, beloved author Wendelin Van Draanen's offers a remarkable portrait of a girl who too a wrong turn and got lost--but who may be able to find her way back again in the vast, harsh desert.

• Bad by Jean Ferris - After getting caught robbing a convenience store, young Dallas is sent to a residential treatment center where she'll learn to confront the darkest parts of herself - and the decisions that led to her going to treatment. Both books are about girls who enter treatment because of their bad behavior - and their parents being unsure about how to deal with them.

• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman - After a mental breakdown, Caden is sent to a psych ward to get his head back together. Caden encounters all sorts of characters on the psych unit, but he's also left to battle the demons in his head - all of which take the forms of a vicious sea captain and his heartless crew. This book differs from Wild Bird slightly - while it's still about a teen in treatment, Caden's reasons for entering treatment differ greatly from Wren's.

• The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin - Matt is a teenager who essentially acts as a parent to his little sisters - and also as protector from their cruel and abusive mother. When their mom gets a new boyfriend who seems like he might be able to help the kids, Matt is stuck with a difficult decision - does he need to handle this on his own or is it time to get adults involved in protecting his sisters? Matt's situation is very different from the situation in Wild Bird, but it is still about a teenager dealing with problematic living situations and unhappy circumstances and having to decide to change and overcome those circumstances.

What other books would you add to this list? Have you read any of the books on this list?

On bookish yarn projects #11

If you're a bookish person with a love for crocheting, you need this book. Written by Cindy Wang (aka the Geeky Hooker), this book is full of crochet projects of book characters from classic novels - perfect to match your books while they wait on your shelves. Below are a few examples of the available patterns:

Captain Ahab and the White Whale from Moby Dick

Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables

Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter

What bookish characters would you like to crochet?