100 birthday candles

My twin daughters will be 50 on Monday, so we partied this weekend.  Their children put all 100 candles on a single sheet cake -- and lit it.  See Barbara and Sandra holding their hair away from the blaze as they try to blow out all the candles.  Too bad you can't see them puffing away at the ten or so that were "magic" candles that kept relighting themselves.  Too bad you missed seeing their children trying to light all 100 candles without burning their own hands.

New Crayons ~ what's new on my bookshelves

Remember when you were a kid and getting new crayons was a big deal?  Getting new books holds the same kind of magic for some of us big kids.  Susan at Color Online came up with the idea of New Crayons to represent new books that arrived during the week.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I got a half dozen new books this week.  My friend Donna took me to lunch today and gave me books, plus this big Happy Birthday cookie (yes, as you can see, I turned 70 today).

Donna also knows the kind of books I like.

The Pillars of the Earth, a novel by Ken Follett (1989), tells the story of Philip, "a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known."  BN.com says, "As a new age dawns in England's twelfth century, the building of a mighty Gothic cathedral sets the stage for a story of intrigue and power, revenge and betrayal."  The back cover promises "a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother."  This sounds like one for the World Religions Challenge.

Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005) may also work for the World Religions Challenge.  Like in the other book Donna gave me, Carter "puts forth a passionate defense of separation of church and state, and a strong warning of where the country is heading as the lines between politics and rigid religious fundamentalism are blurred.  Many of the "moral values" he examines are under fierce debate:  preemptive war, women's rights, terrorism, civil liberties, homosexuality, abortion, the death penalty, science and religion, environmental degradation, nuclear arsenals, America's global image, fundamentalism, and the melding of religion and politics.

The next two books came from the library:

Kate Klise's novel, Trial by Journal (2001), is told through journal entries, news clippings, and letters.  The book is illustrated by the author's sister, M. Sarah Klise.  I'm curious about this one because I've never heard of a sixth grader being sequestered with a jury.  The whole thing gets "curiouser and curiouser" (as Alice would say) when I read that "twelve-year-old Lily finds herself on the jury of a murder trial while conducting her own undercover investigation of the case."  Hmm, my understanding of "sequestered" wouldn't allow that to happen, making an undercover investigation even MORE unlikely.  Still, I'm curious and willing to suspend my disbelief long enough to find out what happens.

Bare Your Soul: The Thinking Girl's Guide to Enlightenment, edited by Angela Watrous (2002), came from the library.  I've already started reading this one for the World Religions Challenge, based on this from the back cover.  It may even work for the Women Unbound reading challenge.  "Whether raised within a specific belief system or warned against all things religious, women today have been left with questions and conflicts that dating guides and pop feminism can't resolve.  This essential collection includes narratives from skeptics, reformists, and neo-traditionalists alike, representing a wide spectrum of traditions and practices -- from Buddhism to Islam, Judaism to Goddess worship, Catholicism to atheism, and many others.  Wise, compelling, and open-minded, Bare Your Soul offers a provocative look at the ways in which a new generation of women both celebrate and repudiate religion -- and, ultimately, find answers that fit."

I can't put the next book down -- it's that good.  My online book club will discuss it in May, and I posted a teaser about it yesterday. 

House Rules by Jodi Picoult (2010) is a novel about Jacob Hunt, a teenage boy with Asperger's syndrome.  "He's hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject -- in his case, forensic analysis.  He's always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room, and telling the cops what they need to do ... and he's usually right.  But then his town is rocked by a terrible murder and, for a change, the police come to Jacob with questions" ... and then they charge him with murder.

I'll have to explain why I call this last book a "new" one at my house.  Although I bought it in 1977 (I wrote the date in the front of the book), I never got around to reading it and it's been in a box in a storage unit for several years.  I've been sorting out old books and taking them to trade at the used book store, but when I came across this one, I set it aside to read first.

Son of Man by Robert Silverberg (1971) is science fiction, though the blurb on the back cover sounds more like what I prefer to call speculative fiction.  "In the beginning there was no Brooklyn, no St. Louis, no Shakespeare, no moon, no hunger, no death ... In the beginning the heavens, the seas, and the earth belonged to more intelligent species than a man called Clay could ever have dreamed possible in his own time ... but his own time as a man had passed, and now his time as the son of man had come!"

What new books have you gotten this week?

Teaser ~ House Rules

Jodi Picoult's latest novel, House Rules, is about Jacob, a boy with a form of autism called Asperger's syndrome.  Here's a quote from page 163:

Dogs are like the kids in school I cannot stand:  the ones who hang around and then leave when they realize they are not getting want they want or need from the conversation.  They travel in packs.  They lick you and you think it's because they like you, but it's really just because your fingers still smell like your turkey sandwich.

On the other hand, I think cats have Asperger's.

Like me, they're very smart.

And like me, sometimes they simply need to be left alone.

Beezus and Ramona ~ by Beverly Cleary, 1955

It's kind of fun when I'm reading along in one book to run across a reference to another book I have recently read. That happened to me last night when I read the first page of Bare Your Soul, a 2002 nonfiction book edited by Angela Watrous.  In the chapter called "My Sister's Keeper, Twilight Greenaway writes:

"As kids, Mara and I were so close it was sometimes suffocating.  I was Beezus, she was Ramona."

Only if you know the other book would you understand that Mara was Twilight's annoying little sister.  Here's an example from page 14 of Beezus and Ramona:

"Beezus watched her little sister pedal furiously around the living room, inhaling and exhaling [to make noises on her harmonica].  Why did she have to like a book about a steam shovel anyway?  Girls weren't supposed to like machinery.  Why couldn't she like something quiet, like Peter Rabbit?"

This book from more than a half century ago (published in 1955) has Beezus (nickname for Beatrice Quimby) spouting the accepted norm, that girls were not "supposed" to like machinery.  But notice that at least one little girl did -- Ramona Quimby.  The reading guide at HarperCollins has a question about things we aren't supposed to do:

"At her birthday dinner Beezus tells Ramona, 'You can’t have jelly on your mashed potatoes because you aren’t supposed to.'  Of course, Beezus is right, but isn’t this also an example of the difference between Beezus and Ramona, between being older and being younger?  What are some arguments for and against the idea that there are some things we don’t do, because we aren’t supposed to?"

These sisters became so well known that a writer in the twenty-first century could, by saying their names, conjure up an image of what life with her sister had been like.  How many of you reading my blog have read any of the Beezus and Ramona books?  Could you relate to their life?

I rate this first book in the series 8 of 10, a very good book for children.

Hug a tree ~ or plant one

I took part in the first Earth Day, back in April 1970. Wow, that's forty years ago! A few years ago I wrote about what happened that day, when I was a university student and went home to three young children. Read that post on my Greening the Blue Planet blog.

Have you ever actually hugged a tree?  I have had a favorite tree in every place I've ever lived, but hugging hasn't been part of my routine.  One day, however, I ran out through a drizzly rain to get my mail and stood inside my garage reading a letter from a friend who had recently moved away.  In her letter she asked me to hug the big tree in my yard that was her favorite tree -- and I ran through the drizzle and wrapped my arms around that tree.  Her letter said she knew I would do it, and she was right.  That would have been 1973, I believe.

On Earth Day in 2000 my seventh grandchild was born.  I wrote about Cady's birthday party a few years later.  That was a day I spent mostly at the zoo, before attending her party.

Earth Day has usually been a very good day for me, though I don't have anything special planned to celebrate.  Maybe I'll hug a tree.  How will you spend the day this year?

Note posted VERY LOW on a refrigerator door

Dear Dogs and Cats:  The dishes with the paw prints are yours and contain your food.  The other dishes are mine and contain my food.  Placing a paw print in the middle of my plate of food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack.  Racing me to the bottom is not the object.  Tripping me doesn't help because I fall faster than you can run.

I cannot buy anything bigger than a king-sized bed.  I am very sorry about this, but do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your comfort.  Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep.  It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other, stretched out to the fullest extent possible.  I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out on the other end to maximize space is nothing but sarcasm.

For the last time, there is no secret exit from the bathroom.  If, by some miracle, I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob, or get your paw under the edge in an attempt to open the door.  I must exit through the same door I entered.  Also, I have been using the bathroom for years -- canine/feline attendance is not required.

The proper order for kissing is:  Kiss me first, then go smell the other dog or cat's butt.  I cannot stress this enough.

Finally, in fairness, dear pets:  I have posted the following message on the front door:

To all non-pet-owners who visit and like to complain about our pets:

(1)  They live here; you don't.
(2)  If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture. That's why it's called "fur"-niture.
(3)  I like my pets a lot better than I like most people.
(4)  To you, they are animals.  To me, they are adopted sons/daughters who are short, hairy, walk on all fours, and don't speak clearly.

House Rules ~ online book discussion

My online book club -- Book Buddies -- is planning to read another book together.  We'll each get our hands on a copy of House Rules by Jodi Picoult, published in March 2010, and start reading it.  Beginning in May, we will discuss it bit by bit, as we read.  Usually we have posted our comments and questions on about a fourth of the book at a time.  In other words, you can read slowly if you like.

As we near the end of May, we will discuss the whole thing -- and not worry about spoilers because everyone will have completed reading the book.  Click here for more information.