I haven’t done one of these in ages! But I do like the way I can keep track of what I’m reading via these weekly posts. So back to it I go!

 

Currently…

 

Reading:

 

 Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4) – Marissa Meyer

While I have enjoyed the previous three books, this one feels a bit too long. I realize it’s the final book so a lot of ends have to be tied up. But it is, according to the Goodreads page, 824 pages long in the hardback version. I’ve been reading it as a library e-book on my Kindle, so it was a shock to me to see just how long the book really is. I feel like I’ve been reading it for quite a while – and I’m quite a fast reader – yet my Kindle still shows that I have over an hour left. I had to do a bit of scanning on some pages where nothing much seemed to be happening. Cinder does spend a lot of time wondering what to do…zzzz… and then I think again, wait, isn’t this book supposed to be about Winter and not so much of Cinder? Well, whatever it is meant to be about, it is a very very long book. And there is much more shooting (with guns that is) than I imagined there would be. Also, why does everyone need to be paired up???

Usually I read more than one book at a time, but this one is consuming all my multiple-book-reading abilities because it is SO LONG.

 

 

Watching:

Eating:

 Too many cookies. I made some oatmeal raisin and some oatmeal chocolate chip last week. Then yesterday the Wee Readers and I made sugar cookies as presents for their preschool teachers.

Drinking:

Tea and more tea. Because I seem to have a hacking cough that is made worse by the cold dry air. And possibly by cookies.

Cooking:

Ugh. I do not know. Thankfully we have a lot of weekend leftovers that will work for dinner tonight.

I’m thinking a beef stew this week so that I can just throw everything into a slow cooker.

And also on that lazy slow cooker note, minestrone soup. The problem with that is that the kids don’t mind soup but will not drink very much of it. Unless it’s miso soup which they inhale like nobody’s business.

Pasta. Always pasta. Because kids. I have emergency bolognese sauce (as in help! I’ve got nothing for dinner! kind of emergency) in the freezer.

 

Browsing:

All these lovely Christmas themed picture books via NY Times

10 bizarre ways reading/writing while underrepresented messes with your head by Asian-American writer May Fan, whom I have to thank for saying that about Firefly and the Lunar Chronicles. Because much as I loved Firefly and it’s “Chinese” setting and cursing, it was disappointing because of the lack of Chinese characters.

Amazon’s best SF and fantasy of 2015

13 great books of 2015 you might have missed (Book Riot)

Last week:

I read:

A Window Opens – Elisabeth Egan

Ultimately disappointing. A likable enough main character who’s juggling her role as mother and main breadwinner after her husband decides to open his own law office. She lands a job at a new start-upt that sells e-books in ‘literary lounge’ type stores. I was drawn to the cover – a book cover with a book in it! But I think I was expecting more of a booklovers’ book, and it somehow didn’t feel like Alice was much of a booklover, despite her former role as a magazine’s book editor. I did really love her relationship with her ailing father though and the text messages they share.

Dumplin’ – Julie Murphy

Probably one of the best books I’ve read so far in December. A sweet YA story about a self-proclaimed fat girl who lives in small Texas town where football and beauty pageants are everything. Her mom, who runs said beauty pageant, calls her ‘Dumplin’. There’s a romance, as it is YA after all, but I like that it doesn’t really change who she is. But at the heart of this story is Willowdean, a fierce, determined, sweet, flawed main character

Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #1) – Maggie Stiefvater

While I adored Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle, I didn’t really like this one as much. I loved the idea of it, her take on the werewolf story, but could not make a connection with the characters. Also their love story is a bit creepy and obsessive and I think that was probably just too much for me.

Names of the Sea: Strangers in Iceland  – Sarah Moss

How I loved this book. Moss moves with her family from England to Iceland, to teach t the university there. And the things she – and the reader – learns about life in Iceland are so fascinating. First of all, this was in 2009, around the time of Iceland’s economic collapse, so things are different these days. But it was interesting to learn about her struggles to find secondhand furniture, the difficulty in not having a car in Iceland, the really bizarre preschool that she first puts her kid into. What I appreciated the most was her honesty about being a parent. For instance, being hesitant letting her seven-year-old go out by himself, unlike Icelandic children, who head to the beach or the pool after school without parents, as there is “no particular need to go home, for parents are still at work. The streets of suburbia belong to the children, who make perfectly sensible citizens.”

“And I hear in my voice an echo I haven’t heard before, the echo of thousands of immigrant parents raising kids in a society they don’t fully understand or inhabit. I don’t care how things work here; I know what’s right and you’ll do what I say because I love you. Max goes along with it, for now, for the cold months when he doesn’t much want to be out there anyway, but he has tasted freedom, understood that it is cultural preference rather than a fact of life that says he can’t go out alone. His parents are fallible, their law a matter of cultural relativity.”

 

I posted:

Back to the Classics challenge 2015 – wrapping up!

#AMonthofFaves – Picking favourites

#AMonthofFaves – New to me Authors

#AMonthofFaves – Winter Survival Favourites

#AMonthofFaves – most memorable books of the year

What would I do without A Month of Faves? My blog would be empty that’s what!!