9/22/2010
WoW: Grace by Elizabeth Scott
I am a big fan of multi-talented Elizabeth Scott. With equal flair, she can do humor or terror. Grace was released on September 16.
Grace by Elizabeth Scott
Amazon description: Grace was raised to be an Angel, a herald of death by suicide bomb. But she refuses to die for the cause, and now Grace is on the run, daring to dream of freedom. In search of a border she may never reach, she travels among malevolent soldiers on a decrepit train crawling through the desert. Accompanied by the mysterious Kerr, Grace struggles to be invisible, but the fear of discovery looms large as she recalls the history and events that delivered her uncertain fate.
Told in spare, powerful prose by acclaimed author Elizabeth Scott, this tale of a dystopian near future will haunt readers long after theyÕve reached the final page.
I cannot wait to get my hands on this one ...
What book are you excited about this week?
9/15/2010
WoW: The House of Dead Maids by Claire Dunkle
"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
Release date: September 14:
Clare Dunkle
Amazon description: Young Tabby Aykroyd has been brought to the dusty mansion of Seldom House to be nursemaid to a foundling boy. He is a savage little creature, but the Yorkshire moors harbor far worse, as Tabby soon discovers. Why do scores of dead maids and masters haunt Seldom House with a jealous devotion that extends beyond the grave? As Tabby struggles to escape the evil forces rising out of the land, she watches her young charge choose a different path. Long before he reaches the old farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, the boy who will become Heathcliff has doomed himself and any who try to befriend him.
I say, "In the expert hands of Clare Dunkle, we finally get to know Heathcliff's backstory ... this one will be good."
What books are you waiting on this week?
9/13/2010
Of County Fairs and other Novelties
My husband and I spent a couple hours at our local county fair on Saturday. There isn’t a lot of reason to go anymore, except maybe to remember the years when we’d practically lived there for the week that the fair was in session. Our kids were in 4-H and later FFA. They raised bunnies and sheep and pigs, which were lovingly grown, shown, and then sold to the highest bidder for … meat. Over the years, I saw more than one little girl burst out in tears when her little lamb was sold.
Our girls also took their horses to the fair. It was a lot of fun for them to participate in horse-y activities. All three kids took other things as well: lego toys they’d constructed, pieces of art, photography, sewing, and food they’d baked. One of my daughters won a special ribbon for a picture she’d taken when she was a People-to-People ambassador in Greece.
We always took a picture of the kids sitting on the fair’s mascot, Patience the cow. My husband’s mother made the cow out of cement in 1970. It’s still there, right in front of the petting barn.
The picture is of two of our kids, in 1980, with their grandmother, who made Patience the Cow.
The fair hasn’t changed a lot. The pig barn still smells, and is, cleaner than the sheep barn, although both barns are impressively clean. The cows are so big and beautiful and soft and mellow that you look at them and wonder how you could possibly ever eat beef. Which I do, almost every day.
There are still the outdoor shows—the local country western singers, the hypnotists, the magicians. There is still, of course, the rodeo!
But we don’t see as many people we know anymore. We used to see everyone. We could hardly walk five feet without running into someone we knew. Now, we realize, the fair is more for the generation below us—our kids, who are now raising their families. Our grandkids aren’t yet old enough to participate, but it won’t be long.
I always love to look at the flowers people have grown. Dinner-plate dahlias; roses whose perfume is heavenly. The quilts. We live in an area where interest in quilting is enormous. So big, in fact, that I didn’t see many quilts at the fair this year. They have their own weekend-long show at the Latah County Fairgrounds. Quilts from all over the world are displayed. The artistry in many of them is jaw-dropping.
This year, there was a more impressive display of table settings at our fair than usual. I’ve always found them to be intriguing. My mother was quite the hostess, and always interested in presentation. In honor of her, I took pictures of the three table settings that I liked best.
There must've been between 12-18 place settings. This one won only a red ribbon, but I love the colors and the feeling of fall.
This was a quiet one tucked into a corner. The green was so pretty, and the pot that the plant is in has beautiful wheat embossing.
This was the grand prize winner. The peach-colored roses (real) pulled out the peach colors in the blue dishes. The dishes were made in Poland, if I remember correctly. Very pretty!
Our girls also took their horses to the fair. It was a lot of fun for them to participate in horse-y activities. All three kids took other things as well: lego toys they’d constructed, pieces of art, photography, sewing, and food they’d baked. One of my daughters won a special ribbon for a picture she’d taken when she was a People-to-People ambassador in Greece.
The picture is of two of our kids, in 1980, with their grandmother, who made Patience the Cow.
The fair hasn’t changed a lot. The pig barn still smells, and is, cleaner than the sheep barn, although both barns are impressively clean. The cows are so big and beautiful and soft and mellow that you look at them and wonder how you could possibly ever eat beef. Which I do, almost every day.
There are still the outdoor shows—the local country western singers, the hypnotists, the magicians. There is still, of course, the rodeo!
But we don’t see as many people we know anymore. We used to see everyone. We could hardly walk five feet without running into someone we knew. Now, we realize, the fair is more for the generation below us—our kids, who are now raising their families. Our grandkids aren’t yet old enough to participate, but it won’t be long.
I always love to look at the flowers people have grown. Dinner-plate dahlias; roses whose perfume is heavenly. The quilts. We live in an area where interest in quilting is enormous. So big, in fact, that I didn’t see many quilts at the fair this year. They have their own weekend-long show at the Latah County Fairgrounds. Quilts from all over the world are displayed. The artistry in many of them is jaw-dropping.
This year, there was a more impressive display of table settings at our fair than usual. I’ve always found them to be intriguing. My mother was quite the hostess, and always interested in presentation. In honor of her, I took pictures of the three table settings that I liked best.
There must've been between 12-18 place settings. This one won only a red ribbon, but I love the colors and the feeling of fall.
9/10/2010
Art Studios--Writing Room
This is the second room I re-conceptualized. This is what you see when you walk in. I removed the heavy red damask draperies and left only the valance. The room feels lighter. Plus, after having removed 12' of table space and six craft storage carts, not to mention supplies that filled three-8' shelves--you can imagine that it really opened up space in this room. There is still 8' of counter space (2-4' tables) under the window to collect bookish clutter.
The room is a library of sorts. There's a 5'x5' book shelf in the closet as well as 2-3'x5' book shelves and a 3'x3' book shelf and a 2'x4' book shelf. For the first time ever, I actually alphabetized the books on my Young Adult book shelf (but none of the others).
This isn't even a quarter of the books I own, alas. When you've been on the planet for a few decades as I have, and books are your passion, maybe even your mental illness, well--
We also have a storage room that has about 15 crates' full of books that I haven't found shelves for and 7-6' wide shelves full of books. All last week, I was weeding books at my library district's branches. I need to do some weeding at home as well.
The trouble is, it's hard to get rid of books I own. Is it hard for you? I've traded out boxes and boxes full of books over the years, but I still have too many. Some would argue that you can't have too many books. I like those people!
This is my writing area. I write every morning before work for at least an hour. I'm considering changing my schedule to enable two hours' worth of writing. It will mean going to bed earlier and getting up at 5:00 am instead of 6:00 am.
Do you have a writing room? A reading room? A home library? What's it like? Do you spend much time there?
9/09/2010
Art Studios--Scrapbooking Room
A recent issue of Rock Paper Scissors: Studios inspired me to separate out my creative pursuits. Two passions, scrapbooking and writing, had been sharing a single, 9x15' room in our house. We have a five-bedroom home--Our three kids are grown, and so my husband and I now live with a lot of unused space. When the kids were growing up, it sometimes felt like there wasn't enough space. Now--well, he and I can be extravagant. I now have two rooms of my own.
This magazine inspired me. It's full of pictures of working artist studios. Studios of people who earn a living with their art, by teaching classes and by selling their works. It didn't give me any specific ideas, but it did give me the desire to see what I could with my spaces.
I spent 20 hours separating out the two creative interests. This is what I came up with for the scrapbooking room. I'll show you the writing room tomorrow. :)
One objective was to get everything possible OFF of valuable counter space. The 8' bookshelves are a great place for most of the supplies. The corner countertop on the right is the official painting/"distressing" area. (Distressing is a technique for the type of scrapbooking I like to do, called Shabby Chic--painting is not distressing!)
Another view of the same wall. I was happy that I could roll my portable embellishment carts under the desktop for storage when I'm not using them.
Paper and ribbon storage. The ribbons are held on 7-spring-tension rods that I put inside a 3'x3' book shelf. The book shelf is sitting on an 8'x3' table--more counter space! There was room for three rubber stamp storage carts under the table.
The final wall has another table, 4'x2' for more counter space. I didn't include a picture because a table is a table.
The room's dimensions are 9' x 11'.
This magazine inspired me. It's full of pictures of working artist studios. Studios of people who earn a living with their art, by teaching classes and by selling their works. It didn't give me any specific ideas, but it did give me the desire to see what I could with my spaces.
I spent 20 hours separating out the two creative interests. This is what I came up with for the scrapbooking room. I'll show you the writing room tomorrow. :)
One objective was to get everything possible OFF of valuable counter space. The 8' bookshelves are a great place for most of the supplies. The corner countertop on the right is the official painting/"distressing" area. (Distressing is a technique for the type of scrapbooking I like to do, called Shabby Chic--painting is not distressing!)
Another view of the same wall. I was happy that I could roll my portable embellishment carts under the desktop for storage when I'm not using them.
Paper and ribbon storage. The ribbons are held on 7-spring-tension rods that I put inside a 3'x3' book shelf. The book shelf is sitting on an 8'x3' table--more counter space! There was room for three rubber stamp storage carts under the table.
The final wall has another table, 4'x2' for more counter space. I didn't include a picture because a table is a table.
The room's dimensions are 9' x 11'.
9/06/2010
We've Only Just Begun ...
Hubbie and I are celebrating our 36th wedding anniversary today.
After the ceremony in my parents' church, our small cadre of guests went to the Elks lodge for a seafood buffet. An antique fire truck sat outside the lodge. Hubbie thought it'd be cool to have our picture taken.
At our 25th anniversary, the family took us to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. When we were leaving, a man at another table put a hand on my husband's shoulder. He said into his ear, "The next 25 years are a lot easier ..."
We're finding that to be true. Being married gets easier.
9/01/2010
WoW: Crazy by Han Nolan
The Amazon description says, “Fifteen-year-old Jason has fallen upon bad times—his mother has died and his father has succumbed to mental illness. As he tries to hold his crazy father and their crumbling home together, Jason relies on a host of imaginary friends for guidance as he stumbles along trying not to draw attention to his father’s deteriorating condition.Both heartbreaking and funny, CRAZY lives up to the intense and compelling characters Han Nolan is praised for. As Jason himself teeters on the edge of insanity, Nolan uncovers the clever coping system he develops for himself and throws him a lifeline in the guise of friendship.
I love Han Nolan’s books for her exploration of serious issues and her depth of characterization.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
