Dewey's II -- or, a great way to survive a bout of influenza.

I started this blog with the last (first) Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon. When I went on Youtube and saw a favourite vlogger talking about it coming around again, I figured, why not?

Then I got the Plague that has been going around the office. Luckily, I posted a restricted book list last night--only two books. The ones I wanted to get through were (1) The Looking-Glass Wars by Frank Beddor - a current book club item- and (2) A Geek Girl's Guide to Murder by Julie Anne Lindsey. Done! and Done!

Both were really great  -- Looking Glass was a little better than the other, but that's simply because it had more tricks and turns. I had figured out who the main suspect truly was with the mystery novel early on --cozy mysteries have long been a favourite of mine. Getting the characters from the beginning to the end and seeing how it was deconstructed was entertaining. And just like Looking Glass, this one has openings you can see the future novels using as launching off points. I enjoyed the protagonist quite a bit -- quirky, smart, introverted and can handle herself. She reminds me very much of a friend of mine. The main character, Mia Connor,  has a family that is just as decent and bizarre as that of Stephanie Plum's in the Janet Evanovich series -- but not so carbon copy as to get annoying. It's a danger with any writer of a quirky cozy mystery heroine to avoid being a Stephanie Plum knock-off --but so far this one seems to avoid that trap. And best of all, it does geekery accurately.

I'm going to try to avoid spoiling Looking-Glass Wars for anyone reading this. Which is difficult because I really want to discuss the plot points on this with someone - I already have theories about some of the characters identities! Essentially this is a fairy-tale with a twist -- the author has taken Lewis Carrol's well loved book and turned it slightly on its ear. It predates Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland by 4 years but there are some strong echoes of this book in that movie, particularly in the role of the Mad Hatter. Probably the strongest resonances, however, are simply due to the fact that this book reads like a movie. The pacing, the visual imagery, the world building -- all would make this a cinch to translate to the big screen. If you are a person that dislikes slow books, read this one.
Now I have to go online in search of books 2-4. Oh, and if you do take my advice and bring this to the big screen, I deserve at least a credit in the film, eh?

There's a couple more hours left in this readathon, but I think the Plague is going to keep me from continuing on any further. Bleaugh.

Cheers, friends and fellow read-a-thoners. And here's to doing my third Dewey's readathon in next April! Maybe I will actually get time to do a lot of the events next go round.

Never Judge a Book By Its Cover

So, I was in the library grabbing books to read, in a bit of a rush. Picked up the holds I had waiting, collected a few more of the Y: The Last Man series, and was looking for something to round out the stack of volumes I was about to borrow. I saw this book on display in the "New Books" section.

No time to read the back cover -- it looks like a food book. And addressing organic food --maybe ths is something like what Michael Pollan writes, I thought to myself. Or book in the same vein as "Can You Trust a Tomato in January," by Vince Staten.  Needless to say, I was expecting a bunch of foodie wisdom and rants.

What I got was the joys and travails in the life of a stay-at home mom. Quite the dramatic content shift!  Or to quote Obi-wan..

Although this wasn't what I would probably have picked up for myself, it actually turned out to be not that bad a book. It reminded me a lot of Jenny Lawson's Blogess series, but kid-focused. The author, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, doesn't pull punches and she uses humour to take issue with the state of parenting today. In a world where the mere act of sending a lunch to school with a child is promoted by Martha Stewart and her ilk as an opportunity to get creative with ingredients and presentation, producing little bento boxes of cuteness, she doesn't hold back from telling the world:

She also takes the world of "everyone's child is a special snowflake and/or genius" to task, and gives parents of the world the sad fact that no, their child most likely isn't a genius/ the next Picasso/ insert superlative here. And really, how could they be? The whole idea of everyone being exceptional leads to no one being so. The book covers a wide variety of other topics as well, from finding a new BFF that can relate to your status as a new mom to how not to get sucked into the black hole of being an unappreciated volunteer at the local PTA (in other words, avoiding Mean Girls part II), to reviews of children's books that are a bit problematic when you think about what they are actually saying. (I liked that she agreed with me on The Giving Tree by Sheldon Silverstein being abused by the little boy.)

Overall, I gave this book a 3.5 out of 5. Some of the humour fell a little flat for me, and some of the content was stuff I had heard quite a bit before. But overall, it was good. I would probably recommend this book to my friends with little ones.