Thursday, December 1, 2011

November Reading Recap and a few mini-reviews!

Teenage Boy exclaimed the other day: "This year is going by so fast!" and I agree.  December is just around the corner.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving spent in Deephaven, MN with my younger brother and his family.  The weather was gorgeous and the food was spectacular!  My brother has emerged as quite an eclectic chef and we had a non-traditional meal with King Salmon as the main course.  The salmon was caught in Lake Superior this past summer by my 9-year-old nephew!  A truly amazing feat and he was all smiles as we ooh'ed and aaah'ed over his tasty fish.

My reading in November was quirky:


 Bright Young Things by Anna Godberson (my shelf):  Ugh.  So wanted this to be as good as The Luxe series.  It was not.

 The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman (library):  This deserves a much longer review but suffice it to say I loved Hoffman's writing and will search for more of her prose.

 Spellbound (The 2nd book of Elsewhere) by Jacqueline West (library):  I loved this little series-perfectly creepy with a strong young female heroine. I reviewed it here.


 The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own making by Catherynne M. Valente (library):  I waxed poetically about this book here after just a few chapters.  The book stayed consistently superb.  The vocabulary alone puts it in a category all its own.  I had to look words up.  Such a treat.  The author's website offers a preview of the book.  Go on click and check it out!

Organizing the Disorganized Child by Martin L. Kutscher and Marcella Moran (new purchase):  Trying to help my Groovy Girl out a little here-this is filled with many great tools like this clock.

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (my shelf):  I don't love it as much as The Lightning Thief but it is a good adventure with mixed race siblings.  I love learning about ancient Egypt.  I've had this on my shelf since it was first published-glad to be finally crossing it off my list.  The same nephew that was responsible for bringing in the salmon was a little disgusted with me-he's read ALL of Riordan's books-some more than once!  He was all like "well, have your read The Son of Neptune??"  Ahh, not yet.

What have you been reading??
Happy December.

3 comments:

TheBookGirl said...

I love that you had salmon for Thanksgiving -- and the fact that it was caught by your nephew and that he basked in his family's praise over his catch is really the essence of a family holiday :)

NatalieSap said...

So sad that Bright Young Things didn't impress. I have yet to read it, but I loved The Luxe series too, so maybe I won't get around to it... The middle grade fantasy books you read all look great, especially the Fairyland one! How is it December already?!

Janssen said...

I can't agree more about the Bright Young Things response. Bah.