Reading Update - 2010 Goal Met!!!

I made a resolution at the beginning of this year to read at least 24 books this year. I have officially met my goal, and after this post, I will have blogged about all of them.

In July:

Prophecy by Elizabeth Haydon

This is a sequel to the fantasy novel Rhapsody. It was just all right. I was on the fence about the first book so I'm not sure why I decided to read the second. Three stars.

The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax

This is a fun, easy read about a down-and-out authoress who has writer's block and possible depression. She and her friends hatch a scheme to write a book to get her publisher off her back. Kind of silly but it is interesting in that it makes you wonder how the book came about. Three and a half stars.

Cataloochee by Wayne Caldwell

I chose Cataloochee because it shows a segment of the history of the state I live in. Back in the day, before all the State and National Parks and Forests were created, there were often people living and working that land. Cataloochee is about townships and farmers living in what is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park at the time before and during the creation of that park. Four and a half stars.

How to Stuff a Wild Zucchini by Heather Horrocks
This was a fun little chick book from Deseret Book. The protagonist ends up writing a gardening column for a Brigham City newspaper even though she knows nothing about gardening or plants. With the help of a persistent local fireman, she gets a good taste of Utah Mormon culture and the gospel. Three stars.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

This is the first book in an epic fantasy series that is well loved by many people. I myself thought it was entertaining and kind of interesting, but unlike others, I didn't love the characters. I suspect that perhaps if I read through the entire series and knew what becomes of each of the main characters, I would like them each more, but that is harder to do if you don't like them to start with. It was not a bad book and I would probably recommend it to readers who like long fantasy series, but for some reason I didn't connect with it. Four stars.

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan
Since the Wheel of Time series was recommended to me by many people whose reading opinions I trust, I decided to give it the old college try and read book 2 even though I didn't love book 1. It was about the same. Stuff happened, I didn't connect with the characters, and I wasn't intrigued by what was going to happen. I started reading book 3 after this and got about 50 pages in before losing steam on the series completely. Again, I suspect that it is an awesome series that I either went into with the wrong idea, or read at the wrong time to really enjoy it. Three and a half stars.

Alice in Wonderland or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was a weird dude. Alice in Wonderland, while famous and still entertaining, is like a crazy dream in which the unpredictable, unlikely, and probably impossible just keeps happening. That said, it is interesting to actually read the book (I think this is an abridged version) after seeing the movies. Three stars.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

I love a novel that you come away from wanting to know more about history and having learned some about places, people, and events that you never knew about. Guernsey is an British island situated closer to Normandy, France than it is England and it was occupied by German troops during World War II. This book tells the story of a number of the island residents during that time. It is well written and very interesting. Five stars.

In August:

None (I think). Shocking, I know!

In September:

It's Good to Be Alive by Jack Rushton

This is an inspirational collection of thoughts and anecdotes from a man who became a quadriplegic after a random accident. In his book, he tells how he recovered and how he maintains his positive attitude in spite of the challenges of his new life. Some parts were so funny that I had to read them aloud to my husband. This book is inspiring, insightful and humorous. Four and a half stars.

In October:

Dewey by Vicki Myron

I have found that many books labeled heart-warming don't actually warm my heart that much, but rather make me roll my eyes or imagine myself drowning in liquid cheese. Dewey, on the other hand, is a heartwarming story that often left me sitting there reading with a huge smile on my face and wanting to hug someone (poor Toby probably got smothered while I was reading this book). Dewey is a cat who, through a minor miracle, came to live at a small-town library. His distinctive personality makes this book entertaining and nice to read, but there is enough non-cat information and story-line that even non-cat lovers will enjoy it.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

I had heard so little about this book, while seeing often it's title hanging out with some of the cliquish classic titles, so I was curious about it. I really liked this book. Adams starts in the preface by saying that while many have made it into a political allegory, it was intended to just be an entertaining story that he told to his little girls. That said, Watership Down is the story of some rabbits who leave their home in search of somewhere better to live. All the rabbits are very well developed characters and the book is very well-written and entertaining. I recommend it to anyone. Five stars.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

I recalled when I started reading this that we had seen the 1974 movie version of this book, but fortunately, I have a rather bad memory for movie plots and I didn't remember much more detail than that I had seen it. Christie creates an interesting situation as a train sleeping car full of passengers is stranded in the snow in the middle of nowhere and they discover a man has been murdered. Luckily, the famous detective Hercules Poirot is on board and he begins an investigation. This book is interesting, creative, and well done. Four and a half stars.

Well, so far that is it. I may have forgotten one because my record keeping has been lax the last few months. I think Watership Down was my favorite of my most recent reads.

Our Kitchen

So the kitchen is still not 100% finished. It will happen someday, but I figured I ought to just put some pictures up anyways.

There may be a few finishing touches that need to happen, but it is 100% nicer than it was before! The floor is marvelous and the walls are so pretty!

There is some decor that needs to go on the wall above the table there but I'm hesitant to put it up because it would mean putting nail holes in our nice paint job... ugh!

We didn't do anything with the cabinets or appliances but I think I'll get some knobs for the drawers and cupboards. They don't really bother me now but I remember when we first moved here always thinking, "How do they expect you to open these drawers!?"

Still a little short on storage space...

The light fixture over the sink is one of my favorite new additions. Before there was a fluorescent tube light that would turn on only if it felt like it and you asked really nicely. This new light is much brighter, happier and more compliant.

Hooray for tile!

The things we still need to do are:

• hang the wall art,
• put knobs on cupboards and drawers,
• put up the edgers that go along the small gap between cupboards and wall by the stove.
• put one piece of the door trim up and caulk and paint all the trim (including doors and windows), stain and nail in cabinet base quarter-round.

I am so grateful that we have a nice kitchen to use now! Took us long enough!

One reason I love YW

Last Sunday, in about a 15-minute time span during our lesson in Young Women's, I heard the words prognosticate, profligate, and pejorative used in everyday sentences as though they are words that everybody knows and uses. I believe the teacher who talks like this is a book editor or some such profession and really is familiar with these words. I don't know what it is but I just am really amused and enjoy it when in just a few minutes, I can copy down multiple words of which I am unsure of the definition. It's probably a little odd, but I think this sesquipedalophilia runs in the family a bit.

Kitchen Sneak Preview

I've been trying hard to wait until the kitchen is finished and cleaned up before I post pictures of it. BUT a) it is taking a long time, b) I'm getting impatient, and c) it is such a wonderful improvement I can hardly wait to share it (and use it).

We are now so close! We are working on baseboards and trim right now. After that, we need to do some caulking and touch-up painting and a little ceiling repair. Then once we've cleaned everything up and put stuff back where it goes, it will be ready! It sounds like a lot but I think it is just a week or two away, if we stick with it.

So for now we'll have to settle for this before and after sneak preview. I promise I'll get a picture of the whole kitchen when it's done.

Before:

After:

Published

I forgot to post when this happened, but last month, Jeran was first author on a paper! "A Six-Gene Signature Predicts Survival of Patients with Localized Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma" was published in PloS Medicine in July. Hooray for Stratford JK et al.!

One Project Down (mostly)

Yesterday, Jeran worked and got our garden area mostly finished. It looks awesome. It was a pretty fun project. I always like the ones where we dig in the dirt and work with plants.

A before picture. This is how it looked when we moved here (for a while we had our motorcycle on the back patio under a tarp). There were some very nice flowers that died and didn't come back after a year of neglect so I dug them up to plant tomatoes.

I have wanted to do something with this garden area for a long time. When our home owner's association got a few bundles of landscape timbers and gave some to each homeowner, we decided it was time to make the change in our back garden.

We decided to use square pavers to extend the patio area a bit to give ourselves just a little more room between our patio and our new raised garden bed and somewhere to set the grill so it isn't in front of our window doors. For the garden itself, to maximize space and the short light we get due to the proximity to the house and trees, we decided to make it an L shaped bed off the corner of the patio.

Anyways, after weeks of planning and digging and waiting and working, it is mostly done!

There is still a little work and cleanup to do. This is before the excavated dirt from the pavers was filled in. We still need a little more dirt, but not as much as we expected, and the dirt we ended up with turned out to be slightly better quality that I expected. A lot of it was clay but we used as much of the solid clay to level under the paver base.

"After"

But that's not really the final product. The hardest part may yet to come, as we decide what to plant and make it something that is both pretty and functional. I'm thinking some flowers and some vegetables... but I'm totally undecided. Also, we plan to get something to sit on and probably bring our grill home from it's summer vacation in a little while. So it might look something more like this professional artist's rendition:

Next on the docket are more kitchen projects. Like that tile! It will happen someday soon and we won't be living with a bare concrete kitchen floor!

Reading Update

I'm well on my way to completing my goal to read 24 books this year. Since I last updated you on my reading (mid February), I have found many new books that I love. Here's what I've read since then.

In March:

Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn

A quick, easy read about a step-family who is struggling to love each other, and the ghosts that haunt them. This book is aimed toward young teens but is well-written and develops the relationships well. Although I'm familiar with her name, I had only ever read Time for Andrew by Mary Downing Hahn so I was glad to read more of her work. 3 stars.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Wow. What else can I say? This was a very good book. Although occasionally the monologues dragged on a bit excessively long, it was interesting and thought-provoking, with great characters, a great plot, and struggles and triumphs that you can really feel. Five stars.

In April:

The Lovely Bones by Alice Seebold
Fascinating. It made me think about a lot of things I don't normally think about. It was thought-provoking to see each different family member's reaction to the death. I watched the movie after reading the book and the movie was pretty well done also, and for once they left out stuff you wouldn't want to see instead of adding more! Four stars.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
Not too bad. This book has a little bit of everything in it. It has got disappearances, murder, business, police, corporate intrigue, journalism, security, family, wealth, poverty, family, love, hate, serial killers, etc. I could go on and on with that list. The book was a bit gritty and I don't think I would read it again and probably won't read the sequel. Three stars.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

& Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
These are obviously re-reads. Or technically in this case, re-listens, since I listened to the audio books. Of course they are both awesome. As an additional bonus, listening to these got Jeran really interested in finding more good audio books so if you know of any that he might like, let me know! Anyways, I love Harry Potter and these two are my favorite two books of the set. Five (hundred) stars.

In May:

I started The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood but I just couldn't get into it. I don't think it was too boring or anything, I think it was just bad timing and I might try the book again later. Sometimes I will start a book that I think I will like but it just doesn't grab me up for some reason. I don't know why that is. I often check out three or four books from the library and read all but one of them. I don't know why... I'm always interested in all the books when I check them out and I usually couldn't tell you which one won't get read. It's weird. Anyways... back to the list:

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Good good. Another very interesting book about a girl during WWII, this time a young Jewish girl in France and how her story eventually came to be known. This is a really poignant book that has really stayed with me more than a lot of other books. Four and a half stars.

Anthem by Ayn Rand
Excellent. This short novella is very interesting and has enough plot and philosophy to keep both strong and interesting. In a society where the word "I" has been completely forgotten, one person searches for a sense of identity and self. Five stars.

The Big Empty by J.B. Stephens
Mediocre. The characters were not very compelling and the relatively simple story has been intentionally dragged out over many books. In this, the first book of the series, they barely make it the first step of their adventure. Two stars.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Great. I can't say for sure yet whether I like this book or Atlas Shrugged better but once you've read one, there seems to be little need to read the other since they are so very similar in character. conflict, ideals and philosophy. There is a lot of merit and truth in Rand's objectivism philosophy, but with all three of Rand's books that I hve read this year strongly centered on the same concepts, it got a bit predictable. It is still very entertaining and interesting, probably especially if you haven't read Atlas Shrugged. Five stars.

So far this June (half-way through):

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
This was an interesting work of fiction about some important women of the Old Testament: Dinah, Rachel, Leah. I have read another novel about these women (Orson Scott Card's Rachel & Leah) and it was interesting to see the differences and similarities in the stories. Both are based on the little snippets of information that can be pulled from the Bible, and then fleshed out to make them real women. This book was pretty good. Four stars.

Day After Night by Anita Diamant

Day After Night is a historical fiction book about four Jewish women, each from different circumstances and with different backgrounds, right after WWII. They are all stuck waiting in a camp in Israel until they can get through the bureaucracy and officially immigrate to the new homeland. It was pretty interesting but not one of my favorite recent reads. The best thing about it was getting to know a little more of the history of the creation of Israel (although the actual facts are sparse throughout, but you get a feel for it). Three stars.

Well, that's it so far. If I don't count Harry Potters, that brings me to 16 books for the year but it's not really about the number. If you have any recommendations, send them my way! :)