Prodigal Summer

From Amazon: Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and confound her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the complexities of a world neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth.

With the richness that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative and ideas that only an accomplished novelist could render so beautifully.

I'm not going to lie to you, I struggled getting into this book. A friend of mine accurately described the book as "mothy". The entire book is filled with a lot of scientific talk of nature, especially moths. There's also a scene that I won't spoil for you but one of the characters has a dream about a moth that was quite...unusual. Not that I don't also have strange dreams but this one took the cake in my opinion. 


The book focuses on three main characters who never quite intersect. Deanna is a moody middle aged woman living up 'air in the mountain as a forest ranger. I found it hard to understand her constant mood swings. Lusa is a young widow learning to cope not only with the loss of her husband but also trying to find acceptance among her four sister in laws. I found Lusa to be a likable character and would have happily read a book just about her. Lastly, the was Garnett, a retired high school teacher in his 80's. Garnett is as a crotchety old man as they come. Many of the chapters devoted to him had me laughing out loud. 


The personal story lines of Prodigal Summer were enjoyable, they drew me in and left me wondering what happened to each character after the final page was turned. The long winded paragraphs about bugs, birds, wildlife and plants were dry and tedious reading. I found myself skipping ahead to get back to the story. I also found some of it to be preachy. I don't know how many times I needed to hear each character talk about the importance of leaving predators alone and not using pesticides. I wanted to just scream "I heard you the first time lady!"


All in all, I enjoyed the book but don't think I would read anything else by this author unless it was about these characters (I really do want to know what happened to them). I felt that it slowed me down on my reading (I have something like 12 ebooks checked out from Overdrive at the moment) and made me work too hard at paying attention to what was going on rather than just enjoying the story.

Common Sense Media

Take a look at any of the Porky's movies or revisit cult classic Animal House and you'll see that crudeness in movies is not a new thing. I guess as a parent, I am beginning to notice every curse word, crude joke and potty humor in movies and television shows. Sometimes it's obvious that a movie is going to be crude, but other times it's unexpected. Everyone seems to know that Bridesmaids had a lot of crude humor, Friends with Benefits kind of gives it away in the title, but not all movies come with fair warning.

Even children's movies are not safe from adult humor. I was shocked by a scene in Madagascar 2 featuring a very sexual exchange between two hippos. And I didn't even have kids of my own at that point!


 Now as a parent I need to be careful about what my daughter sees and hears. She repeats everything. Honestly, I don't want my kid walking around talking about butts and repeating sexual innuendo.

The most effective way to avoid this would be to sell our televisions and place our daughter in a tower (making sure to keep her hair CUT!!!) to be sure that she was never, ever exposed to this raunchy world that we live in. Many people are actually doing this. We're being told to limit or completely cut our kids off from tv and video games. We're told that television viewing is bad for their health, discourages family time and teaches our children bad values. A friend of mine just enrolled her son into a charter school that tells kids and parents they need to shut down all devices for weeks at a time and report back about their experiences.

I think it's great that so many families are cutting the cord and spending more time together as a family. Really, it's wonderful. However, there are the rest of us who enjoy watching television. But we're still concerned about what our children see and hear.

Ready for my plug? Oh come on, this is a review blog, so you had to know I was fixing to plug something. Sheesh!

Anyway, when I want to watch something while my daughter is awake or we want to watch a movie as a family, I rely on Common Sense Media to help me out. I use their search engine to find the movie of choice and they then tell me everything I need to know about the movie regarding sex, language (even the word butt), violence, role models, etc. Seriously, everything I want to know before viewing with my daughter.

So if you're one of those parents that took their kids on opening weekend to see Cars 2 and got upset about the violence, this website is for you. Find out before you go if a movie is right for your family. Different things bother different people. Some families would think the scene I embedded from Madagascar 2 was funny and that it isn't inappropriate or that the violence in Cars 2 was tame, but other families might be offended or their kids would get scared. Whatever, it's a great website that I highly recommend!

Best Staged Plans

Best Staged Plans

From Amazon:

"As a professional home stager, Sandy Sullivan is an expert at transforming cluttered rooms into attractive houses ready for sale. If only reinventing her life were as easy as choosing the perfect paint color. She’s eager to put her family’s suburban Boston home on the market, to downsize, and to simplify her own life. But she must first deal with her foot-dragging husband and her grown son, who has moved back home after college to inhabit the basement “bat cave.”

After reading them the riot act, Sandy takes a job staging a boutique hotel in Atlanta recently acquired by her best friend’s boyfriend. The good news is that she can spend time with her recently married daughter, Shannon, in Atlanta. The bad news is that Shannon finds herself heading to Boston for job training, leaving Sandy and her southern son-in-law, Chance, as reluctant roommates. If that’s not complicated enough, Sandy begins to suspect that her best friend’s boyfriend may be seeing another woman on the side.

Filled with characters who are fresh and original, yet recognizable enough to live in your neighborhood—plus plenty of great tips and tricks for fixing up houses, and lives—this is a wise and witty story of letting go and moving on.Best Staged Plans is Claire Cook at her most humorous and heartfelt."

I wanted to like this book. So much so that when my 21 days with Overdrive ran out before I had time to read a single line of it (hey! I'm a busy reader and I just checked out too many at once this time!) I checked it back out. Anyhow...

I felt like the book was kind of dragging along. I'm a quick reader and I tend to read 150 or so pages of whatever book at bedtime, more if I'm completely hooked (and not completely exhausted!). But I was reading this one only a chapter at a time. Which is why it took me a couple nights to reach 46%. I know it was 46% because that's what my Kindle Fire told me and also where I quit this book.

Backing up...The plot is basic about this woman who so desperately wants to move out of her family home and into something smaller, something fresh and new. In the process, she will be kicking her grown son out of her basement. Claire Cook switches between dialogue of the main character, Sandy, complaining that her family isn't doing enough to ready the house and flashbacks to when Sandy's children were young and the house was newly theirs. When an opportunity arises for Sandy to head to Atlanta to stage a hotel, she packs her bags (May I note that she does this without discussing the trip and extended stay with her husband. In fact she only tells him when he walks into the bedroom to find her packing.) and heads south.

Arriving in Atlanta she stays with her newlywed daughter, Shannon, and her son-in-law, Chance. For an unexplained reason she seems to despise Chance. She's just short of rude to her son-in-law (though it seems like up to this point she had been bitchy to everyone) with her only excuse being that she doesn't know what her daughter sees in him, though he is nice enough.

Back to way I stopped at 46%. Call me sensitive or defensive if you like. Upon arriving at her daughter's new home (which she also talks trash about), Sandy finds Shannon in the kitchen wearing omg! an apron while cooking dinner. Chance leaves the kitchen to sit in the living room while mother and daughter catch up. When Shannon announces that she needs to iron her husband's work shirt all hell breaks loose. Sandy embarks on a two page tangent on how she raised her daughter better than this, that women fought and died for the rights to equality that Shannon so clearly chooses to throw away, and why on earth did Sandy waste all that money on Shannon's education just to have it wasted. Seriously. All over cooking dinner for her mother's arrival, wearing an apron...to protect her clothes, and ironing her husband's shirt. Seriously. Oh but wait, Mom wearing just joshing you! Hahahahahahahaha CLICK, I am so beyond done with this book.

As I said, maybe I'm defensive but this just grated on my nerves. While yes I am a stay at home mom, my husband and I share responsibilities in the home. We did this before kids, before I left the work force and will continue to do it. I do wifey things for him, but he helps me with things as well. But even if I did all the "wife" duties, that doesn't make me a slave for my husband nor does it throw away women's rights. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing household things...besides someone has to do it right? What is Chance is a terrible at ironing? I know I am! What got me the most was when Sandy's blood boils over the whole thing. Why is it so terrible that her daughter did this one thing?

Anyway, this book was dry and in my case offensive. I wasn't very into it to begin with, but that whole thing just ended it for me. The cover was very pretty though. ;)

"Linda Lael Miller, the queen of western romance, kicks off a fine trilogy about the newest generation of the McKettrick men. This one pits Cheyenne Bridges against Jesse McKettrick, "the original trust fund bad boy." Cheyenne, fiercely proud, grew up poor in Indian Rock, Arizona, and returns in her designer suit and heels to do the impossible: persuade Jesse McKettrick to sell a breathtakingly beautiful piece of land inherited from his ancestors (McKettrick's Choice) so it can be developed. Still, she is highly motivated -- not by her Trump-style boss (who's always saying things like "failure is not an option") but by medical expenses for her wheelchair-bound younger brother."

This was a good, light read. 

I don't normally read anything remotely Western, so this was a little new to me. But when you strip away some horses, poker, a ranch etc you're left with your average romance. The bedroom scenes were steamy without being trashy. The characters had depth and personality which you don't always get  in a romance.

Water for Elephants

"As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival."

I just couldn't put this book down. I stayed up until almost 2 am finishing Water for Elephants. 


Gruen has an amazing talent for painting a picture in my mind. I felt as though I was in the book and watching everything take place. To be able to clearly see in my mind a circus act performed was incredible. Each and every step was viewed in my mind rather than just the general idea that a performance was taking place.


I finished the book torn between wanting to go to a circus (I've never been) and wanting to boycott them for past offenses, though I'm sure things are much better these days. 


Great book, must read!

I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas

I downloaded I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas expecting a humorous, cynical read about Christmas. Bah hum bug.

What you get instead of constant humor is a lesson in humanity. Black doesn't claim to be perfect, he admits many faults throughout this book. Black walks us through a typical holiday season from his perspective from Thanksgiving through Christmas. While his view of the commercial Christmas is negative, he celebrates Christmas day with friends and by donating to various charities. Black sets a good example even though he admits that he could never possibly do or give enough.

With the stage and microphone stripped away, we are left with a man who has fought to get where he is today. A man who is not without regrets. When you take away the humor, we're left with a man who had a brush with marriage and fatherhood.

I did get a chuckle or two from this book but I felt more sobered by Black's book than tickled. I didn't walk away from this book hating Christmas but rather inspired to do more for others.

Personal Reading Challenge

Over the weekend we moved our bookshelves from an unused downstairs bedroom up to our personal bedroom.  This accomplished two things. 1. We transformed an unused bedroom into a family/playroom for us and our daughter. 2. We do most of our reading at bedtime, so by having the bookshelves in our bedroom, we're promoting reading.

Every April and October, our local library distract has a Friends of the Library Book Sale. The books come from the library itself and many donations from the community. I personally donate a large number of books each year. I go to both sales each year, probably two days of the sale each time. On average, I gain about 60-100 new books each year. Once I finish reading them, I donate them back. The books are inexpensive and the profit goes to many great causes, supporting our local library and sending books to our troops.

I also have friends and family members (ahem HEATHER) that constantly give me books to read, usually with permission to donate when I am done with them.

As you can imagine, my ONE bookshelf is double stacked.

Last year my husband bought me a Nook e-reader. I've had it for over a year and have yet to pay for a book for it. Between Barnes and Noble's free selection, Gutenberg.org , and the Overdrive program through our library, my Nook bookshelf resembles the one in my bedroom...packed.

My problem is that I continue to shop the book sale (4 or so trips a year), but since the addition of my Nook, that is so comfy in my hand and easy to read (!), I have stopped reading actual books. Which means that when it comes time for me to make room by selecting books to donate I have a difficult time since I haven't read any of them! Of my haul from April, I have read ONE book. It was a good book, but I'm sure the others are too!

So here is my personal challenge. I am going to read each book on my shelf.

I will start by removing and boxing up my "collector" books, the books that I have already read and though I may never read again I am unwilling to part with, and ship them off to my storage unit for safe keeping. I will then place ALL of my unread books on my shelf. That's right, despite my cleansing ritual, I still have additional books in boxes, canvas bags and plastic tubs. Yes, I do have a problem with books! From there I will begin reading through ALL of my unread books until every last one has been read or discarded because I couldn't get into it. Along the way I will attempt to review each one (I'm bad about that but it is a habit I need to form.)

So there you have it. There is no deadline, no real rules. I would like to increase my reading time. Currently I only read at bedtime, but now that we have this cozy reading corner in the family room, I would like to spend LESS time online and MORE time doing the things I love...like reading!

Follow my progress here and on Goodreads.

P.S Kim, if you're reading this...I'm not proofreading that rambling mess. If you found a typo or bad grammar, you're just going to have to ignore it. *Giggles*