Beastmomma

This week's theme for Weekly Geeks is to write about our fond memories of childhood books. I decided to make up a meme. If you are so included, please feel free to leave your responses in the comments or a link to a post on your own blog. You can also add additional questions or edit your responses as you like.

1. What is the earliest book you remember loving?

This is a tough choice. It is a toss up between Are you My Mother and anything by Dr. Seuss.

2. When you were younger, which book characters did you want to be in your circle of friends?

I had several--- Nancy Drew, Harriet the Spy, Ramona, the character from the Great Brian, any of the kids in Enid Blyton books.

3. What books do you have nostalgia for as an adult?

In middle and high school, I got addicted to the Sweet Valley series and when I am craving something trashy, I think about picking up one of those.

4. What books do you wish to share with the kids in your life?

With the exception of those mention in #3, all of the above!

5. More philosophical question--- how do you think your childhood reading shaped what you like to read as an adult?

From a young age, I liked characters who questioned things and tried to create their own identity. I am still strong to stories with strong leads that have integrity.

• Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

I was a writing major in college, so I had to buy a few writing manuals.  Nowadays, the one reference book I use is the Blue Book which has all the rules for how to cite in legal documents.  I do own a dictionary, but I have not opened it for many years.  I also still hope to return to creative writing and own a few books of writing prompts and other instructions on writing.

Time for Weekly Geeks #2! This week, Dewey has challenged the Weekly Geeks to borrow an idea (with permission, of course) from Darla at Books and Other Thoughts and link reviews of other book bloggers to our reviews.

This will allow everyone to get a variety of opinions on the same book! Sounds like a great idea to me. So for this week's assignment, I'll be cruising participant's blogs and leaving links to my reviews and if you have reviewed any of the books below, leave me a link to your review in the comments to this post or in a comment on the review and I'll link it to my review.  If you do not have a blog, but would like to share your thoughts on any of the books, leave that in the comments as well. I will see if I can incorporate those into the review as well. If I have time, I may even look at non-participant blogs to see what we have in common :)

• 1984-- Finished
• A Girl Named Zippy-- Complete
• A Walk in the Woods-Complete
• All Over Creation--Complete
• Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant
• Behaving Like Adults--Complete
• Book of Dead Birds-- Complete
• Chin Kiss King--Complete
• Eat, Pray, Love--Complete
• Education of a Woman-- In Process
• Garlic and Sapphires
• Guns, Germs, and Steel-- Finished
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-- Complete
• I Know This Much is True-- Finished
• Karma and Other Short Stories-- Complete
• Killing Time: My War in Iraq
• Kitchen--Complete
• Memoirs from the Women's Prison-- Complete
• Memoirs of a Geisha-- Complete
• Middlemarch- Finished
• Midnight's Children-- Complete
• Nanny Diaries-- Complete
• Queen of Dreams-- Complete
• Runaway-- Finished
• Slaughterhouse-Five-- Complete
• Son of a Witch-- Complete
• St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
• The Color of Water-- Finished
• The Hungry Tide--In Process
• The Red Tent--Complete
• Tipping Point-- Finished
• Wicked-- Finished
• Wind Up Bird Chronicle

I first heard about this book from Sonja who had given the book as a present to her sister Karen.  I did not plan to read the book until it was selected as the March/April selection at Planet Books.   St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves makes for good reading while in law school.  The short stories are easy enough to read quickly, but bizarre and filled with enough twists to keep my attention.  My one complaint was that I felt the stories did not have enough resolution; I found myself asking, "But, what about?"  Through the course of the Sunday Salon, I got to keep track of what I thought about specific stories.

"Accident Brief, Occurrence #00/422" and the flagship story "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves." Both of the stories were sad. The main characters were frustrated with their current circumstances but did not have the power or resources to create a change.  This week, I also read, "Out to Sea." The main character in that story was an older man with one leg who lived in a retirement community that is made of boats.  After taking Elder Law this semester, I found myself wondering why he did not plan for better long term care.  The story was also sad because the main character's main source of companionship is a visit from a teenager who steals from him.   

I read "The City of Shells," which was surprisingly sad. The cleverness of the author's writing is how she manages to pack in a lot of subtle twist and turns, but then still manage to have a quick ending.  In some of the stories I found this frustrating because I wanted the characters to have more resolution.  I also realized that many of the short stories feature water--- either the ocean or rain.  This week I also read the following stories in this book: "from Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration" and "Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snows." Both of those stories featured characters with rough transitions.  Of the three stories, my favorite was the one about Westward Migration.  In that story, I liked the relationship between the father and son.  In the Lady Yeti story, I found myself disturbed by the sexual undertones. 

Recommend to a friend? Yes.

I am using this book as the "first name" selection for the What's in a Name Reading Challenge.

Other Reviews:

Care's Online Book Club