I Guess I Tried to Repress It SPOILERS

Stone Fox was one of the worst, worst books I have ever read. Ever.  The dog dies very suddenly at the end.  His heart explodes. Terrible.  Terrible.  Terrible.  I read this last year but never wrote about it, or even marked it read on goodreads.  But it is set in Wyoming, which I needed for my Reading Road Trip.

Anticipation

for the Well of Witches, the third book in the Thickety series was well worth it.  I read the first two, A Path Begins and The Whispering Trees when I wasn't writing on here as much.  All I can say is, this is an excellent series.  It really stands up through all three and doesn't feel like "Oh man...another book I have to read."  Great fantasy, even if you aren't a "fantasy person" which I am not.  Scary and creepy good.

Great Sequel!

The Terrible Two Get Worse was a very funny follow up to The Terrible Two, which I read last year.  In the first one, Miles moves to a new town, from his old school where he was the king of all pranksters.  He mets Niles who is an even better prankster and they join forces.  In this second book, pranksters Miles and Niles seem to have met their match.  After they unintentionally get their principal fired, they have to deal with his father, who is coming down hard on would-be trouble makers.  Very funny.  Looking forward to the next one in the series.

Talk to Me

This was a good song.  I used to have such a crush on Mickey Gilley.  Navajo Code Talker:  a novel about the Navajo Marines of WW2 was a very good book.  Again, very important to read for those who are still thinking that we treat Native Americans just swell.  It made me angry and guilt-ridden.  Amazing, incredible story of brilliance and bravery.

Another Great Stone Book

Hot Pursuit was like back-in-the-day Stone yet again.  I don't think that it would be possible to start the series anywhere but the beginning though.  Too many characters that have long history.   The series is well worth the investment, though, for pure fun.

Excellent

the song and the book Stella by Starlight are both favorites of mine.
Another fantastic book by Sharon M. Draper.
Another reminder of our horrible past.  The shame we must bear. And the present isn't really much better.  When will we learn?

One of those Things...

I couldn't remember the name, but my AUTHOR friend Rachel knew it right away!  Bone Gap has one of the worst cases of deus ex machina I have ever experienced.  I liked this book--- at first, but then the end completely ruined it for me.  I am so sorry.
But if you don't mind the whole DEM thing, then you will probably like it.
I did learn about prosopagnosia, though.

To Both of My Fans

If you have been struggling through these posts for any time now, you will notice that when I love a book, I LOVE it.  And it is the.best.book.that.was.ever.read!
I felt that way about Multipliers:  How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter right from the start and so I tried to control myself.
Take a breath.
Try to read with a critical mind.
But that just isn't me.
This book really helped me to realize a lot of the mistakes that I make in managing.
For which I am very, very sorry.
And so I am trying very hard to be a "multiplier" and not a diminisher."
For one thing, I am very, very, very blessed.  I work with intelligent, creative, hard-working people. People who are far more intelligent, creative and hard-working than I am.  And so I have a great, great responsibility to be worthy of that role.
I have started to put some of the principles in Multipliers into action and so far, so good!
Did I mention that the folks with whom I work are also very forgiving?
And for that, I am super thankful!

Do You Wish

that you were related to Gary Paulsen?
I wonder if he sits around and tells stories to his friends and family.
I think he is one of those people I could listen to forever.
It is great when an audiobook has a little message from him at the end.  This one promised to, but it was not there!
But he did introduce the book.
The Winter Room is just plain, good fiction.  With meaning, but no preaching.  I think Paulsen is magic.
This one is more along the lines of the Alida series.  There isn't a lot that HAPPENS.  But it is intended to be that way, it's not like it is an action book that failed.

Paulsen

By now it is probably clear that I fall in love with anything that Gary Paulsen writes.
The Rifle is a powerful, powerful little story.
One that everyone should read.
It follows a rifle from its birth prior to the American Revolutionary War into the 1990s.
It isn't preachy.  It is just real.

Davenport in the Spring and Flowers in the Fall

It seems that way, anyway.  Parker, Woods and Sandford all seem to come out with a book around the same time.  Well, not Parker, but the folks who are carrying on the Parker Legend.
Gathering Prey was good, good, good.  Everything you expect in from Lucas Davenport.  Virgil even showed up for a bit.
I have seen the word Juggalo on bathroom walls over time and it was nice to find out what the word means!
Good stuff.

Since

I have been off of my obsessive reading kick for a while, I didn't even know that Kiera Cass had written another book in the Selection series.  The Heir is number four.  The Queen is a short story that I didn't know existed, either.
I think it is time to surrender and change my goodreads goal. There is no way I will make 300 this year.  I am cutting it in half.
I can't say I liked The Heir all that much.  While I loved the Selection, this one just didn't do it for me.  And the ending was pretty irritating.  I will read the next one though...and yes, there will be next one, for sure.

Amber Brown is Not a Crayon is the first in the Amber Brown series.  You Can't Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown is the second.  The third is Amber Brown Goes Fourth.  The fourth book in the series is Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit.  Forever Amber Brown is the fifth.  Sixth is Amber Brown Sees Red.

Wheew.  That took a long time.

Obviously I did like this series.  I listened to all of them through the library. And that is only way I could have read them, probably because the covers are terrible.

Not Gary Paulsen book cover terrible.  But pretty terrible.

Amber Brown books aren't as good as Gary Paulsen books, no, but they are more than I thought they would be.  Amber's parents are divorced and I don't know...these were really the first books that I read that gave me a real sense (as much as it could be real) about how a kid feels when his or her parents get divorced.  Well, a fictional third and fourth grader, anyway.

There is a lot of pain in these books.

Shiloh...the Rest of the Story...

Shiloh Season is the second book in the Shiloh series  and Saving Shiloh is the third and final.  I really did enjoy these books, a lot.  I thought that the relationship between Marty and Judd, the man with the drinking problem who previously owned Shiloh.  I can see why this is very popular.

Storming the Beaches

My dear friend Sharon visited Normandy this summer.  It was one of those things on her Bucket List and I am so glad she got go.  She couldn't really put into words how moving it was.  For that reason when I saw D-Day:  the Invasion of Normandy, 1944 I wanted to have a listen.
This is the first book that I have read by Rick Atkinson and the guy is a Pulitzer winner so you know he is beyond good, but maybe writing for kids just isn't his thing or maybe I was just used to Jim Murphy and Steve Sheinkin who do nonfiction for young people so very, very well.
Still, this was a very good book and sure to be well liked by those interested in the subject.

Once again, just because you HAVE to read something, doesn't mean it is going to be terrible

Also just because someone famous wrote a book, that doesn't mean it is going to be terrible either.  Football Genius, the first in the Football Genius series is by Tim Green played for the Atlanta Falcons and did all kinds of other sports-stuff before writing books.

I figured that I had to read this book because I had never read any of them and they are super popular and if they were any good, I thought maybe I could recommend them to folks looking for sports books, of which I have read very, very little.  

This is one I can recommend for sure.  Good story.  I really liked the main character, Troy.

I didn't like the LOVE part, but it was so small that I was able to deal and I think that people who don't like love parts will be able to deal as well.  Maybe I was just listening to it on a day when I was down with love.  

I probably will read the next one, but I have so many others to read right now!

Nest and Birds

It seems like 2014 was the year of birds in children's and tween books. There was Nightingale's Nest, Nest and Bird.  Okay. That is only three, but still!    Beyond the Laughing Sky was a bird book, but not "just another bird book."  This book was so....weird!  But it was very good and quotable.

 "You said "impossible."  There's no such thing.  There's things you've seen and things you may not have, but there ain't nothing that's impossible, sugar."

"...some things are too extraordinary to stay in our world for very long.  And so the time they are here should be taken as a gift, as a pause for a moment in front of us, as a hummingbird in the bell of a flower."

Folks Keep Telling Me

to read One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt but I haven't yet.  But I did read her new book Fish in a Tree and it was quite good and makes me think I do need to back and do OFTM.
It's a great, great story about a great, great kid named Ally who is a smart, smart kid but has trouble reading like other kids due to dyslexia, which none of her teachers have discovered yet.  They think she is lazy or a troublemaker.  A new teacher helps finds her the help that she needs.

Three More Kazoos

Friends for Never, Love Stinks, and Bad Rap were three solid additions to the Katie Kazoo series.  I can't seem to get tired of these and at least by #16 (Bad Rap), Krulik doesn't seem to be tired of writing them, either.  I was especially despondent when reading Love Stinks and so it came at a good time!

Oh, It Happens!

I just finished listening to Rebel Yell:  the violence, passion and redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne and I have been since October.  Before it was published I was reading the ARC aloud to my mom.  She is a big Gen. Jackson fan and so far, I can see why.  The thing is, the book is long and we only listened in the car and so it took awhile.

One of the passages in this book that I love dearly is this one:

But there was another reason Jackson was interested in the Junkin family. One of the reverend doctor’s eight children was the spirited, devout, and cheerfully irreverent Elinor, known as Ellie, a year younger than Jackson and still resident in the Junkin home . He had met her on an early visit and had become more intimate with her when they both began teaching Sunday school at the Presbyterian church in February 1852. Soon he was falling in love with her , though it apparently took a bit of time before he understood what was happening to him. Harvey Hill describes a visit from Jackson during which, no matter what Hill said, Jackson would manage to maneuver the conversation back to Ellie. Jackson finally confessed, “I don’t know what has changed me. I used to think her plain, but her face now seems to me all sweetness .” Hill started to laugh and then replied, “You are in love. That’s what is the matter!” According to Hill, Jackson then “blushed up to the eyes, and said that he had never been in love in his life, but he certainly felt differently toward this lady from what he had ever felt before.” 13
Gwynne, S. C. (2014-09-30). Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson (Kindle Locations 2677-2682). Scribner. Kindle Edition.
n.

If you have ever had a crush, you know exactly what has been going on with Jackson.

But enough of that, just suffice to say that sometimes falling for someone causes one's behavior to change.  Like talking about someone a lot, or not reading as much as one did in the past.  That kind of thing.

The BIG thing that I can't get past with Jackson, is of course, his stand on slavery.  Apparently there is not much written about how Jackson felt about this evil.  Just that he took the Bible literally and there is slavery in the Bible and so he couldn't see how it could be wrong then.  Jackson was not as smart as many think he was, is all I can say.

It is hard for me to have full love for this man.  I know that people are complicated and life is complicated, but how one could look at the institution of slavery and not recognize its inherent evilness...well, that is very, very hard to understand.