Author: stacybuckeye

December’s 5 Word Movie Reviews – Join In

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Once a month I feature the movies I’ve seen for the first time with a 5 word ‘review’.  Only it’s not really a review.  For that I need your help.  I hope that you’ll add your 5 words to my 5 words and that someone else will add their 5 words and so on until we have a a fun hodgepodge of words that make up a ‘review’.

This month you can give money to charity by contributing your 5 words (Details here).  Please join the fun :)  Past 5 Word Reviews here.  We’re up to $99.

(2011. Cast-Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace)   Grade A-

Smartly done period dramedy. Fun.

Even better than the first. (Michelle)

Downey, still my fave Sherlock.  (Heather)

(2011. Cast-Ed Helms, John C. Reilley, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver)       Grade B

Earnest Insurance Hijinks.  No, really.

(2010. Cast-Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel)                            Grade B

Totally unrealistic but cute romance.

Surprisingly cute but overly predictable.  (Heather)

My Personal Best: Life Lessons from an All-American Journey, by John Wooden with Steve Jamison

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My Personal Best: Life Lessons from an All-American JourneyFinished 12-26-11, rating 4.5/5, non-fiction, 202 pages, pub. 2004

Never lie

Never cheat

Never steal

Don’t whine

Don’t complain

Don’t make excuses

Joshua Hugh Wooden’s “two sets of threes” to live by (John Wooden’s father)

John Wooden, a basketball coaching legend, won 10 national championships in his 27 years at UCLA, but it was his honest and positive approach to life that won him a multitude of fans.  This book chronicles some of the biggest moments of his life and how they influenced him, from his father reading poetry to he and his brothers to the death of his beloved Nell in 1985.  He loved his family, respected others, and was always striving for success, on the court and off.

Jason and I read this aloud to each other for a few minutes each night as Gage listened or played, a perfect book for it.  I hope that Jason will read this with Gage when he gets older.  Wooden is role model because of the way he lived his life.  He had success after success and yet he was always trying to learn lessons from perceived failings.  It was so refreshing to read about someone considered the best in their field who was also just a decent human being. He was 99 when he died in 2010.

The book had lots of pictures and lots of basketball talk and is a perfect read for fathers & sons. 

This book was from my personal library.

Six White Horses, by Janet Dailey

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Six White Horses: Oklahoma (Americana Series)Finished 12-26-11, rating 2.75/5, romance, 186 pages, pub. 1977

Patty is a trick rider in the rodeo. She travels with her grandfather who helps her handle and train the six white horses Patty uses for her show.  The owner of the rodeo , Morgan Kincaid is overbearing and opinionated and clashes constantly with Patty.  The animosity is hiding a powerful attraction and Patty is the last to realize that not all fighting is bad. 

I rolled my eyes through the first half of the book, but once they arrived in Oklahoma and I learned a little more about the rodeo circuit and the history of Oklahoma I actually enjoyed the story.  Did you know that Oklahoma City is the only state capital with an oil well underneath?  Makes sense, but I didn’t know it.  So, it was melodramatic, but the small historical details made it tolerable.

Okay, this is the last of these small romances that I’ll be reading and complaining about, but I needed a romance and one from Oklahoma, and this one fit the bill.

I had this book in my personal library.

A Christmas Blizzard, by Garrison Keillor

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A Christmas Blizzard: A NovelFinished 12-24-11, rating 3.5/5, fiction, 180 pages. pub. 2011

Don’t  you feel it?  Christmas is the force field of heightened possibility.  It’s not about religion, those myths we were brought up with are only tools to direct us toward the mystery of the under self.  It’s about the ecstatic visualization of psychic world is calling us toward balanced consciousness.  Don’t you feel that?  There is a lightness and spontaneity that is struggling to get through all the commercial static and leads us out of our linear consciousness into a global wholeness, don’t you?”

Chapter 17

James Sparrow is a very rich man with a pump handle obsession who hates Christmas.  His wife, Joyce (James & Joyce, cute right?) is a graceful woman who loves all things Christmas and would celebrate all year long if she could.  James is preparing to fly to Hawaii for the holiday when he receives a call from his cousin in North Dakota that his Uncle Earl is dying.  Seeing that Uncle Earl was the only good thing about his childhood, James charters his private jet to Looseleaf for a quick visit before continuing on to the warm beaches of Hawaii.  Only the spiritual powers in North Dakota have conspired to ground this modern day Scrooge until he learns to make peace with Christmas.

Once I looked at this book as a modern take on A Christmas Carol I enjoyed it much more.  At first the talking wolf and dream sequences put me off a bit when I was expecting a nice, sweet holiday read.  I’ve never read Keillor so I didn’t know what to expect and while I enjoyed this holiday story I won’t be rushing out to read more.

Checked this book out of the library.

 

 

Work Song by Ivan Doig

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Work SongFinished audio 12-22-11, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2010

Unabridged audio 9 hours.  Narrated by Jonathan Hogan.

This is the sequel to The Whistling Season, but is a perfectly fine stand alone novel.

Morrie Morgan shows up in Butte, Montana in the early 1900’s, without friends, a job, or even a change of clothes.  He finds work as funeral crier and a place to live with a widow and two boarders and begins to carve out a life for himself while running from his past. 

Butte is a mining city and Anaconda Copper company owns the city, much to the miners dismay.  Morrie starts working at the library and is mistaken for an instigator by Anaconda goons and is forced to take sides.  He sides with his new friends and goes a step further by helping the union workers find ammunition to use against the company.

There is a nice story and it moves along at a good pace.  I appreciated the lyrcal and humorous writing.  The slyness kept the story fresh.  The story of the big company versus the minions is very topical and added an extra layer of recognition to the story.

I loved the narration.  Hogan had a Steve Martin quality to his voice that I loved.  He really made me think that I could hang out with Morrie for a while.  At least before he took off to parts unknown again.

I enjoyed this visit to Montana.

I checked this audio out of the library.

 

Black Hills, by Nora Roberts

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Black HillsFinished audio 12-21-11, rating 3/5, romantic suspense, pub. 2009

Listened to the playaway narrated by Nick Podehl.  17 hours unabridged.

Lil and Cooper were best friends.  He spent his summers in South Dakota with grandparents and Lil was a local girl and the two of them managed to keep their friendship going through their early twenties.  At that point hormones and pride got in the way and they became distant.  A dozen years later Cooper has returned to South Dakota for good and Lil is there running her rescue habitat in the Black Hills.  It doesn’t take long for the two to reconnect, especially after a serial killer seems to have his eyes set on Lil.

I read Nora Roberts on occasion, in the almost 4 years I’ve had this blog this is the fourth Roberts’ book I’ve reviewed.  I usually like her stories but didn’t really care for this one.  There was no chemistry and the killer provided no mystery.  Lil was an okay character, but Chase wasn’t very charismatic.  They were kind of a boring couple.  It also could have been the 17 hours of listening that bored me.  I did like Lil’s rescue habitat.  I visited one we have in Ohio (post here) and think they are necessary places and labors of love, so that part of the story was interesting.

 

Skipping a Beat, by Sarah Pekkanen

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Skipping a BeatFinished 12-19-11, rating 4/5, fiction, 323 pages, pub.2011

Michael and Julia had a marriage that started with love and turned into indifference.  They had started out West Virginia poor, but ended up Washington DC millionaires.  When Michael died for four minutes his whole life turned on its head.  Now, he wanted a real relationship with Julia and she wasn’t sold on the idea, but that wasn’t Julia’s biggest problem.  Michael wanted to give away everything.  He wanted to make amends for the years of lying and neglect his power had caused.

The premise is fascinating.  I love books about marriages because each one is complex, unique.  This was no exception.  The chilliness in the marriage happened over time and it is only after a gradual reveal of their past that I totally got them as a couple. I thought the timing of the story and the way that it went from past to present was perfect.

In this story Michael wants to give everything away and Julia has fallen in love with all the amenities of the rich.  I get Julia not wanting to give up heated tiles or a jacuzzi, (who would once you had them?) but her repeated rejection of Michael got to be too much for me.  She was not a nice person and even when I read her backstory I never really got past the problem of her superficiality.  She made progress and grew as a person and the end of the book could have helped me feel better about her growth, but I think it was a cop out in that regard. The complexity of the book was lost in the sad, but pat, conclusion.

It may see that I didn’t like it and that’s not true.  It’s just that the distance I felt from Julia kept the whole story at arm’s length for me.  I loved Julia’s friend, Isabelle and was really invested in her story more than Julia’s.  Even with my complaints I still shed a tear, which I found surprising, so I must have been at least somewhat invested!   I think I’m in the minority for not loving this one.  A good read for fans of stories about complex relationships.

I checked this out of the library.

The Missing Ink, by Karen E. Olson

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The Missing Ink (Tattoo Shop Series #1)Finished 12-16-11, rating 4.75/5, mystery, 299 pages, pub. 2009

Book 1, Tatoo Shop series

“Can I help you, Officer?” I politely asked his profile.  I knew how to talk to cops: Keep it cordial, no sudden moves.

He was studying the frosted letters on the window, his hands on his hips.  He didn’t look ready to grab the gun or the nightstick that flanked his stocky frame.  He turned his head slowly, his mouth set in a grim line, eyes narrowed as they settled on my face.

It unsettled me.  Usually people stared at the ink on my left arm-a detailed replica on Monet’s water lily garden, complete with a weeping willow and footbridge-or the dragon that creeps up over my right breast under my tank top.

Chapter 1

Brett Kavanaugh, owner of The Painted Lady tattoo shop in Las Vegas, is the last person to have seen a prominent runaway bride.  Brett is caught up in the mystery and finds herself doing some investigative work of her own, leading her to a dead body and big trouble.  Her brother and roommate, Tim, is a detective and tries to save her from herself with limited success.  She also teams up with a rival tattooist and a sexy Brit who obviously knows way more than he should about the missing woman and the dead man.

Brett is awesome.  She owns her own tatoo shop, but she also has a fine art degree in painting, so she’s got credentials.  She moved out to Vegas when she needed to leave the east coast and remains unimpressed with all the trappings of Vegas.  She sees it as an illusion and that makes her a smart cookie.  She is independent (which leads to some dumb decisions) but relies on the help of her friend and co-worker, Joel.  She obviously is too brave for her own good or she wouldn’t be involved in the murderous mess at all.  What’s not to love?

I have no interest in getting a tatoo and I am no fan of Las Vegas (Was there once, stayed at the Four Seasons and the Luxor.  Was sick the entire week so maybe Vegas didn’t get a fair shake) so it was a bit of a surprise to me that I loved this book so much.  I’d seen all the positive reviews, but was turned off by the cover for some reason.  This will end up being one of my favorite books this year and I can’t wait to read the next one in the series.  Who knows, maybe Brett will eventually convince me that tats are cool 🙂 (I do think that a high proportion of people with tattoos are cool, but remain less enamored with the tattoos themselves)

This book had the perfect voice and a strong mystery to make it a fast and fun read.

I checked this book out of the library.

Sundays with Gage – How Mom keeps her sanity.

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Being a stay at home mom is a blessing and I know it.  Some women don’t have the option and I’m thankful every day that I do.  But, there are many days, cooped up in the house for too long with a toddler who is starting to walk, but can provide no meaningful conversation, that I just want to pull my hair out (well, okay, really I want to either take a nap or go out for a relaxing glass of wine).  At some point in the near future Gage will be going to day care for a few hours a week and I think it will be good for both of us, but in the past few months I have found other ways to stave off boredom for both of us.

1. Library Storytime is the best thing available for moms. We live within 20 minutes of four libraries and we go to storytime 3 times a week at 3 different libraries.  You can find us at the library on Wednesday, Thursday, and 2 Fridays a month.  They are free and take babies from about 6 months up.  A great place to meet other moms.  This is Gage at a storytime at the library where I used to work.  This is Shelby and she and I used to work at the reference desk together, now she works with the kids.  Note that Gage is paying attention.  This happens about 5 minutes out of 30.

2. My Gym (or any other gym for kids) is awesome.  We started taking Gage twice a week (once with mom, once with dad) when he was 5 months and he hated it because he hated being on his tummy.  Once we got his acid reflux under control he started really enjoying it.  They have circle time, a new skill each week, free time in the gym, swings, and separation time where all of the parents gather together in the front of the gym and chat while the kids play together in the middle of the gym supervised by staff.  One mother called separation time the best 10 minutes of her day and I can’t disagree.  We may start going 3 times a week. The 45 minute classes are worth every penny.

3. Pretty Girls. On our street we have a few teen girls who babysit Gage.  This is Brooke and once a week she or her sister Maddie come over for 2 hours after school and play with Gage.  I usually leave the house (coffee with friends, shopping, hair cut), but sometimes don’t because I tackle things like cleaning the office or organizing things for donations.  And once a week Marcy comes over for an hour after school to play with Gage.  She’s 13 an it’s her first babysitting experience so I stay home, but the hour to get stuff done (think laundry or actually cooking dinner) is awesome.

4. Classes.  We sign up for free ones at our city library, they have great ones liked Kindermusik and classes that cost a little at our local nanny school, like the sign language class.

5. Blogging.  It takes time, but I can do it after Gage and Jason have gone to bed.  I consider it my grown-up time and consider it an important social outlet for me.  Thank you all for keeping me sane.

So, there you have my helpful scheduling tips for stay at home moms.  I’m always looking for new things to try until I can start taking Gage museum hopping, so let me know if you have a good one.