So behind on this space, but envision more engagement in the next few months. I miss my blogging peeps!
In a comment, give me your 5 words (or less!) and earn $1 for charity. Once we get to $100 the person with the most reviews will choose the charity. Click here to see the past winners, the charities they chose and the other reviews you can add to. Anyone is welcome to join in at any time. Click here to see past movie posts.
Peanut Butter Falcon, 2019 (Shia LaBouf, Zack Gottsagen. Dakota Fanning, John Hawkes, Bruce Dern, John Bernthal, Thomas Haden Church, Yelawolf) Grade A
Everyone deserves to be seen.
Air, 2023 (Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker, Viola Davis, Chris Messina) Grade A
Is MJ really MJ without his Jordans?
Rush, 2013 (Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara, Pierfrancisco Favino) Grade B+
Racing greats very different approaches.
The Gift, 2015 (Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton) Grade B
Careful who your friends are.
Super Mario Bros Movie, 2023 (Voices-Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, Charlie Day, Seth Rogan, Keegan-Michael Key, Fred Armisen) Grade B
Surprising fun. Peaches is addicttive.
Superbad, 2007 (Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Seth Rogan, Bill Hader, Emma Stone) Grade B-
Husband made me watch it.
Paranormal Activity, 2007 (Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs, Ashley Palmer) Grade C
I was expecting more scares.
The Hating Game, 2021 (Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Damon Daunno, Corbin Bernsen, Sakina Jaffrey) Grade C
Playing with lusty fire.
Chaos Walking, 2021 (Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, Mads Mikkelson, David Oyelowo, Nick Jonas, Demian Bichir, Cynthia Erivo) Grade C-
Any Patricia Highsmith fans out there? This is a graphic bio of the time when she wrote Strangers on a Train and the lesbian thriller A Pinch of Salt under a pseudonym. A Pinch of Salt was later retitled Carol and is known for having the first happy ending gay characters had gotten in books.
Loved the book and recommend it. It was the Author’s Note at the beginning that hooked me. I left out more good stuff for brevity.
“This is a story I believe is worth telling. That being said, I want to be clear: The protagonist of this story is not a good person. She was deeply anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic, even by the standards of her time. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that many of her beliefs were nothing short of evil…
History is populated by complicated and destructive human beings. I think it’s important that we reckon with that. Not every influential or important figure deserves to be put on a pedestal, including women and LGBTQ people…Patricia Highsmith is not a hero, and she had a huge, positive impact on LGBTQ literature, not to mention American literature in general…
If you read this book and end up conflicted about Highsmith and her legacy: good.”
Do you like football? Do you like poetic memoirs about learning to live your truth? Are you wanting to add to your Pride month reading list? I’ve got just the book for you!
RK Russell grew up in Texas with a single mom and very little money. He was big for his age, but even so didn’t start playing football until high school. He had a steady girlfriend. He went on to play football at Purdue University where he also had a girlfriend but also started questioning his attraction to men.
He went on to play in the NFL and the book has a few games rehashed in great detail for you football lovers. BUT this is more than football. This is about a young man coming to terms and then embracing who he is. I loved his stories of growing up as much as I loved the happy ending he made for himself.
He has a book of poetry published and I’m not surprised. He knows how to turn a phrase.
I received this from TLC Book Tours and was supposed to post my review May 22 😳. I totally forgot about it and once I picked it up it only took two days to read, so the tardiness is mine and no fault of the book.
I read 33 books this month, bringing my yearly total to 123. Did you have a favorite this month?
Here were my TOP 5
Seeing With Our Souls: Monastic Wisdom for Every Day by Joan Chittester. I read this every morning for several weeks and it was a perfect way to start my day. My copy is marked up with favorite thoughts. I will read anything she writes. “We’re not here to suppress the gifts of others in order to make room for our own. We’re here to put all the gifts of humankind into the great pool of humanity so that, because of the gifts of each of us, we can all live better in the end.” (page 27)
Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Penelope Baglieu. Don’t miss this biographical graphic novel that highlights some wickedly awesome women with whipsmart humor. “Delia finds herself at loose ends (after dicorce). She’s 50 years old. So, she decides to embark on her first solo African expedition. From the Indian Ocen to the Ehiopian desert, whether in a dugout or on the back of a camel, Delia roams the African continent and becomes the first American women to cross it.” (page 69)
The Bodyguard by Katherine Center. Throw this fun romance in your beach bag at once! She’s his bodyguard and must pose as his girlfriend. Need I say more? “You can’t make people love you. But you can give the love you long for out to the world. You can be the love you wish you had. That’s the way to be okay. Because giving love to other people is a way of giving it to yourself.”
You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day by Mo Willems. This was so much fun. Mo Willems may be a household name to anyone who has little kids or grandkids now, in the early 90s he was finishing college and backpacking his way around the world. This is a collection of his almost yearlong trip with the daily cartoon image he drew of his experience every day. Loved every frame! “Modesty makes maidens swim fully dressed (Pangkor Island, Malaysia). (page 245)
James & Other Apes by James Mollison. I LOVE this overside hardcover with close up photos of 50 apes from sanctuaries around the world. I dare you to look through it and not feel a connection. “Each individual ape has his or her own tragic story of pain and trauma. Each one is different.” from the forward by Jane Goodall, page 7
Honorable mentions
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. “You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
Watching You by Lisa Jewell. “Because that’s the thing with getting what you want: all that yearning and dreaming and fantasizing leaves a great big hole that can only be filled with more yearning and dreaming and fantasizing.”
The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Eugene Yelchin. “Life seemed an enormous puzzle to me then, and drawing helped order the pieces: Mom, Dad Victor, Grandma, Lenin, the Americans, even Baryshnikov. Each piece was a different shape. I was a puzzle piece, too, but I was made in such a wrong shape that I was convinced I would never fit in anywhere. The only place I fit in well was under Grandma’s table, drawing to the soft squeak of the stolen pencil.”
Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas by Lynne Cox & Brian Floca. “The boy, Michael, explained that Elizabeth was a very lovely elephant seal who had decided to live in Christchurch…I knew that one day I would have to pass Elizabeth’s story on to you.” (author’s note)
Circle by Jeannie Baker. “In its lifetime a godwit will usually fly farther than the distance from the earth to the moon.” (cover page)
Last week was New Zealand week and we read some fantastic picture books. So many I just had to share. I love to use picture books as a teaching tool, even as I teach my middle schooler. They garner interest for further learning and can be used as a part of the lesson themselves.
I am in love with the illustrations in this nonfiction book about the godwits migration from New Zealand (and Australia) to the Arctic and then back again. Great for learning about migration in general.
Such a fun and colorful story about a real octopus who was rescued and then freed himself. The story was fantastic as were the end notes. Your kid will learn so much about octopus and will most likely want to know more. This was my favorite book of the week.
Elizabeth was an elephant seal who made her home in the Avon River in Christchurch. She became a problem when she started sleeping in the middle of the road in the afternoon. Three times they captured her and took her far away to live, but each time she came back. The solution they found will make you smile. I loved the picture of the real Elizabeth in the middle of the road at the end of the book.
**For school, Gage had to write a paragraph comparing the two animals and their journeys.
Why is a book about Mount Everest on this list? Because that’s where Hillary was from! This was full of information, even with a timeline of his life at the end. Don’t let the page count fool you. Excellent resource.
I didn’t love the illustrations, but did love the concept. Sir Edmund Hillary didn’t get to the top of Everest alone and yet he always gets the credit. This book tells the story of Hillary but also the story of his sherpa Tenzig Norgay on each opposing page. By telling their stories side by side, it is giving Norgay the due he deserves.
**For school, Gage made a Venn diagram comparing the information featured in each book.
This is not a book about New Zealand, but one created by New Zealander. This is most definitely geared toward a younger audience and it was Gage’s favorite. It’s all about making art wherever you are using what nature has provided. The only fictional book (except for Ranger which is only half fiction)
**For school, Gage and I set the timer for 20 minutes and each created art from whatever we found in our yard. His was super cool with big branches sticking out of theground to look like trees and stones making a circle around it. I’m not embarrassed to say it was way better than mine!
This was our longer read and I love this series! The journey starts in New Zealand aboard the Terra Nova and, while obviously fiction since it’s based on a time travelling dog, only Ranger and the boy he was there to save were fictional characters. All the other characters were based on real life people and a real life race to the Pole. The end notes were the best part even though they were sad.
**We read this aloud as a family, each taking a chapter each night.
I saw this challenge over on IG (OliviaReadsFiction) and tried it last month. You all voted to have me read All the Light We Cannont See by Anthony Doerr. I finished it and really liked it, thank you!
New month, new word. YOU can easily see what word I found on my TBR shelves the most. Which one should I read next. I’ll tally up the votes this weekend. You don’t have to have read the book to vote for it.
Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke. “When I started writing this book in 2016, rates of loneliness had already been increasing exponentially for decades, yet it wasn’t a subject I heard people talk about very often, at least not in relation to themselves.” this is a graphic novel.
We did it!!! We finally finished the whole series of very, very unfortunate events. We read the first last July and finished the last one in April. The series is perfect for road trips with upper elementary and middle school kids. The audio production is fantastic and how we experienced the series after reading the first book out loud together. The series can get repetitive, especially the first few, but kids will love it.
Three orphans get passed from one cluless adult after another, all the while trying to escape the evil clutches of Count Olaf who is after them for their huge fortune.
I couldn’t tell you who my favorite character was at the beginning (besides poor Uncle Monty), but by the end it was the youngest, Sunny, who could do it all, even as she was just learning to walk and talk.
We’ve started watching the Netflix series, but I confess I’m not a fan so far. We’re only 4 episodes in and they’ve changed some very important things. It’s disappointing.
13 The End (Needed way more information, but Lemony told the reader repeatedly to stop reading so we have only ourselves to blame.)
Have you read the series? What did you think? I loved that Gage loved every one and was always excited for the next one. That’s NEVER been the case before so for that reason alone this series will always have a place in my heart. And I repeatedly thank my friend who gifted Gage the whole series at once, giving him something to strive to finish.
It’s been a few weeks since a proper update, so we’ll see if I can wrap it up in a shortish post. This week I worked as a poll worker at the Ohio primary. There was only one choice, of judge, so turnout wasn’t good. But we still had to be there at 5:30 am and stay until it was done. I got home at 9:15 pm. On Thursday Gage had an initial appointent at the Cleveland Clinic Functional Medicine offices. Three clinicians, labs and 3 hours later we left only to have to go to his orthodontist because one of his cheeks was swollen from his mouth device. We stopped at 5 Little Free Libraries between the two offices to distribute leftover books from our book sale, lol.
We had to do something to our computer because of a suspected virus and now I can’t log into half of the things I need to, including this blog’s email. I’ll prbably spend too much time on that today.
As a reward we had friends over for a game night. Two of them will be taking their citizenship test soon so we played an American trivia game. Lots of laughs and a nice end to a stressful week.
Books
Since my last update I’ve read 13 books and they have been very diverse. 4 kids picture books, 2 kids nonfiction, 2 adult fiction, 2 adult nonfiction, 1 graphic bio, 1 romance, 1 kids fiction.
Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Penelope Bagieu is a fantastic graphic novel about 30 bold women from across centuries who really stand out. I knew most, but certainly not all. I checked this out of the library but may buy a copy because it’s a beautiful book.
Movies
We haven’t had time to watch any these last few weeks! But we did finally finish LOTR: The Rings of Power, season one . It was fun revisiting a favorite place.
Puzzles
We did ‘finish’ a 500 piece Fred puzzle this week and while I liked the art, I didn’t like the puzzle. In both the top and the bottom, the blues would fit together but not be right, they would fit ‘better’ somewhere else. Having to redo chunks of puzzle more than once was very frustrating.
Plans for the Weekend
Catching up and prep! Gage’s 2 hour tutoring sessions for homeschool ends tomorrow and that leaves me 2 hours of schooling to fill EVERY DAY!
The real reason I wanted to join the Board of our Friends of the Library was simple. I wanted to get my hands on ALL of the books! Do we raise money to support the library, its programs, and staff? Absolutely. Does my contribution help us raise more money? Yes! I give freely of my time, because I LOVE it. I help with the ongoing sorting by going through donations a few times a week and deciding what goes out in our ongoing sale. We make around $1000 a month from this small ongoing sale.
Twice a year, we throw a big bash and invite all of the books! We store them in many secret places…
We start with the meeting room that’s set up for groups to reserve and have to move tables out and bring 20 big tables in. I draw the map (I tweak it every sale and it gets tweaked further as we start putting books out) and we start by bringing the presorted boxes out to their correct area. We usually have a few loaders and deliverers and the rest start unpacking. After that we bring in the books from the mess of a sorting room and from our ongoing sale. I was there at 4 on Wednesday to start moving tables around and around 8 volunteers came in at 6pm and we worked til the library closed at 9. We were back at it first thing (I took Gage to camp so only had and hour and 45 minutes) with 4 volunteers. They left at 12. I was back at 4 with Gage and it took me about an hour and a half to finish up. At 6 pm 2 volunteers set up the membership table and started the line. We had 6 volunteers for the sale itself that started at 7pm.
We have a board of 15 and every member signs up for a shift and some a few shifts. I’m there for the long haul. I took off only 2 1/2 hours the whole time. I told you I loved the books 🙂 A month and a half before the sale I contact all Friends members who had expressed an interested in helping. There were 7 this time. As a bonus the high school Key Club teacher gave me a list of kids and when they wanted to help. I tried to verify with all 12 of them their times. Even with that only half showed up when they were supposed to. At least half I never even saw!
The sale ran 2 hours for members on Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 9-5, and Sunday from 1-3:30 (bag day). We made over $3100.
On Sunday we allow pre-approved non-profits to come and take several bags of book for their charity. This time around we had 7, our largest turnout yet!
Then from 3:30-5 we tear down the sale by boxing up the books for other libraries. In the past we’ve had one library with very low funding, come and take all of our unsold books to sell at their sale and it was great. They rented a U-Haul and brought a team and took EVERYTHING. They can no longer do this so we had to do some different things with everything we didn’t sell. First, we divvied them up between 5 libraries based on the types of books they requested. We always have one board member who comes and gets all cookbooks to donate to Edwin’s. I am so grateful to her for doing this for such a worthy cause.
So, that leaves us with hundreds of books. This time we decided to put them all out in our ongoing sale area and try to sell them for 25 cents. That will run until Saturday. On Sunday we have a LFL steward who will come and take as much as she wants of what’s left and we’ll, sadly, recycle the rest. Thankfully, our library system recycles them for us if we get them packed up in bins.
You might be asking how many books I came home with. I always buy a bag on bag day and throw things in it as we tear down the sale. I came home 7 books, 2 of them Jason tossed in.
So, there you have it in all of the nitty gritty detail. How different is your library sale? I always love to hear new ideas!
Oh, and as an added bonus, Cindy, from Cindy’s Book Corner came by and we were able to chat a bit. I’m hoping we’ll be able to meet up again soon. Book people are the best people 🙂
This week Gage had the top part of the Herbst appliance put in and it’s been tough. There is a bar across the top of his mouth that makes talking, eating, and swallowing are a struggle. And there is so much drool and sores on the cheeks. It’s been a week for the little man and he gets the bottom half and connectors in two weeks 😦 *The white coming out of his mouth is nor part of the appliance, just the only pic I took.
The day after he got it ‘installed’ he was especially miserable so instead of school we spent the day doing good deeds like trying to remove graffiti that had been spray painted on trees and rocks at a local park and using the Little Free Library app to find LFLs to drop off books. The app itself wasn’t the best navigator for us, but being able to see where they were was very useful.
Books
I’ve read 7 books, all of them kids! Five non-fiction and two fiction. Here are a few standouts…
This is labeled as a teen book, but most stories could be shared with younger kids. So important for kids (and adults) to understand the why of the kids that are coming to America. I liked the individual stories. told in the voices of the children. Want to work on empathy with your kids? This will help them see through another kid’s eyes.
We read a few Iceland books this week, but this one, geared toward ages 5-8, was so well done. It’s our first Ranger in Time book and I was happily surprised at how well Messner incorporated historical facts into the story with additional info and pictures of her visit there.
Full disclosure, I’m not a fan of the Magic Treehouse series 🤷🏻♀️ But this series I can get behind! When we did our additional reading, so many of the things she included ended up in our timeline and fact sheet.
This was first published in 1971. It’s a lovely Russian folktale and the illustrations were fabulous.
I’m currently reading a lot of books, too many really but they’re all so good! Stay tuned.
Books read this year- 81
Movies
Jason and I both really liked this one. It definitely brought back the 1980s for those of us of a certain age 🙂
Puzzles
A little video of the one fun puzzle we did as a family…here
Plans for today
I’m the coordinator for our library book sale and it starts this Thursday and runs through next Sunday. I love it and will work pretty much the whole time plus Wednesday set up. Today will be spent emailing reminders to volunteers, redesigning our receipts, and getting though all of our signage and seeing what needs fixed and what we’re missing.
Stacy's Books 