Nightstand (May 2014)

Generally, I would take advantage of a long weekend to get my Nightstand post up and ready to go with all the bells and whistles – but my brother and sister-in-law came down to visit Daniel and I for this particular weekend and I was much too busy spending time with them to do internet stuff.

So you’re getting the little list I put together before I returned the last batch of books to the library – without expanded comments or books read since then. But something is better than nothing, right?

This month, I read:

• The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
  An intriguing one as Heyer goes since the hero and heroine are married from the very beginning of the book. I’m enjoying working my way through my library’s collection of Heyer.
• Ruth by Lori Copeland
  I only finished this because it was the only fiction I had out of the library. The heroine was an impulsive fool, the hero a “good man” who wasn’t a believer until the day before he married the heroine, the plot absolutely implausible. I didn’t like it at all. In fact, I’m considering just being done with Copeland – I’ve been either “meh” or “blech” on the last half dozen or so of hers that I’ve read.
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
  This is the second book in the “Ender’s Game” series, and we own a copy of the first two in one volume. I loved Ender’s Game when I read it last year, and I started reading Speaker for the Dead immediately afterward – only to give up in desperation. The story was too different, the style too different. There were new characters that I didn’t know and love yet. I couldn’t do it. But when I ran out of fiction from the library this past month, I picked it up again – and absolutely loved it, devoured it. Whereas Ender’s Game is very action-packed, Speaker for the Dead is all about relationships and the inner workings of peoples’ brains. Card is a gifted writer, that’s for sure.
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
  A re-read for our church-lady book club. I led the discusion and found it provoking all sorts of new thoughts in my own mind. Love it, love it, love it.
• The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
  I read along with the Reading to Know Classic Book Club – and enjoyed this little Gothic tale immensely.
• Yesterday’s Schools by Ruth Freeman
  An interesting look at the evolution of schoolhouses in America from the colonial days to the mid 20th century. The emphasis is on New York schools, as the author was apparently an educator there, but I could see resemblances to schoolhouses I’ve read described or seen in person elsewhere. It took me a while, with rather a lot of confusion to figure out that every eight pages or so was misplaced such that I had to skip a page to have a continuous paragraph and then go back to the previous page. Very odd. But I’m glad I read this itsy-bitsy little volume from my local library.
• Paranoid Parenting by Frank Furedi
  I’m working on book notes for this one, but don’t know when they’ll be done. This was a great look at how parenting has turned into a can’t-win game – and children are losing out because of it. The subtitle is “why ignoring the experts may be best for your child” – and I agree completely, except when I’m the expert :-)
• Betty Crocker’s Bread Machine Cookbook
  I might have only made one recipe from this book – the second one, for Buttermilk Bread. It was amazing. I made it a dozen times. I really need to get this book out again and make some more recipes to see if the rest are as good as that one.
• The Gift of Health by Karin B. Michels and Kristine Napier
  Just another prenatal programming book. More interesting than the other two, more practical as well – but a bit too “diet-book” like for me, with two weeks worth of menus and recipes for each trimester. You have to go to the end of each chapter to see the food group recommendations that give you the option of creating your own menus within the nutritional guidelines the authors recommend.