Re: Wrigley

Ed had a whopping one day work week this week. It started with the Martin Luther King Jr Holiday followed by three snow days. It was only a few inches but Portland doesn't really have much in the way of snow removal equipment, so it takes a while to get things moving again. It was a fabulous snow for sledding and we did plenty of it. I didn't get many pictures of it, though, because it wasn't until the last snow day that I figured out that keeping the camera batteries in my armpit would do wonders for keeping the camera working in cold weather. Next time.

On the third snow day we headed out hiking in the Columbia River Gorge. The highways were clear and Wahclella Falls is right off the highway. I do not know why I have never heard of this hike before last fall when Cindi and I were looking for a hike close to the Bonneville Dam. We didn't make it all the way to the waterfall that hike. When you hike with kids and stop to examine every rock in the creek, sometimes a mile hike is too long! This time we made it to the waterfall. This one rates up there with the ohmygod hikes. The ice lended a lot of beauty, but even in the heat of summer, I am certain this one is still amazing.

When you come visit, we'll have to take you there.

The pit stop at Multnomah Falls wasn't bad either.

In other news, Wrigley has finally decided that the tire swing is fun after all and we've been heading off to the playground for her daily dose of dizzying spinning.

And in still other developments, I've started a project I am calling Project 364. Most folks are doing Project 365, but I missed the first day, so it is 364 'round here. I find it challenging if only because I do just about the exact same things day in and day out and there isn't enough light to shoot indoors. You may enjoy my slide show here.

I may have mentioned this before, but I really like book lists, so I share mine for those could use some recommendations. This year I added in some of those 400+ page non-fiction books that take forever to read as well as some young adult which go along very well with the non-fiction because those take only a couple of days to read.

So, here you are (my favorites are in bold):

v The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini – engaging with flashes of great writing and flashes of crummy writing.

v The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder – Some quite nice writing

v Ursula, Under, Ingrid Hill – Boy, I was excited about this one. I heard about it on someone’s best 5 list on NPR. Boy it was long and disappointing. It was filled with characters that were very interesting, but most of them didn’t get their due. There were too many ancestors and the writer was long-winded and sometimes overly detailed. I hate being driven to skim books, and I skimmed this one a lot.

v Freakonimics, Levitt and Dubner – Fun read. Easy to pick up and put down for a week or six.

v How I Survived Being a Girl, Van Draanen – (YA) Spunky young adult read.

v This Heavy Silence, Nicole Mazzarella – Very good read, though not particularly artful writing.

v Because of Winn-Dixie, Kate DiCamillo – What a great story!

v The Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora Welty – This was excellent. It so nicely explores love and feeling, and leaves me with much to ponder.

v Is Your Bed Still There When You Close the Door? How to have Creative Conversations with Your Kids, Jane Healy – Good. I may buy this when Wrig is a little older.

v The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo – A cute sweet tale, but what really makes it excellent is that it must have been great fun to narrate. I love the voice, and the writing is very good.

v The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin – I was surprised by how much I liked this. I thought the main character was pretty interesting, even if I suspect not particularly realistic.

v Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver – I really enjoyed this story, even though upon reflection I decided it was a bit formulaic and predicable.

v Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck – This starts out quite well and full of great insights, but peters out in a big in way on the return trip. Still, I recommend it. Sometimes it is awfully interesting to read what a author has to say when they aren’t hiding behind characters and plot.

v Small Steps, Louis Sachar – (YA) A follow up to Holes, but not half as good. Though contrived, the story is compelling and fun to read.

v Hold on to Your Kids, Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, Gordon Neufeld – Excellent. This adds an important element to my parenting philosophy.

v The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate Dicamillo –I am really enjoying Kate Dicamillo. I hope one day she writes for adults too.

v The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros – Rereading this with my book group. I enjoy this one, but I like Caramelo much better.

v Gilead, Marilynne Robinson – Rich, rich, rich. Just enough plot to move things along at a decent pace, but primarily a dying ministers review of his life and the people in it. There was a fair amount about God and religion, but it somehow didn’t put me off. A high recommendation for those times when you’d like to read a thinking book..

v Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel – Excellent and a joy to read.

v A Room with a View, EM Forester – Very good.

v Fly by Night, Frances Hardinge – Very engaging kid lit. Three quarters of the way through, though, my adrenaline had all been used up before the final twists and turns, and I was reading just to be finished.

v Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer – This one goes on my Top 10 list. I couldn’t put it down but I forced myself to so I wouldn’t get too caught up in the storytelling that I couldn’t concentrate on the writing.. His writing is fabulous and unique.

v Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson – I liked Gilead much more than this one. In this book her style didn’t capture me.

v How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff – (YA) This won a Michael Printz award, but I don’t know why. The story is interesting enough, but the writing isn’t particularly skillful, the voice is forced and it seemed that the author ran out of story and decided to just wrap it up hastily.

v The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky – (YA) this one much more satisfying. The voice bugged me a little (perhaps I am too old), but the story had depth, the voice thoughtful and the writing was good enough.

v Picture Perfect, Jodi Piccult – Eh.

v Time Travelers Wife, Audrey Niffenegger - Excellent story. Very likeable characters and a good complicated plot. Fascinating.

v City of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau – (YA), Eh. Interesting concept, writing has little flare. It was compelling enough that I’ll read the sequel, but I don’t recommend it.

v The People of Sparks, Jeanne DuPrau – (YA) sequel to The city of Ember. This one is a smidge better. It takes on some significant themes, and again, the story is pretty darn interesting. However I will not read the third book, a prequel.

v The Tiger Rising, Kate DeCamillo – This completes all of Kate DiCamillo’s work for me, and I loved it all. Can’t recommend it highly enough. Sure it is for kids, but the only thing that keeps it from being adult lit is it’s length and the complexities greater length allows.

v Shopgirl, Steve Martin – This is not great, but it is definitely good, and Steve Martin’s writing is surprisingly unique and interesting. (The movie turned out to be worth a watch, as well)

v Mojo Mom, Amy Tieman – eh. I need to stop thinking I’ll get something from these types of books.

v Brick Lane, Monica Ali – This was pretty good. The story was engaging, but there was really nothing remarkable about the book.

v Yellow Star, Jennifer Roy – (YA) This was very good, but I don’t think it adds much original to the cannon of Holocaust literature. It was written as poetry, but the writing wasn’t particularly poetic, more just prose written in shortened lines.

v Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich – This was good, but not great. I didn’t quite connect with the characters. Not so much because they were so different from me, more because there were so many of them and the focus of the novel changed often. There were several protagonists, and I don’t think they were handled particularly skillfully. I may read more Erdrich.

v Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv – Interesting read. I loathe the subtitle, but he doesn’t spend much time claiming that nature deficit is an actual disorder, but he is trying to put it up there with ADHD and other “disorders” of childhood. I very much enjoyed reading about how nature and children impact each other, and I appreciated an argument in favor of allowing children to experience nature in ways that might do minor damage (reorganizing streams, building treehouses), because this is an issue I struggle with just about every time we’re outside some place other than our backyard.

v The Big Love, Sarah Dunn – this was a quick, light, fluffy, funny read. I very much enjoyed it.

v The Black City, George Sand – Hmm. I can’t decide how well I liked this one. It was excellent, but the translation felt watered down a bit. Also, the ending is over the top cheesy romantic. It is, though, fascinating to read those early early women writers.

v A Little House Sampler, Laura Ingalls Wilder & Rose Wilder Lane – This was a great way to read a biography. The editor took writings of both Laura & Rose’s and arranged them along with some context to be a biography. Laura’s writing career began as a columnist on the life of a farm wife for the Missouri Ruralist, and Rose was a journalist and short story writer. They were both excellent writers. It was loads of fun to read.

v Looking for Alsaka, John Green (YA)– Eh. At least the author can write (better than the other YA books I’ve read this year) and the story is okay, but neither the writing nor the story have much spark and the characters aren’t particularly real.

v The Giver, Lois Lowry (YA) – better, though I am certainly beginning to believe that the YA genre could really use some top notch writers. The book, though, does and excellent job of presenting some pretty heavy themes to middle schoolers.

v Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollen – An interesting, interesting read. Pollen is a great and humble storyteller. His topic is fascinating and his conclusions sensible. The first section is a bit difficult to get into, because, frankly, the tales of industrial food are unsettling, but the rest of the book moves at an excellent pace.

v Coping with Food Intolerances, Dick Thom – Interesting. Enough said.

v On the Way Home, Laura Ingalls Wilder – Journal account of Laura’s covered wagon journey as an adult. Interesting, though not formed into publication by Laura herself, so it’s pretty rough draft.

v Monsoon Summer, Mitali Perkins – (YA) Finally, a decently written YA book. While it didn’t have the flashes of fabulous writing that I so love discovering in books, Perkins’ novel about a fifteen year old’s summer in India is well written, engaging and I think relevant to the lives of fifteen year olds (but really, what do I know about fifteen year olds these days?).

v The Not So Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen, Mitali Perkins – (YA) I liked Monsoon Summer better, but this one was good too.

v Clown Girl, Monica Drake – This was good. It was sometimes awfully self-aware and the author really seemed to continually raise the stakes, but all in all the characters were interesting, the story good and the writing bother clever and witty.