The Lost Children by Carolyn Cohagan

I picked up The Lost Children by Carolyn Cohagan because the author will be presenting a Young Writers' Workshop at the Tattered Cover this Tuesday.  I read it with my six-year old.

Take a look at the book trailer:



I like the colorful drawing of the gloves, but my first reaction to the trailer is that The Lost Children seemed much more than "gently" creepy -- even taking into consideration that my daughter is significantly younger than (what I assume is) the target audience.  There is a fair bit of violence and what I would probably call torture (holding a candle to someone's hand until they talk, for example).  Near the end of the book one of the main characters does renounce violence after his experience being violent himself.

Josephine's relationship with her father is very sad and I wasn't sure how I felt about the quick and neat redemption of said relationship at the end of the book.  Almost like the dad was getting off too easy and everyone else should just be thrilled to carry on, with a now improved relationship.

I usually really like time-space continuum/parallel worlds/time travel kind of stuff but this book just did not draw me in.  My daughter seemed fairly satisfied with it.  I am still looking forward to the workshop.

an update on being-hit-by-a-car stuff

Some things that remind me I was hit by a car last June:

• Feeling achy and exhausted after a couple of hours out of the house, spent walking around with my daughter and sitting without back support
• Feeling strain in my neck and shoulder when carrying something even slightly heavy
• Having intense neck pain after ten minutes of punching circles and squares out of paper for scrapbooking

I saw the doctor yesterday for an osteopathic manipulation treatment.  My appointment wasn't until mid-afternoon.  I'd been having a lot of pain around my shoulder blade all morning long -- It was even painful for me to push down on the apple cutter that I use all the time.

The doctor has said that, while she thinks my body can still improve somewhat, I'll never be back to 100%.  She said that I will probably have some 100% days but that I will also have some 50% days -- pretty much for the rest of my life.  My lawyer would like her to document this and she said he can call her to ask that.  I have a feeling she will have a fee for doing so.

We continue too get closer to a point where, perhaps, we can start the potentially lengthy settlement.  Meanwhile, I continue with my stretches and lying on tennis balls (under my neck) as well as taking two different prescription pain medicines (and I'm so not usually a medicine taker).

Book Beginnings (How to Train a Dragon by Cressida Cowell) & Friday 56 (The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan)

Hosted by Storytime with Tonya and Friends

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Cover via Amazon

"It's a house," she insisted. "And the bottom picture is the ankh, the symbol for life.  Per Ankh -- the House of Life." 

 ~from The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. 

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence. 

I'm reading, with my six-year-old daughter, How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell.


Product Description: (from the back cover)
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is a truly extraordinary Viking hero known throughout Vikingdom as "the Dragon Whisperer" .  . . but it wasn't always so.  Travel back to the days when the mighty warrior was just a boy, the quiet and thoughtful son of the Chief of the Hairy Hooligans.  Can Hiccup capture a dragon and train it without being torn limb from limb?  Join the adventure as the small boy finds a better way to train his dragon and becomes a hero!

The Opener:


There were dragons when I was a boy.

We are almost finished with this and I, truthfully, am quite ready to be done. It just feels very tedious to me.   However, I'm willing to admit that this may just be a personality issue as my husband has seemed to enjoy what's he's overheard.  I will also acknowledge that I am not the target audience age-wise -- and my daughter is just fine with it.  :)

The Simple Woman's Daybook -- Thursday, July 22, 2010

 With thanks to Peggy

FOR TODAY

Outside my window... a bright blue Denver sky

I am thinking... about being an attentive mother

I am thankful for... the fact that we didn't need an new alternator on our car that wouldn't start - It was just a loose connection!


From the kitchen... home-made tapioca pudding for book club tonight

I am creating... some good ideas for my last homemade facebook gift

I am reading... The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

I am hoping... that in a few more months I'll be finished with the insurance settlement and it will be enough to replenish our savings that we emptied.
 
Around the house... cat hair tumbleweeds :) 

A few plans for the rest of the week:  book club tonight, washing the sheets, talking with my lawyer, reading more of The Lost Children  with my daughter in preparation for a Young Author's workshop

Here is picture for thought I am sharing...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

A walk to the pet store turns into an hour-long shoe tying session at Ross. (Page down fast and it's a flip book!)

On Monday afternoon Fiona really wanted to go and see the animals at the pet store.  Her warm weather hating mama sucked it up, put on sunscreen and a long sleeve shirt, and we headed out for our walk to Petco.  She especially liked the ferrets and we got to watch a couple of dogs being groomed.  We also did some wishful gazing at the brushes (me) and toys/beds (Fiona) we'd like to get for Tucker and Felix.

 On the way back we pass a Ross Dress for Less and Fiona asked if we could go in and look around. I said we could, but we couldn't spend money. (Our car won't start so who knows what will be happening around here financially.)   She agreed and we went in.  I believe this is the first time she's ever said "Let's go look at the clothes that are in my size."  So we looked at clothes for a while and then started looking at shoes.  I realized that she probably will need shoes in the next few months, almost certainly before winter sets in, so I looked with her for a bit.  There was one pair that was quite lovely and that had velcro but it seemed too small in a 12 and we couldn't find a 13.

Then Fiona found this pair and they seemed to fit quite well and were under $20.   However, Fiona has not yet learned to tie her own shoes.  In general, I don't think this is a big problem but I thought that having her main shoes have laces might be a bit frustrating for everyone involved, Fiona included.  

 So we spent quite a bit of time sitting on a padded leather coffee table, each with a pair of shoes, and practicing the many steps involved in tying one's own shoes.  We must have worked on this for at least half an hour, if not an hour.

She didn't quite get it today but she made lots of progress and she said that she would like to keep practicing and, when she has it down, go back and get that pair of shoes. 

 Learning a new skill isn't always easy or fun and I was proud of how hard Fiona worked.  It was a good day to be a mama.

The A-Team movie and my brother

Last Wednesday was our 9th wedding anniversary and we decided to use anniversary money from my in-laws to go see the A-Team movie.   I definitely watched this show as a child and wondered what I would think of the movie.

It was a lot of fun.  The actors who played Face and Murdoch didn't really look like the original actors but the more you watched the more you realized how much they had the personalities and mannerisms of the originals down pat.  Liam Neeson played Hannibal, which was really fun.  It surprised me to see such a big name actor but I got the impression that they all had a blast creating the movie. 

I was a little taken aback at how much watching the movie brought my brother into my mind.  We watched the show together so often.  My brother adored B.A., Mr T's character.  We had contests during the commercials to see who could guess first what each ad was advertising.  And man, did we think we were cool when we quoted Hannibal, "I love it when a plan comes together".  (Truth be told, I still think I'm pretty cool when I say it now.)

My brother has been incarcerated since last summer -- meth related charges.  Thinking about him while watching the movie just sort of made me ache.  I ache for the time he will be in jail, for things he will miss, for the freedom he lacks.  I want to be able to turn back time to those crucial moments where he weighed financial gain against breaking the law and to those moments where he weighed depression, sadness, and isolation against using a drug that, at least temporarily, took all of that away.

And of course, I wonder how much having B.A. as a role model affected my brother's life choices.  :)  I can say that here because I know that he would find it as funny as I do.

As a side-note, there is an interesting subplot in the movie regarding B.A.'s vow of non-violence -- made while in jail.  I was a little disappointed with the way it played out.  I assume there are all sorts of internet discussions out there about this facet of the movie and I may try to find a few -- as someone whose main church involvement in the past 15 years has been in a pacifist denomination, it was an intriguing part of the movie.

Teaser Tuesdays -- Someone to Kill and Eat

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

* Grab your current read.

* Let the book fall open to a random page.

* Share with us any two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page.

* You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from... that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

In 2003, Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer expert, went online looking for someone to kill and eat.  After several interviews, he chose Bernd Brandes.

~p 25, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom

This book was interesting but not rave-worthy for me. 

It's Monday, July 19, 2010 -- What Are You Reading?

It's Monday, what are you reading? is now hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. It is a chance for us to share with other book bloggers what we have just finished reading, what we are currently reading and what we are reading next.
 
Just finished:

• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• Ancestor by Scott Sigler
• Payment in Blood  by Elizabeth George
• How to Train a Dragon by Cressida Cowell 

Cover via Amazon

Currently Reading:

• How Pleasure Works:  The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom (see tomorrow's post)
• The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan 
• The Accidental Billionaires:  The Founding of Facebook -- A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich

Up Next:

Cover of The Wednesday Sisters: A Novel
• The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton
  
  
  
  

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler -- August's Book Club Book

This is my book club book for August.  Way to go Angela for picking a winner!  Octavia Butler is a well-known sci fi author but I have the impression that Kindred is a slight deviation from her normal work.

The year is 1976.  Dana, a black woman in Los Angeles has just celebrated her 26th birthday and is in the process of moving into a new house with her white husband when she gets dizzy and finds herself on a riverbank in antebellum Maryland where she saves a little boy from drowning and then wakes up back in her own house. As the story progresses, and Dana continues to be pulled from her life in 1976 to save the boy, Rufus, again and again (as he grows into a teenager and then into a man) Dana realizes that he is her ancestor. Sometimes her husband is pulled along with her on the journey, sometimes he is left behind (both in 1976 and in Rufus' Maryland).

This book was a very quick read for me.  Kindred is enriched by Butler's research and a list for further reading is included at the end of the book.  There was also a reader's guide/questions and I meant to include a few questions here, but it is already back at the library!