Peter and the Starcatchers

Peter and the Starcatchers is a book that will make you laugh and keep you turning pages. This is Dave Barry's story of Peter Pan, prior to the classic story. How did Peter get to Never Land anyway? On the ship, The Never Land, of course! Peter is brave, but not quite so confident as he is in the original book - more genuine here. We also meet a strong, smart girl, named Molly, who is an apprentice star-catcher - she also is learning how to speak to porpoises. The author gently weaves in more modern beliefs - the Indians on the island have a strong anti-immigration policy - they feed all foreigners to the crocodile because they know that no matter how much the intruders promise that they won't hurt the Indians, they always do. To find out more about what happened to Peter before he became Peter Pan, you MUST read Peter and the Starcatchers. (5th grade and up).

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

This is a funny, touching, fabulous book that I enjoyed listening to immensely. The audio version is read by the author, Sherman Alexie, who is also a stand-up comic as well as a poet. I laughed and smiled and felt for the main character, Arnold Spirit, also called Junior. Junior is a very smart kid trapped on the Indian reservation until a teacher encourages him to leave - and he does so. He attends the school 20 miles away in an upper-middle class white community. To see a more thorough description, click on the link below to Bruce Barcott's NYT's review. Alexie proves with this young adult fictionalized memoir that he is an outstanding author for this age group.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Barcott3-t.html

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

I enjoyed Airborn, a story about an ordinary boy doing extraordinary things in a semi-sci-fi world where air ships successfully circumnavigated the globe. The story kept me interested and there was a lot of action and suspense. The character development could have been better, however. But, overall, a fun read that both boys and girls would enjoy from middle school on up.

The Book Thief

Besides the fact that I'm the worst blogger in the world (note the 6+ week time lapse since my last post) I am still interested in trying to use this blog to make note of what I'm reading, which leads to...

One of the best books I have EVER read! The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak is beautifully written, a powerful story with incredibly likable characters, and written using the character of Death as the narrator. How original can you get. Does anyone know any other books written from Death's point of view? Death is even gentle and sensitive! The time period is WWII, set in Germany, in a small town outside of Munich on Himmel (heaven) street. Death has a wonderful sense of humor as does the author ;^). Somehow Death shows us that even in the face of a living hell, humans can be kind, can grow and be nurtured, and children can be resilient and come out ok.

Read this book... I give it 5 Big BOLD stars!

Happy May Day!

Springtime in the Rockies comes true again today as I look out my window to the big white flakes that have now covered the ground, the garden and the trampoline. Tomorrow more of the same, they say. The goldfinches perch on the Aspen tree, waiting for their turn at the feeder. The two closest Aspen's have their leaves fully out, the farthest one is still mostly bare. The oak has no leaves. The apple tree is just beginning to bring forth it's flowers. Hopefully, the snow won't steal the apple crop. Cocoa, our dog, is in apple heaven in the fall when she gets to pick the apples off the ground, AND the tree! whenever she wants a snack.

Moab!

Just came home from a fantastic vacation in Moab. Went with 3 other families and all the kids and grownups had a great time! We took a float trip down the Colorado River, went on a Canyoneering adventure with Red River Adventures and rappelled down 90 and 110 foot cliffs (no, I didn't look - but wish I could have done it twice in a row so that I could have looked the second time!), went on a gorgeous hike up Mill Creek Canyon and got some birding time in as well as a hike in Arches. The guys got to mountain bike and Trish got to jeep - it was AWESOME! Please, give me another synonym! Once I post the photos to flickr I will put up the link.

I Don't Believe in Atheists

Just saw Chris Hedges, the author of I Don't Believe in Atheists, speak at the Boulder Bookstore. He made some very interesting arguments about the dangers of both the radical believers and radical non-believers. His premise is that any radical belief system closes your mind to understanding. He also criticized the desire of groups to create Utopian societies, believing that this mindset is the truly dangerous one. I'd like to read his book - I'll put it on my endless Amazon wish list!

Second Glance

A fun, great, interesting book. Hurray!

This was interesting historically - investigating eugenics in America, and as an aside, how the Nazi regime used eugenics research as a basis for their ethnic cleansing program. But beyond that, the story was very entertaining and engaging. Lots of different characters with lives intertwined. Explorations about life and death and the importance and meaning of life.

I loved the first line: "Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third".

By the end of the book, Ross realizes it's not what you failed to do in your life that matters, but what you do accomplish.

Highly recommended for teens and adults.

Horton Hears a Who

UGH! Boring for me. I'm not a big Jim Carrey fan and it seems like Jr. High humor to me and it's been way too long since I've been in Jr. High.

My 10 year old loved it, however, and can't understand why I didn't think it was funny.

Both my husband and I were dozing off in the middle.

I'm not much of a movie critic, I usually like to be just entertained and don't go for the deeper meanings, but here, the deeper meaning was interesting, even though I thought the movie was horrible. What if WE were just on this speck of a planet and there were some larger creatures out there carrying our universe through space.

Or, forget about the larger creatures and just think of ourselves on a speck.

BTW, is space bigger than the universe or is the universe bigger than space? Is this one of those which came first questions?

Anyhow, this all comes from a spiritual agnostic. Now how do you like that for a contradiction in terms?

First Post - Why

What am I doing? I don't like writing very much. However, I just spent yet another several hours with my husband's family, digging down deep to keep the conversation going and it was slightly less than torture. So, what did my left-brain come up with? Look on google to find out how to keep the conversation going.

Now, just to be clear, this is not usually difficult for me. But put me around family that I have little in common with and I'm left semi-speechless.

So, one of the things I will be doing here is helping out my poor little memory. What did I just read? What movie did I just see? These things seem to slip through my brain like a sieve.

Maybe because I'm so caught up in day-to-day life with two kids, graduate school, and life!

Oh, and why "The next 48?" Because I plan on living at least as long as I already have up to this point and this way, I'll remember some of it!