Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt

Doug Swieteck and his family have just moved to a stupid new town for his father's stupid new job. His new house is A Dump and his older brother is a wanna be thug.  His mom is doing her best, but is no match for the force of his father, who drinks and keeps bad company. His oldest brother Lucas is serving his country in Vietnam. Doug is starting junior high in a new school where it is already assumed he will follow in his brother's footsteps. Even with all this stacked against him, Doug manages to find a Saturday job delivering groceries, makes friends with the grocer's daughter, and discovers a talent for drawing that allows him to see more than what is on the surface.

I picked up because it's on Janssen's list of best books in 2012. Chances are I'd have eventually gotten around to reading it anyway, as I read The Wednesday Wars a couple years ago and absolutely loved it. Okay for Now is a companion book, in that Doug is also in TWW, but it's not a sequel so you don't have to have read one to read the other. I read the first half of the book over a period of about two weeks and then on Saturday afternoon I sat down and read through to the end.

Schmidt has a very informal way of writing, the book is written in first person and Doug speaks directly to the reader throughout. Despite this, he also has a way of quietly layering details that make the book really terrific. For example, early in the book Doug discovers a book of John James Audobon's birds in his local library and begins to practice drawing them. Each chapter has a picture of one of the drawings and a bit about the composition of the picture (which forced me to flip back and forth to the picture as I was reading). Somehow these technical details about drawing don't feel forced as he's learning them, and even more impressively, don't feel forced as he is thinking about them later. For me, this is one of the best parts of the book, it's just so well crafted that you as you're reading you notice the terrific composition of the book, but you don't mind at all because it's so well done. (Another terrific example of this is Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes, if you're not so into YA literature.) There are other tiny details throughout that, when you notice them, are brilliantly done.

The book wraps up with a bit of a bow on an ongoing theme, but a bit of an open ending on the cute little romance.  Somehow the one balanced out the other enough that I wasn't annoyed by either (and yes, this is vague, but I don't want to tell you anything else.) Like TWW, it takes place over an entire school year, and the pacing is nice and solid.  At this point it's a foregone conclusion that I'll be picking up Schmidt's remaining book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy .

Have you read this one? What did you think? Have you ever read a book that blew you away with techinique, while managing to not have it impact the story negatively? I hate it when an author tries too hard to do something cool, but this one hit exactly the write notes for me. (HAHA, I meant "right notes", of course, but I think I'll leave that.)

Library Loot and Reading Plan

I recently moved the furniture around in our living room so that I could make a little play area for the kids to use during the day. I thought it would make the toys in the living room look intentional, as opposed to messy (and it does!) but one of the by products of this was that I relocated the shelves where we keep our library books. Instead of being along the same wall as my "desk" (the spot at the table where I always sit, next to my sewing machine), they are now directly across the room from me, in my line of sight. Suddenly, I can't stop seeing all the books that I have checked out and need to read before I can't renew them any more.  At my current rate of less than a book a week, there's no way I'll be able to read them all. In order to make it seem a bit more managable, I returned every book that wasn't on the shelf for a reason. That is, I returned all the impulse grabs. This leaves me with the following list, in no particular order, which is still completely impossible!

• Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor, half done with this one, as mentioned previously.
• Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. For my personal reading challenge
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Because everyone and their dog loved it and put it on their list.
• Falling for Hamletby Michelle Ray. For the Janssen Reading Challenge. This one is ILL, I can't renew it. Need to brush up on my Hamlet first though.
• Splitby Swati Avasthi. Also for the Janssen Reading Challenge. Also via ILL.
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Again with the everyone and their dog, plus it seems like a good followup to The Kitchen Counter Cooking School.
• This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper. Recommended by several blogs, and my good friend Shawna.
• The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris by John Baxter. Recommended by Amanda. Sadly this one will have to go back because I'm not going to get to it before it's due tomorrow, and no more renewals. I'll bring it home again one day.
• Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have) by Sarah Mlynowski. I have no idea who recommended this one, but someone did!
• A Profound Mind: Cultivating Wisdom in Everyday Life by the Dalai Lama. Ok, no one recommended this one, it was on the new release shelf. I remain fascinated by religion, khama, happiness, and the intersection of such. At 148 pages and two renewals remaining, I think I'll get to it.
• Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch. This is another that made the rounds. I saw it in the Large Print section and snapped it up.
• Shine by Lauren Myracle. Because unless you spent last fall under a rock, you heard about this one and the controversy.
• Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride. Bookshelves of Doom gets the credit for it. ("Speaking of, the love story is adorable.")
• The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (P.S.) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell. Ok, no rec for this either, I guess.
• The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. This one isn't a library book, it's my next book for the BlogHer Book Club. I was thrilled to get in on this one since I've heard so many great things.

And to round it all out, yesterday I got a call that I have two more books waiting at the library- Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should and Shouldn't Cook from Scratch -- Over 120 Recipes for the Best Homemade Foods and The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters (that second one is an ILL, so again, no renewing on it!)

If I'm realistic at all, I'll start with the ILLs, then the BlogHer book (due Feb 8, I think.) Where would you start?

(The top shelf of books are the ones on this list, the second shelf are all for Mike. The third shelf are kid's library books, and the bottom shelf are random books we own that needed a place to go when I was cleaning the living room. The canvas bag is full of library returns.)

Random Friday: So cold!

• It was -11F windchill when I took the Pirate to school today. That's cold.
• We have a million things to do today, errands and such. Not looking forward to it, but it's my only Bo Peep free weekday, so we will go.
• The Bug is obsessed with playing games on my phone. I kinda hate it. I really want to find a used iPod touch for them.
• Do you guys think a 7 year old girl would like a sock monkey for her birthday?
• The Princess is demanding my attention, this is all you get today,  have a great weekend!

What I Read This Week:

• 
  Whiskey Sour (Jack Daniels Mysteries) by J.A. Konrath for my personal challenge. I did not love it. It had it's funny moments, but I thought the writing insulted my intelligence a bit.
• 
  Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt, for the Janssen Reading Experience.
• 
  Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. Still reading, still enjoying. I'm just not a book monogamist.

So I made the Princess a Pony, every girl needs one.

His name is Neil Patrick Hesh. (The Princess says "hesh" for horse.)



I made him using Simplicity 2921 and a piece of pink plaid suiting fabric I had in the stash.



I didn't have any fake fur, so I used a bit of fleece for the mane and tail. I think it gives him a bit of a punk/ mohawk flair.



The pattern went together really easily, do not be intimidated by step 8, if you are thinking of making it. The hardest part was cutting it out and making his hooves nice and round. I may have rushed that last bit, because I was so close to having an entire horse made. They suggest making it with fleece and I'm pretty happy that I didn't, because I think the curves would have been harder to follow. The suiting had a tiny bit of stretch that worked in my favor.



The Princess is a fan.



She'd prefer you not touch it, thanks.

(Does anyone need me to tell you who is standing to her right?)

Don't censor the internet.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Seriously, watch it, and then do something about it. I emailed my Representatives. You should too. If you don't know who yours are, click here and plug in your zipcode.

Picturing Pierre, South Dakota

One of the hardest parts of living in the middle of nowhere is trying to describe to your friends and family just how middle of nowhere it really is.  Everyone thinks they know what a deserted back road is, but there's a good chance that your deserted highway and mine are nothing at all alike.

For example, look at this map of South Dakota. This shows the population of each county. (Sorry for the blurriness, if you click here you can see it larger and clearly.)

I live in Hughes County (the green one in the center), which is home to Pierre, the state capitol of South Dakota. (Pierre is pronouned like pier, by the way, not like a Frenchman .)  The population of the entire county is under 25,000. The city of Pierre accounts for about 13,600 of those people. Those tan counties surrounding me have a total population of under 6,000. Per County. South Dakota ranks 45th for population density, with a vast majority of the population concentrated in the two cities, one on each end.

The population of the state of South Dakota is about 815,000. The population of the city of San Francisco, is about 808,000.  This doesn't include the surrounding cities like Oakland, which brings the population to about 4.3 million.  There are 12 other U.S. cities with a larger population that my entire state.

What is your state like? Your town? Have you ever experienced a true wide open space? When I first moved to South Dakota driving through in the middle of the night was overwhelming to me and I'd start crying for no reason. True story.

I have a series of posts in mind to introduce you to small town life in the middle of the prairie. There are some small businesses that cry out for introduction and I'd like to show you one of our favorite museums.  There are a lot of things to love about living in a small place, as well as the negatives (the nearest Target is 2.5 hours away!), and I'm looking forward to sharing more about our life here.

Edited to add- I decided I wanted to link up to two other posts I've made about Pierre, to keep them all together.  For my first post on the Pierre Library go here (I have plans to blog about the library again soon), and for my post on the flood last summer, use that link.

Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series

Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series of romance novels became a total guilty pleasure for me last fall. I picked the second on in the series (Almost Perfect ) up first, based on the review of another blogger and whipped right through it in one day, during the busiest time of the year, when I should have been doing other things (see, not guilty because it's a romance, guilty because I should have been doing other things!)  I immediately fell for the town and the people. I felt like Mallery might be similar to Nora Roberts for me- strong relationships between the people, not just the main couple, strong family and friend bonds, and a solid sense of setting. I enjoyed the first three in the series quite a bit, reading them all in a similar all-at-once fashion.

Then the fifth one came (Only Yours ) and I was unimpressed. I felt like maybe Mallery was just phoning it in on this one, or maybe my love affair with them was over.  Despite this I forged on to the last one (Only His ) and while it was better, it still wasn't as strong as the first three had been. I ultimately read book four last (via Kindle for iPhone, also from the library) and was least impressed with it. There was just too much stuff going on to make it feel like a successful romance, but too much romance to take it out of that category. I suspect that if I had read them in order, instead of in the order that the library supplied them to me, that I may have bailed at book four.  I almost wish I'd just read the first three and stopped there, as they were by far the strongest of the bunch.  I have one other quibble, if you're curious, that I'll discuss at the end of the post, as it is a spoiler for the series.

The series has an entire website devoted to it, as if it were a real town, complete with photos.
You can find Susan Mallery on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.  The books have a solidness to them that a lot of romance novels don't and I"ll be picking up more of her work, in hopes that I find another family that draws me in like those first three did.

If you're interested in reading them, the proper order of the Fool's Gold series is as follows:
Chasing Perfect
Almost Perfect
Finding Perfect
Only Mine*
Only Yours*
Only His*

(*Does the title of these three remind anyone else of the Elizabeth Lowell series with the same names from the 90s? I loved those books. Please don't tell me if they are actually full of old school romance themes that would make them distasteful today.)







My other quibble- Without going back to check, the heroine in at least 4 of the novels ends up pregnant by the end of the book. If it had happened once or twice in the series I would not have noticed or cared. But this was just too much.