The Imperfect Mom

This week's completed book (how did I end up at only one book a week??) was The Imperfect Mom: Candid Confessions of Mothers Living in the Real World edited by Therese J Borchard. Published in 2006, this is a slim little book of essays about being imperfect. It seems that everyone is trying to be the perfect mother (homemade baby food! baby gymnastics! Daily craft projects! Breastfeed only! etc!) and this book is written women who admit they aren't. I am not. I am a good mom, but I readily admit I am not perfect. I'd go crazy if I stayed home with the Monkey everyday. I hate bathtime. I lose my patience with the whining. I let him watch tv (the horrors!) He probably (ok, he does) eat too much sugar. I actually let him play alone while I do things I like to do for myself (like reading!) This book of essays is perfect for reassuring me that I am not the only mom who does these things that no-one will admit to.

There are 36 essays in the book. Some of them were great, some of them weren't. All of them were quick and easy. My favorite is near the end of the book. It's called Be Careful What You Wish For by Julie Aigner-Clark. It's about wishing away their childhood ("Can't wait till she can walk; can't wait till they can play together; can't wait till she sleeps through the night") until suddenly you turn around they they are grown. Just that essay alone make the book worth reading. I credit it with a lot of patience in my house lately. I won't ever be a perfect mom, and I will surely never have a clean house, but when my kid thinks about his childhood, hopefully we won't be home cleaning instead of having fun.

Anyone else interested in reading this one? My copy has a little water damage on the front cover (the previous owner spilled coffee on it and then immediately wiped it off) and I can not trade it away at PBS. Leave me a comment and it's yours. If more than one of you are interested, I'll pull a name out of the hat next weekend.

This book is an alternate on my TBR Challenge list, so only 6 more to go before the end of the year!

Number The Stars by Lois Lowry and other bookish catchup

Despite taking a huge stack of books, and buying even more, I only managed to read one book on my vacation- Number the Stars by Lois Lowry- and that one I read on the plane home. Number the Stars is set in 1943 Denmark. It's the story of the Jewish detainment and one 10 year old girl's role in it. This is a very quick book, written for middle school aged kids. It won the Newbery Award in 1990.

The story is very clear, and simple to read, but I didn't think it was nearly as good as The Giver (also by Lowry) or The Book Thief (also about WWII and the Holocaust). The writing isn't as good, and I didn't find it as emotionally hard as either of the others. This was on my Newbery Challenge list, and I am glad that I read it, but it's not going down as a favorite book.

I also finished Hex in the City by Simon R Green. This is the fourth in the series and it just keeps getting more outlandish and better with each installment. This one sets up the story for the next few titles and ends with a bit of a cliff hanger. I have the next two at home (borrowed from the library) and hope to get to them soonish. I'd like to have at least one series that I'm all caught up on.

Reading goals for the next month or so- Harry Potters 5 and 6, finish up the Newbery Challenge, wrap up a couple odds and ends (The Faith Club, I Am the Messenger, Carved in Bone.) This is a lot of reading for me, those HPs are huge! I'm determined to reread them all before July 21 though.

Two weeks worth of math- 7 more from Paperbackswap (the last being How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater) plus the 7 I bought on vacation brings me to 86 books in since January. I finished two whole books in that time. This brings me to 52 books behind. This experiment is starting to get depressing. Good thing it's summer and tv is all reruns!

Books Awards Reading Challenge

Ok, just ONE more challenge. Then I'm done. Actually, this one is so easy it doesn't even hardly count. The Books Awards Reading Challenge is hosted by 3M and the goal is to read 12 award winning books between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008. Books CAN overlap with other challenges, which means my list is mostly made already! Just a handful more and a full year to add them, I think this should work out just fine. As a bonus, I don't have to have my full list now, so I can add things from other, TBD, challenges later.


Here's what I've got so far:

1. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (Newbery 1990)
2. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D Taylor (Newbery 1977)
3. Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt (Newbery 1967)
4. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine D'Engle (Newbery 1963)
5. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Spear (Newbery 1960)
6. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty (Pulitzer 1973)
7. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (Orange Prize 2002)(PEN/Faulker 2002)
   
8. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Governor General's Award 1985)
   
9. Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt (Man Booker 1990) (not on any other challenge, but on my shelves)
   
10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Pulitzer 2003) (ditto)
11. The Road - Cormac McCarthy (Pulitzer 2007) (not on another challenge, but feels like something I should read.)
    
12. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (British Book Award 2006)

Ok, there's my first 12. I've only added 3 that aren't already on another challenge. Now here's the best part- there are PRIZES- credits from paperbackswap! Woohoo! The more books you read, the more chances you have to win. I'm in it to win it!

3M has set up a nice little blog for this challenge, so come by and sign up- Books Awards Reading Challenge.

Gina, this would be the perfect place for you to get your feet wet on blogging. Come on over, I'll vouch for ya if you look like trouble.