Bibliomama

Yesterday did not start out well. I've been having absolutely vicious insomnia, that even breaks through my sleeping pill (which I only take occasionally, but when I do it generally knocks me right out). I turn out the light and lie down and I know within ten minutes that I'm not going to sleep. Sometime I turn on the light and read some more, but sometimes I slip into this state where I'm too tired and achy to get up again but not enough to fall asleep. It blows big chunky bile-green chunks. Because my husband is sweet and considerate, he often takes the kids to school when I've had a crappy night like this. This would seem to solve the problem, but it doesn't really, because what happens is that I slip into a deep, deep, BOTTOMLESSLY deep sleep around four or five in the morning, sleep too late, still wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle and feel like.... big chunky bile-green chunks. So I started the day feeling like I was late for everything (beca...

And it's before March (just barely, I know -- still counts!)  And I know no one really cares - except Julie. You still care, right Julie? I still found the act of finishing it quite satisfying, and I promise that if it gets no comments I will not, under any circumstances, sink to the shameful low of begging for comments on Twitter (again). The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell - one of the reviews on the back cover said that this was something like a Flannery O'Connor novel with zombies, which is a very apt description. The heroine is young but tough, smart and with a strong moral code. Oddly enough, her nemesis, the threat to her existence other than the zombies, the one who holds the place that would be occupied by 'bad guy' in another book, is not entirely different. The voice is measured and there is a feeling of inevitability about the whole thing. Someone on Goodreads was complaining about all the 'thinking' zombie novels, because this meant he was b...

There was an article in the Ottawa Citizen today about Kate the Duchess of Cambridge revealing the heretofore secret name of the royal couple's new dog to a child at a primary school she was visiting. They named the dog Lupo, which is the Italian word for wolf. I quote: "By choosing the Italian for wolf for a cocker spaniel -- not a large or particularly fierce breed -- the royal couple may be showing evidence of a sense of irony." Holy shit! Has anyone told the Queen?

Seems I accidentally took a break from blogging. I'm not doing that great. I thought I was doing okay, which I sort of am, but not great. And I'm not sick. Which is fantastic, I got through Christmas and vacation return without getting the Chest Thing that I always get over Christmas or after vacation return. I still cough a lot because that's just the way my crazy airways work, but it's still way better than last year, and I am thankful. Except even without being sick I'm not doing that great. But I did make it to the gym the last two weeks, and go to physio for my oh-so-poetic Patellar Femoral Syndrome. And I shelved library books and made dinner and watched Angus's volleyball tournament - okay, I'm sounding pathetic now just to console myself. My husband assures me that I'm not wrecking our children and reminds me that even the Cleavers weren't actually the Cleavers and offers to have sex with me because you know, that's what normal married ...

Okay - the three star entries. I'm not going to lie, as I was typing out this list, there were several that made me think "that should have been two" or "why didn't I give that four again?" One of the essays in the book I read last week, articulated very well how I feel about reading a book. Unless the book has very obvious problems or flaws, I never assume that it's the book's fault if I don't like it. Sometimes it's just the wrong time for me to meet that book. I started The Shipping News three times and couldn't get past the first chapter - when I finally read it, I adored it. Last March I began reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog , which I bought at the same time as Come, Thou Tortoise . Maybe it was that I loved Tortoise so much I just wasn't ready to engage with a Hedgehog. In any case, I started it again from the beginning yesterday and will probably finish it tonight, and it is SUBLIME. So I'm not going to change the ...

When I was pregnant for the second time, I waited anxiously to feel the baby start moving. I'd done this once. I thought I knew what to expect. Good heavens, I thought, what on earth is this? Flutters? Please . Kicks? Ha It felt more like roundhouse haymakers . Firecrackers in my belly. Jack Dempsey going three rounds with my spine. " Look, Baby, " I said, ""Whatever it is, we can discuss it," "Is it the turkey sandwich? Would you prefer egg salad ?" "Are we talking a marked preference for reality television over vampire dramas?" No answer. Just a concerted effort to switch the positions of my liver and kidneys My friends said "how does it feel?" I said " it feels angry! " I asked the doctor "is it all the pistachios? Do you think I've made this baby........ NUTS ?" I looked at my strapping little boy and though ...

Yes, it's 2012, and by the way I don't like my World's Fair poster calendar nearly as much as my weird-ass Alice in Wonderland one from 2011 that periodically freaked the kids out.  Yes, I just made the sweet potato soup with red curry paste and coconut milk from the latest Food & Drink magazine and I'd much rather just talk about how transported I am by this soup which I think might be some kind of superior being in food form - wait, that's kind of gross, isn't it?  Who cares, this soup is like CRACK, people, it's like CRACK, you must ALL come over and have some, it has a BANANA in it! Still, the book review post Must Be Done, must it not?  Well, no, nobody really gives a crap, but I have a Free Book book review coming up tomorrow so today seems like a good day for a Books I Read Just Because post.  (Aaaaaand that's when I realized it was already ten p.m. and the post would be up for all of two hours before the next post clicked in at midnight.  S...

The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney, embodies everything I revere about the mystery genre.  Not the simple collection of tropes that comprise a whodunit or a 'thriller', but a mystery, in the most gracious and wide-ranging sense of the word; a work that is about trying to find something, and, in that finding, to address the sense of loss that inevitably accompanies being a thinking person in this world. Ray Lovell isn't a new type of character - the world-weary, battle-scared private investigator - but he is a fine example of the type.  Half Romany, half 'gorjio' (a pejorative term gypsies use for non-Gypsies), he was raised in a house rather than a caravan and is fairly distanced from his heritage, and yet he feels a kinship with Leon Wood, who hires Lovell to find out what happened to his daughter Rose, and with the Jankos, the family Rose married into who claims to have no idea of her whereabouts (I apologize sincerely for that sentence, but I don't hav...