Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Slowness by Milan Kundera

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson

As this was a National Book Award Finalist, I read a review of this one that made it seem like our bookclub would love it. We didn't. Very similar to Bent Road...to the point that a few months later we had a conversation where we all tried to recall which characters were from which book. Middle-America-family-drama type stuff here. Good for passing the time, but not the Irving/Cunningham-caliber of writing that I was expecting. Apparently, these particular quotes and excerpts stirred something in me at one point...

"The individual and the state, the individual as unwilling participant in the state. The self existed among the great confusion of other selves, each of us, all of us, the cells in the body politic. The political animal. A shuffling, shambling, bearlike creature, sometimes lurching forward, at other times gnawing and swatting at its own troubled innards."

"It wasn't fair. Maybe when you were a child, or for a little while longer, you thought that as soon as you pointed unfairness out, a swift and righteous justice would prevail."

"He didn't feel like dredging it up, explaining. How naive he'd been, naive being a nicer way of saying dumb, to think that ideas could protect you from the world's catastrophes, or from cruelty or unfairness or your own vanity."

"...It was better when the church was crowded and they had to sit in the balcony, where you could at least look down on people and imagine yourself parachuting on top of them. ...nothing you could do to keep from being eaten up and digested by your boredom. ...he didn't know why they weren't all embarrassed. Everything about church was profoundly embarrissing to him, as if religion was something that only took place in the most unnatural circumstantces."

Heartbeat by Sharon Creech

Wowza. The last half of 2011 wasn't an awesome stretch of reading and writing time for me. While the documentation of titles and book covers was on track with my reading, I never quite got around to summarizing or reviewing. You know what they say about good intentions. They say that Jill is a procrastinator. Instead of living under the delusion that I'll "eventually" come back to write on those titles, I'm simply posting what I have saved in my drafts. If there's something you want to ask about, let me know....AND if you're looking to read anything, shoot me an email. When I moved in February, I packed up 5 boxes of books for donations. I've been on a hot streak of reading these past few weeks (mostly young adult lit), and am hoping to continue it, as well as follow suite with my writing. A girl can dream.




I've now read this book 4 times, made copies of appropriate pages for my students, posted poems on bulletin boards and profusely gushed about Sharon Creech for the past 3 years or so.

This is a story about a 13 year old girl who loves to run. Annie is just now figuring out how to run because she loves it, and whether or not it's possible to express and share that kind of passion with other people.

Annie runs with her friend Max, and talks a bit about running with her Grandpa. Told in story verse, we also see Annie connect with her community and explore her other talents. Her year-long art project of 100 drawings of the same apple is a thread that ties many lessons together for the reader, just as young Annie unfolds these truths herself.

the dog says how by kevin kling

I read this book sometime in October. It was spectacular. Well, err derr. Kevin Kling is a professional storyteller, a playwright and an NPR contributor. The short stories here completely jumped from the pages right into my imagination. Squirrel monkeys, family dinners, car trips, Australia, morphine, Of Mice and Men, bachelor parties, and schoolyard interactions all receive at least a mention...and I was thrilled at every turn.

Regardless of the amount of detail used or the affectations of his own speech, Kevin Kling is gifted as a writer. There are many stories that I could quote, but given the season and my own place in the world, I give you an excerpt from this:

the view from the card table

(please note that immediately preceding these paragraphs, Kling has just spent some time explaining his aunt's breathing sounds, complete with onomatopoetic exclamations and making a comparison to someone running in corduroys. Ba-zing! Zhuup Zhuup, Read sisters!)




Uncle Dale blesses the food and our fellowship and that everyone made it safe. He prays in Jesus' name and calls him, "Our Savior." Our Savior. I start thinking, Jesus is our Savior? Don't you have to be in big trouble to be needed to be saved? I mean, doesn't a drowning person need to be saved? And Jesus is constantly having to come to earth to save us. What does that mean?

Then, I remembered the Meyers's cats. My friend, John Klein, was hired to watch the Meyers's two cats while they were out of town, these lazy, hedonistic cats. I mean, I never saw 'em move, but there were signs of destruction everywhere: chair legs shredded down to toothpicks, an acrid odor in one corner. But, you'd look at these cats and they'd sit there like, "Yes, I know. It was like that when I got here, too." Lazy, hedonistic cats. So anyway, Mr. Meyer told John to feed them twice a day and give them a treat "when you think about it." John and I laughed at what the treat might be. Then, one day, about a week later, we're riding our bikes, and I mention to John, "How's it going with the cats?"

John hits his brake and says, "The cats! The cats! Oh, the Meyers's cats! I forgot all about them."

I said, "They'll be okay, John. They can go a couple days without food."

"No!" he says, "it hasn't been a couple of days. It's been a week. I forgot this whole week."

So we raced over to the Meyers's, and the cats were still alive, but, I mean, just barely. Luckily, the toilet seat was up, so they'd had something to drink. And when they saw John, they didn't think, "Oh, there's the guy who forgot us." No, they saw John as the one who saved them. Every time John came back from then on, those cats would see him and go crazy. "Oh, there he is! He's back." I wondered if that happened to God. "Earth. I forgot all about earth. Oh, my, me, I better get down there. Hey, what if they're mad at me? I know, I'll send the kid." And Jesus came down, and we all went crazy like the cats.

Last Nights of Paris by Philippe Soupalt (translation by William Carlos Williams)

Accomplice by Rupert Holmes