Where've You Been?: The April Edition

Some people post reading recaps every month.   Mine would be awful short, so I've decided to replace my reading recaps with excuses for why I haven't been blogging or reading enough, with verbs!

Adjusting - To this new job.  I used to have a job where I spent a lot of the day walking.  Now I have a computery desk job.  This makes me unlikely to want to spend my evenings with another computer.  Also, it makes me fat from sitting at a desk all day.  With that in mind, it's not surprising that I've joined my new co-workers on their daily lunch walks that get me up and moving away from my desk and burning off a few calories.  The bad news is, when you spend your lunch breaks walking, a good half hour of reading time disappears from your day.

Reading - Occasionally.  LOL.  No, seriously, though.  April wasn't a total wash of a reading month for me.  I did finish The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood  and Ender's Game for the book club that I very occasionally join.  The Wicked Girls was good, and so was Ender's Game.  I'd been meaning to read Ender for quite a while, so it was good to get that final push to pick it up.  I also read a big chunk of Five Days at Memorial which I have been anticipating and avoiding in equal measure.  Finally, this time when I chose it at random, I didn't say, "Argh, non-fiction, I don't think I can!"  I actually picked it up and gave it a shot.  It's compelling but also jaw-droppingly depressing.

Spending - A great day in NYC with a bunch of friends!

Freezing -  Seriously, the cold weather just won't quit.  My dad got us 5 game "season" tickets for a minor league baseball team in our area, but you have to use one set of tickets each month of the season.  We had fun eating overpriced ballpark food and clowning around with the mascot, but let me tell you something is really lost in watching baseball when it's like 45 degrees and windy out.  Brrrrrr.

Cheering -  For the 24 Hour Readathon.  I totally missed the under-publicized deadline for signing up to cheer, but that didn't stop me, I went "rogue" instead and had a great time cheering for the ridiculous amount of people that were signed up this time around.  However, having missed the official deadline, it kind of sucked because I had to go back to using the sign-up linky to find blogs to cheer for, and lots of people signed up and didn't participate or participated by Tumblr.  Is there a way to cheer for Tumblr users?  I mean, I'm pretty clueless about Tumblr, so maybe there is a simple way, but I couldn't find it and, unfortunately, couldn't cheer for those folks.  However, I did make up a great rhyme or two to cheer Readathonners on Twitter, and seriously, I had a ton of fun.  Thanks to Andi and Heather for not just keeping the event going but working to make it even better every time!

Crying -  Over Patchy.  One of our "stray" cat colony that is never quite stray enough.  Almost exactly a year after his brother went missing, Patchy got hit by a car.  You never quite feel like you did enough to help the cats you didn't mean to pseudo-own, but you can't figure out how you could have done more under the circumstances and the whole thing ends up in a morass of a sadness and mostly undeserved guilt.  The moral of the story?  Save another animal lover some heartbreak.  Adopt a cat, and get it fixed so it won't make lots of other (homeless) cats that some poor sucker won't want to watch starve and will feed and love and be heartbroken over when they can't take it in because they already have a zillion cats and the inevitable occurs.  :'-(

Celebrating -  It's birthday season for my family.  April is littered with birthdays here on the ranch.  My mom, dad, and two aunts all celebrate this month.  It's a month full of cake and cards stuffed with cash which is fun but hard on the ever-fattening recent desk job convert and those with ailing bank accounts. 

Planning -  To start blogging again.  For real.  But here's the thing, I've decided not to let myself start until I have a good stockpile of posts to schedule out.  I'm shooting for eight.  Counting this one, I have about three whole and four halves done.  Wish me luck - I do miss this blogging thing!

That's what I've been doing.  What have you been up to?

Cheering for the 24 Hour Readathon!

 

That's right, it's Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon day!  Sadly I can't commit the whole day to reading and I missed the deadline to be an "official" cheerleader, so this is going to be like the olden days when I cheered "unofficially."  Hopefully I'll be doing a little "unofficial" reading too, but I'll definitely be scraping together what spare time I've got to to cheer on the many, many people who are spending today reading, reading, and then reading some more.  Happy Readathon day to everyone participating! 

Loose Leafing: Good Stuff Marches On

Happy Sunday, all!  I have to tell you, I'm always admiring it when people post those "good stuff" posts where they simply list all the good things that are going on their lives, but all too often, I fail to post my own.  This March was made for good stuff, and for once, I'm not letting the opportunity to post about it pass me by.  So here's just a sampling of all the good stuff happening this month:

~ Turning 30 (Wait, how did this get on the good things list??)

~ Birthdayaganza! (Defined: The unintentional celebration of one's birthday with the continuous eating of cake and other birthday goodies with a variety of friends and family all month long.)

~ Spending my actual birthday weekend with my good friend Lover-o (We talked books, saw The Lego Movie, ate delicious food at Reading Terminal Market before accidentally sneaking into the Philly Flower Show - it's okay, we bought the tickets in advance!  Plus, we had a "snow day" that involved homemade soup, a cake that looked like a huge whoopie pie, and only one inch of snow. Everything is awesome - just like the movie says! PS, thanks again, Lover-o!)

~ Successfully purchasing enough new clothes in one day of outlet shopping to wear to a new job where real person clothes are required.

~ Getting some sweet goodies from my former co-workers (and friends!) for my departure (Bonus points: the orchid is still alive after 2 weeks or so!)

~ Starting a new job. (Wearing real clothes pays!)

~ Picking up my 5 game season tickets for the AAA minor league Yankees team, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders  (There was a party with free food and team mascots wandering around.  Here's to getting people excited about baseball while there's still snow on the ground!)

~ Having a great dinner (Mmm filet mignon!) with great friends and a spur of the moment (mostly positive) psychic reading, too.  Not that I'm not a total skeptic about that kind of thing. 

~ Taking a very successful and entertaining trip to the King of Prussia mall with my mom, aunt, and cousin where we "only" had to wait 40 minutes for a table at the Cheesecake Factory (which my iPhone knows should be capitalized, LOL) and discovered what fun The Container Store is (it's more than just containers, everybody!).  Bonus?  Getting a Cinnabon from the service plaza on the Northeast Extension.  Yum!

~ Writing this entire post from bed on my iPhone.  (Because inspiration can die between bed and computer, and I couldn't let that happen, could I?)


There it is, just a sampling of the good stuff March has had to offer, a little something to perk us all up while we wait for the temperatures to match the season and the post time-change sniffles to be sent packing.  Next up...book reviews?  Dare we hope?  Hmmm...

In the meantime, what's been happening good in your life?

One Hundred and Four Horses by Mandy Retzlaff

When Pat and Mandy Retzlaff settled on Crofton farm in lush Zimbabwe, they imagined giving their children the same sort of idyllic African childhood that Pat had experienced and leaving them the thriving farm as legacy when they were grown.  For a while, it seemed as if that would be the case as they threw themselves into farming tomatoes and tobacco, taking their kids for rides into the wild African bush on their favorite horses, and making friends with the family on the neighboring farm.  Unfortunately, the life they had dreamed for themselves and their children was not to become a reality.  Instead, the couple became wrapped up in the living nightmare of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, where farms were often stolen from their rightful white owners to be redistributed back to the African natives, or, more accurately, Mugabe's political cronies.

The Retzlaffs and their neighbors on Two Tree farm were driven under threat of violence from their homes and livelihoods in one shot, leaving them on the run for safety with their beloved horses in a nation that would continue to grow increasingly hostile to its white population.  Fleeing from farm to farm in search of a safe haven, each time refusing to leave their horses to uncertain, violent fates, Pat and Mandy soon got a reputation as being the "horse people," and many farmers and ranchers fleeing Zimbabwe sought them out to take in the horses that would otherwise be left behind. Eventually forced to leave behind the country they loved, One Hundred and Four Horses is Mandy's story of how she and her husband managed to ferry a nation's abandoned horses to new life.

I loved One Hundred and Four Horses.  It proved to be a huge reading funk-buster for me.  After struggling with a few books that were lackluster and whose characters seemed too affected for real life, the authenticity of Mandy Retzlaff's voice was a breath of fresh air.  The writing, while occasionally artless, gave the impression of being written letters by a well-loved friend going through an incredible trial.  Retzlaff's love for her kids and her occasionally hot-tempered, always determined husband shines through in her writing.  Furthermore, the couple's love and admiration for their horses, both the ones that started out as theirs and the ones that they adopted along the way, penetrates Retzlaff's narrative, so much so that I felt as if I knew and loved the horses, too, and would practically be biting my nails as they were rustled out from under one dangerous situation or another.

This is a book that animal lovers will both love and hate.  The Retzlaffs' actions in saving so many  horses under such terrible circumstances were downright heroic and when things went their way, my heart soared.  Unfortunately, bad situations were rife in two countries in Africa where the rule of law had gone by the wayside, and obviously, death, destruction and frustration follow.  My heart was both warmed and broken at the same time as I experienced Mandy Retzlaff's roller coaster of a book.  There were some occurrences that were truly difficult to read about, but the Retzlaffs' tale is so irresistible that there was no stopping until the last page was turned and the fate of the horses secured.

(Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.)

The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag

Book reviews - I still write them!  No seriously, look, here's one now!

The House at the End of Hope Street is a novel about a magical house that shelters women in need for a set number of days.  Even better, the women who have benefited from the house’s healing in the past, many of which became famous for their accomplishments, linger in portraits that litter the walls doling out encouragement to the current denizens.  Benevolent spirits of house guardians past provide the women with whatever they need to nourish their souls and pick themselves up for a new start during their hundred day stays.

 

During the time of the book, the three women in need are Greer, a failed actress looking for a new path; Carmen,  a talented singer fleeing from an abusive husband; and Alba, a humiliated ex-scholar from a dysfunctional family of scholars whose secrets threaten to overwhelm her.  Each finds refuge in the house with Peggy, the aged house guardian, getting guidance from the photos on the wall, and in Alba’s case, the spirit who lives in the kitchen.

I think I’m in the minority when I say that I really didn’t like this book as much as I expected to like it.  Several bloggers I love and respect very much enjoyed this one.  For my part, I was entranced by the house and its guardian, but the three women in need of the house’s aid failed to captivate me.  By and large, I don’t mind when  a narrative switches focus among a few characters, in this case, however, I think the tactic does a disservice to the characters.  The pace of The House at the End of Hope Street felt off to me.  Van Praag bounces too quickly between characters not giving readers quite enough time to settle in with one and feel sympathy for her before veering off to the next.  Despite the fact that van Praag spends a good amount of time developing each of her characters, the brevity of the time we spend with each seems to undercut that and create a story that feels somehow shallower than what I'd hoped for.

There are some truly heartwarming moments lurking inside The House as van Praag’s characters negotiate their respective paths to self-discovery.  The House as a character unto itself is ripe with fun discoveries.  In the end, though, the awkward pacing held me at a distance and kept me from falling head over heels for this one. 

(Disclaimer:  I received a copy of this book from the publicist in exchange for my honest review.  Impressively, I've managed to review it before the paperback release date of March 25th.  Rather less fortunately, they were probably hoping I'd get this in in time for the, um, hardcover release.)

Anyhow, we interrupt this moment of book blogger guilt to post the picture of the paperback cover which I might possibly prefer to the hardback cover (which is also quite nice).  Which do you think?