Speaking of....

Speaking of books, the super-awesome Nicole over at Nicole is Better just posted about her experience plowing through the entire Harry Potter series (for the first time) in the last two weeks.

An excerpt from her post:

The upside of this is that Harry Potter makes your heart feel good. The downside is that you’ll quickly realize how boring your stupid ordinary life is, and you’ll be very sad when the books are over and no one around you is making cars fly or spontaneously morphing into a dog. See also: cooking dinner by bewitching knives to chop the ingredients, disappearing from one place and immediately appearing in another, regrowing broken bones, and fighting dragons. Nothing gives you street cred like fighting a fucking dragon.

Damn, I have a girl-crush on her. Anyway. Read it. Remember the books. Peace out.

Turning pages

A brief selection of my summer reading.

Last week, I found myself splayed on the sofa one afternoon after work, windows open, dog barking, house a mess, and run sidelined for the afternoon. Why? I was finishing a book. And I refused to put it down until I was done.

Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you I'm a year-round book geek. But there's just something about summer and endless reading that goes together like peanut butter and jelly. (Milk and chocolate? My credit card and a shoe store?)

I've made heavy use of the Chicago Public Library's book request service this summer, plowing my way through more than a dozen books since the end of May. I won't pretend I'm reading super-intellectual books, But after a semester at seminary, I decided to sideline the deep stuff and bury my nose in Jodi Picoult, Anne Brashares, Jennifer Weiner and Sara Gruen. I've also tried to knock off a fair share of YA books (word to Maureen Johnson!), Tina Fey's autobiography, and some nonfiction thrown in, too.

So that's what I've been reading. What about you? Do you dive into a certain type of books in the summer? Or is it a 12-months-a-year affair? Anything you're dying to recommend?

Tell me a story

There's just something about a really great story and a book that you just can't, no matter how hard you try, put down.

I'm a lucky reader, mainly because I spent at least 45 minutes twice a day sitting on a bus during my work commute. It's the most amazing time to read. It's quiet. The bus rumble is quiet. We go up and down Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan is out my window. It's my time. My time to think. To pray. To decompress. To watch the sun rise over the water and set behind the skyline. And it's my time to read.

I could take the train to work and back. In fact, it might be even a little faster. But I wouldn't trade my bus time. Not for anything.

Which leads me back to my initial line. I love a good story. While I can't just read one book at a time, if I can find a book that draws me in, that makes me actually take a lunch break to keep reading, I feel like I've hit jackpot.

You know?

But it's hit or miss. It had been a few months since I'd found one of those books. Until last night.

I came home and was frustrated and cranky. I didn't feel like I'd done a particularly good job at work that day. I didn't really want to deal with the world. My life felt like it was in disarray. So I climbed in a steaming hot bath and opened a copy of "Blankets," by Craig Thompson, which an, ahem, boy let me borrow.

One day and 592 pages later, I feel like I'm just coming out of a good read fog. And it makes me so, so happy.

What have you been reading lately? What's your favorite book that just absorbs you? What should I read next?

Image via DazeyChic.

Brrrrr. It's cool in here.

It's fall here in Chicago, what with it being in the 40s all of a sudden at night. This, incidently, seriously makes me want to have a sidebar with Mother Nature to ask her WTF is going on. I mean, I love fall. Don't get me wrong. It's by far my best wardrobe season. But it's AUGUST. At least for another 24+ hours. Anyway, soap box over.

Since it's been extra chilly at night, I've been able to engage in one of my favorite fall activities (outside of apple picking, drinking hot spiced cider, leaf fights, pumpkins, hayrides, etc.), namely, layering on extra blankets and sleeping with the windows open.

Who doesn't love this? If you don't, you're c-r-a-z-y. Of course, the downside is if you're hungover, or stayed up too late reading the third Twilight book, and wake up cranky AND having to give yourself a peptalk to actually throw off the covers and race into the shower, because lingering too long would cause you to freeze and then return under the covers making you later than you already are. Not that I'd, you know, know anything about this. At all. Ever. (Also, Bella is lame and pathetic and unhealthily obsessed and she makes me want to scream and cringe almost as much as the writing does. And yet, it's book porn. Can't. Put. It. Down. But that's another post.)

That is all.

Blast from the past

The Mom was doing some cleaning and ran across a long-forgotten book, "The Tale of Custard The Dragon." Anyone remember this poem? And is it me, or does it rock as much today as it did almost 30 years ago?

(Also, for what it's worth, wouldn't it be kick ass to be described as being as brave as a barrel full of bears?)

THE TALE OF CUSTARD THE DRAGON

By Ogden Nash

Belinda lived in a little white house,

With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,

And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,

And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,

And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,

And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,

But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,

And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,

Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,

And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,

And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,

Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,

But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,

Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,

They all sat laughing in the little red wagon

At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,

And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,

Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,

When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,

And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.

Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,

For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,

And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,

His beard was black, one leg was wood;

It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!

But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,

Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,

And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,

Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,

With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm

He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,

And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,

He fired two bullets but they didn't hit,

And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,

No one mourned for his pirate victim

Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate

Around the dragon that ate the pirate.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,

With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,

And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,

And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,

And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,

Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,

But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

Read all about it.

I picked up Lotta Jansdotter's book, "Simple Sewing" during at Barnes & Noble last night.

A super-fun and contemporary-yet-accessible designer, I'm psyched to try out some of the projects in her collection. Of course, as quilter, I'm not so much with the sewing of curves and circles (which, come to think of it, is also my problem when I try to crochet. Perhaps I'm spherically challenged.) So, we'll see how it works out and I'll be sure to post updates, etc.

Of course, I pay $24.95 for the book at Barnes & Noble and then see it's $16 on Amazon.

Stupid impulse shopping.

How 'bout a bedtime story?

Ask any one of the moving companies who've helped me set up shop over the years and they can verify that I have a thing for books. A big thing for books. A big, freakin' thing.

My tiny condo is overflowing with hardbacks and paperbacks, even though I keep making an effort to sort through and downsize. My book collecting habit started early and I feel pretty certain I was the only kindergartner with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in my room that covered most of one wall. (I, um, also began my still-with-me habit of being a perpetually late library book returner. What can I say. I've got to have the occassional flaw...)

Now that my friends are all spawning, I seem to find myself wandering around in the children's section of book stores more and more. All of which has me reminiscing about my favorite childhood books.

Thanks to the parents, who are equally voracious readers, I managed to read most of the Caldecott Medal and Newbery Medal winners growing up. But I couldn't get enough of the childhood staples like Paddington Bear, Babar, Angelina Ballerina, Corduroy, Petunia the Goose, Curious George, Berenstain Bears, and more. I still have copies of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day on my shelf and recently informed my Facebook friends that I was debating moving to Australia. I've also got a beautifully bound hardback Paddington collection.

Remember George and Martha and their effort to make pea soup? Madeline and her misadventures with the twelve little girls in two straight lines? Eloise who had the coolest life because she got to live in New York's The Plaza Hotel? (I stayed in the Plaza with my mom for a girls' weekend in my early 20s. We discussed Eloise over $14 martinis. It was totally worth it.)

So tell me, what were your favorites? Why did/do you love them? And what books do you want to make sure are on your now or future kids' bookshelves?

Want some inspiration? Check out the Children's Literature Book Club, a cool blog for grownups who still love to read stuff for the ankle-biting set.