November 29, 2007

Gift Guide For Good Kids (Or Even Merely Tolerable)

Herewith, gift ideas for the kids.  I’ve tried not to duplicate the ideas I put in last year’s gift guide for boys, so if you need more thoughts, click here and see what I recommended last year.

If you’ve missed the other installments, the gift guide for teachers, babies and toddlers is here.  Part Deux, including suggestions for people who are hard to buy for, is here.

READING

All three of my boys are on the fifth Harry Potter book at the moment.  Last night we’d stuck Porter in the bed, but he popped out and came in our room to inform us that “all the house elves except Dobby are drinking lots of butter-beer, and it’s very strong for house elves.  I’m worried about what will happen.”

For those of you who haven’t been hooked by these books yet, they are a gift to this generation of up-and-coming readers, and are responsible for my younger boys making huge leaps in their reading ability this year.  I haven’t been able to snap a picture of the boys running in the driveway riding brooms and chasing a tennis ball and a basketball simultaneously in an Alabama version of Quidditch, but I assure you it happens.

Drew practices his broom-riding technique inside

I’d do anything to encourage an eight or nine-year old to read the Harry Potter books.  They get longer as the series progresses.  Consequently, we’ve purchased the paperbacks so the boys can lug them to school without chiropractic assistance.

I received a magazine in the mail that features expensive Harry Potter paraphernalia, including a replica of the sorcerer’s stone ($95) and a pewter Gryffindor mug ($55) but the Hogwarts bookmarks aren’t quite as pricey. ($20)

All of the books I recommended in last year’s Boy Toy gift guide are still popular, especially Little Lit.  Other hits this year for the twins included Roald Dahl’s books (James and the Giant Peach and The BFG were clear favorites), Andrew Clements’s books (especially The Landry News and Lunch Money), Diary of a Wimpy Kid(the graphic format and honesty captivated them), and a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys
together with some of the supplies called for in the book, such as a compass, rope, a knife, and so forth.  Aunt Su gets credit for this genius idea.

(Although, I should point out that they didn’t need a book to learn how to be dangerous.  Finn told me that earlier this year when I raced to the store for forgotten dinner ingredients, he and his brothers collected twigs, sticks and leaves, mounded them in the
driveway, set them on fire and enjoyed the spectacle.  When I called to say I was on my way home, they extinguished the fire, swept all traces from the driveway, changed their clothes and resumed their homework as I drove into the garage.)

Other books that they’ve loved: The Indispensable Calvin And Hobbes, Nate The Great , and the Junie B. Jones books.

There’s another series of books including Wizardology and Pirateology that Drew and Porter both adore.  It’s a lot like a scrapbook style story, as if you discovered a sailor’s journal of his quest to find a pirate, with maps and drawings.

Often I’ll see large coffee table books on the bargain shelves at the bookstore.  I’ve picked up one about the Titanic and one about the Civil War, and the boys have been fascinated by the pictures.  That’s been another good way to sneak in some learning.  Tuesday Morning also had some of these.

Porter has been stealing my printer paper and making all sorts of paper airplanes.  If I didn’t already have plenty of ideas for him, I’d buy him his own sheaf of paper and The Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes.  Or if I felt guilty about destroying trees, I’d get the Encylopedia of Immaturity (Klutz) which contains tons of funny activities, like instructions for taking a picture where it looks like you’re holding your tiny friends on your thumbs.

For the older crowd, I’m high on three new books.  Alabama Moon is by Watt Key, a Mobile native I got to know last winter.  He’s a hoot, and has spent so much time in the wilderness that he’s eaten armadillo just to survive, and then discovered that chewing pine bark cured the horrific halitosis caused by the armadillo.  Let me hasten to add that he’s gotten rave reviews for his book, and you don’t have to love armadillo or be from the South to enjoy it.

Watt Key’s Idea of Dinner

What Watt Key Uses Instead of Colgate

The Chicken Dance was being promoted at BEA last spring, and I got to meet the charming author, Jacques Couvillon, who kindly inscribed a copy for Finn: “You can fly!”  The author photo shows him feeding chickens while wearing a tux, and if that isn’t a kick-ass picture,  I don’t know what is.  I’m going to start this book as soon as I finish the damn John Rosemond book over in the right sidebar, the one about fostering responsible decision making in your teen.  Or hell, that book doesn’t seem to be working, so maybe I’ll start The Chicken Dance tonight.  I could use a break from the parenting grind.

I’m also eager to read The Night Tourist by Katherine Marsh in which a boy goes under Grand Central Station and discovers another world.  I always suspected there were ghosts under the subways!

NON-BOOK GIFTS

How about the way I’ve organized everything so neatly into Books and Not Books?

One of the best suggestions I received this year would be good for anyone, but especially younger drivers: gas gift cards.  Here is a site where you can order Shell gift cards.  I just Googled it; I’m sure you can do the same for your nearby station.

Kids with iPods (or hell– anyone with an iPod) can always use an iTunes gift card.

Art supplies are always a good bet- as Drew got older we got him special sketching pencil and sketch paper.  In last year’s gift guide I described other popular art supplies.   But wait!  What if you’ve been there, done that?  Then it’s time to move on to those office supplies the kids are always snatching from you - Post-It notes, large paper clips, different kinds of tape, staplers, index cards, fancy pens and pencils, pads of paper and notebooks, and so forth.  You know who would love this?  Zoot.  She goes ballistic over office supplies.

Speaking of office and school supplies, my reliable friend Margaret, who should have just written this damn guide herself - THAT’S how many great ideas she had– has alerted me that there’s a segment of the elementary school population that’s wild about Pencil Petz erasers.  The kids stack them on pencils or make bracelets out of them.  There’s no denying that collecting erasers is much more edifying than fighting over Soulja Boy.

If you’re purchasing for hangman or tic-tac-toe lovers, Horchow makes a set of three pads, one preprinted for each game and one for drawing.  You can personalize them, too.

Remote controlled items are still extremely popular, and Porter says Air Hogs are the way to go.  You might consider the Air Hogs Remote Controlled Reflex Helix or the Air Hogs Mini Storm Launcher.

Kids also go nuts over Transformers.  Frankly, I find them creepy.  What mother would buy something that is described like this:

BONECRUSHER hates everything, and what BONECRUSHER hates, he destroys.  He hates this planet, and all its inhabitants. He hates the AUTOBOTS for getting in his way. He even hates MEGATRON and the other DECEPTICONS; the only reason he stays with them is because MEGATRON scares him. BONECRUSHER lives for the day when he’s the only one left standing atop a pile of smoking rubble and shattered robots.

I would, because  Bonecrusher is only $10, while other Transformers, like  Hasbro Transformers Ultimate Bumblebee Figure are $99.  You’ve got to be kidding– a bee that transforms?

Now that I look more closely, I see that it transforms from a Camaro into a scary yellow robot, and that’s pretty cool.  If there’s a boy on your list, you cannot go wrong with a Transformer.

Porter received a METAL DETECTOR one year and it’s been extremely popular.  There are detectors made for kids, but this one is a little cheaper.  You can see other choices on that page.  Alabama is in a severe drought, and the lake is lower than it’s been in years.  We were there a couple of weekends ago and the boys had a fabulous time finding buried treasure such as broken deck chairs, a varied assortment of liquor bottles, a boathouse door, an original pop-top Tab can, and a pair of parachute pants.  We didn’t find tons of money or jewelry with the metal detector, but if it had been there, we would have.

Here’s a picture of a dried-up lake that yielded many treasures.

There’s a special place in my heart for the red parachute pants we found.  U Can’t Touch These!

Porter saw this set of huge maps U.S./World 2 for 1 Map at a bookstore and purchased it with his own money.  As soon as we got home he hung one over his bed and one on the opposite wall.  Then he stuck pushpins in the places he’d been.  The world map shows the flags of different countries at the bottom, which is riveting for a nine-year-old.  Both boys used the map of America when they were getting ready for their geography test.  This was the best money Porter’s ever spent.

Now that everyone’s old enough to play, board games are becoming more fun.  Hits and recommendations include Operation, Mousetrap, Blokus , Othello, Rush Hour, Monopoly and Life (although I still think the latter teaches the wrong lessons about life).

Readers have also suggested Settlers of Catan, which I’ve never heard of but which sounded intriguing on the web.  Defective Yeti speaks highly of it and appears knowledgeable about games, so this is on our list.

The boys are still captivated by Legos and I don’t think I mentioned Playmobil last year.  They spend hours with these figures, building stuff.  You can spend a little and get the Pirate Crew or spend more and get the Playmobil Pirate Ship, for example.  The possibilities are endless here.

Boys love cars– buy some Hot Wheels as a stocking stuffer or cars and a Racing Set.

What about outdoor activities?

Porter can bounce a basketball while jumping on his Flybar Pogo Stick and I’m getting him some balls so he can practice juggling while jumping.  Porter has his eye on the Flybar 800 Pogo Stick which promises to hurl the pogo-er over four feet into the air.  Too bad for him, as I have no intention of letting a $200 “toy” that propels your child into space onto my property, but if you purchase it, let me know how it turns out.  We achieve plenty of air and the resulting bruises without added pistons.

Instead, we’re going the Ripstik Caster Board route, which is probably no safer but prevents you from watching your child purposely soar into the air.  The Ripstik is a two-wheeled skateboard that lets the rider pretend he is snowboarding… on asphalt.  Don’t forget the helmet and pads.

You can use Roller Blades or Inline Skates to race, or you can play roller basketball in them.  Porter can even rollerblade into a Port-O-Potty, do his business, and rollerblade out without falling.  What are we going to do with all his non-marketable skillz?

The Skateboard is back as well.

TECHNOLOGY

You know my stance, or should, so no talk about Game Boys and Wii here.

Last year Porter got a simple HP camera for Christmas.  You may remember seeing his highly successful retrospective on Portugal.  He also discovered that the camera takes movies, and that’s how we created the irresistible Yo Mama!  Finn enjoyed filming the action, while Drew proved particularly adept at editing with the Movie Maker program that came with our computer.

My point is that while there are digital cameras made especially for kids, like the Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera for Boys (they make a girls’ version also), you can spend a bit more and get a real camera.  The plastic ones would be good for the younger crowd, but an eight-year-old would enjoy having the features of Porter’s camera.  This HP Photosmart M447 5MP Digital Camera is still just under $100 if you purchase it with a 1G memory card.  Here’s a Kodak EasyShare C533 5MP Digital Camera.  I can’t believe the megapixels on these things.  Porter’s Portugal pictures were outstanding, and his camera has 5 MP.

We have NO videos of our children as babies, or toddlers, or at all.  That’s because early on, I told Bill that I could be in charge of raising children and taking still photos, or raising kids and shooting video, but not both.  He said he’d handle the videos, but remember those tiny cassettes?  The big black bag you had to lug around?  The way the battery was never charged?  It was a big pain in the ass.

The digital camcorders of today have changed all that, and we’re outsourcing our video requirements to Drew, who always has two free hands.
I saw the Aiptek DV5900 5MP Pocket Digital Camcorderat Target the other day.  Easy as pie, and tiny!

This Flip Video Camcorder: 60-Minutes (Black) is precious and apparently easy to use.  It doesn’t have a slot for extra memory, though.

Yeesh.  That’s a lot of ideas for one column, and I have to go make some Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Peanut Butter Brownies.  Hope this helps you finish your holiday list for the small fry.

Other helpful resources:

Terry White’s Gadget Gift Guide

The Men’s Gift Guide

Reid My Blog

Green Kids Gift Guide

RookieMoms

Design*Sponge ($25 and under)

In The Trenches Of Motherhood

HGTV

Cooking With Amy

Gratitude 365

July 30, 2007

Freak Show: Boys Who Read

I’m feeling smug because although we’ve packed bathing suits, sunscreen, bikes, tennis rackets and thousands of board games to ward off rain, my boys have realized that packing beach books is as necessary as packing underwear. 

For a while Drew was stuck on the Magic Treehouse books and he steadily read through the series until he had tackled the last one.  Now he’s turned his attention to Lunch Money by Andrew Clements, along with his other books, such as The Report Card and Frindle. 

Honestly, I’ve spent so long restricting their TV viewing and banning video games that he could be reading Playboy and I’d be equally excited.

Meanwhile, Porter, having made his way through the silly adventures of Captain Underpants(apparently that’s where he learned that “starch is the enemy of underwear!”) is now engrossed in James and the Giant Peach and has packed Matilda and The BFG for further reading.  Aunt Lulu loved the latter book so much that she named her pet fish “BFG” for “Big Friendly Goldfish,” of course, and so I always forget that the BF in the book is actually a Giant and not a fish at all.

(I have the same problem with a popular type of sportswear, called Under Armour, but which I persist in referring to as ArmorAll , which is a car-cleaning product that’s been around since I was a child.  Everytime I ask the boys about their ArmorAll shirts they look at me as if were hopelessly uncool, which I suppose I am.)

Currently I have a stack of five magazines and eleven books (I’m trying to whittle it down to five), set out to hide in the crevices of the minivan.  The stack includes A Thousand Splendid Suns which has gotten rave reviews. 

I have missed Several Virtual Book Clubs but since I’m heading to the beach, why don’t you re-read numbers one, two, three, four, five, six and seven and then laugh when I tell you that Bill has set out The Alienist for his beach reading?

Leave a comment– will this be the vacation where he finishes it?  What books SHOULD we all be reading, or avoiding?

Also: pray for our trip down.  The latest sound emitted by the van is reminiscent of the feedback produced by Jimi Hendrix during “The Star Spangled Banner.”  Apparently starting the car and putting it into gear makes it long for Woodstock.  Despite the cracked windshield and orange dents, it’s not nearly that old.  I think it’s just caught up in all the hoopla about the Summer of Love.

February 26, 2007

Writer’s Conference Links

FROM BLOGGING TO BOOK CONTRACT

1. WHAT IS A BLOG

Tales From My Tiny Kingdom to show elements

Probably the most well-known mommy-blogger (though she wasn’t a mommy when she started)

Dooce

Variety of bloggers

Some mommy and daddy bloggers - though they write about much more

Rice Daddies MetroDad Rockstar Mommy,
Motherhood Uncensored Girl’s Gone Child
2. HOW I STARTED BLOGGING

The article my friend emailed me that started it all.

Typepad hosted his friend’s blog.

Maybe Oprah would be surfing and laugh about “The Naked Baby Kidnapping Caper” and she’d show it to Stedman, and then Gayle, and next thing you know everyone in America would be tuned in.

Important to practice writing and also to read:

Book Reviews Virtual Book Club Meeting # 7

3. HOW TO START A BLOG - Things To Consider

Host

Simple Design - Indigo Girl

More Design: Waiter Rant A Little Pregnant
Laid Off Dad

Bitch Phd

Title: Funny and Self-explanatory

BusyMom

Breed ‘Em And Weep

Suburban Turmoil

Dad Gone Mad

Catchy but mysterious:

Defective Yeti Boing Boing

Address: Domain name - get yours

Marketing:

blogexplosion

technorati

Top Momma

Miss Doxie Julia

d) Respond to readers - either by email or in comments

George W. and Porter: BFF help from readers much appreciated
4. WRITING ON THE WEB VS WRITING IN REAL LIFE

a) Competing against a lot of blogs

100,000 created each day and Technorati tracks about 57 million, according to this article.

b) Importance of font - Compare Funny Mom with Tiny Kingdom.

c)Interactive- because of comments - Crime & Punishment

d) Can add pictures

What Not To Wear In Bed - one of most popular, but not adaptable to a piece in book

can be lazy Vague Remembrance of Things Past

e) Links

It’s Natural But It’s Rated “R” - “crotchety” a link in subsequent pieces

f) Stats!
5. HOW BLOGGING CAN HELP YOU WRITE ELSEWHERE

a) On The Web

LUCK - iVillage

PURSUE OPPORTUNITIES

Babble

Strollerderby

MetroDad, Sarah and the Goon Squad, The Zero Boss

Plenty of press coverage about it- Time Magazine article

Search “bloggers needed to write”

b) Outside The Web

Lindsay of Suburban Turmoil now blogs and writes for The Nashville Scene (This is web site but is also a traditional paper and ink publication)

6. WHERE’S THE MONEY IN A BLOG

It’s hard to find

Porn!

Amalah -

Adsense, Google Ads, Federated Media (Dooce) BlogHer (Busymom)

article how to count readers for ad purposes and how best to decide which are the most valuable to advertisers

ProBlogger

Anne Glamore’s Gife Guide To Boy Toys

7. Book Contract

Helps, Can hurt

Gawker article

January 22, 2007

Virtual Book Club Meeting #7

It’s been ages since I hosted book club. I apologize. I’ll get right to it, because I’ve read some wonderful books recently. (If you’ve missed the last meeting, click on the “Book Reviews” tag at the top of this post and you can see them all. Don’t neglect the comments; readers always have great suggestions. None of my posts from iVillage days have comments because the comments stayed with iVillage, so if you recommended a book then you may want to re-suggest it here.)

I. BOOK CLUBBY BOOKS

I’ve read three books recently that are very different, but which were each captivating in their own way. Name All the Animals: A Memoir by Alison Smith is a memoir, and it’s a devastating one. The author lost her brother in an accident when she was fifteen and he was eighteen. The accident happens quickly; the story is about her family’s struggles after his death, and her memories of their childhood. Smith’s writing is simple and pure, and she depicts details that resonate perfectly, especially with those of us who are roughly her age and remember the songs (Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”) and fashions she recounts. If you’ve lost someone close to you (and perhaps if you haven’t) her descriptions of her thoughts and actions in the aftermath of Roy’s death will seem eerily familiar. I stayed up way too late reading this book and had to hold my eyeballs open with my fingers during Drew’s basketball game the next day.

If I were forced at gunpoint to summarize The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova in just one sentence, I’d have to say, “It’s a thinking person’s DaVinci Code, with librarians and Dracula.” But really, that wouldn’t do the book justice at all. It’s DaVinci Code- like only in that it involves a search that takes the protagonists all over Europe, they puzzle over clues and strange languages and a couple of weapons are employed here and there. The structure of the book could be confusing but mostly works well; the narrator tells the story, which sometimes quotes her father’s stories to her and then his letters to her once he disappears. The tale is convoluted yet entertaining.

I found myself reading each chapter twice, not only to ensure that I had all the characters and events straight, but to prolong the delight of reading the book. There are a couple of points at which the search for Dracula (the historical figure, not the Bela Lugosi blood-sucker you are picturing) becomes overdramatic, but it’s well worth buying into the story.

Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America reads like a novel, but in fact it’s based on actual events. At the same time Chicago was preparing to host the 1893 World’s Fair, young women and children began disappearing from Chicago. Larson writes about the men determined to make the Fair a success, and focuses on one man in particular, whose view of success was more macabre. Yes, it’s a book about architecture and a serial killer, subjects that would seem impossible to combine into one adventure, but Larson provides proof that it can be done, and well.

II. A PARENTING BOOK WORTH A LOOK

I read a book about addressing the ways having children can affect your marriage, and I intend to give it to Aunt Lulu, with a few caveats. Babyproofing Your Marriage: How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family Grows imparts some valuable messages for those couples expecting a baby or having a hard time dealing with the changes children add to the marital relationship. The book makes several very good points: that both spouses have to sacrifice to raise a child, that everyone needs to hear words of affirmation and appreciation, that sex is just plain harder to get to when you’re working on little sleep and there are toddlers hanging around.

Bill and I have some experience in practical application of some of these principles. We went to a marriage retreat organized by our church long ago, and it was one of the most valuable weekends we’ve spent. The church also emphasized constant appreciation, and we’ve taken that to heart. We try to remember to say gooey things like, “Thanks for unloading the dishwasher” or “thank you for taking out the trash,” even though these are chores that must be done once, if not several times a day, just to acknowledge that we noticed that the other person did something for the good of the family.

At the retreat we spent a whole day discussing sex. My take-away was that not every rendezvous has to be a gourmet dinner. Sometimes a quick Happy Meal is enough, and sometimes you only have enough energy for a Chicken McNugget, or even one fry. (I’m really hoping you can read between the lines here and fill in the corresponding actions for each food).

Remember that Kenny Rogers song “Daytime Friends” that goes:

Daytime friends and nighttime lovers,
Hoping no one else discovers
Where they go, what they do,
In their secret hideaway

Those lovers were either childless or empty nesters. If you’re going to do the gourmet dinner, you and your husband should try being nighttime friends and daytime lovers. No one else discovers where you go and what you do if you sit your children in front of videos that are otherwise strictly rationed and the turn the volume up loud. Don’t forget to lock the bedroom door!

The book does have some weaknesses. I was not the only reader to feel that the female authors were unfairly harsh in their depiction of the husbands in the book, who came across as lazy, sex-crazed sports-watching thugs. In fairness, I should note that the writers apparently met plenty of men who provided the numerous caveman quotes in the book, such as:

Women have been doing this for thousands of years. There have been centuries of human history where women have had a lot more children than we have, and they had to do a lot more work, churning the butter and washing clothes in the river. Why is she always complaining?

–Bobby, married 7 years, 1 kid.

How did Bobby get enough nookie to make a child, with an attitude like that? If I were giving him a Chicken McNugget, I might be tempted to pull his wanker right off.

III. BOOKS INTENDED FOR SMARTER READERS OR GENERATIONS Y AND Z

I tried to read two other books with less than stellar results. I’ve recently moved my website from TypePad to WordPress, and I bought WordPress 2 (Visual QuickStart Guide) to help me navigate the unfamiliar code. I alluded to this in my last post, and I’ll be mentioning it constantly in the future, but I’m about to be forty years old. Technically, this makes me a part of Generation X, but I’m almost a Baby Boomer.

I remember filmstrips in classrooms. I got contacts in fifth grade– hard lenses, that scraped against your eyeballs when they weren’t rolling back in your head near your brain somewhere. I remember when having a pushbutton phone was a big deal. Our first VCR was the size of a small suitcase. To make mix tapes, we sat with our tape recorders near the radio and waited for our favorite songs to come on, then carefully pushed the “Play” and “Record” buttons together. That’s a long way of saying that none of the coding or texting or plugins and so forth come naturally to me. I don’t understand what this means: “Use your favorite text editor to open the theme template file in which you want to display the feeds.” I don’t have a favorite text editor and in fact am not sure what a text editor is, although I probably use one.

Similarly, I use photos in my blog, and wanted to try fixing some of them without spending the money on Photoshop. I downloaded and installed GIMP, then purchased Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional to try to use the program. So far I have succeeded in cropping one picture, and I have been unable to recreate that accomplishment again. My friend can perform plastic surgery on the people in her pictures, from whitening their teeth and deleting wrinkles to smoothing their skin. I would love to do cyber-surgery on my pictures. I think I’m going to recruit a Generation Y bag boy from Publix to show me the basics and explain it in English, not techno-speak, and I’ll be a lot better off. These are probably wonderful books and I’m just not savvy enough to make the most of them.

Sigh.

IV. DUSTY BOOKS WHICH I SHOULD HAVE READ BUT HAVE NOT

I’m really proud that I made it through Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel, and enjoyed it. That was probably the last unread dusty book I made it through thanks to your encouragement. I’ve had a copy of East of Eden (Oprah’s Book Club) for ages, and I can’t seem to get excited about it. In fact, I have yet to make it past the third page. If you love it, please comment and inspire me to read it. I feel like there’s a hole in my education due to my failure to read this. Am I right, or should I take a pass?

V. CONCLUSION OF THE MEETING

Whoa– I can’t believe we drank all that wine! It must be time to go. I’m taking suggestions on books to read in all my “spare time.”

AG

**Click on the “Book Reviews” tag at the end of this post to read the six other Virtual Book Club Meetings!

July 4, 2006

Virtual Book Club #6

Our summer is over in six weeks, and I haven’t provided you with any summer reading recommendations. Let me remedy that as quickly as possible! For those of you who want to look at our previous book club meetings, click here and you can read the 5th meeting. That column provides links to the previous meetings as well. Don’t forget to read the comments! Readers have given me some fabulous titles.

In fact, one author I kept hearing about ad nauseum from many of you was Jodi Picoult. I decided that not all of you could be wrong, so I went to the bookstore and stood in front of the shelf containing her many books and read one jacket after the other. It was immediately apparent that no matter which one I picked, I wasn’t going to be in for a light read, because Picoult tackles hard, up-to-date subjects.

I chose The Pact. I’m snobby about books, and the packaging of this one was downright embarrassing. Across the top the cover blared: “The Basis for the Lifetime Original Movie.” That was a definite minus, not a plus, for me. A boy and a girl were shown sitting on a wall, from the back, and beside them in ooey-gooey cursive was written “a love story.”

Readers, the fact that I bought the book at all is a testament to my devotion to you and trust in your opinions. Let me say– I could not put the book down. It involves teenage lovers, a shooting, and a trial, and it was well-written and fast-paced. I did think the premise of the couple’s longtime devotion was a bit unbelievable, but it was well-worth suspending that disbelief to enjoy the story. Those of you with teenagers may wish to choose another of her books, which is sure to tackle an equally disturbing topic.

Last summer I read a lot about the Mormons, and you can read about those books in previous book club posts. Now I’ve moved on to the Jews. Chaim Potok’s The Chosen is a story of two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940’s. Anyone who is not Jewish would think that they are both pretty hardcore Jews, but in fact one is Hasidic and one is Orthodox and the differences in their beliefs and cultures is discussed, but not in a way that is hard to digest. The focus of the book is the boys’ friendship and their relationships with their respective fathers.

It is a lovely story even if you put the religion aside. However, I learned a great deal about Jewish customs, although I did not ever find out if there is a certain tool, like a curling iron or something, that is used to make the curly earlocks worn by some Jewish men.

For those with a hankering for some historical fiction, Geraldine Brooks’s Year of Wonders tells the story of the way the plague affected a small English village in 1666. The town chooses to quarantine itself to prevent the plague from spreading, and the novel explores the way the villagers react when faced with harsh circumstances. The book has everything– grisly deaths, moral lessons and a little romance. To be about such an unpleasant subject it was an entertaining read.

The Civil War is huge where I live, but I’ve never gotten into it too much, frankly. I know that Atlanta burned and that Robert E. Lee was the big guy for the South, but I’ve never been one to wallow in war stories about any war. In an attempt to gain a little understanding about war, I read The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. The novel won a Pulitzer Prize and according to General Norman Schwarzkopf, it is “The best and most realistic historical novel about war I have ever read.”

I was underwhelmed. I had trouble keeping up with all the characters, and the main thing I learned is that these soldiers spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for things to happen. I always thought soldiers would get on opposite sides of a battlefield and start shooting, but apparently they line up and sit around and look at each other through binoculars and think about their choices and see who’s tired and who’s low on potatoes.

Don’t let me keep you from reading the book, however. Other people have raved about it, so maybe I’m just not the target audience.

Those books aren’t MINDLESS BEACH READS and I know you need some. I don’t read that many detective novels, because in general I find that they are poorly written and I get so frustrated by the split infinitives and hokey dialogue that I completely lose interest in the dead body.

Michael Connelly is a notable exception. He’s a good writer with exciting plots. I particularly like the The Harry Bosch Novels. If you’re Type A like I am, you should read them in the order they were written because there’s enough of a back story that you’ll get excited when there’s a reference to something that happened earlier in another book. Then again, it’s not that big a deal. If there’s only one book left at the library, grab it and enjoy it. He also writes thrillers with other characters that are good.

Next up on my reading list are a couple of books from the New York Times Book Review’s List of the Best Fiction of the Last 25 Years: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. I’ve also got True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne for no good reason other than it caught my eye.

Happy reading, and let me know what you’re enjoying, or not!