Fall Book Reviews

This fall I've hit a few walls with some books and either finished them with conquering triumph or didn't at all and don't feel guilty. Here are the ones worth passing on:

• A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini - I may be the last person to read this book, but I'm playing catch up. In my defense, I've read several other books about Afghanistan. Does that count? This one follows 2 women, born in different generations, and yes, it ends sadly. Very well written. These books always leave me feeling empty because I have so much. How can that happen? 
• The City of Ember, Jeanne DuPrau - I loved this so much I'm reading it to my 2nd and 3rd graders now. Very clean, good character development. About two friends who live in a city with no sun and the food and light bulbs are running out. I kept thinking it was going to get more scary and intense and it didn't (no hunger games in this utopia). Just perfect. Great solution at the end, but enough cliff hanger to make me want to read the next one (there are now 4, plus a graphic novel of this one).
• Because of Winn-Dixie, Kate DiCamillo - another one read late. Actually saw the movie first and loved it. The book is such a treat too. Not sure which one I liked more, and that's rare.
• An Acquaintance With Darkness, Ann Rinaldi - I'm just discovering her, but apparently she's written other YA historical fiction books, and if they're anything like this one, I'm in. Set at the death of Lincoln, she weaves the intrigue of the conspirators with other very interesting and historically accurate plots. I'm still thinking of these characters.
• Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, Ross King - I am catching up, did I mention? I liked his Impressionists book so much, and everyone says how great this one is. And I liked this one more. It went faster for me, was well rounded, and didn't make anyone angelic just because they are now, posthumously famous.
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder - one of the authors on my list I see and wonder how I received an English degree without reading. This was a small story, written in great detail, about several people who die when a rope bridge finally collapses in South America, and a priest's investigation into why God might have taken each of them just then. A little slow, but an interesting plot I'd love to visit myself.
• Big Twitch, Sean Dooley - a birding book. Maybe the funniest (without too many swear words) birding book I've read. Bird books can be funny, you say? Yes. When they're written by an Australian. This is Sean's story of his big year. Gets a bit slow and depressing around October when he's not sure he's going to make his goal. And then the end came to quickly, like he wanted to be done writing. Still worth the read if you're even marginally interested in birding. Made me want to look into the colonization and prisons of Australia.
• Dodger, Terry Pratchett - a YA book set in Charles Dickens era, based on what Oliver Twist's Dodger could have been like if given a chance. Includes famous people of the era, including Mr. Dickens. This was writing at its best, and I'm so glad it's a YA book, so kids can see what good lit is right off. Maybe one of the best opening pages ever. I'm looking for Pratchett's others now - he's written enough and they get very high ratings on goodreads.com.

Plus Signs Quilted

Purple Math Facts

Purple must not play well with other colors, because it's hard to find decent purple fabric. Which is why I haven't made my daughter the purple quilt she's been asking for. In May I was at Suppose, the fantastic quilt store in Preston, ID and lo and behold, they had a TON of purple (among other fantastic things). This quilt is Amanda Jean Nyberg's Math Facts, which she did in orange.

Japanese X+

I'm officially on the bandwagon, so move on over! Here's my rendition, using Amy Badskirt's tutorial.

Gettysburg 150th Anniversary

This summer was the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg. I remember the first time I visited that hallowed ground in college. It was so spiritual for me . . . hard to describe. Anyway, Paul and I went back on the fated mountain-bike-accident-right-before-our-flight trip to DC of 2002, so it's part of the many memories that have a drug-induced fuzziness for him, and make my arms ache remembering pushing a grown man in a wheelchair all over our nation's historical sites. Turns out, not so flat after all.

(He kept getting out of the wheelchair for the pictures as if that would remove it from our memory too. I'm saving you from the 27 pictures he took of the deer at Valley Forge. He almost broke the camera with his stupor of fascination banging it against the passenger window. That's probably also when I took the map away from him for the last time.)

So to commemorate this important event in American history, and as a tribute to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, life crept into my quilting and this one became my Gettysburg quilt. I changed one of the charcoal crosses into a red one, to remind us of the men who died during the three-day battle. 

Today we're not asked to battle in cornfields, but I do think we have our own authentic American battles for our day. Depending on which side of the fence you're sitting, you may look at them differently, but we're all trying to protect and preserve what it means to be free in our country. And surely that middle ground could be enough to get something productive done.