beach read

::

what I'm reading

Frank Auerbach: Speaking and Painting by Catherine Lampert
Purity by Jonathan Frazen
The Last Love Song by Tracy Daugherty
Hold Still by Sally Mann

(obviously on a bit of a non-fiction kick.)

What are you reading?

summer lovin' (part 1)

in my opinion, there are two other necessities to a perfect summer at our cottage (aside from sun, sand, and sea):

good reads

mine
H is for Hawk
Delancy
Everything I Never Told You
Year of the Cow (by our neighbor Jarod!)
Station Eleven (recommended by Michael Christie - see below - with Gulf Island setting)

d's
If I Fall, If I Die (Michael and his family live on Galiano)
A Death In the Family

e's
The Outsiders
21 Proms
Read Between the Lines
More Than This
The Infinite Moment of Us
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
The Woman in White*

k's
Rain Reign
The Giver
Gathering Blue
Messenger
Son


*9th grade summer reading list

good read day/week/month

i've come across two interesting ways to share articles lately. (i really feel i get so much of my information - valuable and otherwise - from things that are sent to me via the web.)

1) joanna goddard's "articles club" (love this idea.)
2) my friend nomi's weekly "5 things" email where she compiles 5 things found on the web + a photo she is loving. (so good!)

four links that crossed my desktop today that i don't want to forget...

the best worst president ever (yes! i really need to become a citizen.)

we want your job: graphic designer at madewell (e and i have been talking a lot lately about careers - and i've been stressing to her that if you love it, and can imagine it as a job, it likely exists! she has a strong interest in fashion, photography and design, and i want to make sure to share this interview with her.)

at what point is a model really considered plus size (one of the things that worries me most about her interest in fashion is the perpetual idealized body images presented there. though the choice of phrase isn't a good one - this still made me happy.)

10 reasons your teenage daughter should own a horse (no comment!)






along with all that - today is our 15th wedding anniversary. it doesn't seem like such a big number really, but then i look at the pictures that chronicle that day and the pictures that chronicle those years and can't believe it. i am so very lucky. my dad told me a long time ago that marriage is hard. it is. but it is oh so worth it all.

i love you cowboy. thank you for letting me, be me. and for making me better at it. here's to many more. xo

{summer} reading list

wanted to try and capture this, as we did last year.

K

Pegasus: The New Olympians, by Kate O'Hearn
Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
The Winter Pony, by Iain Lawrence
Dark Horse, by Jenny Hughes
My Friend Flicka, by Mary O'Hara
Summer Pony, by Jean Slaughter Doty

E

The Maze Runner trilogy, by James Dashner
Four: A Divergent Collection (Divergent Series), by Veronica Roth
If I Stay, by Gayle Forman
Paper Towns, John Green
We Were Liars, E. Lockhart
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne


and on mine:

The Signature of All Things, by Elizabeth Gilbert (I never would have picked this up normally, somehow the tagline "author of ...Eat..." turned me off. But K's teacher told me she was reading a book this spring that reminded her of me. This is it. Curiousity got me.)
The Vacationers, by Emma Staub
Criddle De Diddle Ensis: A Biographical History Of The Criddles Of Aweme, Manitoba, Pioneers Of The 1880's, by Alma Criddle (I'm going to re-read this book that I read many years ago. Last summer I enjoyed reading For Elise, a newer look at the history of the Criddle-Vane family. I am related to the Criddle clan - and curious to revisit their history.)
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (from my university literature class - now on E's 8th grade reading list. I'm rereading this one with her too)
Trauma Farm, by Brian Bett
Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell (on E's recommendation)

what's on your list?

lots of nothing

we really unplugged these last two weeks. so very good.







we played the ukulele. cribbage. and went through a series of suduko puzzles like nobody's business. we walked favorite roads and paths and played outside and got a lot of yard work done. we read by the fire.

i read:
chasing aphrodite (so good in the museum gossip dept. if you have been part of that world - and more specifically the getty part of that world)
the daylight gate (pretty graphic and disturbing at points. but i have a longstanding fascination with dr. dee and alchemy and this fit in nicely. plus winterson's prose never disappoints.)
the paris wife (i loved this book. with my love for hemingway and historical fiction, a friend recommended it to me a while back - and i'm so glad i finally got to it.)
the goldfinch (i had a plan to buy this on island, at my favorite bookshop, only to find out they were sold out. thankfully lindsay gave me her copy to read. i'm only half way through but am having a lot of trouble putting it down. always a good sign. makes me want to reread a secret history.)

you'll have to ask the others about the specifics of their reading lists but...

d read:
the golden spruce
telegraph avenue

e read:
allegiant
an abundance of katherines
eleanor & park
the probability of miracles
the book thief
fangirl
after iris

k read:
fortunately, the milk
flora & ulysses
dork diaries: tales from a not-so-graceful ice princess
dork diaries: tales from a not-so-happy heartbreaker
and a stack of betty & veronica double digests

saturday bookshelf :: week three

Title: Woodcutters

Author: Thomas Bernhard

Reader: D

Thoughts: I've read about half a dozen books by this author. Translated from German. I guess I'm a secret hipster. So what is this book about. Well it's more about the author's constant critique of the bourgeois in Austria. He dissects them in such a loathsome manner one would think it as pure hatred, but I think that he is trying to inspire them to be better, truer, more substantial human beings.

In the excerpt below, Bernhard derides the Auersbergers, old friends that he now is estranged from...Yet accepts an invitation to an artistic dinner. (intellectual masochism)

"All her life she was constantly trying to escape from her origins, just as he was from his - she from the idyll of her gentle Styrian birth, he from the paternal destiny of petty local officialdom and the maternal low pressure zone inhabited by butcher's assistants - all of which was bound to appear irresistibly comic to anyone around them who had eyes to see and ears to hear."

Boring you say? Well it gets bleaker. Bernhard writes this singular thought diatribe of a novel in one paragraph(180 pages). Sheesh. He is relentless in his character attack of the Austrian people and takes no prisoners. Banned in Austria. Reads like a weird art film.

Saturday Bookshelf :: week two

I try not to edit what the girls want to read*. (love Neil Gaiman on this subject.) it is not always easy - and these days finds them reading things as disparate as poorly written movie tie-ins to heady young adult material. I've noticed that they don't really come to anything before they are ready to talk about it. and books have always, for me, provided a wonderful opportunity to talk about it.
*********



Title: Looking for Alaska

Author: John Green

Reader: E

Thoughts: "When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books"

Looking for Alaska is the story of sixteen year old Miles, nicknamed "Pudge, who moves to a new boarding school. Through his roomate Chip he meets a girl named Alaska. She has a tragic life. The story is funny, adventurous and sad. It keeps you thinking because it is a bit of a mystery too. It is so well written; I really love this book.

Mom note: this book holds some pretty sophisticated stuff - and is recommended for grades 9 and up. I'm reading it now and preparing for some discussion around various subject matter.




*for the record I do edit what I buy for them. thank goodness for our neighborhood public library.

Saturday Bookself :: week one

"This or any other procedure is merely a dam against the springtide of memories which surges toward any collector as he contemplates his possessions..."

do you know walter benjamin's essay on "unpacking my library"? it is filled with quotes like the one above. and well worth a read. (or reread as the case may be.)

i am in the process of packing up the girls' "library" and am incredibly nostaligic as i box up so many memories along with the books. i struggled with what to do with these. and part of me knows i should let them go / pass them on. but i am a collector by nature and a bibliophile too and so the most dear are being put away, with the hope that they will be shared again with someone i love, someday.

i want to start documenting (weekly) what we are reading here. both as an incentive (for me) to finish books i begin and to record what we can about what we are reading.


*********



Title: The Curve of Time

Author: M. Wylie Blanchet

Reader: T

Thoughts: This is one of those books that in the beginning I wasn't sure about but by the end found myself transformed by. It is an epic true tale of a mom and her five children (and their dog) exploring the coast of British Columbia on their 25 foot boat Caprice over fifteen summers in the late 1920s early 1930s. (The same boat from which her husband disappeared, leaving her a widow.)

There is so much I could say. This is a book about a place I have loved - and describes a landscape etched in my own heart. (White shell beaches, purple sea stars, barnacles underfoot...) It is a book about adventure and raising children and being a mom. On death. And on living.

Its not terribly well written - but it provided personal connections that made it hard to put down.

"Destiny rarely follows the pattern we would choose for it and the legacy of death often shapes our lives in ways we could not imagine."

It is a book I will read again. (And again.)

::

we are dealing with someone we love very much going through a very tough time related to mental illness. explaining this to the girls has been so hard. i always want to be honest and open in the most age appropriate way.

with a very perceptive and thoughtful almost 11 yr old that is often a challenge.

with an easy-going 8 yr old, a little easier.



"Bright became dim.
Glad became gloom."

i love this book. virginia woolf is one of my favourite writers and her tragic end familiar. when i saw this over the summer i picked it up immediately. (the illustrations are so lovely.) i could not have guessed that it would be so relevant and helpful a few months later.



hold your loved ones close. talk. "love, love, love."

inspiration on our bookshelf.

Artists' Studios by M.J. Long



Vera by Susan Seid, Jen Renzi and The Vera Company


Undecorate by Christiane Lemieux