Cammykitty Returns in 2018

Welcome to my thread. I've been in the category group for years but decided to take a break last year and try out the 75ers. Great people, but I crashed and burned there. Summer wasn't a healthy one for me and I actually quit reading for three months. Things are better now, but it's a little quieter and homier in the category group, and that's what I need.

So, hopefully I can keep up with your threads at least a little bit, and keep up with this thread - and like the 75ers, hopefully this will be a place where we are free to talk about books as well as wonder off topic.

As for off topic, my favorite Non-book topic is my dogs, Wanda and Sage. They are Irish Water Spaniels, which are best described as Rastafarian Poodles. Especially right now when they are way overdue for the groomer. I'll post some pictures here when I get a chance.

As for my reading, it is all over the place, but usually with a heavy focus on Young Adult, Fantasy (urban) and Science Fiction. That said, I'm going to keep the categories loose this year. I'm not going to set myself up for more crashing and burning this year!!!

Thought I'd share a butt shot!

Category 1. Literary-wise, I am travelling around the world. This year, I'll be starting in Southern Europe and working my way up.


visited 50 states (22.2%)
Create your own visited map of The Worldhref="https://douweosinga.com/projects/visited?region=world">Create your own visited map of The World

1. At the moment I have started The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
from Bosnia. I had never heard of Andric before, but he has received a Nobel Prize for Literature and his Bosnian Chronicles are on the 1001 Books to Read Before you Die list. I was hoping to read Bosnian Chronicles, but Drina was at the used bookstore and it seemed meant to be because I have a friend whose heart dog, and last Irish Water Spaniel was named Drina after the river. She was my heart dog's Aunt, and jumped on top of him when he was a pup trying to learn to swim. Naughty Drina.

Possibles:
1. Tiger's wife Serbia

Beddy-bye Audio Books


Yup, I listen to comfort books before bed, and will often listen to them over and over again so I can enjoy them, nod off and not miss anything. I won't list them unless they are new to me or I haven't listened to them for so long I was starting to forget them.

1. Gold Coast by Elmore Leonard My first Elmore Leonard. Not a good sleeping book, and not really a mystery even, but a decent thriller with a satisfying ending.

2. Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by RL Stine - annoying twins who have to compete with each other get ventriloquist dummies. It's not a pretty thing.

3. Unstoppable Octobia May by Sharon Flake has the hallmarks of a routine bedtime story. Routine ones require a clever or homey quality in the writing that means you can dip in or out and the writing is charming enough that it doesn't matter that you already know the plot and the outcome. Octobia is charming. She's convinced her Aunt has a boarder who is a vampire, but everyone else thinks she's crazy and are getting sick of her garlic breath.

4. PK Pinkerton and the Petrified Man by Caroline Lawrence

5. Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls by Wendelin Van Draanen

6. Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask by RL Stine

7. Goosebumps: Welcome to Dead House

Possibles:

Short Stories
I have tons of anthologies, some of which I've been slipping into and out of for years. I don't even really believe I'll finish them all the way through by now, so here's a place to keep track of all the individual stories I've read.

From 25 Favorite Science Fiction Short Stories Anthologies Volume 1
(Not joking about the name. I think it was a freebie)
1. Disqualified by Charles L Fontenay

2. Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford

Time for Off the Shelf, Woman!

My house is cluttered, and if I could cut the books in half (ha ha) I might have a shot at reducing the clutter (ha ha again) so this is just for random stuff I already own.

1. Ruby Redfort: Look into my eyes An annoying, know-it-all Mary Sue, Ruby grows on ya as she skips out of school to help a secret agency crack a code and prevent a heist. I probably will continue with the series, but from the library instead of purchased.

2.

Pretty Pictures!!!



1. March III by John Lewis - harrowing, not pretty pictures, in this book but well worth the read.

2.

Possibles
1.
2. My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 2 which won't be released until August of this year. Vol 1 ends with lots of tough questions, so I'd wait until July to read it if you haven't already, and don't be fooled by the young protagonist. This isn't an appropriate book for your 11 year old offspring.

Oooh, shiny
Books bought, borrowed or stolen that I just had to read right now

1. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

School got me
I'm a paraprofessional at a middle school, and often I read books with or because of the kids. This spot is for those books, although I'm a little worried this year. I'm in two language arts classes, but both of them have kids with such *needy* behaviors that I am not even hearing half of the books in the read aloud. They can ask me about the books, but I only have a very general idea of what is going on. So far I've been able to fake it, but eventually I'm going to have to say "when you don't listen, I can't listen so don't count on me to do your listening for you." Fair enough, right?

1.

2.

Books in Spanish

10. Bingo!!!



10. Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls

4. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

16. Ruby Redfort: Look into my eyes

22. Freedom in Congo Square

21. March III

12. The Bridge on the Drina

Cute pictures to come, but at least this will serve as a coat rack where we can hang our hats for now. I had to work at the co op early this morning so yes, it's sleepy time now! Real reviews will start with #4

Great to see you back here! Looking forward to following your reading.

Welcome back Katie! I'll be looking forward to your comments on the Andric book, I've got it on my TBR.
I'm not familiar with what goes on in schools these days, what exactly do you do as a paraprofessional?

Hope your 2018 is filled with lots of good reads!

Welcome back, looking forward to following along.

Welcome back! I hope you have a great reading year. Looking forward to pictures of the doggies :)

The 75ers are quite the chatty group. I was there for a couple of years but found this group much, much easier to keep up with. Still, plenty of talk about furbabies and food, but manageable. Glad you came back here.

Good to see you again! :) Best wishes for an awesome reading year!

Welcome back! I'll be happy to follow along (and eventually spot some dog pictures). :)

Wow!!! Thanks everyone. You make me feel like I'm returning home. I still haven't fleshed out the thread yet, but I will eventually with dog pics and weird links and all that stuff.

Mamzel - yes, 75ers is overwhelming! But I do have some friends over there. I've been torn over what to do, but still think hanging out with this group is the best decision.

>13 MissWatson: Birgit, I'm a few chapters in on The Bridge on the Drina and almost put it down. It is strange book, I think with no main character except the bridge and the city. And there is a many, many page long description of torture and impalement. I finally realized there wouldn't be a test on that section so if I skipped to the end of it, I'd be okay. I think the scene was an accurate depiction historically, but many more scenes as painful as that one and I'll decide the book is not for me.

Other news - dogs are doing fine. I gave the two of them rawhides last night, and gave Wanda a third one when I realized that Sage had stolen hers. So who is chewing an almost whole rawhide today? Wanda, and I'm willing to bet she reclaimed it from Sage shortly after I went to work (school).

Work - As a lot of you know, I work with special ed kids at a middle school. Usually I'm pretty upbeat, but this week my main teacher is gone and had no substitute for two classes. I was left winging it with seconds to go to find a safe place for the kids to be. I wasn't going to be left alone in a room with them! They are crazy right now, and in the minute alone in the room they managed to knock everything off a shelf and wrap a whole roll of paper towels around some bottles like a weird surprise party banner. And that's while they were trying to be good. Other stories too, but time to quit dwelling on the fact that I prevented a fight yesterday... mostly. And was told I was going to be baked... And my "roasting" on Monday...

Also have a job at Linden Hills Co-op as a cashier - boring work but people are great! And I get a lot of free food. Today's lunch was Jerk Chicken Soup, free from the co-op.

Anybody else have any work chaos stories?

#4 Beddy-Bye Audio Books: Finished Unstoppable Octobia May today. It's an enjoyable, light-hearted detective story about an African-American girl during the civil rights movement who is being "spoiled" and "protected" in the North by her Aunt who is raising her instead of her family because the girl is delicate. She has "died" before from heart failure when she wasn't even a teen yet. Octobia starts snooping around because something isn't right about Mr. Davenport, her Aunt's boarder, and he sure seems like a vampire.

But for all this funny, the story is very much about race and in ways is one of the most complicated and depressing accounts I've seen for a long time. The murders are all committed to protect a "colored" man who is passing for white. So don't expect a clear cut story about good and evil here.

>20 cammykitty: I have been warned that The Bridge on the Drina is pretty relentlessly gruesome, as the entire historyof the region has been. I think I'll put this off to a time when the nights are less dark and long.
No work chaos for me, thankfully. Your school job sounds very demanding!

Katie - I'm so glad to see you, Sage, and Wanda back! I thought a couple of years ago that I was going to try the 75 group too because I liked the idea of the TIOLI challenges, but decided against it after trying to follow some people and seeing how much people posted. (Sometimes just to post I thought). A bit too frantic for me. But I've missed your pictures of your puppies and I recall I used to like following your reading too.

On a sad note, we had to have our border collie Gracie put to sleep a year ago this month. She was 14.5 but her back legs had gotten worse and worse until they would give out while she was walking. We miss her a lot, so lots of dog pictures are fine with me.

Love the butt shot. Good to see your thread.

Glad to have you back here, Katie. I follow a few people over in the 75ers, but if I don't keep up with their threads everyday, they quickly grow too long and I just wait for them to start a new one. i'm happy here and over in Club Read, which keeps me as involved as I have time for.

A reading slump is no fun. I'm glad you're recovering. I have The Bridge on the Drina on my wishlist and I'll keep in mind when I do find a copy to read it when I'm up for challenging and depressing.

Hi everyone!!! It's so good to see familiar "faces." I'm actually at school, being a "calming" influence while the kids work on their chromebooks. I think some gaming is happening, but some work too. And yes, it's loud here! And I'm going to start knowing the words to a rap song I've never heard sung by the original artist. :)

>22 MissWatson: Birgit - I'm reading Drina because I want to know more about the region. I have a very sweet Bosnian student who sometimes shows the class Bosnian music videos, and over the years I've met several Bosnian students, most really nice. I've read enough from that general part of the world to know not to expect a pleasant history. I think I need to think of it more as an essay or history book than fiction, and I also think I need to read no more than a chapter a day and have something else for relaxation, Waiting for winter to end first sounds like a good plan!
>25 RidgewayGirl: Kay, Birget and I will let you know if it should stay on the wishlist.

>23 dudes22: Betty, so sorry about your grrl. It's hard to see them get old and suffer, and so hard to make that decision. 14.5 is a good long life, so you know she loved you and you gave her the best life you could. Anytime you want to share a story about Gracie or live vicariously through my dogs, I'll be here.

>24 majkia: Jean, thanks! I love that shot too. It's one my boyfriend took. I've got to get my camera out more often, but I've got to admit, he's better at it than I am. I think he's got the patience to wait for just the right shot.

Chapter 5 of The Bridge on the Drina is incredibly beautiful. It spans about 200 years after the bridge was built, and is about floods and endurance.

Welcome back! Love the Wanda and Sage picture.

>20 cammykitty: - I was running threads in both Category and 75ers for a couple of years and I started to get overwhelmed so this year I am just sticking to this group, and making random forays into the 75ers to visit certain friend threads. I feel considerably calmer focusing most of my attention just on this group. ;-)

I too, ran two threads for a few years but a couple of years ago it totally overwhelmed me and I reverted to having the one thread here. I made some great friends amongst the 75ers who I continue to follow but the slower pace here suits me much better.

Hi Lori and Judy! Yes, way too fast on 75ers. By the time you can return to a conversation on a popular thread, 50 more posts have happened. Eeeeek!!!

Yesterday, Jerome came over to shovel snow and took some new photos of Sage and Wanda. Here's the front end of them.



I've had a bit of insomnia lately so finished book 4 and 5, both in beddy bye audio category.

4. PK Pinkerton and the Petrified Man. PK is an orphan living in the mountains of Virginia during the US Civil War. It has a wild west feel to it, and PK has set up a shingle as a private eye. When a "soiled dove" gets murdered, PK gets a first case.

Not the greatest book in the world. It's escapism, and an enjoyable escape, but there are a couple things that pushed this book into the "Might read another one" category. 1. PK has autism. The author doesn't say as much, nor does PK, but PK has a lot of traits, talents and coping methods typical of autism. It was clearly deliberate on the author's part. The other, Sam Clemens is running around as a newspaper man. He hasn't settled on a pen name yet, but we the reader know eventually he'll write mostly as Mark Twain. Clemens writes some outrageous news, yup false news, and it's fun to see how PK with autism literal-mindedness reacts to all these whoppers being printed as news.

Black dogs are so hard to photograph, but they show up nicely against that background of snow. They look happy to be out in that white stuff!

Judy, they are loving the snow!!! And yes, they are very difficult to photograph. They are so dark that if the lighting isn't bright enough they look like eyeless mop-blobs. And of course they are fast moving, so it's hard to use a low "shutter" speed to get more light.

Book 5 Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls - another child private eye story. I like Sammy's friends, her unusual families, and her difficulties getting adults to help her in ways that are useful. This book has handled the adult problem well - they don't seem stupid or evil as they do in a lot of middle grade novels, but they obviously have trust issues with the young protagonists and therefore have to be managed. So, the adult characters can't solve the kid's problems, but they aren't the cardboard characters that are most common.

Sammy's friends cut through the graveyard on Halloween and find themselves with two human skulls and some scary adults following them. This is a much more complicated story than RL Stine's Goosebumps, but it will appeal to the same audience. I found it enjoyable and may read more in the series (which appears to be of stand alone stories with cameo appearances of characters from past stories.) That said, it's a bit complicated for an audio bedtime book because when I fell asleep on part of it, I would find myself hopelessly lost and have to backtrack and re-listen to almost all of it to figure out the sequence of events. In your average Goosebumps, the sequence of events is pretty obvious.

>31 cammykitty: They look so happy! Lovely.

>31 cammykitty: Aww happy puppies! :)

Happy dogs are the best. When we had snow here our former yard dog was full of NOPE. She agreed to walk on the cleared sidewalks only.

Hi Vivienne, RP and Kay. Kay, can't believe your dog hated snow that bad! I'll confess, sometimes Jerome shovels paths in the yards for the dogs, but they don't really need them.

So naughty dog story of the day. I went to Penzey's Spice because they were giving away "soul" spice collections in honor of Martin Luther King Jr day. Put them on the counter and went to my volunteer gig training other people's puppies. Came home, no spices left in the bag. Sage had dragged all the bottles to the bedroom and was trying to figure out how to open them. He did successfully get into the Cajun spice, but I got it back before it was all over the bed !!! Brat!!!

Also celebrated MLK day by going to The Source and buying March III by John Lewis, and since I was there, I got two more books and a button of Evil Alternate Universe Spock. Okay, my inner geek was having a hey day today. The other books are book 1 of Black Hammer and Paper Girls, a book where kids from the 80s are sent ahead in time to dystopia USA (now?) to help their older selves fight a conspiracy.

As for reading, read 2 chapters of Drina. Yes, it is going to continue to be grim, but I think it is worth reading anyway. Ivo Andric has such a cynical, human view of history tempered with compassion. I'm getting confused about all the different groups in the region. We have the Turks, the Serbs, the Bosnians and the Gypsies all with there own agendas. Am I surprised that I'm confused? Who is who in that region has always confused me.

Also read another Beddy-Bye book Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask. Girl's friends are always scaring her so she decides to scare them, but she can't stop. I like this because it's traditional horror - the problem comes from a real life flaw, add some magic for emphasis, and put in a bit of MwaHaHa in the end.

Happy new thread! Sage and Wanda are beautiful! I have a bad dog story from yesterday too- Coral pulled half a loaf of bread off the stove and ate it while we were out, Except for one piece that Mike found in our bed.

>40 mstrust: Ha, Jennifer! Oh, so nice of Coral to save a piece for Mike! And I'll bet she told you she was starving.

>39 cammykitty: Your reading the children's book reminds me I need to read the 5 I allocated for completing Nicholas Nickleby. I need to complete a review. Then I want to read a short e-book I got through Early Reviewers so I get that review out of the way.

>1 cammykitty: Thanks for letting me know where you'd wandered off to!! I hope you have a great year over here and I will be sure to visit you and Sage and Wanda (love the butt shot!). Wishing you lots of fun with books. : )

>38 cammykitty: - I love Penzy Spices, but have to order them as the nearest store is more than 2 hours away.

We used to occasionally shovel a path for Gracie if the snow was pretty deep, but she mostly loved the snow.

Hi Thornton, Kim and Betty.

Snow today, lots of it. Pretty, but I'm scared to shovel it!

And speaking of scary, #7 of Beddy Bye Goosebumps: Welcome to the Dead House is probably the scariest Goosebumps I've read yet. When your family inherits a creepy house from a great-uncle no one remembers, perhaps you should think twice before accepting.

A few more chapters in Drina down too. I'm getting into the rhythm of it, but yes, still grim.

I'll keep an eye out for Welcome to the Dead House. I've developed a penchant for children's scary books.

Thanks Jennifer! It's good to know I'm not the only one. It's kind of a guilty/embarrassing pleasure.

DS alias Bruce Krafft's evil twin, if you remember her, is talking about getting a bunch of gelli print stuff and some silk scarves and... So here's my inspiration. I'm looking forward to helping her with the experiment.

And book #9 The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman is a new to me author. Never heard of him before. This book is about a woman trying to figure out who she is and what has really happened to her after being kidnapped and kidnapped again to be raised by her unreliable mother, an intellectual but fake immigrant and a charismatic con man. Kind of sad and I don't know what to think about it, but on the whole, I enjoyed it. A quote from The Third Man that you'll recognize "as the poet says" near the end of the novel.

Great to see you here! The pups look great. I suppose I should never join the 75ers since I struggle so much to keep up even here! I need a way to check in on my phone easily -- it is rare these days that I have a laptop out. I don't like the effect that has on how I consume more than produce, but I haven't quite tipped over into going out of my way to address it yet....

Good to see you Pam! Yes, 75ers is too much. This group here is only 1/2 as chatty as they are, and like you say, it's hard enough to keep up here!

As for reading, I listened to Freedom in Congo Square which is more a poem than anything else. The information before and after the poem was interesting, and actually took much more time to listen to than the poem itself. It was good, but I didn't love it. I wonder if I had been able to see the pictures that are in the book form, I would've had a different opinion.

And I finished my first in "Pretty Pictures", my MLK day purchase.



March III by John Lewis tells about the fight to secure voting rights for African Americans, and although the graphic novel has young teens as a target audience, it didn't shy away from documenting the deaths that paved the way for this cause. Occasionally this one bogs down a bit in the acronyms, SNCC. SCLC, NAACP etc, but it is still one of the more powerful books on the Civil Rights Movement I've seen. The books can be read separately, but I'd recommend them as a unit, II being my favorite.

Which brings me back to modern times. Trump tweeted in response to John Lewis's statement that he would not be going to the inauguration "All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!" --- which makes me think Trump didn't know who Lewis was. Trump wouldn't have been following Obama's heels if it weren't for the work of John Lewis and others.



That's John Lewis on the far right of the picture.



And that's John Lewis in the foreground. Isn't "all talk" safe.

Powerful pictures. I can imagine a graphic novel struggling between two poles -- making these stories more accessible, or falling short painfully of the amazing photojournalism we have.

Yes, Pam. I could tell at times they had come to the line where the facts were too much. And in hindsight, you can tell that the artists desk must have been burried under photos.

>51 cammykitty: I keep meaning to look for this one. Great review.

>54 virginiahomeschooler: Thanks Traci, it is a really good trilogy. There's a 6th grader who picked Book II for his "choice" reading book. He keeps asking me which one is Martin Luther King and when King is going to show up, which he does, but March is about specific events in the Civil Rights Movement, not King. It will be interesting to see if he sticks with it because it's a little difficult for him.

Just realized that you were back this year. Nice to see you again!

Stacy, good to see you too! Hopefully I'll get some time soon to visit some threads.

Great to see you here. And to see Sage and Wanda again, of course.

Hi and Merry March! Hope to see more of you.

Still looking out for you. Hope all is well in your world. : )