Just the Five of Us

Advent Activity #4

#4. Tonight, we’re going to see the Lower Paxton Christmas Tree lighting! 

Last night was the tree lighting in our township. We dropped Jake off at practice, made a quick stop at Wendy's for food, and joined the crowd of people outside the community center. We ran into the McDonnell's, so Emma was happy to sing carols with Kerri and Devin and their friends. Owen loved the band and singing, and he kept asking for "Jingle Bells." It was the first song we sang, so he was happy. He also loved watching the "big horn" in the band . . . it reminded him of Jake's baritone.

 

After singing, we counted down from ten to zero and then watched for a minute until Santa came driving in on a firetruck. Emma was ecstatic, and the look on Owen's face pretty much sums up what he was feeling.

 

 

Yeah. That pretty much sums up Christmas right there. After watching Santa climb down the truck, we went inside at had cookies. The Santa line was too long, and we had to go pick up Jake. That resulted in a meltdown from Emma. We got to practice about ten minutes early, and it went over by almost twenty minutes. To pass the time, we talked about the big gingerbread house in the lobby of the church, and I tried to convince Owen that touching all the parts really wouldn't be all that fun. He disagreed. We then spent a bunch of time talking about the nativity scene, naming everyone and all the animals and practicing animal sounds. Owen was obsessed with the names of the three kings, but I could only remember Balthasar. I promised we'd look it up at home, but he had forgotten by then.

I had brought Jake a cookie from the tree lighting, which he was very happy about, and we shuttled everyone home and got them to bed.

February and March Books Read

There was so much sickness and illness in February that I only read one book.
Red Light Wives by Mary Monroe

With a couple visits from/with my mom (my main source of new material), March was much better.
Whitethorn Woods by Meave Binchy. This is typical Binchy. I love her, so it was a fast and happy read.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker*. One of my favorite books ever, hence the reread. Everytime I read it, I notice something different. Not sure why I picked it up to read again . . . maybe the ideas of rebirth and renewal and starting over were making me thing spring.

Durable Goods by Elizabth Berg. Quick read. Fairly predictable plot. Not bad.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. This won the Pulitzer Prize. I didn't like it. I found it rather boring and rote, and I foudn the plot confusing. Almost all of the climax and resolution came in the last ten pages or so and seemed to come out of nowhere. It did give an interesting look at farm life in the 70s.

Barn Blind by Jane Smilely. I foudn the same plot issues in the one, too. Great info about horse farms, but I found it kind of boring. Her writing is very complex . . . a lot happens though nothing really happens to the end. I realize that didn't make much sense, but that's how the book left me feeling. Tragic ending . . . not an easy read.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. I like this. Extremely predictable . . . it's about a school shooting and it was obviously very much influenced by Columbine. It gave a disturbing look at how children grow into the teenagers that kill, and I found myself almost siding with the shooter. I think it paints an accurate picture of how some children are just targeted from the first day of school and eventually, all of the cruelty and isolation take its toll. Not a fun read, but I think it would be good for all parents to read.

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsoliver. Great book. Interesting insight into adoption and Native Americans and the issues they face.

The Whispering Season by Ivan Doig. Hands down, my favorite this month. A brother and sister show up in Montana in 1909 and bring with them a new kind of knowledge. Great look into life in Montana in 1909, and since quite a bit of the plot centers aroudn the one room schoolhouse (and education in general), it was right up my alley.  The teacher was one of the most fascinating characters. The book totally inspired me to start teaching Jake how to look up the Latin roots of his spelling words.

*reread

January Books Read

The Weight of Water. Anita Shreve.
A good book. It follows two different story lines simultaneously, which the author does well. The main character is a photographer on assignment, traveling with her husband, child, brother-in-law, and his girlfriend on a sailboat off the coast of

New England

. The writing was fluid and descriptive, but I was able to put it down and read it in spurts. The ending was totally unexpected and actually made me gasp . . . I never saw it coming. A good read. I'd like to see the movie.

Affliction. Russell Banks.
This was a hard read. Very violent, very depressing, and very harsh. Set in

New England

in the winter the whole book is full of cold (the writer is brilliant tying in the winter setting with regard to plot and characterization) and the anger and affliction of alcoholism and hopelessness. It was not easy to get into, and I read it in spurts. I thought the last part of the book actually flowed the best and was happy to get to the end. It was still a good book . . . just a little too much description. I did find myself sympathizing with the main character even though he's not a great person.

The Reader. Bernhard Schlink
I read this in one day. The main character has an affair with an older German woman only to meet her years later as she stands trial for her role as an SS guard at a concentration camp. The beginning was a little slow and not that engaging, but the middle and end were pretty good. The book raises an interesting moral dilemma, but I think the author kind of skirted over it a bit . . . the section in which the dilemma is answered for the main character seemed short and almost an afterthought. It was okay but not one of my favorites. I watched a trailer of the movie coming out, though, and I think I'd like to see it.

Girls Most Likely, Sheila Williams
I found this one on a borrow pile at the gym. It was a fun read . . . followed the story of four women from childhood through adulthood. I love stories like this . . . I love how the characters are developed around a central person. It reminded me a lot of my best friends from high school—we were a group of four, and we were inseparable.

Light a Penny Candle, Maeve Binchy
Firefly Summer, Maeve Binchy
I love Maeve Binchy. Quick and easy lighthearted reading. I’ve read both of these a half dozen times before . . . I love Maeve’s writing style and I’d like to explore some other Irish writers.

The King of Torts, John Grisham
I like John Grisham. He’s not one of my favorites, and I find his law novels all pretty similar. I prefer his non-law fiction, actually. But every once and a while I like to read a good John Grisham novel, and this one did not disappoint. I love the glimpse into his fictionalized law world of money and power. The ending of the book was fairly predictable, but I like the path he took to get there. A fun read.

The Other Boleyn Girl. Philippa Gregory

I've never been into historical fiction, but I really like this book. It's the story of Anne and Mary Boleyn (which I learned is pronounced "bullen" and not "bowlynn") and their relationships with each other, England, and Henry VII. It was a LONG book, but I read it in three days. I could not put it down, and I found myself doing some research online about the time because I've always been fascinated pre-Elizabethan culture. It was an interesting read, and it's been made into a movie. I think I'll rent that at some point. I already knew how the story turned out, but I liked getting more of the details of the time--even if they were fictionalized. Good beach reading.

Books

A while ago, a 100 books meme was circulating around the blogosphere, and I decided to participate. I'm not sure where the list came from, but there are lots of "100 Best" book lists on the internet. Books in bold are the ones I have read, and I've put the ones in italics that I'd like to read this year.

Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen

The Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien

Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte

Harry Potter series — J.K. Rowling

To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee

The Bible (not the whole thing, but a lot of it in a Literature of the Bible class)

Wuthering

Heights— Emily Bronte (one of my favorites)

1984 — George Orwell

His Dark Materials — Philip Pullman

Great Expectations — Charles Dickens

Little Women — Louisa May Alcott

Tess of the D’Urbervilles — Thomas Hardy

Catch 22 — Joseph Heller

The Complete Works of Shakespeare (most of it from high school and college classes)

Rebecca — Daphne Du Maurier

The Hobbit — J.R.R. Tolkien

Birdsong — Sebastian Faulks

Catcher in the Rye— J.D. Salinger

The Time Traveller’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger 

Middlemarch — George Eliot

Gone With The Wind — Margaret Mitchell

The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bleak House — Charles Dickens

War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams

Brideshead Revisited — Evelyn Waugh

Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck

Alice in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll

The Wind in the Willows — Kenneth Grahame

Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy

David Copperfield — Charles Dickens

The Chronicles of Narnia — C.S. Lewis (so far, the first two and a half . . . )

Emma — Jane Austen

Persuasion — Jane Austen

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe — C.S. Lewis

The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin — Louis De Bernieres

Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden

Winnie the Pooh — A.A. Milne

Animal Farm — George Orwell

The Da Vinci Code — Dan Brown

One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Prayer for Owen Meaney — John Irving

The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins

Anne of Green Gables — L.M. Montgomery

Far From The Madding Crowd — Thomas Hardy

The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood

Lord of the Flies — William Golding

Atonement — Ian McEwan

Life of Pi — Yann Martel

Dune — Frank Herbert

Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Gibbons

Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen

A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth

The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A Tale Of Two Cities — Charles Dickens

Brave New World — Aldous Huxley

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time — Mark Haddon

Love In The Time Of Cholera — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Of Mice and Men — John Steinbeck

Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History — Donna Tartt

The Lovely Bones — Alice Sebold

The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas

On The Road — Jack Kerouac

Jude the Obscure — Thomas Hardy

Bridget Jones’ Diary — Helen Fielding

Midnight’s Children — Salman Rushdie

Moby Dick — Herman Melville

Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens

Dracula — Bram Stoker

The Secret Garden— Frances Hodgson Burnett

Notes From A Small Island — Bill Bryson

Ulysses — James Joyce

The Bell Jar--Sylvia Plath

Swallows and Amazons — Arthur Ransome

Germinal — Emile Zola

Vanity Fair — William Makepeace Thackeray

Possession — A.S. Byatt

A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens

Cloud Atlas — David Mitchell

The Color Purple — Alice Walker

The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro

Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert

A Fine Balance — Rohinton Mistry

Charlotte’s Web — E.B. White

The Five People You Meet In Heaven — Mitch Albom

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Faraway Tree Collection — Enid Blyton

Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad

The Little Prince — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The Wasp Factory — Iain Banks

Watership Down — Richard Adams

A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole

A Town Like Alice — Nevil Shute

The Three Musketeers — Alexandre Dumas

Hamlet — William Shakespeare

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Roald Dahl

Les Misérables — Victor Hugo