Let’s start with this one:

World Book Night started last year as just a day to promote a love of reading, literacy and books. Totally up my alley. This year, they expanded into the U.S. (it started in the U.K.) and as part of that they are giving “givers” a box of paperbacks to pass out to non-reading/light-reading/underserved-in-the-literary-department friends/strangers/whoever! Is that not amazing?

I got an email on Friday saying that I was accepted as a giver, so be looking for a fun blog post come April 23rd about me handing out books! From what the email said, everyone that signed up to be a giver was “accepted” and there are still plenty more books to give. They extended the deadline to sign up to February 6th, so get over there and sign up! What could possibly be more fun than getting a free box of books to hand out to people?! Seriously, I cannot think of anything.

Get over to their website at worldbooknight.org and register! You can pick from a list of 30 books and it is hard to pick- the books on the list are AMAZING. It did say in the acceptance email that there was a run on The Hunger Games so not everyone that signed up for it will be getting it… but there are SO MANY other great books on there. I signed up last month and I can’t even remember what I put in my top spot. I had a huge debate over it and I just can’t remember who won! Click here for a little bit on how they chose the books.

Can’t wait to see everyone’s blogs exploding with pictures of them giving books to people!! It will be like Christmas only a little bit better.

Are you signed up to be a giver? Do you remember what book you signed up for? Do you have a give away plan?

2. My birthday is next Tuesday. 30 is looming on the horizon at this point. *gulp*

3. Tuesday and Wednesday were nice enough this week to play outside almost all day. We went for walks and went to the park and played in the front yard and it was all amazing. A little preview of spring, and let me tell you, I am way, way excited. Now that Izey is more energetic, he NEEDS to get out and just run and run or he acts like a wild man. I love when I can just set him loose. So, thank you global warming for allowing me to do that in February this year. I love you.

4. We had friends from our hometown visit this past weekend and it was so fun. They are readers too so they left with armloads of books, one of them being The Hunger Games, which they had heard of but not read. Wha?! We also ate out about 30 times and played Settlers of Catan for hours. It was delightful and geeky and everything good.

5. I think we’re going to go this weekend and pick out a double stroller. Another huge *gulp* Every day the idea that are going to be parents of two kids under the age of two (at least for a few days!) gets more and more real…. and equally exciting and terrifying.

The Book: Shepherding a Child’s Heart, by Tedd Tripp

The Story: This really is just another parenting book. The “twist” on this one, I guess, is that Tedd Tripp claims that his method of parenting is firmly based in the Bible and is the technique that will guide your kid down the “straight and narrow” from the time s/he is very young.

What I Thought: Parenting is weird because you’ll read half a dozen books on parenting techniques/ideas in a true pursuit of “figuring it out” and then really just feel out what works best for you and go with that. I have taken a lot of tips and pointers from parenting books, but I have always had this idea that it was a kind of “take what you want and leave the rest” proposition.

Guys, there was nothing here for me to take.

I think I picked up this book because I liked the title and the blurb on the back. The idea is that we can never “fix” our kids without knowing their heart issues. We should be able to kind of get to the heart of their issues and work from there instead of just disciplining behavior or talking to them about their actions. This seems true and right to me, and not just for kids. When I take time to see my husband’s heart on a matter instead of just getting mad at what he’s doing, things seem to go more smoothly too. I guess I thought that this book would talk a lot about how to get to those heart issues and helping the kid work through them. I was pretty wrong.

Tedd Tripp’s (what is with the extra D anyway?) idea is that at the heart of every misbehavior is sin. Dirty, evil, rotten sin. Tripp’s “biblical plan of child rearing” is to first communicate why what the kid did is sinful and wrong and then get rid of the sin. And apparently the Bible says that the ONLY way to get rid of that is by spanking. Like… he started spanking his kids when they were around 8 months old. EIGHT MONTHS. I’m not a doctor or anything, but I’m pretty sure that the “cause and effect” area of a child’s brain isn’t fully formed at 8 months…. right? He says that if you fail to spank you are saying you don’t love your kids enough to raise them the way that God said… or something. What?

There is just so much wrong with this that I am not going to even go through it point by point. I think that the constant spanking was my huge turn off (he spanked his kids from the time they were infants until they were 12-13….. every.single.time they disobeyed their parents), but it was more than that. I just felt like Tedd Tripp really thinks that talking to kids about what they do wrong and then spanking them is it, is the whole goal of parenting. To teach our kids that all this stuff that they do is wrong and that they need to first honor their parents and, in that, honor God. This just feels… wrong… to me. Really, really wrong. He kind of sets up this relationship early on that, “I’m your parent, therefore your adversary,” and I will take the opposite approach with my kids. “We are family, we are in this together. I am your parent, so I will teach you things, but you’re my kid, so you’ll teach me things too.”

I guess that was the whole problem… Tedd Tripp’s method may work for some people. Whatever. I’m too soft/too much of a hippy for that.

The other thing is that when he wrote this Tedd Tripp’s kids were all grown and out of the house. Maybe he forgot that parenting- being in the thick of it- is much different than looking back later. He just kept saying he did the communicate/spank for every time his kids disobeyed or acted out. What about little stuff? What about just normal KID stuff? I think that there is a possibility that he was just too far separated to remember what parenting little kids is really like….

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it at this: this book set wrong with me like very few books have. While I was comfortable with the blurb on the back, that was about it for me. The rest of it felt very harsh and wrong. Yuck.

Conclusion: I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Ever.

So even if you saw it before, watch it again.

Shaun sometimes makes little stop motion videos, so I know the amount of time that goes into just a little 1 minute video on a small scale. Something this long and huge? I cannot even imagine what kind of time they put into this. It is so, so impressive.

The Book: Gone, Baby, Gone, by Dennis Lehane

The Story: A four year old girl, Amanda, is reported missing after having been gone several days. The private detective team of Patrick and Angie are put on the case because of their track record in being able to figure out tough cases that no one else can.

When they start to hear from Angie’s mom- a barfly and sometimes drug runner- they start to get the idea that something is way, way fishy. She had left Amanda- A FOUR YEAR OLD- in their house alone while she went down the street to watch TV with a friend on the night that she was abducted. They check out Amanda’s room and find it bare of toys or books. It’s just a mattress on the floor and a couple of blankets. When they interview people who knew Amanda, they heard over and over that Amanda was a small, shy kid who sunk into the background and was apparently used to being ignored.

With suspicions mounting that Angie’s mom is maybe not telling the whole story and their hearts breaking for this kid, Patrick and Angie start a journey through Boston to find Amanda.

What I Thought: It’s no secret that I think that Dennis Lehane is the absolute best at what he does. Sometimes I read crime books or mystery novels as little “filler” books- something that’s fluffy but readable, something without substance. Dennis Lehane takes the genre in a whole different direction. His books are thoughtful, well written and go deep. I’m a big fan.

This one especially left us with this horrible question to ponder: is it possible that wherever Amanda is, that she is better off there than with her parents? Is it possible that a mother can abuse not with fists or words but with straight up neglect of spirit? As we get a view of Amanda’s life, the whole thing just becomes more and more bleak, and in the end, Patrick and Angie are left with a very, very hard ethical dilemma. If I’m being honest, I still don’t know which side of the line I fall on. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but this is one of those endings that will keep you thinking for a long, long time.

Something that I really love about Dennis Lehane is how he writes about Boston. He writes it from his gut- you can tell that he loves it with everything he as and wants to show all the gritty parts… and somehow leave you loving it just like he does. Boston is a character in and of itself in his books. I love that.

My only real complaint about this book is that it drug a bit in the middle. I guess solving a crime is probably kind of like that- quick and crazy to start, muddled in the middle, and then this resolution (kind of) at the end. Before figuring out what was really up, Patrick and Angie followed some totally false leads. During that “muddled” part, the story seems to slow down a bit and while I was still intrigued, I wasn’t stealing minutes here and there to read like I was in the beginning and the end.

I didn’t know when I started this book that it is part of a series. I was perfectly fine reading this and didn’t feel lost, but especially when the characters were being introduced, I could tell that there was some background that I was missing. Turns out this is number four in a series of books about these detectives. I haven’t read any of the other books in this series, but if I see one at the bookstore, I will not hesitate to pick it up. I loved this book and want to know more about Patrick and Angie’s lives.

Conclusion: A great mystery novel by a great genre-bending author. Highly recommended.

2. January is weird. I was getting discouraged because I haven’t been getting as much reading in as I usually do and just seem like I’m plodding through books. I have been keeping a spreadsheet of my books read since 2009, so I looked back and realized that January is always my worst month as far as book reading goes. This seems counterintuitive to me- I would guess that it’s cold and gross out and there’s nothing else to do, so I would read more… right? Nope. I don’t know what it is, maybe just plain old busy-ness, but I think I’ve read less than 10 books this month. Crazy. The good thing is that several of those (including the book I’m currently reading) are great books. At least I’m not picking duds!

3. Shaun got a new job that he starts next week! The effects on me are minimal really, but I’m still really excited for him! He’ll be doing something very, very similar just in a younger company that is kind of more in line with what he wants to do long term. Pretty fun stuff!

4. How does YouTube choose what will be the picture that “stays” at the front of a video? Why do I look so stupid in that picture down there? Is there a way for me to look less stupid? It bothers me.

5. I’m considering a major overhaul of my bookshelves. I have talked about this one other time, but lately I’ve become a little bit obsessed with changing them. I know it will be a giant pain in the butt but ever since I added the fourth shelf, I feel like you really have to stand far back to get the “effect” of the color-coded-ness, and our apartment is too small to stand very far back. I think that horizontal stripes will be more obvious. My fear was that it would be really hard to add books because my space is limited anyway, but probably in the next month or so I’ll be needed to add another shelf so there will be space at each end, making adding books easy. I’ve almost talked myself into it like three times this week. With the slightest nudge, I’ll probably start pulling books off of the shelves. Please nudge me.

I even washed my hair… and got dressed. Before noon. Guys, this is big news.

(If one wasn’t enough, here is Julie’s from Book Hooked!)

There is one thing though that I’m pretty purposeful about and that is making sure that he has a love for books. I, as you guys know, love books, and I attribute that in part to the fact that my mom read to me every single day of my childhood. We had a bazillion books and even though she was a busy, working, single mom she was never too busy to sit down and read a book with us. I have a lot of fond memories of snuggling in beside her in bed while she read to me.

Here she is reading to Izey during her last trip up here. So frigging sweet.

I started reading to Izey the very day he was born and in my memory I haven’t skipped a day. In the beginning it was always initiated by me, but now that Izey is older, he brings me books to read about every five minutes. Sometimes I don’t feel like reading, but I do it anyway. I stop cleaning, blogging, whatever, and plop right down with him and read about the Hungry Caterpillar one more time.

In order to foster his (still young) love of reading, we have baskets of books in every room of the house and a bookshelf of books in his room. When he lays down for his nap, I put a pile of books at the foot of his bed so when he wakes up he can read for a little bit on his own before he hollers for me. Sometimes he is in there for an hour, awake and content to just have 5 or 6 fun books to read.

Another thing that I’ve been purposeful about is letting him touch/explore books that seem “too big” for him- paper picture books from the time he was 4 or 5 months old and I don’t scold him for pulling my books down and flipping through them. I don’t want him to be afraid to look at something that is “too advanced” so I’ve started young letting him think that any reading material is good for him. We started telling him young to “be gentle, it’s a book!” and so far he has not tore up one single book from my shelves and has only tore up one of his.

When he is playing happily and independently or when he is reading on his own, I often pull out the book I’m reading and let him see me reading for enjoyment. Once again, this is just how I was raised. My mom is a big reader and I grew up seeing her plow through books. Even now we are always swapping books and talking about what we are currently reading. Kids love imitating their parents and I think that him seeing me read could only be beneficial.

I’m not saying that I have it all together, I really don’t. I’ve only been doing this thing for about 18 months and I’ve screwed up a lot and will screw up way more as the months fly by… I guess I’m just sharing the little things that I’ve done in these months to try to give Izey the best chance I can to be an enthusiastic reader.

What are you doing to help your kids find a love of reading? What have you found that works/doesn’t work? Does your kid love to sit in a pile of books and flip through them one by one?

The Book: Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way, by John Krakauer

The Story: I don’t know how many of you have read Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson, but I remember for a hot minute that book was EVERYWHERE. When I read it, I wrote this review on Goodreads (oh days before my little blog!). Pretty much I was very unimpressed with the writing but did think that Greg’s story was phenomenal and inspirational.

Apparently, so did John Krakauer. Because he is an avid climber (according to Mortenson, he got lost after climbing down a mountain, ended up in his sherpa’s village and then committed to building a school for them), the story really touched home with him. He poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the organization that Greg Mortenson had started and even spoken at events to introduce the guy. They had never been friends really, but Krakauer did think that they had similar passions and wanted to get behind what Greg was doing.

After years of this, John met someone who he thought was a mutual friend of he and Greg. Greg’s name came up and the friend confided in John that he knew stuff about Greg’s organization that made him very, very uncomfortable. Because he had given/was giving so much money (and had had little suspicions of his own), John was instantly intrigued. He is an investigative importer- it’s what he does- so that kicked in and he started investigating and was really ticked at what he found.

Pretty much, Greg had fabricated a huge percentage of his story, and more upsetting- he was taking money that people were donating and using it just for himself. The board of his charity-organization was quitting left and right because Greg wouldn’t answer calls or be in anyway accountable to the money he was spending. Again, when John Krakauer contacted him to let him know that he was going public with this information, he refused to comment and pretty much acted like a jerk about the whole thing- to a guy who had bankrolled him in a big way- so Krakauer went ahead with the piece and this little 80-something page book is the result.

What I Thought: Like I said, I didn’t love or hate Three Cups of Tea. I thought what Greg was doing was cool but thought that the book itself was kind of dumb. When I heard about this book, I kind of rolled my eyes. I thought that the “big deal” was that Mortenson had kind of flubbed the order of stuff or whatever. I was totally willing to be forgiving because who on earth can remember the exact order of everything? Had that been the case, I would have said that he just had a bad memory. No. That’s not the case at all.

The money thing is SO CRAZY. Dude just makes money off of donations- people that go to his signings/talks, kids in schools where he presents his “Pennies for Peace” deal, and big time philanthropists. The money is SUPPOSED to go to building these schools in Afghanistan. There is no sign that that is happening. John Krakauer even went over to check out some of the “schools” that had been built and they were just standing empty- there was no research done into where to build them so the few that are standing are totally unused because they are not in areas with children. What?! Who does that?

I could go on and on about all these little facts that made me want to punch Greg Mortenson. This is just a short little book- more like a long article- and as I read it, I could feel my mouth dropping further and further open. It is absolutely shocking what a total arrogant crook this dude is. I walked away from Greg Mortenson’s book feeling a big inspired. I walked away from this one feeling almost sick to my stomach. I would love to know what has happened with Greg Mortenson and his organization since this was printed- if people that backed him pulled their funds and if Greg Mortenson is continuing to speak at schools. I hope that all of it is getting pulled out from under his feet because he absolutely deserves it.

Conclusion: If you read Three Cups of Tea, I really, highly recommend you read this.