You guys might remember last month when I had had it with my TBR shelf and decided to start over.

I got a pile of new books at the library book sale and have made my way through most of them during the course of this month. That being said, my pile looks VERY similar to what it did last month at this time.

Here ya go!

I’m going to try to knock out that Bonhoeffer bio this month just because it’s bugging me sitting there. Other than that I’m hoping that I get some new books for my birthday (which is today! Happy Birthday to Me!).

How did your TBR shelves grow/shrink this month? Any big movement?

The Book: Blindness, by Jose Saramago

The Story: (from Goodreads) Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortunes of a handful of characters who are among the first to be stricken and centers on “the doctor’s wife,” her husband, several of his patients, and assorted others, thrown together by chance. This group bands together in a family-like unit to survive by their wits and by the unexplained good fortune that the doctor’s wife has escaped the blindness. The sudden onset and unexplained origin and nature of the blindness cause widespread panic, and the social order rapidly unravels as the government attempts to contain the apparent contagion and keep order via increasingly repressive and inept measures.

A Side Story: Back in September, the night before I went to Decatur Book Festival with my nerds. Shaun, Izey and I piled into the car around Izey’s bedtime assuming that he’d sleep the whole way to New Lebanon (where I was flying out of and Shaun and Izey were staying while I was away) and we were right. We got to my in-laws, where we were staying, and I carried in a completely-asleep Isaac. Did they just let me silently carry him back to his room? No. Was every light and TV in the house on? Yes. Did they poke him and talk and kiss him until he woke up? Of course.

Thus began the first night EVER in his WHOLE LIFE that Izey refused to sleep because he wanted to play. I went to bed immediately but woke up after an hour or so and switched shifts with Shaun. I went in the room where Izey sleeps while we are there, had the lights dimmed and was reading him books and playing quietly with him. He found the remote and turned the TV on. Then lost the remote. I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off or change the channel. There was a strange/creepy movie on and I never did figure out what on earth was going on.

A few months later, Julie highly recommended the book Blindness to me. I found it at a library sale and it was a movie cover and… yup, I had seen the movie…. at least chunks of it from behind a exhausted fog. That said, I went into this with a very, very dim knowledge of what was going on. So you know, Izey stayed awake until 4 that morning and I had to get in the shower and leave for the airport at 5. Those girls saw me MESSED UP with exhaustion. Yes. Tangent, anyone?

What I Thought: When I first opened this book, I emailed Julie and asked her what on Earth she was thinking. I have said a million times that I hate books with weird/no punctuation and this was #1 void of punctuation, #2 the sentences were paragraphs long and some paragraphs stretched more than one page and #3 (which I didn’t find out until I started reading) you never learn the character’s names. As in… never. Julie told me to just power through that it’s pretty awesome.

And why did I ever doubt her? Julie and I are book twins and I should have known that if she loved it, I’d love it.

The thing is, this style wouldn’t have worked in any other scenario. I get irate at ol’ Cormac McCarthy because there’s no reason for this lack of proper punctuation. He just said that he doesn’t like how the “squiggly things” look. I think that is beyond stupid. Here though, for some reason, it worked. These people were suddenly struck blind and the writing is just kind of this stream-of-concious fight though the dark. It took me a few chapters to get into the flow of the book, but once I did I was totally hooked. I thought that even without names that these characters came to life and I just felt for them in a way that only happens when you are reading a powerful book.

I thought that the story itself was super intriguing- I love the nationwide-sickness deal, the good vs evil deal, and any story that highlights relationships and how/why they work. I kept putting myself there, in that situation and wondering which character I would be, how I would react… and I know this much, I’d stick as close to Shaun as I possibly could. If we could get a shirt made with two neck holes, I’d just stay attached to him…. although that may make blind walking a bit harder. Anyway, I digress. This is one of those books that keeps popping back into my brain, I find myself thinking about it at odd times… and like it or not, I think that is the sign of a good book with staying power.

It keeps bringing me back to this idea that society is normal and fine and good… but it’s just a little disease, a little something, one second, away from this nightmarish, crazy situation.

So that’s that. I liked it, I thought it was written a bit heavily but it just worked. Thanks for the rec, Julie. I’ll never doubt you again!

Conclusion: Kind of a strange, heavier read, but worth your time for sure. I’d recommend it!

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!)