Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Book Slump

Well I haven't done any book reviews lately. I think the last one I did was back in December. I've really been in a reading slump. I've just been really impatient with everything- characters who are too stupid to live, plots that are too ridiculous to be believed, and endings that are too horrendous to be mentioned. You can tell I've been grumpy with books lately. That being said, I have enjoyed a couple books. Ok two. Two books in five months! Is it that hard to find good books? Anyone who has an idea, give me one please. Anyway, the books I've liked are The Evlolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly and The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I know. One is a book aimed at young teens and one is aimed at the book club set. The ways of my brain are strange.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is about a young girl growing up in Texas at the beginning of the 20th century. Callie is the only girl in a large weatlhy family and is expected to learn all the domestic skills necessary to run a big house like the one she is growing up in. However, she likes rambling outside more than learning housekeeping and is the despair of her mother. Her somewhat crusty naturalist grandfather takes an interest in her after she plucks up the courage to talk to him about his work, and they start to bond over collecting specimens and observing nature. Ok, I'm starting to get bored by my description. I'm a little rusty at this. What I really liked about the book and what is missing from my review is Callie's voice. It is all told from her perspective, and I thought she was charming. I particularly liked the scene where she and her best friend take part in their first and last piano recital. Ahhhh vomiting at a piano recital, who hasn't felt like doing that? Anyway, I enjoyed it and hope the author writes another book about Callie and her family.

On to the next book. Like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Help is totally book club bait. But also like The Guernsey etc etc, I really liked the book. It is told from the perspective of white and black women in the South during the 60s. A wealthy white girl comes home from college without receiving her M.R.S. degree and feels a little like she's a failure for not being married. A black woman works for a young married woman and pretty much raises her daughter, but she has to use a bathroom out in the garage so she doesn't contaminate the family's other bathrooms. Another black woman can't keep her mouth shut and loses almost every job she ever gets. Skeeter, the white girl, sees how her friends treat their black maids and gets the idea to write a book of the maids' stories from their own point of view. At first none of the maids in town want anything to do with this crazy white girl, but they end up doing it. (Well of course they do or there wouldn't be a book, right?) There is a fall out from the book, and it is frequently not good. Of course, it's also not always bad, and that's what I liked. It showed the negative and the positive in the relationships between these women. And let me just say that I will never look at a chocolate pie the same way again. I laughed really really hard about that although it was really really nasty. Read the book and you'll know what I'm talking about.

And that is my measly store of good books. Hopefully I'll have a better track record in the next five months.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Mummu and Grandpa Visit

So Jared's mom and dad visited us at the end of March. "But it's May!" you say. All I have to say is, "Yep, it is." And now on to the pictures. The girls pretty much felt that their grandparents' blow up beds were their blow up beds.
Katie would have slept there if we had let her.
This was our dinner at a nice restaurant in Savannah. You can imagine what the patrons thought of Charlotte eating spaghetti with her hands and then dipping said hands over and over again in her water cup. This is Sisko in the courtyard of our hotel there in Savannah.
Charlotte thought it was the best hotel she had ever stayed at. Maybe because it's the only hotel she's ever stayed out, but that doesn't diminish its awesomeness.
And speaking of Savannah, look at that Spanish moss (which apparently is neither Spanish nor moss).
Ok, enough of Savannah. Here are the babies appropriating their grandparents' beds again. Only this time, they brought a bunch of their toys.
We also went to this German town about an hour north of our house. I know, a little German town in Georgia is pretty random.And that's about it. Their visit made a big impact on the girls. Katie and Charlotte talk about mummu and papa all the time now. Katie has started to point at strangers who have Sisko's same hair color and say, "Mummu!" Thanks for visiting us. We had a lot of fun!

Monday, May 3, 2010

Pre-Mother's Day Pictures

This post is for my mom and mother-in-law. Ok, it's mainly because my mom emailed me telling me to get with the posting pictures on the blog program, but they work for Jared's mom too. Notice the words on the bibs. Well, I guess they're kinda blocked. They say "I love grandma." See, works for both of our moms.
Doesn't Charlotte have great bed head? It cracks me up every morning.