What's my excuse...?

OK, so I haven't been very good this year about blogging. And normally I wouldn't care, but... last year, finding something to blog about every day was so rewarding, and I captured a lot of those little moments of the kids growing up, the cute things they'd say, etc., and this year I'd be hard pressed to even recall one really cute, funny thing they've done/said. (And it isn't that they haven't been saying cute things, of course.)

So, what's my excuse?

First excuse: lazy!

Well, the first couple of months of the year, I really had no excuse at all. I was just being lazy. I wasn't even working fuill time! I just didn't feel like getting on the computer at night. And, for some reason, I absolutely HATE loading pictures onto the computer, so it's usually Andres who does it. So pictures wouldn't get loaded quickly, the time would pass, and the laziness would just grow.

Second excuse: where's the camera?

Our camera was MIA for about the last two weeks or so. I knew it had to be in the house, but where? NO idea.

We finally found it, two days ago, under a pile of laundry. Yes, I had a pile of laundry in a laundry basket that didn't get put away completely for at least two weeks.

Oh, the shame.

Third excuse: Heroin

Actually, not heroin, but I feel like a heroin addict must. Because look what I just found!

OK, you probably can't see that - but it is the screen shot of the online library in Saint Paul. Ramsey County also has the same. So does Hennepin County. I registered my library card online with Hennnepin County and voila! I can check out books and download them to my iPod!!! At three different libraries!!!!!

I spend every hour of the day either reading (I have so so so so many books I have put on my to-read shelf and a lot of catching up to do!), or browsing the digital shelves. My family hasn't seen my face for the last two weeks, and my eyes feel like they will fall out one of these days, but it is like pure heaven. Some people want chocolate ice cream and cake. Me, please, just give me a book. So I think - five minutes loading pictures and updating my blog? Or five minutes reading that book I've got going (I've got like 5 going at the moment). Like an addict, I always go with the addiction.

Can you be addicted to books? Not that I care. Like a true addict, as well, I can't get better if I don't recognize the addiction, and I have no intention of doing so, but just for curiosity's sake, can you?

Oh, don't bother answering - I won't have time to read your comment, anyway, since I'll have my nose in a book.

PS - Just to give you an idea, so far this month I've read five books from my online library:

Blood, Bones and Butter (Gabrielle Hamilton)

Zeitoun (Dave Eggers)

The Girl who Fell from the Sky (Heidi Durrow)

Wicked Prey (John Sandford)

The Help (Kathyrn Stockett) - just finished this last night and it is So Good. Like a modern day Gone with the Wind. Loved it!

My bookshelf

Got a few books on the To Be Read shelf, at the moment. Most from the library. A couple lent to me. Most excited about the Garrison Keiler book. I haven't ever read anything by him. Should be interesting.

Bookshelf makes mommy smile

The title says it all. Somewhere to house the kids' books is a good thing. And I love that now the boys can get to their books easier (before they would always fall and make a mess). Nicolas is especially enjoying the shelf, as I will often find piles of books around the house or on his bed as he takes them off the shelf and looks at them.

Six-word memoir

Just saw the funniest six-word memoir from It All Changed in an Instant.

Desperate enough to read my spam. -Caroline Braun.

Hilarious. Have you ever felt that way? Don't ask me...

What would you write if you had to sum up your life in 6 words? I'm going to think about it...

And I realized, that would make a good one for me, wishy washy to the core and professional procrastinator:

I'm going to think about it. -Kari Miller

Memory, Books and Vacation

Lots of Memory and relaxation around the house this Christmas vacation. Nicolas especially is fascinated by this game, and asks everyone to play it. He doesn't cheat - too much. He cries when he loses and gets excited when he is winning. He pouts and walks away and hides his head in a pillow if someone gets the pair he had his eyes on (although he is getting better about this the more we play - big brother is now doing the same, however, which makes for tedious play). He "saves" the cards that are pairs by placing his hands on top of the cars, and he won't let anyone else turn them over, unless we want to see the Pout.



Myself, well, what have I been up to? You guessed it - lots of reading! Finished The Book Thief (got it in Vegas) and it was not at all what I expected.



I hate it when I get a book, thinking it is going to be great because so many people have recommended it (when I bought it at Borders, the girl even commented that I had made a great choice!). It wasn't bad. It was sort of good. Again, it was meant for teenagers, like the Twilight saga. Maybe that's my mistake. There is no comparison to Twilight, mind you, but I thought the language was too contrived at times. I shouldn't be so critical, but there were some sentences that just didn't make sense to me much at all. I guess the author was trying to show the power of words, how they can envelop you, change you, imprison you and free you. Sometimes I just wanted more of the story, though, and not so many "words".

I kind of liked the narrator, however. Death. The author did a great job of making sure that the narrator was not such a cliche. It was still a good story, although I didn't cry once (and I cry at everything), so there was something that couldn't make me care enough about the characters.

I am going to blame the power - excess - of the words.



I am still working my way through Angela's Ashes. It is really good, amazing, and I can't quite make myself believe that Frank McCourt will make it through to the end. He is amazing and the story is so great, and I can hear the Irish lilt of my Great-grandpa Kreyer as I read McCourt's memoir. The way the ideas are threaded and connected is so much fun, and there are some parts that are just hilarious! I mean, what do you do with a line like this:

Before he leaves his house he always sticks his head out the door and tells the lane, Here's me head, me arse is coming.

You laugh out loud!

So, back to school and work tomorrow. I am expecting lots of tears tonight!

Let me take this moment also to wish you all a Happy New Year!

My First Love(s)

Anyone who knows a bean about me knows that I am a huge bookworm, and even if I don't get an opportunity to read much, I am and always will be a reader at heart.

Anyhow, Monday night I went through my book shelf to find a book, and came across all my loves again: Fay Weldon, my huge book of all of Shakespeare's work, a collection of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, my Toni Morrisons (minus The Bluest Eye, which I lent to a friend and never got back but that's ok), my poetry books from Hamline MALS program (Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep!), Pablo Neruda and Borges - wow, I couldn't keep my eyes off of them and had to start taking them off the shelf to literally caress them! Sick, I know!

Anyhow, I got inspired to write this post today after reading a favorite book blog where the author had mentioned The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), a Hamline short story classic that reminds me of why I love reading so much. I am going to go back and read that short story again.

I go through these stages of what I will/will not read. In grad school I was mainly into poetry and literary works of nonfiction about education and such. When I start teaching my TEFL class I get into reading all my TESOL Quarterlies and Essential Teacher Magazines, or lovely books titled "Exploring Second Language Assessment". When Tin was born I couldn't read for about 2 years, and that was a real dry spell, for some reason when I was pregnant (and then afterwards also) I didn't have the concentration, resolution, interest (all three?) to pick up a book. Luckily I haven't had that problem with Nicolas, and so have started reading again.

One thing I have found that I am able to do now that I'm older (and love doing) is reading more than one book at a time - I may have four sitting around at a time, all of which grab my interest at some point in time. I never thought I'd like to have more than one book going at a time, but I guess I had just never tried it.




At the moment I am reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It started out really good and has since gotten a little slower (it is really long) but I like it anyway. Next I will try to hunt down the Twilight series. I just finished David Mitchell's Black Swan Green and really enjoyed it. I have his Ghostwritten and wasn't such a fan the first time around, but may have to go back and look at it through new eyes one of these days.







I have also got The Panama Hat Trail by Tom Miller going, and it should be fun as it takes place mainly in Ecuador (Panama Hats are actually made in Ecuador and just got their name from the port where they were peddled out to the rest of the world- um, for those a little slower on the uptake, that would be Panama!). By the way, for anyone who wants to read a great book about Ecuador and a little of its (and the world's history), I would highly recommend The Mapmaker's Wife by Robert Whitaker. There aren't that many novels out there about Ecuador, but this one is excellent! It is a little about the French expedition that came to Ecuador to measure and locate the equator.

I have been reading a lot more fluff lately, too, like mystery and suspense. Not my usually choice of literature, but I can get through a paperback in a day and also like the fact that I can read while in line or waiting for a bus (not that I ever do that, it's just an example! lol) and not have to worry about the plot too much (i.e. no thinking involved).


Rereading Elizabeth Alexander's Antebellum Dream Book again, and hope to find her newest this summer. May have to order it online, I think I read somewhere they will only be printing out 20,000 copies. Will everybody start reading her now, like they did with Maya Angelou?








Nonfiction is another thing I never liked much, but as I get older I find myself drawn more and more to it. I don't have a chance to get much nonfiction down here but will be looking this summer in MN for some books I can bring home, so send me those nonfiction book recommendations!

All Soul's Day

We spent a nice All Soul's Day holiday in Ambato, which they call Finados there (come to think of it, I have no idea why or even what finados is!). The kids LOVE going to Ambato, and although we planned on returning Saturday (luckily we didn't, as the annual Mama Negra event in Latacunga was going on full force and it would have meant MAJOR traffic jam), Agustin begged us to let him "please stay one more day". As he usually gets his way (well, spoiling my kids with something like spending one more day on vacation is fun!), we agreed to stay.

He was reluctant on Sunday to go home, but we managed to get him back to Quito, where, two minutes after he walked into the house, he turned around and said, "OK, let's go back to Ambato now!"

Nicolas, on the other hand, had a hard time sleeping there. He wanted his bed back home, I guess, and would make frightened faces at the ceiling, as if he were seeing ghosts or something. He had to be put to bed in his grandma's arms, and once asleep didn't have any problems. Last night you could see the relief in his eyes when we put him into his own bed again. While Agustin has never had a problem sleeping in strange beds or bonding with people easily, Nicolas is a different story. We have decided to go back to Ambato the weekend before Christmas, to pick up my father in law before he goes on vacation, and therefore have an excuse to get Nicolas used to sleeping outside of the house.

Happily, I got a lot of reading done over the long weekend. I finished two books, The Sleeping Doll by Jeffrey Deaver
(not a big fan, not sure why I continue reading his stuff, I guess it is just escape reading and something I can get through quickly while kids are screaming and pinching and hitting each other, and not have to worry about losing my place),








and The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant,
a book I had wanted to read forever and which completely surprised me in the end.










I also started Naked by David Sedaris, and, as expected, it had me snorting (laughing snorting!) as I read.

Everyone was looking at me like I was nuts, but that guy is just hilarious! Too much!

Library Day

Today is library day, which makes me very happy. So far, since finding the lovely damas library, I have checked out and read the following books:

• Notting Hell by Rachel Johnson. A quick read, similar to those British chick lit books but maybe not as good as something by Jennifer Weiner, for example. Still, light reading and enjoyable, although not really my type.
• The Book of Salt by Monique Troung. I couldn't finish this book, and actually did not enjoy it at all. Every time I felt like something was going to happen, the plot would thin out and leave me hanging. I did not like the second person voice at all, and felt like the narrator was too educated and insightful, almost pompous at times (under the guise of a humble cook), for who he was supposed to be, which made him completely flat in my opinion. The prose has some potential, although it felt like the author (this is her first book) was trying to hard to impress and would therefore forget about her plot and her characters. A little too verbose. Anyhow, NOT a recommendation, although I may check out something by her in the future. I don't know, I just expected more...
• The Other Boelyn Girl by Philippa Greggory. I have read another book by Greggory, and enjoyed it (The Constant Princess). Her books remind me of when I was young and would read historical romance - I always loved getting wrapped up in a story from the past. I guess I like them because English royalty has always confounded me, and by putting the kings and queens into "real" characters, I feel like I understand it better. I feel like I am learning as I read. It is a long book and I haven't finished it yet, but it is interesting and well written.
• Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult. I've read My Sister's Keeper, and enjoyed it. I like the suprise endings, and Picoult's writing is basically flawless. She can really move a plot along, although I did not understand the reason for giving background on the main character, Jack St. Bride. Anyhow, Picoult is good escape reading, and reminds me of why I love to read in the first place! I can finish a book of hers in a few days, a big plus for someone who can barely get reading time in.
• The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. I have been looking forward to reading something by Kidd for years. The librarian told me he has The Secret Life of Bees, which I have heard is better than The Mermaid's Chair, but I am glad I at least got to read something by her. Not my favorite book, but a quick read and different plot. I liked the descriptions of the settings.
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. WONDERFUL. This is a great book. It says "A Memoir in Books" on the front, and that is a good description. I would recommend this book to anyone. Not my usual choice of book, but even better than I had imagined!
  

On the Nightstand

I have been reading a lot more lately than I had been. Partly it is Amy’s fault, since she was getting through a couple books a week, and made me feel that old nostalgia. I remember looking forward to summer so that I could read twelve, fourteen, twenty books a week. I was insatiable. I loved it. There are no real regrets - I feel I got my fair share of play in, too. But going to the library and bringing home bags full of books - knowing that I actually had the time to get through them all - was icing on the cake.

So, I have started to make an effort to get more reading done. I still have a good ten books or so in my English collection that I haven’t read (lots more in my Spanish collection), and quite a few more I could stand to read again, so it shouldn’t be too hard. One thing that has changed greatly from summer days as a kid, however, is that my self-diagnosed, not ocmpletely-joking-about-it, attention deficit disroder has kicked in and I can no longer keep my mind on one book at a time. So, at any given time, I’m reading 3-4 books at a time.

Right now it is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. This is a book I ahve been looking forward to reading for probably the last two years or so, and which I was so excited to find in a used bookstore here in Quito. I have been hoarding it since I bought it about a month ago, but now is the time. I am only a few pages into it, but I feel a little shiver of excitement go up my spine every time I look at its cover. (At this point I am sure even Amy is thinking, YIKES! She’s losing it.)

I am still reading Mosaico. In fact, I’ve only gotten through a few chapters since last time I blogged about this book. I am beginning to think that the problem is in the translation, however, and not the book itself. I just can’t get into it - it feels very flat and repetitive. And that’s too bad, but always the problem when translation comes into play, especially on books that are not best sellers or classics.

I am also reading Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund. It is not at all the kind of book I thought it would be, and is not an easy read. Yet, I find myself unable to put it down. It has some sort of magnetic pull, and the voice, which was annoying at first, has started to grow on me. When I am not reading it, for some reason I miss the characters. This doesn’t usually happen to me with this kind of book, so, without actually realizing yet, I’ve already gottten halfway through it.

And just finished is A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. A crazy title for a great book. This, on the other hand, was an easy read, but not because it was not worthwhile or mere fluff. It was simply good writing, a great storyline that moved things along, and wonderful, funny characters. Really enjoyable. Too bad about the title, perhaps. When I first heard about this book I had no desire to read it. Then, I found it in the book shop here and decided to go for it, since I had heard so much about it. Definitely a book you could gobble up in one night on the couch sipping coffee.

The last book I am into right now is Mr. Murder by Dean Koontz. Yes, quite a change of genre and voice. It is my car book, however, and car books are very important to have. These are books that you keep under the seat of your car in the event that you get stuck somewhere in line and need a good book to entertain you. It can’t be anything too deep, because you could get pulled away from it at a moment’s notice, and it has to be something not too hard to follow since you may not get back to it for weeks at a time. This used to be my purse book, but since Agustin was born, it has become my car book, since I often get stuck in the car at malls, restaurants, home, etc. while we wait for him to wake up fmr his car nap. So a car book is vital at these moments.

It is an old book, a murder/mystery, and one which I think I may have read when I was younger. I chose it because I liked Koontz’s books when I was a teenager, and I wanted to explore that old fascination I remember having for them. I have been pleasantly surprised with the book so far - Koontz’s writing is sound and actually not bad, and the characters feel less flat than a lot of the other characters you see in that genre. So, a good car book that looks like it will be a good read. (Unlike my previous car books, Meg by Steve Alten and The Millionaire by David Baldacci - both of which have characters that are so predicatable and cliched that they distract you from the plots, which are also predicatable and cliched, but oh well. A car book is a car book.)

I found my library card and got online. My wish list is at 32, but I have thought of a couple more I’d like to put on there. I am sure I’ll end up buying many of them, since I will never get through them all. But I love getting online and dreaming my way through the library’s web site. And that’s Ramsey County.... Hennepin County is even cooler and better.

Next big purchase will be a PDA so I can buy ebooks online and download them instantly. It’s not my favorite way to read, but it is easy to keep up with the new stuff that’s out there, and I don’t have to buy a bookshelf to accomodate them (nor dust them, which is a big plus)!

I guess it’s time to end this post - I’ve been interrupted four times by screaming kids with nightmares/tummyaches/hunger pains, etc.
(Note: This was written the night of my frustration. I am uploading it a few days later.)

Long Time, No Write

I've been largely absent this month because of the teacher training course I've been involved in. One of our self-proclaimed "good" TEFL tutors decided to skip out on the program, without warning us at all, and I had to pick up most of her hours. I've been working long, long shifts - up to 14 hours a day, but it is extra income and well paid, and we finish this Friday so it was relatively short-term. Today is another long day, one in which I'll probably get home after the kids have fallen asleep. That is a depressing thought...

books! books! books!

Yahoo! I found another bookstore here in Quito, and really close to work! (Bookstore with books in English, that is.) Most are used, but there is a really big selection and there are actually some pretty recent books. I saw Atonement by Ian McEwan and some Anita Shreve, Barbara Kingsolver, among many. I am so excited, because I got Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. How exciting! I spent less than $20, too. He also had a huge nonfiction section and Stephen King section. I am not normally a King reader, but once in awhile I just want something quick and scary to read, and his older books are unavailable around here. There were a lot of best sellers, for those who like those kinds of books. And the best thing is that the owner seemed really nice! It's called The English Bookstore and it's on the corner of Calama and 6 de diciembre. Prices range from like $5 to $14.


My really truly FAVORITE bookstore in Quito, however, is Anna's Books on Eloy Alfaro and (almost) 6 de diciembre, in Edificio Sinai. It is the BEST place for books, most new (she now has a gently used section - awesome!), and a great selection of magazines. She always has deals going on, and gets new stock constantly. You can find almost any of the contemporary fiction books there. Only problem is that prices are a bit high - up to $22 for a paperback. But her selection is so great and current that you just gotta pay the price to keep her in business. (I was never one to complain about an expensive book, either.) I could get lost in her shelves for hours.

The one place I do NOT like is the other used bookstore that has been around forever. The owner is a rude, gross American (no offense to other rude, gross Americans). The selection isn't too bad, but I would really rather not hear about the best place for prostitutes in town, nor how much fun it is to shoot the poor Mexicans crossing the borders. I can do without that. I would feel like a felon every time I walked in there.

And what a relief not to have to search the shelves of Libri Mundi. They have beautiful books, but whoever is in charge of ordering needs to get online and find out what people (of course, people like ME!) want to read. I do not need 5 different copies of the Kama Sutra (husband can disagree) nor care to have a $30 version of Crime and Punishment or Shakepeare's sonnets. I don't want to read about every drug addict in the free world and their argument about why they are intellectual for getting high. It can be mentally draining trying to find a book that is actually worth reading the back cover there.

So, keep on coming you book store owners! I want more more more!

You know you're obsessed with books when...

1. the first thing your eyes are drawn to in magazines are the books on shelves and tables
2. you get a small magnifying glass out to read the titles of those books in the magazine photos
3. you feel like you lost your best friend when the local English bookstore closes for the summer
4. you browse the virtual bookshelves of other Library Thing subscribers
5. you secretly buy books instead of running an errand and hide them in the corner of a room of your house to later pull out and put on the bookshelf so that no one really notices them, especially since you haven't yet read the last one you bought (saving it for a special occasion)
6. you hoard books like candy, saving them for this unforeseen "special occasion"
7. you sometimes pull books down off your shelf and just run your hand over the cover, leaf through the pages looking at random sentences, and imagine what's inside
8. you do the above in bookstores, also, occasionally generating looks of bewilderment
9. you experience a rush of exhiliration every time you purchase a book
10. you get onto Amazon.com various times a day to see if your recommendations have been refreshed
11. you get REALLY excited when someone reads a book you recommended them
12. you go home to visit family and friends, traveling almost 4000 miles, and then spend the majority of your time in the library
13. your husband doesn't want to even hear the word book
14. the only thing that can quiet your two-year-old boy down is getting out a book (usually about cars or trains) and reading together (he doesn't let me read to him - we just sit next to each other and read our own books simultaneously!)
15. you write a blog entry about this addiction!

What I'm Reading

I recently finished The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Before that it was Caramba! by Nina Marie Martinez (not to my liking at all - it felt completely contrived, and the author did a terrible job of incorporating magic realism into the plat. The characters were very flat, and when she tried to get them to do something out-of-character, it felt unreal. Total pop culture overload - gay/transvestite hairdressers, the macho Mexican mujeriego, two best friends - one with a phobia, prom-like dances, evangelical mariachi bands, prisoners on parole for drug dealing...just too much squeezed into an already poorly written novel). I really enjoyed Kite Runner, though. I like that kind of story, especially the ones that make me cry or feel complete despair (I know, it’s masochistic). I can’t imagine what it would be like coming back to your home country after so many years and finding it reduced to rubble.

Another recent read is The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst. Andrés picked this one up for me while he was in Tampa, and I loved it so much I read it in one sitting (really really late at night of course). It is the story of a man who loses his young wife and, while trying to deal with the loss, makes some discoveries of his own. The best part was the whole talking dogs angle - horrifying. (It sounds strange - I know, talking dogs? Not usually what I read. But it was so believable and well written that I cried at the end for Lorelei) A very poignant story, written in beautiful, flowing prose. One of my favorite all-time reads.

Oh, and I’ve also recently read Around the World in 80 Dates by Jennifer Cox, an ebook I bought for Andrés’ palm. I never thought I’d like an ebook, but it was nice to always have it around. I could pull it out while in line at the supermarket, or on break at work, or sitting in the parking lot of the department store with two sleeping kids. The book itself wasn’t so great - pure chick lit and a really light read. I was expecting more of a travelogue, but mostly she just talks about the dating scene (something I am not familiar with and not really interested in). Anyway, perfect ebook material. I’ve also got Bill Bryson’s A Short History on Nearly Everything on ebook. A lot of interesting facts and figures that can be instantly bookmarked with the touch of the stylus.

Currently I am reading Mosaic by Soheir Khashoggi. 5 don’t think it’s got a U.S. printing yet, and my version is actually in Spanish. I’m halfway through it and at a point where the author just seems to be saying the same things over and over again. It’s about a woman whose husband, from Jordan, kidnaps their two youngest children and brings them to Jordan to protect them from Western culture. I thought it would be more about the arguments behind the kidnapping (homosexuality, cultural decadence) and also more of a travelogue, but so far it’s just about the main character sitting at home waiting for her husband to call with news of their children. I’m stuck where she has hired someone to help her kidnap them back.

We’ve got the CEC-EPN library up and running, so I’ve decided to check out my allotted books. I chose The Chamber by John Grisham (an easy read, something to pass the time) and Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, which I hope will be more riveting.
As you can see, after nine months of not having the concentration needed to read, I’m trying to catch up.