I’m joining another reading challenge for 2013: What’s in a Name 6. I played along with this challenge a couple years back and think its requirements remain eclectic enough to amuse me.

Anyway, the point is that you choose six books based on criteria concerning their titles:

1. A book with up or down (or equivalent) in the title

2. A book with something you’d find in your kitchen in the title

3. A book with a party or celebration in the title

4. A book with fire (or equivalent) in the title

5. A book with an emotion in the title

6. A book with lost or found (or equivalent) in the title

With regards to the books I’ve read thus far this year, I’ve taken care of the emotional book with Wonder, but since I haven’t published any book reviews yet this year you’ll still have to wait to hear what I thought of it. (I also suppose Plum Lucky could fit in the kitchen item category, come to think of it…)

If you have suggestions for any of the other categories, feel free to leave them for me in the comments. Otherwise I’ll be scouring my TBR piles, the library shelves, and my Goodreads queue for likely contenders.

Spring arrived while I was in Salt Lake, leaving me pleased with the change in season, but unable to focus on the important aspects thereof, such as the beginning of the annual reading challenge, Once upon a Time, now in its seventh incarnation.

Now that I’m back and able to concentrate on books once again, I’m eager to participate. This year I’ll again be signing up for Quest the First, wherein I agree to, before summer begins:

Read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time categories. They might all be fantasy, or folklore, or fairy tales, or mythology … or your five books might be a combination from the four genres.

I’m not yet sure which books I’ll read, but I did receive a Kristin Cashore novel as a belated birthday present, and both Seraphina and The Peculiar were shortlisted for the Cybils in their respective categories. I also have a tome of Icelandic mythology I bought before our trip a few years ago, but honestly 800 pages seems a bit daunting.

If you’ve got a recommendation for me to read in these categories before June 21, I welcome them.

March was a particularly quiet month here on the blog — probably the least post-filled in its eight-year history.

There are a variety of reasons for that, but I won’t bother making excuses. Instead, I’ll just vow to resume writing here more often — and on broader topics than just the weekly notice of beautiful things in my life.

To begin, I offer you my two works in progress:

The book, Mrs Queen Takes the Train, I began months ago, and it’s now past the return date. D.C.’s generous policy means that it really needs to go back in the next week, so I’ve been working on wrapping it up. As my mother (who started the book after me and still finished long before I picked it back up) predicted, while the beginning is a bit slow, it picks up once Queen Elizabeth II finally exits the castle. The book is told from the perspective of more than half a dozen characters, which makes for a certain amount of story time shift and of retracing of plot. But generally I’m enjoying the novel.

The knitting is this year’s first pattern in the annual Sock Madness competition. This is my fifth year participating and the second time I haven’t advanced out of the opening round. (Interestingly, the other time also involved a trip to Salt Lake.) The pattern is called Sockdolager, and the yarn might be Trekking, but is definitely one of a trio of sock yarn purchased from A Tangled Skein before they went out of business earlier this year. (The other two skeins were Rudi’s picks.) My goal is to be done with this second sock before the winning knitter finishes her final pair — probably some time in late-May or early-June (giving me plenty of time to work on a belated shawl for my grandmother, just as soon as I find yarn for that project).

This week’s Booking through Thursday meme post asks:

What are you reading right now? (And, is it good? Would you recommend it? How did you choose it?)

I am seemingly incapable of monogamous reading. Or, rather, I suppose I’m fully capable, but disinterested in it.

So, I am in the midst of:

• Dodger by Terry Pratchett: The last of the Cybils nominees that I put aside after I’d ruled that they weren’t going to be in contention for my top nominations but that were good enough I wanted to finish. It’s good (it was named a Printz Honor Book last month) and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or who enjoys Dickens.
• Mrs Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn: A fictional look at what might happen if elderly Queen Elizabeth decided to go rogue. It’s good, but I’m a bit tired of stories told from a legion of points of view.
• Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley: It appeared on a number of book bloggers’ best-of year-end lists and was the Printz Award winner last year. It’s good, but I’m not sure how much I’m enjoying it the further in I get. Could be I just have to push through a little further.
• Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: Another book that lit up the year-end lists (literally, since the cover of non-library-bound copies apparently glows in the dark). I’m bitterly disappointed that I’m not enjoying this as much as I feel like I should be.

I also read the first paragraph of Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins last night, but I’m pretty sure that’s not enough to go on.

What this highlights is the surprising fact that I am only reading books by men right now. How unusual!

How about you? What are you reading right now?

Hey, all!

I’m in the mood to read some short stories, but I don’t want just any short stories. I do not want stories that leave you depressed and raw and empty at the end of them. I want stories that make you laugh or that make you feel life is worth living or that just end happily. But at the other end of the spectrum, I decidedly do NOT want sappy, saccharine-filled Chicken Soup for the Soul-esque pap.

There have to be literary, upbeat short story collections out there somewhere. Can you help me find them?

The Broke and the Bookish‘s Tuesday meme asked this week for you to consider your favorite ten characters in a specific genre. Since so much of my recent reading has been for the Cybils, I figured I’d focus there, even though that’s not technically a genre.

So without further ado, here is my list, in no particular order, of favorite characters among the 60 Cybils nominees I read:

1. Maddie from Code Name Verity, because you couldn’t ask for a more loyal friend
2. Autumn from Pinned, because she was self-confident despite her lack of academic prowess
3. Micha from The Storyteller, because a little girl should always feel like a princess
4. The entire Garrett clan from My Life Next Door, because if you could move in with a fictional family this is the one you’d pick
5. Boy21, aka Russ, from Boy21, because he returned from the edge to be a better friend than he ever could have thought
6. Louise’s grandparents from The Boy on Cinnamon Street, because quirky senior citizens rock
7. Max from Messy, because she surprised herself
8. Charlie Dickens from Dodger, because the wordy English author could have been more bad-ass than you think
9. Howie from I Hunt Killers, because what other hemophiliac do you know who’d confront a serial killer?
10. Verity from Code Name Verity, because she did exactly what she needed to do

You may not be able to play along in my category, but I’d be interested to hear about some of your favorite literary characters.

As you know, I was a first-round judge of realistic young adult fiction for the Cybils last fall. Our panel cumulatively read nearly 200 books and passed along our consensus of the top seven among them to the shortlist panel. They had the challenging assignment of picking a sole winner among that group, a task that seems herculean to me.

Narrow it down they did, however, and tonight the winner was unveiled: (more…)

Which of these books do I want to read next:

• Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
• Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
• On Writing by Stephen King
• The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann
• Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge
• Cinder by Marissa Meyer
• Drink the Tea by Thomas Kaufman
• The Fairies Return by Peter Llewelyn Davies
• Goblin Secrets by William Alexander
• Return to the Willows by Jacqueline Kelly

I have to face facts: I’m not going to get caught up in reviewing the books I read last year.

However, I’m not going to let that prevent me from doing some summarizing and some recommending. If I’ve reviewed the book, I’ll include the link. But if we don’t go this route, I’ll still be contemplating my year-end post next fall (like the 2011 best reads post I never published last year).

I finished 100 books last year. These are the 10 best (with a few honorable mentions): (more…)

If it’s Thursday, it’s time to look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. The UConn-Notre Dame women’s basketball game was on tv, which prompted Rudi to see when UConn would be in town to play Georgetown. Turns out it was Wednesday. It was great to see some of the Huskies’ newest talent, including spirited play from first-year student Moriah Jefferson. Georgetown’s Sugar Rodgers, who is being talked about for this year’s WNBA draft, was everywhere on the court, keeping the game far closer than I’d expected. (By that I mean UConn only won by 25 or so points.) If this is the last year the Huskies come to town (due to Georgetown’s imminent departure from the Big East), I’m over the moon that we got to see the game.

2. I hit both the Arlington and D.C. libraries to return (most of) the last of my Cybils books. And I took out books that I picked out and that I wanted to read. The first time since September!

3. Russian Christmas was Monday, which marked the end of the holiday gift-giving season between Rudi and me. To celebrate, he gave me Jasper Fforde’s The Last Dragonslayer, which I’d had to put off because of Cybils reading (and which I plan to devour this weekend), and my favorite tiny notebooks, purple and the perfect size for carrying in back pockets, purses, and knitting bags.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?