Monday, November 24, 2008

Nanowrimo Frenzy!

I am so excited about nanowrimo this year and the novel just waiting to come out of me.

I will have this post at the top of the page throughout the month and will update each day with a running total of my word count, hopefully leading to the end goal of 50,000 words! (or more)

Underneath this post will be a chronicle of the path of my story as often as I get a chance to update. Lord willing, I will try and post each day. This will help get my juices flowing and perhaps help me work out all of the nasty kinks that keep me from flowing as fast as they should be in order to reach my goal.

So... the count begins...

Day One: 1676 words 8:59PM goal met
Day Two: 3789 words 9:00PM goal met
Day Three: 6195 words 8:56PM goal met and a little extra
Day Four: nothing... election day
Day Five: 8368 words 8:45PM goal met for days four and five
Day Six: 10109 words 9:21PM goal met with extreme difficulty
Day Seven: 11857 words 9:15PM goal met
Day Eight: 13758 words 9:28PM goal met
Day Nine: 15547 words 9:32PM goal met
Day Ten: 17362 words 8:54PM goal met
Day Eleven: 19177 words 8:43PM goal met
Day Twelve: 21207 words 8:22PM goal met
Day Thirteen: 23043 words 8:17PM goal met
Day Fourteen: 24732 words 9:44PM goal met even though I left my plot at home :D
Day Fifteen: 26492 words 8:24PM goal met
Day Sixteen: 28171 words 8:05PM goal met
Day Seventeen: 30139 words 7:50PM goal met
Day Eighteen: 32171 words 7:05PM goal met
Day Nineteen: 34010 words 4:48PM goal met
Day Twenty: 36029 words 5:18PM goal met
Day Twenty-one: 38038 words 6:20PM goal met
Day Twenty-two: 40102 words 3:27PM goal met
Day Twenty-three: 42171 words 4:30PM goal met
Day Twenty-four: 44565 words 5:20PM goal met

On Backwater by Joan Bauer

I think I have found a new favorite author.

Bauer enchants with this novel. I have to admit though that I felt an extra affinity for the main character, Ivy, because of her ardent love of history. Ivy loves history even more than I do and with a dedication that I would love to have.

Ivy Breedlove, a lover of history in a family of lawyers, attempts to create a family history for the birthday of a beloved aunt. She battles the expectations of her entire family that all Breedloves should become lawyers as well as an aunt who hold much for being efficient at the sake of preserving history. In addition Ivy is determined to find out what happened to her father's sister, Josephine, another "misfit" in the Breedlove family.

This is an amazing book. I love Bauer's clever wit and all of her beautiful imagery and definitely recommend this book!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

On... Hope was Here by Joan Bauer

What a beautiful book!

Hope, the main character, lives with her aunt after having been given up by her mother. Hope's aunt, Addie, works as a short order cook and often moves around to help struggling businesses.

Every time Addie and Hope leave a place Hope writes the three words "Hope was here" in a place where it would last for a long time. Hope also keeps a scrapbook of her life divided into sections for each city that she has lived in with the hope of showing her father when she finds him.

While Hope thinks that Addie has made a major mistake when she moves the duo to a small town in Wisconsin it is here that Hope truly finds a home and her father, the one she had really been creating that scrapbook for all of those years.

When Hope writes "Hope was here" at the end of the book she writes the phrase with the knowledge that she will be coming back and that she has a home.

I absolutely love this book!

Monday, November 17, 2008

On... Hitch by Jeanette Ingold

I absolutely loved this book.

In Hitch Ingold describes the journey of Moss Trawnley in becoming a man during the middle of the Great Depression. Moss deals with a father who struggles with alcoholism and commitment issues of his own before joining up with the CCC Civilian Conservation Corps one of the alphabet soup organizations created during the New Deal.

Though as a fiscal conservative sometimes I cringe at how Roosevelt drastically increased the size and scope of government in order to pull the country out of the Great Depression (think Social Security for one) I actually admire efforts like the CCC which put men to work, thus decreasing unemployment, and at the same time helped hardworking Americans like farmers to conserve and protect land devastated by drought.

Though Moss at 17 is a bit older than my future middle school students and thus struggles with issues that might not affect my students I definitely recommend this book. Applications definitely could be extracted for the current financial crisis among other things.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

On... Traitor: The case of Benedict Arnold

I had to double check on this book when I started reading because I assumed, rightly as it turned out, that this book is a children's book. This book does not read like any children's history book that I have ever read.

I enjoyed the book, do not get me wrong. I actually learned a lot about the man known as probably the greatest traitor in American history, though technically I do not think he actually was such.

The book is well written and most probably aimed at an upper middle school age child or underclassman student in high school. The average student though would not pick up this book unless extremely motivated or simply a history buff like myself.

I recommend the book although the cover disturbed me just a bit when I realized what it depicted.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

On... The Living Stone by Jane Orcutt

I approached this book with bittersweet anticipation. For many years Jane Orcutt has been one of my favorite authors specifically because of two of her books The Fugitive Heart and The Hidden Heart which I have read many times. Just a few months ago Orcutt lost her battle to cancer.

I enjoyed this book and have a hard time criticizing it for the above reason. At the same time I do not agree completely with how Orcutt dealt with some serious issues. I guess that on different theological points I differ with Orcutt but not on the fundamentals of the faith.

Both Leah and Jacobo are complex and believable characters. I felt for Leah as she struggled with the death of her husband and son and all of the different ways that suffering can affect a family. Because of circumstances going on in my own family I understand how suffering can be perceived in different ways and how just because one person's loss may look on the surface to be more traumatic than the other that does not diminish either suffering.

I definitely recommend the book.

On... Secrets of a Wildlife Watcher by Jim Arnosky

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I have no idea how this book made it on my to be read list but I'm glad it did.

Arnosky, a wildlife watcher, wrote a simple guide to wildlife for children complete with cute illustrations. I guess the text appealed to the nerd in me, the science lover in me but at the same time Arnosky wrote in a very "cute" style (for lack of a better word).

I definitely recommend this book!

Friday, November 07, 2008

On... The Revealers by Doug Wilhelm

I sit down to write this review not knowing whether I think positively about this book or hesitantly (notice that I did not say negatively).

Having spent two months with beautiful little seventh graders I think that Wilhelm did an admirable job at portraying life in middle school from a kid's point of view. I do think that all of the adult characters seemed out of touch or downright authoritarian but perhaps that was because Wilhelm did such a good job at writing from the kid's point of view.

Wilhelm's style made me want to keep reading even when I was thrown out by some pretty blatant profanity thrown in. To be perfectly honest I find such profanity offensive especially when used, albeit like it is in a middle school, so casually. Growing up none of the authors of the books I read resorted to sprinkling in and occasional curse word or two. Even one of my favorite secular authors, Mary Higgens Clark, rarely uses profanity in her novels and those are written for adults.

Although the profanity (around 10 words but 10 too many in my opinion) is the only negative I have about the book its use makes me hesitate to recommend the book. I would not assign this book to my students. There are better books out there.

On... The Washing of the Spears by Donald Morris

I give a warning at the beginning. This is a book for history nerds only. :D

While this book took me quite some time to read (because of the enormous length--614 pages--and because of Election Day interruptions) I enjoyed the book.

At the same time it was quite a chore to read. The only reason that the book seemed to make sense to me was because I took a class on the history of Africa and watched a video of the battle that took nearly three hundred pages to recount... or at least I think it took that length.

I found myself confused as the chapters progressed and Morris sort of backtracked when he switched to a new chapter to tell about another flank or division of the British army. I apologize if I confuse anyone. I myself found myself confused by this.

In addition, the small print and large paragraphs also made the book more difficult to read through my normal method. (I tend to in depth skim :D)

I do recommend the book for anyone interested in African history, specifically South African history. I find it intriguing to consider that the province with the highest AIDS infection rate in South Africa (or pretty close to the top) is KwaZuluNatal... or the Zululand of this book.
Unless you have a history fascination or the above mentioned fascination I do not recommend the book unless you need material to fall asleep to.