My Fave Reads - 2019

Here's my 2019 favorites -- not necessarily titles published this year, although most are, but my favorite things I read this year.  I love that at Bookmarks everyone on staff, booksellers, store managers, and operations alike, gets a year-end endcap to group our staff picks.  I am not likely to hit my Goodreads challenge this year, but I did complete 44 books, not including rereads, and I might get a few more in before the ball drops to ring in 2020.  Curiously, this year was an exceptional year for me in audio -- five of my nine top picks I did on audiobook via libro.fm, which is an audio subscription that allows you to support your local indie bookstore with your audiobook purchases.  (I know there are only eight books on my endcap.  There is a separate libro.fm endcap in the store that we all got to contribute to.)

The Sentence is Death

by Anthony Horowitz

Mystery/Thriller

(Self-proclaimed) brilliant private investigator.

Screenwriter/middle grade author.

And a bloody, wine-covered corpse.

What could go wrong?

Me

by Elton John

Arts - Music

What’s your favorite Elton John song? 
I can’t pick just one!  But it might be Goodbye Yellow Brick Road… or Candle in the Wind 1997… or I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues...

The Parker Inheritance

by Varian Johnson

Middle Grade

White letters on black pages

Black letters on white pages

Black letters on grey pages

Different voices, different times, and a treasure to be found.  An intriguing take on the Civil Rights Movement

Over the Moon

by Natalie Lloyd

Middle Grade

also audiobook thru libro.fm -- the only audiobook I’ve ever know where they hired a composer!
Are you brave enough to dream?

WANTED

Brave and wiry young fellers (orphans preferred)

Unafraid to ride and race and fly in the fear of certain death!

Great riches await!

The Huntress 

by Kate Quinn

Historical Fiction

also audiobook thru libro.fm

I want to be Nina when I grow up.

She’s the last eyewitness to what The Huntress did when the Nazis set her on their prey.

And she’s one of Die Nachthexen, the Night Witches, the Russian female fighter pilots.

Every Tool’s a Hammer 

by Adam Savage

Science & Technology

also audiobook thru libro.fm; read by the author

Let’s hear it for the Makers!

Success principles work here too?  It’s not just business and self help books that have success principles.  Memoir by Mythbusters’ and Tested’s Adam Savage.

Tiger vs Nightmare 

by Emily Tetri

Middle Grade Graphic Novel

You can do it!! 

The Monster under the bed keeps away Nightmare, but what to do when the Monster needs Tiger’s help?  

A Place to Land 

by Barry Wittenstein, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

Who inspires the inspirations?  

Mythos 

by Stephen Fry

audiobook thru Libro.fm; read by the author

We’ve all had a prof who was just exuberant about their favorite topic and excited to tell you *every*thing about it.  Even better if they have a great voice, or a British accent, or both.

Stephen Fry talks thru an enormous breadth of Greek mythology with all the delight of a child and the word nerdery of a gleeful etymologist, drawing sometimes-ridiculous links between the stories and word origins and English cognates.  It doesn’t make sense that it would work, but it is a joy.

News & Notes 2019

A New Day

This is the beginning of a new day. 

God has given me this day to use as I will. 

I can waste it or use it for good.

What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. 

When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, 

leaving something in its place I have traded for it. 

I want it to be a gain, not a loss; good not evil; 

success, not failure, 

in order that I shall not regret 

the price I paid for it.” 

– Dr W Heartsill Wilson

written in 1954

original title "A Salesman's Prayer"

Best dessert

<I take a passing glance at the dessert menu (just one for the table) and pass it to my niece and her bf>

<They glance at the menu and exchange an extended significant glance that almost looks like an exchange of Ha (breath) and also almost looks like a head-to-head>

me: Ummm... that looks like a "you know what I'm going to say but I'm waiting for you to say it to see if you really know what I want."

niece: What I want and what he will want are not the same thing. 

me: You can each get something...

bf: We can get yours and share it.

me: So... which is it?

niece: The creme brulée.  

me: Of COURSE the creme brulée!

<discussion continues and I make Big Frog tell his story about Mexican food>

me, in passing: I wonder what creme brulée is in Spanish.  ¿Como se dice creme brulée?

<niece types>

me: Are you Yelping already?  <knows that usually would be me typing>

niece: I'm Google translating.  <pause>  Flan.  Of course it's flan.



This weekend I discovered the joy of having an adult niece, from drinking (responsibly!) together, to my positively pressuring her to get Fairy Hair (she did, in a very professional matches-and-shines, flashes-in-the-sunlight color, whereas I put Easter-egg-colored sparkles in mine), to late-night tabletop gaming.  And Biltmore.  You've met me; you don't even have to ask.  Better believe we went to Biltmore.  Getting to walk around downtown Kernersville this morning on a sunny, 60F+ day?  Love it.  C'mon... move South!

Buddies are important

QOTD

(finishing up lunch at Deerpark, at Biltmore, with our niece and her bf)
me: And next, on to our buddy Steve the Blacksmith.
Big Frog: Or Dave the Blacksmith.
me: Also our buddy.  But it's Friday, should be Steve.
Big Frog: And when I retire, Big Frog the Blacksmith.

Heels

I finally got over my fear of heels.  

Not a phobia (those who know Mike Pressler's story know what I mean when I say phobia), just a fear.

And frankly, not heels like you were probably thinking -- if my feet (and ankles and knees) would let me, I would love to wear stilettos.  Might be the only way I could be tall, other than stiltwalking (which I have also considered).

Nope, for me it's sock heels.

I started a pair of toes-up, two at a time socks on circular needles size 2 well over 2 years ago.  I made it as far as the instep and it said to start the heels. I know anecdotally from knitters and even fictional knitters (I read a lot of Anne of Green Gables and characters like her when I was a kid, and girls in that era made things.  Even Molly in the American Girl series knit and got frustrated by it.) that heels are tough in the making and mentally tough.

So although I asked my yarncraft expert - pattern-creating - oil painting - palette knife acrylica - plein air - former potter friend to walk me thru the pattern before I went to Germany so I could actually turn the literal corner on my socks, and she who usually does cuffs-down, one at a time, double pointed needle socks graciously parsed it out for me, I did nothing.

Ok, not technically nothing.

I went to Germany in Oct 2017.  (Loved it. Would definitely go again.)

I bought wool there to make MORE socks to commemorate my trip.  Beautiful sock yarn from real German sheep.

And over the course of 2018 I crocheted 11 afghans, most of them baby blankets for friends who had babies or started fostering a family of 3 under the age of 4.  (Crochet faster! You don't get 9mo lead time when the foster agency says, “So, what are you doing on Wednesday at 7?” God bless social workers and foster parents.)  And crocheting I've done since 8yo and it goes fast for me, especially in comparison with knitting, which I'm comparatively new to (really learned in 2015) and which always takes longer to show progress, unless you're arm knitting (arms make very big knitting needles) or just freakishly fast (you know who I'm talking about, Stitchers).

But as far as progress on these socks, nothing.  Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Until now.

And I'll admit, in part that's because I threw it in my bag as a 2nd project if I got a lot done on my Hawaii afghan (which I’m keeping for me, to remember the colors and warmth and experience of Hawaii) and either ran out of yarn or it got too big to lug around.  We're close on the former and far past that point on the latter.

So out came the socks.  First time since Oct 2017.  Counted my stitches about 18 times, getting many different numbers (why do you do that, yarn?), tried a line of the pattern, tinked it (tink is knit spelled backwards and means un-knit), tried again, dropped some stitches, my LED light ran out of juice and I had to find charging cords, and finally got two rows done.  And I feel ok enough with it to bring it on tomorrow's bus trip in hopes of actually making progress. (Really didn't want to lug the afghan. Been there, done that. Took 2 to The EDGE last summer.)

Most important thing is, I'm doing something with it.  It's still a UFO (unfinished object) OTN (on the needles) but I've gotten out of my own head.

I'm growing as a person.

Tomorrow's gonna be fun.

(The bus trip is to the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I brought a bunch of stuff to anchor me in this trip so I could remember Hawaii every time I look at my Hawaii afghan or Michelle Obama's Becoming.  But God has a sense of humor. Pink and purple wool socks. And a library e-copy of Craig Johnson's latest Longmire novel, Depth of Winter, set in Absaroka County Wyoming.  Those will remind me of Hawaii too.)

A Three Hour Tour

We're living on a sailboat this week!  The Mamenchi Saurus https://abnb.me/FTrFXAs0MO is a 41-footer docked in Kewalo Basin Harbor, Ala Moana, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii.  It's an AirBnB run by Josh and Carly, although they're new owners since the start of the year and all my initial planning was done with Jason and Rhea, who are in the process of wrapping up Jason's military career and moving to Florida.  Jason and Rhea had themselves lived on the boat for 2 years of the 6 or so they owned it; farther back it was owned by a Japanese dentist who named it. BTW, Mamenchisaurus is a Japanese dinosaur.

We are loving sailboat life, especially the waves rocking you to sleep.  With three bedrooms below it's surprisingly spacious. There are some limitations, though, chief among them the head.  Definitely missing the convenience of a regular flush toilet. And my shins are a not-lovely purple from forgetting that there are steps up and down into all the rooms, which in some cases don't line up with the raised doors.  Still, loving this and 10/10 would do again.

Sunday night we were able to hire the owners to take us on what is billed as a 3.5h sunset cruise to Diamond Head.  Big Frog and I persist in calling it a three-hour tour. Our cousin Dom & Uncle Steve (different branches of the family) were able to join us, too.  In a perfect world we'd’ve sailed gloriously into the sunset. Dom has pretty extensive college sailing experience, and I am enthusiastic but untrained, having been on a 25-footer twice (The Hebe, our friends’ boat on the Chesapeake Bay.).  So in my mind it was going to be a reasonably hands-on sail.

God had other plans.  (Fortunately not of the three-hour tour type.  https://youtu.be/Q8jhb5NnADM)  Try as we might, winds never allowed us to more than motor around.  (There were other tourist boats out, mostly catamarans, with the sails unfurled but tied tight.  Evidently such are promoted that if you don't sail you get a redo, so they as a matter of course always have the sails out.)  And yet God gave us a blood wolf moon lunar eclipse. To be on the ocean I count as a win in any case, so compounding that with on a sailboat, in Hawaii, with family, during a lunar eclipse is rather an abundance of blessings.

I know many of my East-coast friends posted beautiful images taken under duress -- telescope, camera, thermal blankets, frozen feet and hands.  Our experience was a little different.
Hawaii, like Arizona, doesn't observe daylight savings time.  So in winter it's 5h later than eastern standard time. For us, the sun set at 6:12p and the moon rose in an impish Cheshire cat smile.  As it got darker out and the moon ascended, it went from very white to strawberry blonde and then outright red in color, and as we pulled back into port, white began to appear again, giving the moon a curiously peach peachlike appearance, two-toned with a seam.  

My photos (in 2nd post) are phone photos, no filter, adjusted for light at the time of the snap.  Some of them I've cropped down or adjusted the tilt, but as far as a stable platform, please remember I was on a boat.

Epiphany - follow the star

Synergy (our children's ministry) in its evening church permutation covers a huge range, K-5th.  And I love it and I love them but it makes prep interesting.  Some of the kids know their Bible inside and out.  Some don't seem to have a bit of focus but are taking it all in.  Some are pre-literate.  On a given week we could have two kids or 15.

And when you throw in a major holiday like Christmas but don't actually meet since the first Sunday in Hanukkah (unexpected 14" of snow in NC, in addition to all the other programs and planned time off from evening church), you get to cover some interesting ground for Epiphany.

Like a cursory read-thru of the whole of Luke 2 and Matthew 2 with the kids, using my VeggieTales creche.  They've all heard the story of Christmas but how much of it do they know?

Our pastor has been preaching thru Jeremiah so he's alluded to the prophecy of the slaughter of the innocents and its initial context of the Israelites going into exile, but to read it again out of Matthew, who calls out that it was Jeremiah, it's neat to see them put that together.  Even if they're talking about the way soldiers killed the 2-and-unders.  I told them they were probably all right in their death-by-_____; there were a lot of kids killed.  Not just Jesus?  Nope, aimed for one and took out a bunch in the looking.  But the one got away. 

Thing is, I myself learned a new tradition this year when my friend, an Episcopal priest, shared a pic of the chalk he bought for his congregation. 

Here's a full article which goes into much fuller explanation. 

What we did:

First we blessed the chalk, then used the chalk to write a secret code on the church entryway:

20*C+M+B+19

Which not only contains a numeric code of 20 times C, which is kinda like century, plus 19, for the year it is...

...It also contains the initials of the magi, or wise men, who according to tradition are Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar...

...And it has them following the star, as it were...

...And it alludes to a Latin blessing: Christus Mansionem Benedicat.  Christ bless this house.

Then for take home art and to bless our own homes we did some chalk art of mountains and the secret code, and a prayer.

Visit, O blessed Lord, this home
with the gladness of your presence.
Bless it and all who live or visit here
with the gift of your love; and grant that
we may show your love to each other
and all whose lives we touch.
Lord Jesus Christ, be with us now and forever.
Amen.