2011 Book 24 - Catching Fire

Today I finished the second book in Suzanne Collins Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. I know there was a long stretch between the first, The Hunger Games and this one being read, but I don't intend to have such a span between this and the third as I'm very excited to find out how things end. However, let me first give you the synopsis from the book jacket:

Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District
12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothin is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.
Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

I give this book and the whole series thus far, two huge thumbs up. If I could shut off the rest of the world and just curl up with these books, I would in a heartbeat. I'm also very much looking forward to how the movies are going to turn out, as they are making a movie of this to come out in March 2012. I am curious, though, how they are actually going to do this movie and not make it Rated R based on the violence and cruelty that the books actuaully address.

2011 Book 23 - Winter Sea

Susanna Kearsley's book The Winter Sea was my most recent completion. Here is the back of the book write-up:

In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobian fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.
Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.
But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth - the ultimate betrayal - that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her...

I found this to be a great book. However, when I just read what was written on the back, I don't really see where that all comes from. I highly recommend this book. It made me smile and cry and smile.

Bad Mommy

I admit I am a bad mommy to Leo. He is spoiled rotten. But I can't help it, look at that face:

He barks or whines and I jump and find out what he needs....usually nothing, but I give him food because I feel guilty for not being a stay at home mom.

However, I've taken to drugging him at night so that we'll both sleep. He LOVES the pill pockets that are beef flavored, so I give him one of those with a little Benadryl stuck inside and then his mint cookie for fresh breath. He munches them down like there is no tomorrow.
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little. I have only done this twice and I take a close look at him and before I do it he has red, rheumy eyes and a runny nose much like I get with allergies, plus he is doing lots of scratching and chewing on his feet, which the vet said was a sign of allergies.

The thing is, though, the meds make him a little loopy. Last night within about 15 minutes he was barely able to stand and once I got him into bed (yes, he sleeps with me) he started snoring like an old man. Then he woke up right as I was turning out the light after reading and started wandering around the bed and bumping into the headboard. I then realized that he had to go potty, so I rushed him outside (much better to do it out there than on my feather pillow) where he finished up but then got a second wind and was all hyper and wanting to play. Well, momma wasn't having any of that, so I put him in his crate and shut my door. After listening to him for 30 minutes bark and whine, I got up and let him back in bed with me, whereby he did go to sleep but had all sorts of night terrors and kept kicking or head butting me...not certain what a nine month old puppy has to be terrorized about since he lives in the lap of luxury (aka Casa ABBA), but he must have some demons.

Anyway, I think tonight I'm going to hold off on the drugs and see how he sleeps...and how I sleep. Hmmm, I wonder if my neighbors would kill me if I decided he needed to be an outside dog....oh wait, I can't do that, did you see that face?!?

2011 Book 22 - The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

I tell you, I've been on quite a roll this vacation and finished up my third book. The latest has been Alan Bradley's second book in his Flavia de Luce series The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag. Since this was an actual book that I read and not from my Kindle, I can provide you with the write-up from the back:

Flavia de Luce, a dangerously smart eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop's Lacey are over -- until beloved puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who'd do such a thing, and why? Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she's letting on? What about Porson's charming but erratic assistant? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local contables can't solve -- without Flavia's help. But in getting so close to who's secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?

I have to admit that I do enjoy a good mystery and the Flavia books seem to provide that in an Agatha Christie sort of way....if Agatha Christie wrote her main character to be a highly intelligent child with a passion for posion and a history of being tortured by her older sisters. I would recommend this book to folks if they wanted a light read with a little meat on its bones. The plot is pretty good and the character development is quite impressive. I look forward to getting the next in the series A Red Herring Without Mustard...