The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was both enormously entertaining and enormously useful in terms of improving the craft of writing. Strunk has a dry, crisp sense of humor. One of my very favorite parts of the book is the list of misused words and expressions. I loved his comments on -wise...There is not a noun in the language to which -wise cannot be added if the spirit moves one to add it. The sober writer will abstain from the use of this wild additive. And his examples of wild additives? Taxwise, pricewise, marriagewise, prosewise, and wait for it...saltwater taffywise. I love it!

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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A long time ago when I was in a bookclub, someone recommended this book, but somehow we decided against it. My friend's description of this book made it sound creepy and weird, and like the girl's sister also gets raped by the neighbor, which, unless I totally missed about 100 pages did not happen.

This book was so much better than I expected, and I really want to give it 4.5 stars. It was just short of amazing, in that I was able to put it down.

This book is poignant and well written. I found the characters and the family dynamics to be believable within the realm of this story. And the grandmother rocks.

You should read this book.

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Resolution follow-up

While I seriously doubt that anyone is actually keeping tabs on whether or not I'm accomplishing any of the goals I set for myself this year, having a giant chart of them in the office is (I think) helping me keep on task.

I had nearly complete success in reading The Hunger Games trilogy and books 3-5 of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, more commonly called Game of Thrones, which is actually the title of the first book, and not the name of the series (unlike The Hunger Games, which is both the name of the first book and the name of the series). And while I'm being weird, I can't remember if grammatically, I'm supposed to remove the "a" in A Song of Ice and Fire, since I have to use the article, the, with the noun, series. And I don't feel like looking up the answer.

Anyway, I'm part of the way through A Dance with Dragons. The problem is that Clash of Kings is a doozy to get through and took me a really long time to read.

In terms of my exercise/losing weight resolutions, I burnt more than 700 calories in a day 17 times in March and April, and ran at least one mile 26 times. And, I have been managing to lose weight, although I may have undone all of that progress this week, but sometimes life smacks you upside the head and hands  you a 19.5-hour workday. What can you do?

I also managed to watch all of the Dirty Jobs and 30 Rock recordings I had, and am ahead of schedule with about 40% of the DVR space available.

I'm thinking of moving my "run a sub 4-hour marathon" goal to next year, mostly because I haven't found a marathon this year that I want to train for.

Oh, the joys of home ownership

I recently started reading Happier at Home, and the first chapter deals with possessions. (Gretchen Rubin is always dealing with her possessions ) For a while now, I've been trying to figure out why I dread using the laptop in the office, and I had the suspicion that it had more to do with me than the machine (the laptop works just fine). There's something about our office that just doesn't feel homey to me (I realize it's the office), but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Then, two weeks ago, Captain America and I moved the expensive, gorgeous chair we keep in the office into the living room, and the significantly cheaper Ikea loveseat into the office. (I had read somewhere that there was value in rearranging your belongings...something about being cheaper than redecorating, and that just moving them around stimulates that "something new" part of your brain. Or something along those lines.)

Anyway, we finally concluded that part of the problem with the office is that it feels cluttered, at least to me. (I'm sure most people would walk in and think it was uncluttered. This is my house, after all.) We decided that what we had was really the wrong furniture for the room. For instance, the drawer-unit on which we store the printer? I NEVER open it, if I can avoid it. As far as I'm concerned it is a cluttered mess and contains nothing useful. Ironically, this is also my husband's set of drawers. Apparently his organizational nemesis is office supplies.

Also, we have a bookshelf in this room that can only store large books because it has open sides. I bought this bookshelf because I liked how easily it folded up, which was a useful characteristic in my twenties when I lived in apartments with roommates, but it's really no longer useful, or at least not as useful as it should be (case in point, we have a much larger bookshelf in the guest room that looks a lot more chaotic, but doesn't feel more chaotic, mostly because everything fits in it just fine, and we can adjust the shelf heights).

So today, we went looking for a more useful bookshelf/storage option for the office. Which was a total bust. I've discovered that what I thought I wanted is called barrister bookshelves (my mother has some in her house, and I like how they close up), but they are ridiculously expensive, and work in my mother's house because she lives in a Victorian confection, but we live in a cookie-cutter 1950's era I-don't-even-know-what you'd call it.

What I'm somehow hoping to find is a low-ish, long-ish bookshelf that has some doors on it, so I can hide the unsightly office crap I'll have to put in it, but will still let me display the books. But everything we've found that is practically priced is way too tall for the space we have in mind.

And we now have six green chairs in the dining room and living room. That's a little bizarre, but we're going to work through that some time in the future.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my review the first time I read this book:

With around 30 pages to go, Captain America told me it was time to get ready for bed. I said, "I'm reading THIS book," and he asked if I was going to cry. I said, probably not. Boy, was I wrong.

I'm a crier when it comes to books. Sometimes it's just a few tears. This time it was full on sobs. I haven't cried like that since Dobby died. And it wasn't even over someone dead; it was over a friendship that could not be made whole.

Having taken a few hours to calm down, sleep, and then discuss the series with a friend who also loved them, I have concluded that Hunger Games was the best book in the series, and that while I did enjoy them, the pacing was strange in the last two. Sometimes months would go by very quickly and without much explanation, and sometimes several chapters would span just one or two days. And a lot of events become totally chaotic in the last half of this book. Not it an I-can't-follow-this sort of way, but more like, what-is-going-on!?!?!

To me, one of the most truthful, real moments in the book is when Katniss loses her mind and thinks she can yell at dead people.

Overall, the book is worth the three days it will take you to read it.

A couple of other things to add: I didn't really like how you never learn if it's Gale's parachutes that kill Prim. I mean, Coin, or someone must have ordered the drop. It's as if Collins was afraid her readers would hate her if they were Gale's, but that the readers would also hate her if they weren't (and Katniss ended up trusting  Snow when she shouldn't have, although Snow's arguments that it wasn't him are pretty solid). But I think it was pretty obvious that Coin was not an ideal choice for a new president, so I'm not sure what the concern could have been. And, I think other series, including Harry Potter and GOT, indicate that as readers, we will stick by you, even if you kill off people we really like, even if we think the wrong guy gets the girl, even if you make us wait years between the books, as long as they're worth the read.

Also, there was really no conclusion with Johanna. We never learn what happens with her.

Finally, because this entire series is told from Katniss's perspective, every time she is sedated, or in some other way incapacitated, we, the readers, don't know what's going on until she comes to and someone fills her in. So there's all sorts of things we don't know. For example, Haymitch comments (somewhere in the series, although it may not have been this book) that the Capitol killed his parents and his girl, but never really why this happened, or the effect it had on him (although it's fairly obvious given his drinking). There seems to be something that happens to the survivors of the Games that makes the rest of their lives colored by that experience (which totally makes sense), and my imagination is active enough that I can imagine how that would be, but the horror isn't fully expressed. Even Katniss's nightmares, while scary, didn't grip me with terror.

I loved reading this series, but I also know that it could have been more.

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Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the review I wrote the first time I read this book:

This book took me three days to read, mostly because my reading was interrupted by having to go to work. I haven't enjoyed reading a series this much since Harry Potter came out. Although that's about as far as I'd go with comparing the series: you're reading enjoyment level will be high.

I generally don't write much about the plot in my reviews, because I always think, I'll learn about the plot from the cover and when I read the book. What I want to know from reviews is, should I read the book? And the answer is, yes!

Because I read this one (remember...I listened to Hunger Games on CD), any young-adulty stuff was less bothering. Or maybe there was just less of it in this book.

I like Collins' writing style. What I really like is that around page 250, you know there's no way you're going to get to "...and they all lived happily ever after." It's both frustrating and thrilling, because you so badly want to find out what happens next. At least I do. But then again, I become a little obsessed with books I love. And the best you get at the end of this one is "some people lived, but not before they were seriously hurt and a lot of other bad things happened."

I can't wait to read Mockingjay!

Having reread it, I wouldn't make any changes to my review, although in the second reading, I noticed more literary gaffes. Most notably, at the very end of the book Katniss and Haymitch get into a huge argument  Except you don't read the argument  You are simply told: Then we are both screaming terrible, terrible things at each other. I think the editor should have said to Collins, alright,  let's hear these terrible, terrible things. It's very easy for the reader to imagine what these things are, but still, it seems a bit of an oversight.

But still, I love this series!

When I told a friend I was rereading the series, she asked me if I wanted to be Katniss yet. I've never found myself reading a book and wanting to be the protagonist. More often, I've wanted to know the protagonist, but as some yet unknown character. My imagination never allows me to be an already created character. I don't know why this is.

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How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author by Janet Evanovich
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an incredibly easy-to-read book. I think that because I read it on the heels of the screenwriting book, I found it to mirror a lot of the same sentiments.

I think an important thing to note is the subtitle: Secrets of a Bestselling Author. In reading this book, I realized that a number of things that I find to be petty or sophomoric about Evanovich's writing are actually intentional: the shortish stories, the simple, linear plots, the formulaic-ness of those plots.

It completely makes sense to me that once you find a formula that works, you should keep doing it, especially if you want to be a bestseller.

I don't know that this is the most useful guide to writing (although to be fair, it isn't advertised as such), but it is fairly entertaining, and Evanovich provides some resources and references, and reinforces that writers write.

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