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A globally warm X-Mas and New Year greeting from Sevensheaven.nl and Artylicious.com. A bit on the early side, I know. :)

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A globally warm X-Mas and New Year greeting from Sevensheaven.nl and Artylicious.com. A bit on the early side, I know. :)

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This action-packed, real-life story of Marie Peary, the daughter of Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary, is a wonderful introduction for tweens to the family life of a great explorer. Most often, the families of famous explorers were left at home in relative safety while the explorers (usually men) were gone for months and years at a time traveling to unknown and often dangerous parts of the world.

However, the Peary family was quite different. The real star of this unusual story is Peary's wife and Marie's mother, Josephine. Breaking with the convention of the day, Josephine traveled with her husband on several of his attempts to find and claim the North Pole. In fact, Marie was born in a remote northern corner of Greenland during one of these expeditions.

Marie's earliest memories and friendships were with some of the Inuit people who populated the far north. Her family depended on these kind people for help as guides and in constructing clothing to protect them against the fierce cold. Marie spent months and years living aboard ship going to and from Greenland. In fact, she and her mother, along with the ship's crew, were locked into the ice for 10 months in 1901 while trying to reach her father's new base camp.

Marie and her family developed close relationships with some of the Inuit and considered them friends. For a good part of her early life, Marie lived and played among Inuit children and had many adventures with them. Sledding down an ice mass and finding fun on nearby icebergs with her Inuit friends was a frequent pleasure.

The Inuits gave Marie the name "The Snow Baby" when she was born with blond hair and blue eyes. The book makes clear that there was much mutual respect and affection between the various explorer parties and the Inuits, and that there personal association extended over a period of years during Peary's many expeditions to the Arctic. In fact, it took until Marie was 16 before her father successfully journeyed to the North Pole and claimed it for the United States.

The book's author, Katherine Kirkpatrick, has made good use of her source material. This remarkable story is significantly enhanced with a generous collection of photographs. Even though some are extremely grainy, most are clear images of their lives in northern Greenland. The bulk of the book concerns itself with Marie's early years as part of the expeditions. Even though she and her mother spent years moving back and forth between this adventure life and a conventional life in the states, Marie was separated from her father for long stretches of time while he remained in the Arctic to winter and prepare for the next foray to the North Pole. He and his expedition did not successfully reach and claim the North Pole until 2009. Those years in between were consumed with supplying and resupplying the expedition between forays.

For anyone interested in a non-conventional life, or intrigued by the spirit of adventure necessary to pushing out to the ends of the world, this is a delightful story. For one thing, it centers on a girl's experience and that is unusual in itself. Secondly, Marie had extraordinary, enlightened parents who saw nothing wrong with exposing their daughter to such an exceptional life. Marie grew up to spend many years of her adult life helping her father organize his notes and papers for the early National Geographic Society.

And in 1932, traveling to Greenland with her own two sons, Marie placed a monument honoring her father at the place where she was born - "the first piece of land sighted when a ship approaches Greenland from America."

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I did the 48 Hour Challenge between 9pm Friday and 9pm Sunday.

During those 48 hours, I read and blogged for 26.5 hours.

During the time I wasn't reading, I slept, showered, attended a group meeting for school, and went over to a friend's house for dinner.

I finished reading 9 full books. I also read 2 chapters of my text book for school and started another book.

I read a grand total of 2,213 pages. That's 1.4 pages per reading minute! Or .77 pages per minute even including those I was sleeping for...

I reviewed the 9 full books I read, 3 other books that I read earlier and hadn't blogged yet but tied in with the books I was blogging about AND the 2 chapters I had to read for school.

I finished the following books:

The Mates, Dates Guide to Life, Love, and Looking Luscious Cathy Hopkins
The Year the Gypsies CameLinzi Glass
Heart and Salsa (S.A.S.S.) Suzanne Nelson
Now and Zen (S.A.S.S.) Linda Gerber
Spain or Shine (S.A.S.S.) Michelle Jellen
In the Cards: Love Mariah Fredericks
The Salem Witch Tryouts Kelly McClymer
Diary of a Fairy Godmother Esme Raji Codell
All I Want Is Everything (Gossip Girl, 3) Cecily von Ziegesar

I read 2 chapters of:

Discovering Computers 2007: A Gateway to Information, Complete (Shelly Cashman Series) Shelly Cashman

And the first 18 pages of:

Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent: How Daring Slaves and Free Blacks Spied for the Union During the Civil War Thomas R. Allen


The Year the Gypsies Came was the best book-- by far the most literary and well crafted...

but All I Want is Everything was probably my favorite...

I'll be cleaning up my weekend posts during the day!

I would have loved another vodka gimlet in that shot to celebrate the end, but sadly, we are out of vodka. After I took that, I made dinner. And had wine. And watched TV.

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Well, I'm done. There will be a full recap tomorrow, as per the rules, but here are the totals:

Hours spent reading/blogging: 26.5
# of books read: 9 full, 2 partial
# of pages read: 2,213

My last full book was...

Gossip Girl #3: All I want is Everything by Cecily von Ziegesar (215 pages)

I really like the Gossip Girl series. I didn't think I would, so I didn't read it for a long time until it showed up on the ALA list of most-banned books in 2006. I LOVE it. I wrote a post about it for Geek Buffet awhile back.

This is guilty, trashy reading at it's finest. You get hooked on the characters-- who cares that they're not good role models? Most of them are horrible people-- you're fascinated with them but you'd never want to be them. Kinda like Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan.

They're always drunk. Or stoned. When they're not air kissing each other, they're talking trash behind their best friends backs and sleeping with their boyfriends. I love it.

We have:

Blair, a bitch with perfect taste and dark hair who is majorly uptight, a bit neurotic, and slightly bulemic...
Serena, tall, blond, gorgeous and a free spirit who doesn't let a lot get to her...
Jenny, young, sweet, naive with a massic rack
Kati and Isabel are lower hangers-on in the circuit
Vanessa dark with a shaved head, hates the rich kids
Dan, Jenny's brother and a tightly wond, wounded artist tortued soul type who chain smokes and drinks way too much coffee
Nate, hott and always stoned, clueless
Chuck, slimey hornball
Anthony, Charlie, and Jeremy lower hangers-on

The frame of the stories is Gossip Girl.net, a page 6 type online gossip column where Gossip Girl spills the dirt and answers emails from loyal readers with their tips. Gossip Girl is also the narrator of the series and you have to love her wonderfully snarky tone:

He had yellow hair. Not blond yellow, but yellow like a person's snot when they're seriously sick.

I feel I should review the first two though, even though I read them yonks ago. Well, as far as quality the first 3 books are all the same and I loved them, so really, plot summaries:

Gossip Girl

Serena has just gotten kicked out of boarding school and is looking forward to hanging out with her friends again, especially Blair, and returning to her snooty school, Constance Billiard. But Blair has kinda enjoyed the spotlight ever since her taller, thinner, blonder, prettier best friend has been away and doesn't want to give it up. The rumors, and the fur, fly.

Gossip Girl #2: You Know you Love Me

Ugh. So, Blair's mother is marrying her tacky, overweight boyfriend Cyrus. On Blair's 17th birthday, which everyone seems to have forgotten it is. Jenny's hanging out with Nate in the park. Dan's obsessing over Serena who's starting to get a little weirded out. And everyone's off interviewing for colleges. The college interviews are hilarious. All of them. Hysterical.

Gossip Girl #3: All I Want is Everything

It's Christmas! Jenny and Nate are still going strong. Maybe. Serena has a hott rock star obsessing over her. Vanessa wants sex. Dan wants it to be special. Aaron has the hots for his stepsister, Blair has attracted the unwanted attention of his best friend. And oh, do Blair's mom and Cyrus have a bombshell for the "happpy" family...

Then, I had a few more minutes, so I read the first 18 pages of

Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent: How daring slaves and free blacks spied for the Union during the Civil War by Thomas R. Allen. More about that when I finish it.

But for now, it's dinner time, and I need to call my mom, because I totally blew her off this afternoon.

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Hours into challenge: 45.5
Hours spent reading/blogging: 24
# Books Read: 8 total, 1 partial
# Pages Read: 1980

Diary of a Fairy Godmother by Esme Raji Codell (170 pages)

Hunky Dory is the at the top of her class in charm school. Her mother knows that she will grow up to be the wickedest witch wherever the four winds blow...

But then, Hunky discovers that what gives her the most satisfaction is granting wishes, and witches don't get satisfaction from granting wishes. Fairy godmothers do. What's Hunky to do?

Funny and smart, with a cast of familiar characters, this book was great. I especially liked spoiled Golidlocks. The illustrations by Drazen Kozjan add a lot. It contains a recipie for booger cookies at the end and an excellent supplemental reading list.

We're into the final stretches-- 2.5 more hours. Ihope I can finish another book in the time!

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Hours into challenge: 44
Hours spent reading/blogging: 22 and 1/2
# books read: 7 full, 1 partial
# pages read: 1810

Pru, short for Prudence, has always known she's half witch and living in a mortal world in Beverly Hills. But when her younger brother can't control his magic, her parents decide to embrace their magical side and ship the family off to Salem, for a proper magical education. Suddenly Pru, who has been very good about following her mom's no-magic rules finds herself in remedial spell casting classes. She might have been the Queen Bee in Beverly Hills, but here she's a big, fat 0.

She was head cheerleader back home, so making the squad here should be easy-peasy and up her cool quotient, right? Not when the routines are all done mid-air...

This is a fun book that looks like the first in a series BUT! Prudence is totally obsessed with whether she's cool or not. Except she says "kewl". Ew. When one of her mortal-obsessed friends says her cell phone is "neat" her response is

Another annoying trait of Samuel's is that he likes to use archaic mortal phrases

from the girl who says "kewl" and never once "cool". Argh.

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Hours into challenge: 41.5
Hours spent reading/blogging: 20 hours, 55 minutes
# books read: 6 full, 1 partial
# pages read: 1550

In the Cards #1: Love by Mariah Fredericks (270 pages)

When weird old Mrs. Rosemont dies, she leaves Anna her deck of tarot cards and a cat. Anna and her best friends Eve and Syd do a tarot reading to see what the future holds for Anna and her crush object-- freak turned uber-cool Declan. What does fate have in store? And is it really all about fate?

There's a lot of stuff in here about navigating an iron-clad clique system and dealing with parents and balancing friends with boyfriends and dealing with bullies. It's not bad. I probably won't die to pick up the rest of the series though.

There are only 3 sopranos... They pretend to be friends and all kissy-kiss, but boy, watch out when solos get handed out.

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Hours into challenge: 39
Hours spent reading/blogging: 16 hours, 5 minutes
# books read: 5 full, 1 partial
# pages read: 1284

Ok, man, I haven't been reading nearly as much as I thought, after 2 nights sleep, 1 group meeting, and 1 bbq with friends... but, I have gotten a lot read, I think...

S. A. S. S. (Students Across the Seven Seas)

This is a great series! Each book is by a different author about a different girl studying abroad in a different country. These books are actually... a lot better than I thought they would be. They're pretty fluffy but there's still a lot going on. They each contain:
1. Some interpersonal problem at home they're working through from abroad
2. Romantic fun in-country
3. Someone mean in-country
4. Lots of information and learning about the country and language

What I really like is that you do learn a lot about the country and city these girls are studying in, but each book finds a way to present the information in a way that's not obtrusive or disruptive to the story flow.

Also, each story isn't just the same semester abroad. Swede Dreams has a straight-up Spring semester at a Swedish school, but Heart and Salsa is a summer service project with field trips, but no actual classrooms. Now and Zen has a summer program on global outreach and Spain or Shine is...

One thing I do wish is that there were some author's notes in the back with more information or further reading or something. There are maps in the beginning though-- of the country where they're studying and of the city itself.

Swede Dreams by Eva Appelquist

PLEASE NOTE: I did NOT read this this weekend, but I'm blogging about it now because I read the other SASS books this weekend.

Callie's twin sister is perfect and is amazingly busy preparing her Julliard audition. Last semester, Callie was dating Jonas, the Swedish exchange student at school so she decides to go to Stockholm for the semester. Can she survive her classes in Swedish? Why does the girl next door hate her so much? And why hasn't Jonas emailed her back yet?

I really liked the conflict between Callie and her twin-- Appelquist has captured the relationship perfectly. AND! Lots of fun Swedish holidays I didn't know about!

Heart and Salsa Suzanne Nelson (214 pages)

Cal's parents are divorced. While she's still reeling from that change in her life, her mother marries Ted, a college professor she's only been dating for 3 months. As if that weren't enough, Ted then moves the family from Cal's home in Scottsdale, Arizona out to Boston. She's having a really hard time adjusting, so when her best friend from AZ, Sabrina, suggests that they both do a service project in Oaxaca over the summer, Cal jumps at it. But when she gets off the plane, she finds Sabrina has also brought along her boyfriend. And Cal's host sister automatically assumes she's a princess and won't even give her a chance...

Now and Zen by Linda Gerber (214 pages)

This one was a little dissapointing because I feel I didn't learn as much about Japanese culture as I learned from the other books. I think a big part of this is because Nori stayed in a dorm with other Americans (and some Japanese students) rather than living with a host family, which is how the other books work.

Basically, Nori's parents are growing apart and Nori's off to Tokyo for the summer for a Global Outreach Program. I think this is another part about why we don't get as much about Japanese culture-- the program has very little to do specifically with Japan...

Nori is Japanese-American and that does lead to complications as everyone she's studying with assumes she's Japanese. Also, the program draws students from all over the world so there are Germans and Brits. Erik's the hott German Orlando Bloom look-alike Nori's drooling over. He wants an authentic Japanese prosepective on some things so Nori pretends, using nice-guy and geniunely Japanese-guy Atsushi in the process...

This book was better at the relationships and internal struggle, but not as good on culture, which has always been the high point of this series...

Spain or Shine by Michelle Jellen (214 pages)

Elena is a dreamer in a family of focused achievers. Sick of teachers always comparing her to her siblings, she relishes the chance to study in San Sebastian, Spain. There, in addition to Spanish and Basque culture classes, her main class is in theater. Elena wants to write and direct movies and this is a chance to finally work towards that goal. For her class she has to write a full length play with a partner. The 2 best plays in the class are going to be produced at the end of the semester. Elena really wants to win...

Also, Elena's really, really shy, so how will she win the heart of her super-hott Spanish classmate, Miguel?

This is a fun one. It features a home stay so you learn a lot about Spanish culture. Despite some mentions of Basque culture, we didn't really learn about who the Basque people are or how their culture is different than Spanish culture or anything, which is too bad.

Hmmmm.... and I just now noticed that all of the titles are exactly 214 pages long. Weird. So far, Swede Dreams is still my favorite of the series, but I'm looking forward to reading the rest of them!

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Hour of challenge: 17 hours, 45 minutes
Hours reading/blogging: 7 hours, 45 minutes
Books read: 2 full, 1 partial
Pages read: 632

The Year the Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass 260 pages

I first picked up this book because it was on some YALSA list that a coworker friend picked up for me at ALA midwinter. She had scrawled "sleeper hit of the year" next to the title.

Emily is almost 13 and lives in the suburbs of Johannesburg in 1966. Her parents marriage is strained, and they often have long-term house guests so they can sweep their issues under the rug for the company. Her mother is a real piece of work with quick mood swings and constantly resentlful that her husband cannot provide her with the type of luxury she grew up in. Her sister, Sarah, deals with the tension by keeping everything perfect.

One summer, an Australian family who live in camper come and live with them (in their camper, in their driveway.) The father, a friendly wildlife photographer, is violent towards his sons, especially his oldest, Otis, who reminds the reader of Lennie, without a George to watch over him.

What is striking about this book is the way Emily, the narrator, notices and tells of us the small details in her life:

There's Father's partner, Clive, beefy and large, sweating under his Panama hat. Cigar ash perched on his big toe. His nakes fat feet in sandals. His wife, Ursula, her bright yellow hair piled high on her head in a beehive, laughs with Mother as they stand under the cool shade of the plum trees. Cherry-colored drinks in their hands. Mother's lime-green sundress is pulled tight into her waist to show off its small size. Sometimes Mother even checks with a tape measre to make sure her waist stays "twenty-four inches, Emily, never more." Ursula's waist is at least thirty-five inches, according to Mother.

Also, Glass grew up in South Africe during the apartheid era and this story clearly reflects that with the minor, but striking, details of day to day life of the priviledged British children. There is much racism in the book, but it is not a major issue, rather a powerful backdrop of the story, which makes it all the potent because Glass does not bang our heads against the injustice of it.

The last few pages of the book contain a good glossary of the all the Afrikaans words and one of the Zulu words, but they're all defined well in context.

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Hours into the challenge: 4
Hours spent reading/blogging: 4
# pages read:372
# books read: 1 full, 1 partial

Mates, Dates Guide to Life, Love and Looking Luscious by Cathy Hopkins 241 pages

This is a companion volume to the Mates, Dates... series. You know the stuff they put at the end of each chapter in those books? Well, this is kinda like a compendium of that, but it's not. I mean, it reads like it is, and some of the material is taken from the chapter-end material, but a lot of it is new.

And, there's some great stuff in here. I actually liked this book better than any book in the series and I wish I had it when I was in junior high/ high school. It gives important advice on how to make your first kiss not suck, how flirt, and how to spot a love rat. It also deals with more serious issues such as what to do if you're being bullied and how to tell if you're ready to have sex.

I love the section on homemade face and hair masks for different skin and hair types-- I must try them out. AND! Who knew there was a cure for whisker rash?!

One of my main complaints about the series (besides how a lot of the books came off like a bad after-school special) was the lousy translation job-- they'd just translate words and forget the context. In one book, Nesta makes a pun about public schools. Now in a translation from British to American English, "public school" means "private school". So, they changed the public to private... completely ruining the joke and making the entire page make NO SENSE if you didn't realize that's what had happened. There's not a lot of translation here. I mean check out this sentence:

Boys tend to be more anoraky than girls

Would anyone besides a hard core Anglophile know what "anoraky" means as an adjective? Because that's something I never would have picked up on until I moved there.

But then, once again, the one time they DO translate, they forget context. It say if you're mugged to hand over your personal property and call 911. Now, in the UK, you call 999. So, they translated the phone number, but the illustration still says 999.

But what really gets me is what's left untranslated-- it gives some great hotlines and websites to check out if you're being bullied, but they're all British. Would it have been so hard for the US publisher to add a few pages in back with American resources?

Also, just a note, this was written before the series ended, so keep that in mind, other wise some asides they make don't make ANY sense in the context of the last book, but it makes perfect sense if you realize that the events of the last book haven't happened yet.

Ok, it's after 1. Off to bed and then a group meeting tomorrow and lots more reading! Stay tuned!

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Hours into the challenge: 2.5
Hours spent reading/blogging: 2.5
# pages read: 131
# books read: 1 partial

Ok, I did my reading for class on Monday-- chapters 1 and 2 of Discovering Computers 2007 by Shelly Cashman Vermaat

I learned a lot. For instance, did you know that...

A blog, short for weblog, is an informal Web site consisting of time-stamped articles, or posts, in a diary or journal format, usually listed in reverse chronological order...Blogs reflect the interests, opinions and personalities of the author, called the blogger, and sometimes site visitors. According to a Web tracking company, more than 500,000 posts appear on blogs each day... Home users... use blogs to share aspects of their personal life with family, friends, and others...

I didn't either! And guess what!

You can use something called an e-mail program to create, send, receive, forward, store, print, and delete email messages.

I am shocked and amazed.

Fork, meet eye.

Much thanks to Ali for talking to me (using this amazing technology that you should try sometimes called instant messaging) to help me survive this. I was also going to do the reading for Wednesday, but that will not happen tonight. Maybe tomorrow or Sunday...

Onto fun reading!

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This is a fancy post. My posts this weekend will not have links, nor pictures. I'll go back and add those in next week.

Well, when you start a weekend you have a mental list of all the things you want to do now that you have "free" time. I had to check a few things off my list after work tonight before I could begin my 48 hour challenge.

For instance, look at the guest bedroom when I came home:

And my dresser:



See, school started this week, so things just kind of, well, exploded. (Just kidding-- things always look this bad. :) )

BUT! Look at the guest room/office now!



Ooooo and my dresser:



And the part of the bedroom that was too messy for a "Before" shot:



But is that a vodka gimlet with a stack of books?



Yes, yes it is. The 48 hours has begun.

Friday, 9pm.

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It's Friday!

I'm gearing up for a big weekend with Mother Reader's 48-Hour Challenge. I'm going to start sometime tonight. I haven't decided yet... I need to get some stuff done around the house, like cleaning the guest bedroom (I know, so exciting, but it's part of the bargain I made with myself to allow myself 48 hours of reading...)

I plan to catch up on all the YA stuff I have checked out and is due soon...

Interrupting my reading time will be a group meeting for school (I really hate group projects, luckily I managed to get a group that all live in my state, which is nice, because school is in a different state, on the other side of DC. I was once in a group where one member lived in a different state and one person lived in a different country. Yeah, he was only 1 hour away, but we couldn't call him, because we were students and that means we were poor and who can afford international calling rates to talk about a project no one wants to do anyway?)

On a better note, I'll also be hanging out with friends on Saturday night, grilling and stuff. I think I'll need to break on my brain. Other than that, lots and lots of reading. And blogging about reading. I'll post again tonight when I start, if my computer agrees with me.



But, also, because it's Friday, here's a poem:

Widow's Lament

It's not quite cold enough
to go borrow some firewood
from the neighbors.

-Richard Brautigan

Also, a quick blogger question-- if my template doesn't include a left sidebar, is there an easy way to add one? Because I want one, but I don't want to change my template.

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