Misc. things of a bookish nature

First: Please consider pushing the Guys Lit Wire Book drive, in aid of a needy Washington D.C. school, over the top!

Second: Please consider entering to win one of two copies of Dark City, by Catherine Fisher! It's US only, but that doesn't mean that you out there in some other country can't enter and have it sent to a friend here in the US!

And now, notes on my life with books.

Just five more days till I head to Book Expo America (and the Book Blogger Convention)....and my list of books that I want to look out for is now up to forty two books (Tuesdays at the Castle, by Jessica Day George! Little Women and Me, by Lauren Baratz-Logsted! Darke, by Angie Sage! Spellbound (The Book of Elsewhere 2), by Jacqueline West! etc.)

I don't actually expect to come back with all the books on my list, but I do expect to come back with lots (happily my sister is going to drive me and my books back home!) And so, this weekend (a weekend mercifully free of Things!) I am going to get 42 books from the to be read/to be reviewed pile out of the house, or put neatly on shelves (after having been read/reviewed). Otherwise the Book Creep will take over the whole house (like kudzu. There is a house in that picture)

However, my main reason for wanting to get the book situation under control is that somewhere in the house, lurking in the book filled shadows, is my library's copy of Where She Went, which I feel just terrible about not reading right away because of all the holds on it. Sigh. So if I can at least find and read that one book, it will be a good weekend.

Fortuitously, Pam (aka Mother Reader) has announced up-coming 48 Hour Readathon, scheduled for the weekend after BEA, ie June 3–5, 2011. So I will, I hope, continue to move the tbr books up and out.

One of the Things that made it hard to read last weekend was a trip to Providence for the kickoff of Kids Reading Across Rhode Island (the book chosen for RI kids to read this year is Where the Mountain Meets the Moon). Thank you so much, all you RI librarians who made this happen! My older boy and I very much enjoyed listening to Grace Lin's talk, which made a huge impression on him. Here's an excerpt from the school book report he wrote last week:

"Because of the talk she gave, I know that the second book she tried to write, the publishing company tried to whitewash, and told her to make the Chinese girl into a white boy. Thank goodness she didn’t do that here with this story!"

He utterly loved Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, which just goes to show that a white boy doesn't need books with white boys in order to be a happy reader. And it also goes to show that if you have a picky reader, you shouldn't limit the books you offer him to books that ooze "Boy Appeal"--ie, boy characters, lots of Action, short sentences, etc. The other book he read and loved this week, and read literally in a single sitting, was Highway Cats, by Janet Taylor Lisle, another book that I wouldn't peg as having that sort of in your face boy appeal.

And just to include my little one (eight years old)--his class just gave their book project presentations, and his story included a "steam punk" helmet that tickled me lots. It also had ninja carrots.