Sunday Coffee – The Next Great Adventure

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Thistle

IMG_0336It’s been a long time since I posted on my personal blog, Boston Blooming. The reasons for this are twofold. First, the blog’s original intention was to catalog my family’s move from San Antonio to Boston, from the time we decided to move, all through the moving process, and then the adventures that unfolded once we were up here. After the move actually happened, I didn’t have much to talk about, especially after I reopened The Zen Leaf and began talking about books here. Eventually, I just had no reason to keep writing there. Which leads me to the second reason:

The Boston adventure has not worked out for us. I’m not going to go into great detail about the failure, to which there are many contributing factors. I will say that it was decided very early on that we would be moving back. As in, only about two to three months after we arrived. That decision has not changed in the months since.

So now, we are working on a reverse move – back to San Antonio. We’re working on a living situation (should be closing on a house on 6/15!), getting the boys back into their old schools, booking a rental truck, etc. Jason will be telecommuting for work – really good news, that he gets to stay with his job instead of changing – and we will be leaving for Texas at the end of June, after the boys are out of school.

I won’t say that everything about this move is wonderful, because that would be untrue. There are things that each of us will miss, but there are also many things to look forward to. Each of us have different mixed feelings about the situation. While I won’t discuss anyone else’s feelings, as those are private to them, I’ll say that for my part, I’m mostly looking forward to moving back home, to being back among familiar faces and places, among family and friends. This year has been a particularly difficult one for many of us, and the support of nearby family and friends will lift a little of the burdens we currently shoulder.

My apologies for the vagueries. I don’t wish to get any more personal than that. Over the upcoming couple months, I will likely be a bit sporadic here, due to both busyness elsewhere (packing, cleaning, etc) and due to actually being in transit (then of course unpacking, etc). Wish us luck!

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 24 Comments

Forever, by Maggie Stiefvater

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Thistle

foreverSpoiler warning: Spoilers from the previous two books, Shiver and Linger, but none from this book.

In this conclusion to the Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy, the wolves have come under heavy scrutiny. More death has led to more anger, which in turn has led to people trying to pass through laws to kill off the pack with helicopters and sharpshooters.

Like I said in yesterday’s review, I have a difficult time remembering what all happened in this book versus Linger. Some if it is a blur, having read them both pretty quickly and back-to-back. I think I have a fairly good idea, though, and will split this review into two sections, good and bad. Let’s start with the negative.

Bad:
– Olivia’s conclusion (or lack thereof)
– Shelby’s conclusion (or lack thereof)
– the disease’s conclusion (or lack thereof)
– Cole’s conclusion (this time no lack! just felt a bit too easy)

As you can see, my only real issues with the book is that some things seemed to be unresolved. This isn’t to say they weren’t addressed. Instead, they were addressed, but in a way that seemed to just slide the problems out of the way instead of actually dealing with them. That’s never my favorite thing. Despite that negative, though, this was my favorite of the three books, because:

Good:
– Stiefvater’s humorous writing started to become very apparent in this book.
– The characters became more three-dimensional.
– Grace’s conclusion felt appropriately ambiguous.
– There were real consequences to drastic actions.
– That includes death.
– I generally enjoyed the move from supernatural love story to environmental tale about hunting wolves with helicopters and sharpshooters (which does happen!).

In other words, the book sort of diversified, in character, tone, and theme, and it became far more balanced than previous books (especially Shiver). Overall, I enjoyed the series, more with each book. It didn’t live up to the Raven Cycle, but I honestly wasn’t expecting it to, and comparisons aside, this trilogy stands up very well on its own.

Posted in 2015, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged | 3 Comments

Linger, by Maggie Stiefvater

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Thistle

lingerSpoiler warning: This will give away spoilers for the first book in the series, Shiver, but no spoilers from Linger.

In this follow-up to Shiver, the roles have reversed. Sam is human, and Grace can feel the wolf trying to break out of her. For the first time, she’s getting sick, and some of the wolves are dying. There are new wolves around, and one of them – famous rock-star Cole St. Clair – is an incredibly volatile person who may blow everyone’s cover.

I read Linger and Forever (book three, review to come tomorrow) back to back, so I honestly have a hard time distinguishing what happens in each book individually. Therefore, I’m just going to list a few things that I loved and a few things I disliked that may or may not be specific to Linger.

1. Cole is awesome. I don’t really like him as a person, but he and Isabel both brought this book to life in a way that Sam and Grace as narrators never did.

2. There’s still too much love-story emphasis, but not as much as the previous book. Better.

3. I was surprised, but not unhappy, that certain characters didn’t really show up again, or at least very little.

4. I was also surprised by the transition of Grace’s parents, especially her dad.

5. The scientific study aspects were very interesting. Another point to Cole.

6. I never really got much out of Sam and Grace’s relationship, which seemed idealistically unrealistic. Cole and Isabel’s dangerous flirtation was fun, though.

Okay. I think that’s all without going into spoilerific territory. The last thing I want to note is that this book was an improvement over the last in character, pacing, and depth. Spoiler alert for tomorrow’s review: Forever improved even more.

Posted in 2015, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Top Ten Books I’ll Probably Never Read

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Thistle

There are a lot of books I doubt that I will ever read, but I think these ten make up the ten I’m least likely to read unless forced to by a class…

1. Finnegan’s Wake, or anything else by James Joyce, because ugh. Also, because this word appears on Page 1 (hyphen added by me): “Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonn-thunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk” Yes.

finnegans-wake-James+Joyce2. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, because fifteen years after seeing the movie, I still wish I could burn it from my memory.

3. The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser, because it’s an “incomplete epic poem” and all three of those descriptions make me cringe.

4. The Aeneid by Virgil, which to be fair I may or may not have already read in college, which shows you how much I enjoyed it, if I read it, and/or how strongly I’ve avoided coming in contact with this book in the time since. Though really, anything of this kind would be avoided.

5. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, which to be fair I’ve actually read 95% of, stopping only about thirty pages from the end because I just didn’t care how the book turned out. I’ve never once in the fourteen years since then been tempted to go back.

neuromancer6. Neuromancer by William Gibson, because me and drugs do not mix.

7. any of the Sherlock Holmes books/stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because I think Sherlock himself is an a$$.

8. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, because every time I’ve tried to read something by her, I’ve passionately disliked it…

9. Maus Part II by Art Spiegelman, because Part I didn’t work for me, and I never felt the need to read on.

10. Don Quixote Book II by Miguel de Cervantes, for the same reasons as Maus Part II. This is despite Book II sounding like it would be far more interesting and engaging than Book I.

What’s on your list of absolutely not? And are there any of these you think I should bend on? Even if it’s not likely to convince me? Ha! 🙂

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Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 17 Comments

Sunday Coffee – April Showers

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Thistle

IMG_0217April can pretty much be split into two categories, book-wise. First, there was the four books that I read that were written by Maggie Stiefvater. Then, there were the four books not written by Maggie Stiefvater. It was an accidentally Stiefvater-heavy month, between re-listening to The Dream Thieves and reading the entire Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy.

For the first time this year, though, my favorite read of the month was not nonfiction. Neverwhere took that honor, made even better by attending a lit conference with my friend Stephanie where she discussed the book at some length. I did have some nonfiction in the mix, too, and both – a PTSD memoir and a history of the world through Islamic eyes – were very good. Actually, I enjoyed all of my books this month, and y’all? That’s pretty fantastic. I love it when that happens!

April was also a super-busy month for me. Between Easter, four mini-vacations during spring break, having Stephanie come to visit twice, and meeting with various friends for dinners and lunches, I didn’t have much time for anything else! I got much less done on the school-and-writing side of things, though I’m surprised that I got as much done as I did. Two more chapters added to my manuscript, plus some edits and revisions on earlier chapters. And in my paralegal studies, I finished all the assignments for my contract law substantive course (essay, employment contract, exam) and passed with a 99%, woohoo! And I almost managed to get through the next level of my Rosetta Stone Spanish (should finish soon).

Then there was, of course, my personal project of the month, Operation Girly-Girl. I wrote the other day how that came out.

To be entirely honest, April had so much stuffed into it that it’s still a blur to me. I have yet to truly gain some perspective. I probably traveled, socialized, and read way too much. I certainly didn’t study or write enough! But in the end, I really enjoyed all the things I did, and while I’m looking forward to some downtime in May, I don’t regret anything I pushed myself to do in the last month.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 4 Comments

Operation Girly-Girl

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Thistle

I mentioned a few weeks back that I was doing a personal project in April that involved “dressing up like a traditionally-gendered girl” every day this month. The project was meant to focus on two things that I would very rarely choose to outfit myself with in normal life: dresses and makeup. More details about the reasons for this project both in the post linked to above and the comments of that post.

Now, the month is over, and here is what I learned:

Dresses
26 springI flat-out hate dresses. I only managed to wear a dress or skirt about a third of the days of the month. Maybe. Every single time, I hated it. They are just so inconvenient to wear! I have to think about where my legs are positioned all the time. I’m limited in my mobility because of my clothes. There are no frickin’ pockets, and in the rare case that there are pockets, they weigh down the dress and make it even more uncomfortable. I hate wearing my fitbit under my dress. I hate trying to coordinate the right leggings and shoes. Dresses and skirts just make me so irritated and frustrated! I can wear them for a nice dinner or concert, or like a costume, but otherwise, please give me jeans, shorts, capris, cargo pants, exercise clothes, corduroys, tank tops, sweatshirts, pajamas, anything else! Pic to the left was my favorite dress/skirt outfit of the month, and even that outfit was partly composed of clothes I would normally wear with jeans/pants, and got irritating to wear after about an hour.

Verdict: Dresses and skirts are pretty and fun to look at and/or try on, but absolutely do not work as actual pieces of Manda-clothes.

Makeup
32 paint your petI have to say, this one surprised me. I’ve never worn makeup. Never. I was allergic to it as a child, with extremely sensitive skin, and therefore never learned how to wear it. I went through a phase of hate-it-because-I-couldn’t-wear-it, then a long period where I didn’t wear it on pure principle. I preferred people natural, sans makeup, and only liked makeup when used as costume-fodder (natural costume or otherwise). Before this project, I’d only worn makeup twice in the last decade – once at my sister’s wedding in the Middle East (done by a Palestinian salon), and once for a Halloween costume (2013, flapper).

Needless to say, I expected makeup to irritate the snot out of me. I expected it to mess with my skin. I expected to be annoyed with things like itches on my eye-shadowed eyes that I couldn’t scratch. I expected to get tired of the time it took to put the stuff on in the morning. I expected to think I looked like a clown all month.

NH selfieBut…but…I didn’t. That picture above, with the kitty-paintings? Tinted sunscreen, mascara, eye shadow, and lipstick. Ditto the selfie on the left. All very light, all barely noticeable, and honestly? I like the way it brings out certain parts of my face. There were only two days this month I didn’t wear makeup, and I can honestly see myself continuing to wear it going forward. I like the way it smells, I don’t mind putting it on, I enjoy playing with colors and trying new things, and I do actually like the way I look in it. Total shocker for me. I never would have expected this in a million years.

So that’s all. My project. With very unexpected results. Only don’t expect me to start wearing skirts and dresses any time soon. I am sooooo glad to be back to my normal clothes!

Posted in Personal | 22 Comments

Destiny Disrupted, by Tamim Ansary (audio)

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Thistle

destinySubtitled: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

It comes as no surprise that different parts of the world view the history of the world in different ways, or that the western view of history that I learned in school is not the only story. The history of the world is too vast and complex to wrap up neatly into a single coherent narrative, especially when different cultures view events through different contexts. This book presents an alternative view of world history: both events that are entirely ignored by the western worldview, and others that intersect and contradict that viewpoint.

The series of events as laid out by Ansary is well-organized and well-presented, though he admits up front that it is a biased tale (just like the western version of history is). I listened to the audio version, read by the author, and enjoyed the narration. Normally, I don’t really read/listen to straight-academic sorts of nonfiction, but this one was really good, and I highly recommend it to those interested in other, non-western views of history.

Posted in 2015, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Top Ten Books with Lovable Flawed Characters

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Thistle

Flawed characters lead to rounder books, but flawed characters do not necessarily mean lovable characters, not for me anyway. I’m not a fan, for instance, of the Count of Monte Cristo’s vigilante “hero” or the manipulative, controlling love interest in Austen’s Persuasion. There are certain character flaws that make me dislike characters, and others that make those characters and books much more lovable. These are my top ten on the lovable side.

howl1. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones: Howl – Yes, I fell 100% in love with Howl despite the fact that he’s a complete cad.

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Rochester – Ditto. I think Rochester is my very favorite complex character in all of literature.

Vin3. the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson: Vin – The poor girl is scarred and doesn’t trust anything/anyone, and it makes her all the more endearing.

4. the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater: Ronan – I could technically name many flawed characters from this series, but I’m choosing Ronan because I actually didn’t like him for the first 1.5 books. Then I came to love him.

5. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: Eustacia – Self-centered, manipulative, yes, but for some reason I adore her. Don’t ask why.

6. The Awakening by Kate Chopin: Edna – People seem to love or hate her, but I’m on the love side.

Katniss-Training-Outfit7. the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins: Katniss – See #3 Vin above. And yes, I even loved her – loved her more, in fact – in Mockingjay.

8. the Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo: Genya – She does many, many bad things, but I think she’s essentially good at heart and just wants to be loved. I feel for her.

9. The Painted Veil by William Somerset Maugham: Walter – He is by no means a nice human being, but I feel a connection with him for the things that lead him to those mean places.

10. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell: Cath – I love that her flaws don’t make her a bad person, just a complicated one.

What are your favorite lovable flawed characters?

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Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 18 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Spring Break

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Thistle

IMG_0082This past week was spring break here (much later than I’m used to!) and we decided to spend the week traveling around to all the little New England states we’d never been to: Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. It’s been a thoroughly exhausting-though-rewarding kind of week.

Vermont: Our first stop was Vermont, an overnight trip because it’s further away from the other states and we didn’t really feel like driving five hours roundtrip. Also, because these were short trips, we didn’t want to drive all the way up to the busier and more popular parts of the state. Instead, we settled on a small city close to the border: Brattleboro. Exciting, yes? Keep in mind, our only real goal with these vacations was to travel to the states themselves, rather than to do anything specific. So in Vermont, we didn’t really do anything specific. We went bowling. We had a nice dinner. We lazed about in a hotel and enjoyed the scenery driving there and back. Totally lazy and lovely vacation. Also: Vermont is probably the most beautiful state I’ve ever seen.

Maine: We took a bus up to Portland, Maine, the day after we arrived home from Vermont. The original goal was to take the boys to the International Crytozoology Museum (ie the Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster museum), because that’s just frickin’ silly and fun. However, our bus got there late, and it was freezing and rainy, so we didn’t end up walking all the way to the museum. This was a daytrip, with a very short window of opportunity between buses there and back, so instead we walked out to The Holy Donut (oooh heaven…) and then walked around the park and other nearby areas playing Ingress (a google-run iphone game involving hacking strategic portals for your team).

New ImageRhode Island: This was a quick daytrip down to Providence – only an hour away! – and we ended up going to the zoo there. Why the zoo? Because they have CAMELS, and it’s one of my lifetime goals to see a real-life camel. Actually, the goal was to see a camel, and maybe if possible pet and/or ride one. And guess what? I DID ALL THREE!!!!! Yes. I saw, I pet, I rode a camel! (It was very bumpy.) The rest of the zoo was great as well. Alpacas. Elephants. Seals. You know. Zoo stuff. I love zoos.

New Hampshire: Notably, we drove through New Hampshire on our way to Maine, so that was the boys’ only experience with the state. I, however, went with my friend Stephanie up for a grad-school lit conference there later in the week, so have a bit more to share. Stephanie and I took a bus up on Friday, and spent some time exploring the UNH campus (very, very beautiful). We bought truffles, tried some new beers, and spent half an hour in the used-book section of an academic bookstore. It is so fun traveling with fellow nerds! I got myself two books in French, and got a few cool books for Jason, including an anthology of Scottish poetry. The next day was the conference, where the topics ranged from an evaluation of fascism in Watchmen to heteronormativity in the Jack Reacher series to Stephanie’s presentation on derailing the monomyth in Neverwhere. It was awesome.

I’m back at home this morning after getting Stephanie to the airport VERY early (think: waking up at 3:45am), and now I’m having extra coffee, with plans to do nothing more today than take a nap and finish reading Forever by Maggie Stiefvater. I hope those of you who got to participate in Readathon really enjoyed yourselves – I’ll be reading with y’all next time!

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Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Thistle

neverwhereRichard Mayhew is ordinary and passive, floating through life and letting things happen to him. One day he makes the choice to take an action, helping an injured girl that he stumbles upon. Suddenly, he’s thrown into an alternate London: London Below. His London Above life no longer exists, and the terrifying stuff of his dreams suddenly becomes very, very real.

Years ago, I tried to read this book, and gave up in the very first chapter because it opens with a vomit-scene. It wasn’t graphic or anything, but at the time I was so tired of vomit-scenes in books (a personal phobia/turnoff) that I didn’t bother to continue. I figured that was setting the tone, and I’d already had some bad experiences with Gaiman (*coughAmericanGodscough*) so there was no real point in continuing.

In the time since, however, I’ve had some really good experiences with Gaiman, and my friend Stephanie told me to give this one another chance. She’s on her way up north right now to present at a conference, about this book, and so I figured I should. And I did. And it turned out that I really liked the book, despite the opener. Just another happy example of giving books a second chance at another later time!

I don’t really want to say much about the story and give things away. It was intricately laid out, with very unique characters, and it kept me guessing the whole time. There are still things I wonder about after finishing. The pacing was very good, fast but not so fast that I felt tired afterwards. Random observation: It seems Gaiman quite often writes adult male protagonists that start out as very passive, float-through-life, trodden-on kinds of people. I’ve noticed this in pretty much all of the adult novels of his that I’ve read. The stories become a kind of adult coming-of-age because of that as those characters evolve.

Anyway, I know I haven’t said all that much here. Mostly, I liked the book, and I’m glad I gave it another chance, and I’m excited to hear Stephanie’s presentation about it at the conference this weekend!

Posted in 2015, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments