Way behind

Apparently I've let my reviews slack. SO here's a catch-up post.

Chester is a super cute kids book! The author wants to write a book about a mouse but her attention-hogging cat has other ideas. Adorable!

Anne of Ingleside was next up on my L.M. Montgomery reading spree. Pretty cute, but it does lack for enough Anne tales. The kids are cute, but Anne's the reason for the series. Plus I'm starting to have a harder time keeping track of all the past characters who show up now and then. Loved the chapter from the quilting bee that was all the ladies gossiping though. Small town life never changes.

At first I had a hard time getting into the short story collection Birds of America. But I found some of the stories to be pretty haunting. I loved "People Like That Are the Only People Here," "Agnes of Iowa," and "Which is More Than I Can Say About Some People." And my god, that woman can turn a great phrase! Some of my favorite quotes from the collection:

"When she packed up to leave, she knew that she was saying goodbye to something important, which was not that bad, in a way, because it meant that at least you had said hello to it to begin with..."

and

""The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney." ... "We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney," explains Simone. "And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They are all like that.""

Black Pearls was filled with dark and creepily retold fairy tales. I have such a weakness for fairy tales, and this one did not disappoint. I liked how the storyies were told from different points of view (Prince Charming tells Cinderella's tale, the magic harp telling Jack & the Beanstalk). My favorite was Cinderella's story, but Gretel's story was wonderfully haunting as well.

Mary Roach's books are fascinating. Science books filled with little known facts, frequent wonderful gross bits, and funny asides. I really enjoyed Bonk.

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day helped me get over my intimidation of bread baking. Positives: the bread was yummy and not too hard to make. Negatives: the bowl of dough took up a good bit of room in my fridge. My bread wasn't very pretty (my own fault I'm sure). Also I want to give the whole day-long kneading and punching down dough thing a try. I do like a challenge!

Watched In Bruges the other night. Darker than I expected, but good. I do love Ralph Fiennes in this role.