Conversation with a librarian

My librarian: Are you doing the graphic novels again this year?
Me: Yeah, that's my plan.
My librarian nods, continuing to check out books to me.
Me: But that's not until October.
My librarian: Oh I know. I just have to prepare myself.
Me: laughing We're in this together, right?
My librarian: serious I won't plan a vacation during that time.

Librarians are the best.
Cybils season is the best.

My favorite mascara

Only because my sister, Clare, asked me to find her the link.

It is Clinique Lash Power Mascara Long-Wearing Formula Black Onyx for Women, 0.21 Ounce

This mascara is magically amazing. I heard about it from Mara (her blog is also not a makeup blog) but I can't find her original post about it.

It doesn't smudge, it doesn't flake. The application brush isn't gigantic or tiny. It doesn't make your eyelashes look like something they're not. It just paints them black. It's juuuuust right. (I'm starting to feel like Goldilocks, here).

My favorite thing about it is that it comes off with warm water. All the way off. No other removal product needed, truly.

My least favorite thing about it is the price. I usually get it at the Macy's makeup counter and it's like $18. (My penny pinching heart is squeezed just typing that). You know what though? I was going to go pick some up the other day, but I stopped at Target for something else. Here is my internal conversation:
"Oh man! This other mascara is SO much cheaper!
"But I know it won't come off as well...
"But I could buy this mascara and the recommended remover for half the price of the good stuff!"

*4 or 5 minutes of internal debate
*Bought the inferior mascara
*Went home and put it on
*Regretted it immediately.
*Regretted it when I took it off that night
*Didn't wear mascara for like 2+ weeks (except to church) because I was so filled with regret and annoyance.
*Still regretting it, but have accepted the fact that I won't convince my penny-pinching heart to buy mascara again until I use what I have.

Never again.

So, here's the link for you Clare! And anybody else who needs the best mascara link. Including me. Though it looks like my local mall is my cheapest option.

It's a personal update!

Hi guys! So here are some exciting things that are going on in my life right now:

1) I'm pregnant! Hurrah! We're expecting a baby boy in the next 4 months or so. I'm due on October 1, but with my first three kids I didn't make it to my due date, so I'm kind of expecting a late-September baby.

A friend of mine asked about timing and spacing between my kids: was this baby a surprise? No. Am I worried about having a larger age gap between the youngest and the baby? No. This little guy is coming a couple months later than we would have ideally chosen; he's coming at the start of the semester instead of the start of the summer, and has a college professor for a dad, but hey! We'll take it. And my belief is that siblings can have wonderful relationships with each other regardless of the age difference between them. Relationships are more about shared experiences, positive experiences, and love than they are about how far apart in age two people are.

Related: Here are my two favorite pregnancy books. I've been using them both again this time around!

2) I'm helping out with our church's Young Women's camp. I'm one of the assistant directors of the camp, and it is fun and challenging and thought-provoking and already rewarding to work on the project of putting together a week-long church camp for a lot of teens. I enjoy thinking through events and imagining scenarios that could come up -- planning for the big picture and planning for contingencies.

When people ask me how I'm going to camp while I'm pregnant, I can't help but smile. I am SO not worried. Whereas my experience as a teen was sleeping in a tent and cooking meals on a camp stove, I'll be sleeping on a mattress in a lodge and not cooking so much as a fried egg. There is a flushing toilet in the lodge, and, like, couches and electricity and stuff. I'm gonna be fine. And the vast majority of my work (planning, and preparing) will be done before the camp even starts. I'm looking forward to a week of relaxing in nature, reading my scriptures, and helping campers and leaders solve whatever problems may arise.

3) I'm leading the music for the children at church. This is such a fun way to spend every Sunday! I'm glad I have the chance to do it. Every fall we have a Sunday where the kids sing all their songs and speak parts, so we're busy preparing for that and I'm having fun making it fun for the kids. This last week I had the younger kids create a rainstorm with musical instruments, and I had some of the older kids pretend to be me, including choosing the song, leading the music, and giving the group feedback. They loved it and I did, too. I'm thinking once my turn at being Music Leader is done I might have to start teaching Kindermusik again. I love kids, I love music, it's just good times all around. Speaking of music I'm going to repost an old article I wrote for a friend about making parenting easier with music. I've had several people tell me they remember the article, so I figure it's time for a refresh.

4) I'm volunteering in Levi's classroom. He's in first grade, in a bilingual (English/Spanish) class. This is his teacher's first year, and when I asked her if I could start coming in to help she was super enthusiastic. So I go in once a week right after their lunch and mostly just work with individual kids who need some guidance on the assignment or help staying on task. Sometimes Jubilee is at preschool during this time, and other times I drop her off at a friend's house and we swap childcare.

5) I'm looking forward to going to BookCon in NYC at the end of next week. Loads of authors, tons of books . . . will I see you there?

Ok that's about all I can think of for now. Anything you want to know? How're you?

Going Kondo on the Bookshelves

You've heard of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I assume. My book club read it last fall, and I enjoyed it. In it, Marie Kondo suggests going through all your possessions one category (not room!) at a time. I'm in the middle of doing this, and it is strangely both easy and hard at the same time.

She says that if one category is overwhelmingly large—too large to bring it all together in one place at one time—that you break it up into sub-categories. So that's what I've done with my books. I've completed the board books, picture books, and early chapter books. I've also completed the Graphic Novels, both MG and YA. Yeah! It feels great and looks great, and as my sister Clare reminded me when I said I didn't even want to start on it, "You get to keep ALL the books you want to keep, you know?" And it's true that Kondo doesn't put limits on the amount of things you can have. If they all bring you joy, they all stay.

Here are some fun stats I recorded for the board books:
Board books before the cleanout: 63
Said thanks and goodbye:19
Kept on the shelf:44
Time: 30 min, including some repairs to books

I did take a picture of the picture books, but I didn't record numbers:

In hindsight I wish I had recorded the numbers, just for fun, but at the moment I was like "look I'm not making this any harder than it already is." This category had more books and took significantly longer to complete.

Because I consider our picture book collection not to belong to me exclusively, and because Marie Kondo advocates against decluttering other people's stuff, here's what I did.

Random tangent: I would like to take a moment here to tell you that I just finished eating a Knoppers. I had never heard of these before but I found them at Aldi and decided to take a risk. Live dangerously. (When I said this yesterday, Jacob scoffed, "That doesn't look dangerous at all." Well, it wasn't.)

It's like if a Kit-Kat and a Ferrero Rocher had a baby. It's delicious. That's all. Maybe I should reward myself with one of these every time I finish a category of my library! Genius. Looks like the Amazon price is the same as the Aldi price, for you unlucky folks who have no Aldi. 

First I went through all the picture books and piled up all the ones that didn't bring me joy.  

Then, I let the kids each go through that stack and say which ones they really wanted to keep. 

Last, while the kids weren't looking, I went through their "keep" stack one more time and snagged a couple of books that I truly did not ever want to have to pick up/read again, and put those back in the donate pile. 

So maybe I cheated a little? But I think it's fine because I've had zero complaints.

I did the "Pokemon books" separately, and let the kids decide on all of those. only one of the dozen we owned found a new home.

We donated our surplus to the library, and I added the surplus graphic novels in there as well. I think it was three tote bags of books.

We love our library. 

So anyway, I've still got the MG fiction, MG Fantasy, YA (fiction and fantasy combined, since I don't have tons of YA) and Adult fiction. Then I've got MG non-fiction and adult non-fiction and the religion section. Then all the boring ones that I pretty much did when we moved two years ago and haven't acquired more: cookbooks, phone books, magazines, textbooks.

And then, like, all the rest of the Kondo list that comes after that. The "komono."

Have you cleaned out your bookshelves? Have you done a Kondo style "tidy up"? I would LOVE to hear about it. 

Book Jeopardy! by Benjamin

On Sunday night my eight-year-old, Benjamin, made us a jeopardy game. I have got to record it, because it was adorable. The categories were his favorite fantasy book series: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, The Unbelievable FIB by Adam Shaughnessy, Harry Potter by J.K Rowling, Percy Jackson and the Olympians by RIck Riordan, and Dreamdark by Laini Taylor.

The questions were not strictly Jeopardy style, in fact they were quite the opposite. I don't think Benjamin has ever watched an episode of Jeopardy. He has taken a lot of AR quizzes though.

Here were the questions:

Dreamdark
100 Who is the main character?
200 Who is the Magruwen's champion?
300 Who is the Magruwen?
400 What dragon was the last to die?
500 Who is Magpie's favorite person and why?

Percy Jackson
100 Fill in the blank: Camp ___ ____
200 Double tragedy, lose 200
300 Who is Annabeth's mom?
400 What is the name of Percy's sword?
500 Where is Kronos's throne room?

Harry Potter
100 Name Harry's 2 best friends
200 What do dementors guard?
300 How many times has Harry faced Voldemort?
400 What kind of tart is Harry's fave?
500 What is a bezoar?

building the game

Alcatraz
100 What book does Alcatraz use 2 lies?
200 Is Bastille a Smedry?
300 What is the High Library?
400 Do 10 jumping jacks or lose 100 points.
500 What Smedry has the talent of making rude noises?

FIB
100 Tragedy, lose 100
200 Who is the trickster?
300 Special, gain 300
400 Mister Fox's looking glass has a ____
500 Daily Double: Who is Fay Longintime?

Levi and I had a great time playing the game, even though we both ended up with a negative score. I haven't read the Alcatraz or FIB series, and it's been long enough since I read the others that I was a bit rusty.

Benjamin wanted me to be sure to post the answers to the questions for you, in case you wanted to play for yourself. I'll put those in the comments.

If you're curious about any of these series, Benjamin and I are happy to answer your questions. Also, I linked to their Amazon pages above, for your convenience. If you shop through my affiliate links to Amazon I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. Did some of this money go toward purchasing the last Alcatraz book, The Dark Talent? Yes it did.

Drop That Book! 10 Times to Stop Kids Reading

Top 10 Times to STOP Kids Reading

10. When the chores aren't done - Nothing bugs me more than realizing I'm picking up after someone who is chilling on the couch with a book. 

9. When the homework isn't done - The only problem is that sometimes the homework IS reading and then we parents haven't got a leg to stand on, here. And that's OK.

8. When they're eating - Unless you own the book this is just a bad idea with expensive consequences.

7. When they're in the tub - See #8. The exception being those special baby bath books which are pretty lame anyway.

6. When I've turned off the light five times already - Look, kid. I get that you want to finish the chapter, but I'm telling you that it is WAY past your bedtime and I know that this chapter is only going to end in a cliffhanger; just like the last one did. 

5. When they're in the car, feeling queasy- I'd much rather confiscate your book and hear you complain than clean up the contents of your stomach. 

4. When we're eating a family dinner - Talk to me about what you're reading, ask me about something in your book you didn't quite understand, or just stare into space thinking about the plot. But, if you sneak a book into your lap, don't play dumb when I call you out. 

3. When we're in church - Unless it's a church book, you'd better leave it out in the car. We are not here to worship the latest best-seller. 

2. When the book is overdue - Renew or relinquish! I'm not planning on paying your fines if you don't let me take it back to the library. And I'm leaving in five, four, three, two . . .   

1. When they're not dressed - Are you kidding me? First things first. You are not allowed to lounge around in underwear (or less) reading! Even Harry Potter was at least wearing a robe. 

Oh man that was fun to write.

And yes, I did have to deal with #1 today! 

Related: My Kid Reads Too Much (which addresses this issue a little more seriously.)
Related: More parenting posts here on Everead.

Horrible things to say to an author

This afternoon I met an author by accident.

I've met many, many authors. I often go out of my way to meet authors. But this afternoon, while I was attending the baptism of a family friend, I met an author by accident.

This wouldn't be a very big deal except that I completely stuck my foot in my mouth. Afterward I was like, "I'm pretty sure that a couple of things I said could be listed in a BuzzFeed article about what not to say to authors."

Here's how it went down:

Our hostess introduced me to Ann Haywood Leal, whom I had actually met earlier, because we sat next to each other during the program. Then our hostess told me that Ann is an author, and is working on a new book. "Oh!" I said, smiling, "tell me about it."

Ann began to describe the plot of her book. She only got about two or three sentences in.

For some crazy reason I felt compelled to tell her about another book I had read, with a similar-sounding plot. I felt compelled to describe this plot in pretty good detail. Good grief! I hope she knows that I wasn't trying to communicate that her idea had "already been done" or something. I wasn't. I was just saying the first thing that came to my head.

I think Ann wasn't too put off, because we kept talking.

"What are your books?" I asked her.

Ann named them: "A Finders-Keepers Place, and Also Known As Harper."

I thought for a minute, and then said, "I haven't heard of them. . . . but that's okay!" Oh my goodness.

Ann was very gracious.

She seems like a lovely person, and now I've got some good books to put on hold at the library. A Finders-Keepers Place and Also Known As Harper both look like interesting, middle-grade realistic fiction. I enjoyed Hilary McKay's Casson series, Linda Urban's A Crooked Kind of Perfect and Leslie Connor's Waiting for Normal, so I bet I'll like these ones, too.

p.s. Found a BuzzFeed article. Thankfully neither of my faux pas are on it. Phew!

Did I ever tell you the story about . . .

Working on Story Club tonight!

And I just had to share with you this gem I found on the internet. 21 Surprising Parenting Tips. Especially because I tried this little bit of advice:

3. If you want their attention at the dinner table, or anywhere else, start a sentence with "Did I ever tell you the story about..." 

And it worked amazingly well on five 3- and 4-year-olds who were not listening to me.

See, we got an electric keyboard from some friends who upgraded theirs, and it's power cord is a bit finicky (thanks to the fact that we tried to jam one of the wrong size on there, shortly after getting it). Anyway, the aforementioned preschool group kept bumping the piano, which would make it turn off, which would cause them to shout at each other for turning it off.

"Did I ever tell you the story . . . about how this piano needs to be treated gently?"

It was magic.

While we're on the subject, I would love to hear your best parenting tips! Share them with me in comments. I'll put some of my own down there, too.

Here's one!
Double the fun of getting a package in the mail
by giving the kids markers and letting them draw all over the box
before you recycle it (or save it for your upcoming move).

A couple bookish things

1. A good book related talk:
Have you seen this TED talk by Mac Barnett? I loved it! I enjoyed it so much I had to share bits of it with the rest of the family. In it he talks about his book Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem, which I have not read (but which looks very fun).

Text (above) and this image are affiliate links.

He says that under the dust jacket, the cover is an advertises a free whale for those who send in a self-addressed envelope. In his TED talk, Mac Barnett explains what exactly they send the kids who write in requesting a free whale. :D (Hint: It's not actually a whale . . . unless you've got a good imagination.)

Thanks for sending this my way, mom!

2. Perhaps you like theater, as well as books?
Another little thing you might be interested in: one of my friends is a professor these days and he asked me to spread the word about this research project. The survey is really short (took me 5 minutes or less), and you can opt in to a $30 cash prize drawing if you complete it. Quick, potentially lucrative, and for good causes! (Namely: nerdiness and theater) Take the survey here, and tell 'em Alysa Stewart sent you.

Vote for Everead -- send Alysa to NYC!

The Independent Book Blogger Awards are being decided over on Goodreads. Grand prize? A trip to Book Expo America in New York City this fall. 

Golly it would be so awesome to go to BEA.  I'm not getting my hopes up too high, but just thinking about all the authors to meet, book industry professionals to connect with and all the free books (hello!) has me drooling. I've been imagining myself at BEA for a couple of years but, alas, the stars have not aligned for me yet. 

Which is where you come in. Vote for Everead (in the Children's and YA category) between now and April 23!

The rules: The polls allow one vote per person in each of the four categories, and voters must be Goodreads members so that we can accurately tally the results. When polls close, the top 15 blogs in each category will become finalists.

Winners will be selected from among the finalists by a panel of industry judges. Each of the four category winners will receive a pass to BookExpo America (June 5-7, 2012) with airfare and hotel accommodation in New York City.

I got to choose 5 posts from between Feb. 2011 and Feb. 2012 to represent Everead. You can go to my entry page to see which blog posts I chose. :D

And, hey, now's as good a time as any to say this: Thank you for reading Everead. It means a lot to me, silly as that may seem. But I'm happy I can share reading with you, and hope that you get something good from this blog!

--Alysa

Some fun links

A few fun links for your Saturday:

Stephenie Meyer blogs about being on movie sets for Austenland, Breaking Dawn parts 1 & 2, and The Host.

Shannon Hale talks about the gothic romance.

I learned about Kid Book Ratings, a blog where books (mostly picture books) are given one of the following distinctions: Buy, Borrow, Donate or Destroy! So clever.

From the mental_floss blog, 12 Wonderfully Useless Flyers made me laugh quite hard.

...Well, whaddaya know, it was!

So I wrote a little story for the aforementioned contest.

The Princess and the Robot

If you like it, register for the site (which is simple, and not spammy) and "heart" it so that I have a chance to win. There are nearly 200 entries, so it is a little daunting, but I only have to get in the top 15 to be considered for the grand prize.

Personally, I think I did a fantastic job. Ashley helped me with the editing.

"Bellissima always gets her way. But when a suitor comes calling during the robotics fair, it could throw a wrench in her plans."

Remember, if I win the awesome prize (books by Shannon Hale and an Amazon Gift Card) I will give the books away here on the blog! :D

Whew! & So this looks fun.

Hey, weren't those guest posts awesome?  Whew, they took more work to put together than I originally thought they would, but of course the hardest work was done by their authors. And it was totally worth it! Many thanks to those who left comments on them. We were featured on the homepage of the Center for Children's books, did you see?

In other news, doesn't this contest look fun? Basically write a less than 1500 word story about a prince or princess and you could win awesome Shannon Hale prizes. Y'all know how I feel about Shannon Hale prizes. So I'm going to enter! And, since I already own the two Shannon Hale titles that are part of the prize, if I win then I will do a giveaway here! I've already got a start on my story...

Alysa

A couple of links

I quite enjoyed reading what Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 had to say about possible award winners this year.  I haven't the foggiest about who will win this year, but going through her picks I just kept adding titles to my TBR (To Be Read) list.

I also quite enjoyed entering this Crossed giveaway, hosted by the author. Cuz I know I want to read it! (everead review of book 1: Matched)

It's a mystery! Can you solve it?

My mother is trying to figure out the name and/or author of this favorite poem of hers.  We can't seem to figure it out any way any how.  The text may not be exact, since it's from memory, but I bet it's pretty close.

Under the green glass roof of waves
The little merchildren play.

Their toys are shells
And their homes are caves,
Their little pet fish
Feed beneath the spray.

They slip and dive,
Swoop and swirl,
Where the sea-grass sways
And the seashells curl.

Peep through the seaweed wafting wild,
And you might even see a little merchild.

Cybils round one concludes!

Ashley and I have finished our Cybils Middle Grade Fiction Round one panelist duties.  The shortlist is decided. The blurbs are written. We have acquitted ourselves well. (Can you tell by that last sentence that I jumped right in to reading Austen's Persuasion? For the first time, I might add. One does require a break from modern children's lit every once in a while.)

And though I am bursting with recommendations for you, we are taking something of an internet hiatus. No computer for two whole days (Christmas Eve and Christmas) -- except for webcam with family. For the two days following, only checking email and the bank. I think this will be quite a test of will for me. Wish me luck!

Alysa

Yes, yes, yes.

Just read this post over at Shannon Hale's blog.  I totally agree.  This is one of the reasons I don't give star ratings (or use a number system of some kind).  It's just not part of my reading process.

I do what I like here on my own blog.  I don't like being a literary critic, I like reading books and thinking about them and applying them to my own life.  I don't like reviewing books, I like recommending books.  If I read a book I don't want to recommend, I don't usually mention it here.

I especially liked this list of questions from Shannon's post:

Where did the story fail you? Where did it work for you? So, what does that say about you? What were you hoping for? What did you need from the story? If you're a writer, what does that tell you about what kind of a story you want to write? For me, this kind of responding is just about how I think about the book. Instead of thinking, "The author really dropped the ball on the ending," I try thinking, "What did I want out of the ending instead of what I got? Why did I want that?"

If you feel like chattering about questions like these about a book you've just read, and then you email that to me, I might even post your guest review. Just let me know. Email address is in the sidebar.

Bookshelf Review

At last! The long awaited review of the bookshelf.  You all can let out your breaths now.


June 23 -- bookshelf ordered
June 28th -- bookshelf arrives, so that's pretty fast, considering there was a weekend in there.
June 30th, 8:20 p.m. -- assembly begins.
8:47 assembly done -- only one "hold this for a second", no sounds of frustration or extra tools needed.  A screwdriver was listed in the instructions, but we didn't actually use it, only the included Allen wrench. Nice.

It's pretty cute, if I do say so myself.  Moderately sturdy -- not pressboard or something, but the shelves are thin.  It is a little bit smaller than I expected it to be (even though I measured out its dimensions before).  But, all in all, I like it.  Would I pay the price listed on the website for it?  Hmm... not at this point in my life. 

July 1-August 10 Procrastinate posting about said bookshelf because 1. I'm pregnant 2. I'm teaching the toddler not to throw the books on the new shelf down the stairs and 3. I can't seem to find the picture above on my computer.  Hadn't uploaded it yet. Go figure.  Ta-da!

A new kind of review...

So. I know that we here at Everead usually confine ourselves to reviewing books.  Occasionally we do audiobooks, or movie adaptations of books.  But we've never done a bookshelf before.

When the opportunity came up (i.e. I was contacted by Sean at CSN) I decided I just couldn't resist.  CSN apparently has all kinds of sites and sells everything from sectional sofas to luxury handbags.  But honestly I think a bookshelf is going to be the best fit for Everead, don't you?

So, after I get my bookshelf and test it out, you can count on a new kind of review.

New Look

Ashley has used her blog-savvy to update the Everead look.  What do you think?