Sheenazing Nomination and What We're Reading Wednesday

I'm not a recipient, but I couldn't find an official nominee button.

Some kind person or persons thought enough of this bad blog to nominate Housewifespice in the category of Smartest Blog. 

Yippee!

You can go over here to vote, but seeing as how I'm up against some big time blogheads, I'm not expecting to win.  Hey, just to be in the same ballpark as Simcha Fischer, Jen Fulwiler, and Aunt Leila and her daughters is huge. 

Done voting?

Good.

I fell down my icy front steps Sunday afternoon, on my way to a happy hour of all things.  I spent the rest of my evening icing my swollen knee with various bags of frozen vegetables and sitting on a heating pad for my tailbone.  It was a total wipeout.

Having just finished, The Wizard Heir (see below), I tearfully asked the Chef to bring me any other book from the library bag.  Doesn't everybody have a library bag?  Stuffed to overflowing with treasures that will only cost a fraction in fines what my bookstore bill might have been?  It lives in the front hall, or in any other season, the front hall closet?  No?  It's the latest thing in decorating.

He brought me Girls Don't Fly by Kristen Chandler.  I'm always saying that the age of the reader should be equal to or greater than the age of the protagonist, and Myra is a senior in high school just shy of her eighteenth birthday.

The good stuff:  Scholastic underachiever, Myra, goes all out for a scholarship to study wildlife in the Galapagos Islands.  Lots of beautiful island imagery, and neato factoids about flightless cormorants.  She loves her sibs, from pregnant, single older sis to the four younger brothers she is always tending, and they love her too.  She tells an on-going fairy tale/pirate story to her brothers, chronicling her obstacles as she tries to win the scholarship.  She is hurt by the nasty rumor that pretty boy, Eric, dumped her "because she couldn't keep her shirt on,"  but the truth is he dumped her because she would NOT sleep with him.  Yay!  Teen chastity! 

The bad stuff:  That's not to say that she's against pre-marital sex, she just didn't want to have it with him.  Her parents are very anti-religion.  Set in Salt Lake City, there's lots of instances to poke fun at this.  "At my school we had to dance a Bible's distance apart."  "I've never read the Bible." 

All in all, it was better than I expected.  I'd give it a C and I'd let high school seniors read it.  Plus, it kept my mind off my injuries until Downton came on.  I was so disappointed that Isobel wasn't the principle who died.  And what's with all of the bloggers hating on Bates?  Aside, from trying to purge his hairy bedroom scene from my mind, he's still one of my faves.  Remember first season Bates? 

Okay, Angela, I read Insurgent by Veronica Roth and I'm still not feeling the love.  Tried to quit halfway through, but I had not replenished my library bag at that time. So I offered it up suffered through.  Too many characters, and I don't like any of them.  More violence, more snogging, more saving-all-of-the-plot-related-action-for-the-last-100-pages or so.

I know many sci-fi and Hunger Games fans love this trilogy.  I'm just not that into it.  It's less sexy than it's predecessor, and there's a smidgen of forgiveness plus an ounce of guilt.  I'd let Susan read this one, except I won't let her read Divergent.  Do I have to read the third one?  What's it called again?  Regurgitate?

 Here's one that I wouldn't have read if Angela and Isabel hadn't told me to, and unlike the last one, I really liked The Whisper by Emma Clayton.  All of my hang-ups and issues in the first episode, The Roar, were more than compensated for in The Whisper.  

I just wish there was more balance between the two.  In The Roar, it's all doom and gloom, totally hopeless, super-powerful bad guys with no way to take them down.  In The Whisper, from page one, the good guys are winning and they keep winning the whole book through.  Sure, things look a little precarious here and there, but our hero children definitely have the upper hand the entire time.  Maybe these books should be combined under one title and jacket. 

Remember a few weeks ago, when I gave thumbs up to The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima, well this week, Lucy insisted I read the sequel, The Wizard Heir.  I had to vociferously stop her from giving me spoilers before she finished and forked it over.  It was very hard for her not to give stuff away.  She liked it even better than the first one, and I have to agree.

The good stuff:  Main character, Seph (Joseph) McCauley is great, and he's Catholic.  He attends Mass and prefers the Latin rite.  At one point, he is accused of practicing occult magic, but he says, "I'm Catholic and I wouldn't do that."  Boo-yah!

The bad stuff:  Seph is tortured with nightmares by the evil headmaster.  He is tempted with drugs and alcohol from the headmaster's henchmen.  But he never accepts.  Because he's awesome.  And Catholic.  Did I mention that he's a practicing Catholic?  Shown in a good light?  Just want to get that out there.

Lucy finally finished The Dragon Heir.  Too late, I already started Chima's other series, The Seven Realms:  The Demon King.  No demons in sight so far.  Demonai is the name of one of the Native American-ish clans struggling to balance power with the wizard race.  It's shaping up verrry nicely, more on this next week.

The Chef's new favorite book is I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen.  I had gone to the library to get this year's Caldecotts, Newberys, and the newly announced Caudills.  Jon Klassen is the winner of this year's Caldecott for his book, This Is Not My Hat, but that was checked out.  So I settled for another one by him.

The text is in different colors for the different characters, which makes using funny voices when you read that much easier.  When the Chef reads it, the main character, a bear who has lost his hat, has a deep baritone and a slight lisp.  The turtle sounds Italian, and the armadillo could be Hispanic.  Every character has a unique and hilarious voice. 

Of course when I read it, the bear is a very frustrated female. 

Either way, the Chef was near tears while reading this very funny story with a surprise ending, and the rest of us were in stitches.  I'm not quite sure what was funnier, the way he read it, or the way Baby J faked laughter on every page.  She squinches up her eyes, and sounds like she's wheezing.  Also, ridiculously funny.

I can't wait to read the award winner.

If you go to my library, and you're looking for the newest award winners and nominees, I'll return them in three weeks.