Somusing

The second and third books in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series are just as entertaining and exciting as the first. Fun reading, with lots of references to Greek mythology.

Same as what I thought about Tears of the Giraffe .

If the youngest is crying, and you give some bubbles to the big kids so they can distract him, he might stop crying, but the arguing among the elder children might be so loud and vehement that you consider taking the bubbles away, even if the little one starts crying again. If there is a water and ice dispenser in the door of the refrigerator, there will always be at least 20 cups and glasses on the table, half-filled with water and ice. Even though there are only eleven children.

I'm spending this week at Ivy's house while Ivy and her husband are gallivanting around Orlando, Florida. (I totally approve of the gallivanting, by the way. They'd better be having marathon fun!) That makes me, the lone adult, with eleven children, ages 19 months to 12 years. Of course, more than half are my children, so it's not really as big of a deal as you'd think. The days start off pretty calmly, and it's only around dinner time that the noise reaches such a level that I start to feel like joining along with the screaming. And right after that, it's bed time, the best part of the day. Ivy and I have watched each other's kids several times, and it's interesting to see how interactions between the kids change as they get older. For example, the older boys now spend a lot of their time talking about their "band." Keep in mind that none of them plays an instrument. Well, Ivy's oldest is taking guitar lessons, and my boys play the ...

The fourth book in the Harry Potter series has a pretty slow and meandering start that lasts for about 3/4 of the book. Maybe I was a little burned out on Harry by the time I started it. I also remembered the movie pretty well, and maybe that made it less exciting. I do think the plot moves more slowly than in the others and it's not even really clear what the plot is , because the connections between events are intentionally unclear until the end. However, the end was so suspenseful and exciting that it made up for the rest. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I was riveted. It also set up the fifth book in a way that the movie didn't. So I guess I'm a Harry Potter convert. I resisted for a long time. But after I finished Goblet of Fire , I had that familiar bittersweet feeling of missing the characters as if they were real friends that I'd lost contact with. I can reread the books and see the movies, especially the coming sixth and seventh, but there ...

This was the first Harry Potter movie that I really liked, and http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Prisoner-Azkaban-Book/dp/0439136369/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301499884&sr=1-1">the book was even better. I loved the time travel stuff.

I decided to take advantage of my recent desire for purely entertaining reading and read the Harry Potter books I hadn't read yet. After the fifth, sixth and seventh, this was a quick read, and thoroughly enjoyable.