Presents!

This one's for Norm: Bookslut's Jessa Crispin on the wah wah fest.
This one's for Whitney: The editors of Brain, Child on motherhood and literature. (via LVE).

We went to the library for the first time in ages last night. I'd taken it out of the loop of routine because my fines went over $5 and I'm a criminal like that, but then my daughter told me last night that she couldn't remember what the children's room looked like. D'oh!

I ended up with one of the Noah Lukeman writing books since I've never read them, Do You Speak American?, and Gilead. As far as I can tell, my little library has exactly jack and squat about intentional communities -- which would be useful right about now.

My daughter got two books about dinosaurs, and a leprechaun story. I have no idea what's up with kids and dinosaurs -- I grew up before that whole prehistoric marketing machine was in place.

But the leprechaun book, that's easy to explain. One day, I was late picking her up because I couldn't get the car started because I was low on gas. I explained to her that I'd told the house leprechaun to remind me to refill the tank, and he'd forgotten as he always does. Since then, I have to scrape up a Seamus the Leprechaun story about twice a week. He goes to a lot of picnics (which is why he's never around when my daughter gets in the car). In the most recent installment his father came with him to a picnic and ate everything. So anyway, I found the leprechaun book and showed it to her, and she was excited -- but then a little disappointed. While the leprechauns in it have pots of gold (very important), they don't have red hair -- and Seamus definitely has red hair. I had to explain that it was normal for leprechauns to have different colors of hair. Well, as normal as the whole conversation could be to begin with.

I'm a little way into Gilead and honestly? I'm having a hard time with it for a peculiar reason. About fifteen years ago, my great aunt wrote a family history that covered from the 1600's until my younger cousins were born. It's written in much the same tone as her letters -- very warm and engaging, and probably unlike a lot of other books of its ilk I reread it and enjoy myself. Gilead is obviously different, but there's enough genre similarity that I find myself itching to go get my aunt's book. I think once I get to know the characters better the itch will subside, but it's been a reminder that sometimes good things are as close as your dusty bookshelf.

Comments

[normal mc]

Makes me feel better now about hating Egger's 'Velocity'.