Average Girl Reads

My goal has been to read more fiction, especially highly acclaimed books. It has been difficult to stick to this plan, though. The only books I want to read right now are YA books or how-to books. The kids' books are easier to jump into and finish in a couple afternoons, while the how-to books fuel my fantasies of a well-rounded life. I like to dream about gardening and knitting when I don't have the energy to actually do it.

TODAY'S BOOK: I'm reading The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. It is a book filled with step-by-step instructions for projects like creating your own self-watering planters and routing your washing machine water out to the garden. I'm only 50 pages into this book, and I've already recommended it to my best friend. What I like most about this book so far is that they are sticking to the "urban" in their title. Many books that I've read on self-sufficiency may have a couple paragraphs on planting in containers, or they talk about ways to save money so you can buy a place in the country. This book assumes that you are going to stay in the city and gives you strategies for working around the limitations of not being on a farm. I hope that I will get a chance to try a few of these projects this summer.

UPCOMING BOOK: I have several books on my bedside table (see sidebar) but I am probably going to read Whatever, Mom: Hip Mama's Guide to Raising a Teenager by Ariel Gore. Most of the parenting information I've found online and at my local library is about raising babies and toddlers. I'm well past that stage of mothering, so I hope this book will offer me some insight on dealing with my teen and tweens.

A few weeks' ago, I had an idea of making May a sort of "indie sweeps week" on my blogs. Several of my online friends are creative people. They write novels, record podcasts on a variety of subjects, and create video web series. I'm not in a position to contribute monetarily to their efforts, so I thought that I could help them by putting out the word. I've never seen book bloggers mention podcast novels (also known as Podiobooks) so I'm not sure that the two worlds even cross. My plan for this blog was to do several posts about some of these books throughout the month of May to bring more attention to them.

Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans. I've been working so much overtime that I've barely been reading, never mind writing. However, May isn't over yet, so who says I can't start in the middle of the month?

The book I'm spotlighting today is one of my 16-year-old daughter's favorites, Nina Kimberly the Merciless. M has corresponded with the author, Christiana Ellis, several times and even dressed as the main character for a school project. If you have a teenage daughter who is into fantasy, this book would be a great choice.

Nina Kimberly the Merciless is a comic fantasy novel about the daughter of a barbarian horde leader. At the start of the book, we find that Nina's father was killed 10 years' ago and she was left in the care of the royal family of a neighboring kingdom. Nina is now a teenager who is ready to fulfill her destiny as an adventurer. However, she is living in a quiet back-water kingdom where nothing ever happens. So she decides to leave the kingdom and find a quest to fulfill and a handsome hero to stand by her side. However, due to circumstances explained in the book, Nina is stuck bringing Lewis, the doltish teenaged king who has grown up with her and thinks that they are in love with each other.

Indie authors usually offer several ways for you to get a taste of their work before you buy, and Ellis is no exception. The story was originally released in serial form as a podcast, complete with music and sound effects. This is the way my daughter and I listened to it. On 15 May 2009, the story was released in print and offered on Amazon (although as of this posting, there is a glitch in Amazon's system that says the book is out of print). You can also try the new audio version that is more like a traditional audiobook (no music or sound effects) or even download a PDF version of the text. If you go to Ellis' page about the book, you will find links to the different options.

Happy Mother's Day to all you reading mothers out there! Since I'm typing this late Sunday afternoon, I'm sure that most of you have already gone out to dinner and opened your gifts. Right about now, you should be sitting in your favorite easy chair enjoying a book :-).

I should probably be reading, too, since my kids are giving me some peace and quiet. Instead, I'm knitting while watching a Eureka marathon on SciFi. I can't bring myself to read any more of A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It isn't a bad book, but it hasn't grabbed me yet. I've only made it to page 54 and it is due back at the library tomorrow. No chance I will get through 1200 + pages before then. Part of the problem, I believe, is that I lost my reading buddy for a few weeks. She was the one that pulled me through Atonement when I wanted to stop. This time around, she had a bit of family business that kept her from starting the book. I know, I'm a grown woman and I should be able to read on my own. Sometimes, though, it helps to have someone who has read a bit further than you who can say, "Hang in there; it picks up once you get to the third chapter."

So what will I read this week? By my bedside I have a couple books by the Motley Fool group on managing money. Waiting to be picked up at the library, I have a lot more how-to books on various topics: gardening, sewing, vegetarian cooking, writing, childrearing. The book I'm really looking forward to diving into, though, is Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution. I've rediscovered my love of performance poetry, so I'm looking forward to reading about some of the women behind it.