Ed Helms is now a regular on the Office. I was wondering what happened to Andy. I Googled it and found out that on a producer's cut he was sent to anger management. Awesome. I hope he's back soon.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon

This will not be a funny book. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them.

I missed this book in the last post. This was a wonderful read. The story is told by an autistic 15 year old, Christopher. It's start out with the murder of his neighbor's dog. Christopher decides to solve the mystery. In the process we learn about his mixed up family and his odd, sweet world. The book is quirky and funny and sad. I highly recommend it.

I'm pretty sure that this a not a complete list. It's sad how quickly I forget things if I don't write them down. I did have a good long dry spell for reading the last few months of the year. Every time I sat down to read a book I just felt restless and I couldn't concentrate. But, these are the books that kept my attention and that I still remember that I read.


Digging to America
by Anne Tyler

Tyler is one of my favorite authors and this book is a great example of what I love about her. This is the story of two families whose lives become connected when they both adopt baby girls from Korea. Tyler writes from different family members' points of view and you get to know and care about the characters. This is classic Tyler where you are just given a slice of life without resolutions or endings. Sometimes that's a hard way to leave characters that you want to have happy endings, but this book still satisfies.


The Time Travelers Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger

This is fluffy, escapist science fiction. Which doesn't sound like a book I would be interested in, but it's a wonderful book. It absolutely sucked me in. It's over 500 pages long, but at the end of the book I didn't want the story to end. The story is about a man, Henry, who time travels and his wife Claire. The book begins when they meet. She has known him since she was six years old. He has never met her. The story jumps around in time (Henry is 38, Claire is 10; Henry is 30, Claire is 15) and you piece together things Claire has already experienced and Henry has yet experienced. The author does a very good job of keeping the story cohesive and believable enough. The only thing that got a little old were the descriptions of their intimate life together. Most of these scenes were done well, but from time to time her descriptions were too trite or too graphic or just plain tiresome. Besides that small complaint, this was a great book.


Love in the Driest Season
by Neely Tucker

This is the true story of a couple who move to Zimbabwe and end up trying to adopt an orphan. Although the baby has been entrusted to their care, the authorities don't trust their motives (the father is white and the mother is black and many times they are asked why a white man would be interested in a black child) and the country's general policy is to forbid foreign adoptions. Even knowing that the story has a happy ending (there's a beautiful picture of the family at the beginning of the book), the book is riveting. Tucker does a wonderful job of weaving together the intimate story of their family and the broader story of Zimbabwe and AIDS.


Night
by Elie Wiesel

Fast, powerful read. Eli Wiesel's account of his time as a teenager in Auschwitz was heartbreaking.

Today on the way to school, Lillie and I were reviewing her spelling words. The only one she was still having a little trouble with was information. She asked me to make up a phrase that would help her remember it. We'd done that once before with a shorter word and it had helped. But, information? A little tougher.

This is what we came up with:
I Need Food On Rabbits Made At The Icey Orange Needle.

Then, we decided that the "tion" was the only part she was having a hard time with so we just focused on that:
The Icey Orange Needle
Tuna In Orange Napkins
Tea In Orange Nests

Ahh, good times.

And now let us welcome the New Year
full of things that have never been.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

In honor of my two year bloggiversary, I thought I'd actually post. I almost posted this quote at the beginning of the year, but I couldn't get my thoughts out right. Mostly because they were all over the map.

This quote is actually very fitting as I look back on the last two years. I doubt I would have welcomed all the new things that came at me in 2005 and 2006. I had no idea on February 7, 2005 that I was actually homeschooling both girls for the last year. In fact, I was feeling better and more competent about homeschooling than I ever had. But, the truth is that as much as I miss it (and I do miss it), school is good for the girls. They like it. I think Lillie has the best deal with cutting out early every day, but it works for both of them.

I felt sad reading our typical day because those were good days and I'm glad we had them. I'm also glad to see that I moved away from homeschool-centric posts pretty quickly because they were a bore.

It's funny because I actually feel nostalgia for the first year of blogging. I discovered Amira, Susan and Jen who are all stilling blogging. Crapples, Gabby, and Motherofall are no longer blogging. Ned is in that in-between stage where he posts now and then. The angry mormon was going strong and Banner of Heaven was irritating and entertaining and Unofficial Manifesto was a fun place to be.

The whole blog-world was this interesting place to be. Commenting was fun. Now, I read a post and even if I have something to say it rarely feels worth my time to comment. Which, in some ways is good. I like that I spend less time on the computer these days. But, I do miss the relationships that I had built up and I do miss writing. I'd like to get back to it. There's so much here in this blog that I'm glad I have written down. We'll see, though. I'm not sure how much of my silence has been that I was no longer sure what I wanted to share in a public forum and how much was just running out of material.

The new year will be full of things that have never been. Let's just hope they are good ones.