Monday night I was at the library browsing DVDs and such.  I found a few- a reserve waiting for me for season 4 of Psych, ah Megamind- I think I will watch that one, many, many skipped for one reason or other (seen before, lack of interest).  Moving on.  Wait, what’s this?  Should this even be on the return cart?  It should have a reserve list  a mile long.  Ah, I get it- “Here and Now,” meaning that they chose not to allow reserves on it, though no doubt there are a couple dozen copies available for reserve too.  A few copies then to give people a sporting chance without having to wait months on the reserve list.  So which recent blockbuster am I talking about?  None other than Harry Potter  7.1.  The thing is, I have been gambling as it were on a short return to the big screen just before 7.2 next month.  If anyone would do it, it would be AMC, the biggest chain around and with a 30-screen complex about 10 miles away.  But I don’t know if this will really happen- I certainly haven’t heard news of it.  But they have done it before, so…

Yet, now I have a copy in my that I could watch now, for free, in a much smaller and lower-resolution venue as a DVD on a 32-inch CRT TV.  What should I do?  Hmm.

I was always an avid reader, but then I took an almost decade hiatus from reading books.  Because I did (and do) my reading before bed, I think the hiatus was due to the combination of getting used to parenting and also being fresh out of college which meant that I wasn’t used to getting to read what I wanted rather than what was assigned to me.  But a few years ago, I took up the hobby once again, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it.  I began by reading non-fiction because I liked the idea of learning something while I was reading.  I read biographies and stories that ranged from fun to inspirational, and my favorite reading was centered on true crime.

I read In the Presence of My Enemies, the inspiring true story of the Burnham couple who, after years of missionary work in the Philippines, were taken hostage during a vacation there and held for a year.  I read My Lobotomy, the biography of a man named Howard Dully who underwent a forced frontal lobotomy at the age of 12.  I read How Many Hills to Hillsboro, an account of a family of 5 who attempted and almost made a cross country trip together in the ’60s – on their bicycles.  I delved into fiction, reading the entire Harry Potter series and loving it.  And now I call myself an avid reader with a “to read” book list a mile long – and by the way, all of the above mentioned books I enjoyed immensely, and I highly recommend them.

I think that’s how I ended up reading 3 books at the same time.  It began when I was looking for something to read that would compare to Harry Potter, so I tried C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series and began with The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  While enjoyable, it wasn’t quite the can’t-put-it-down book that I was looking for, so I consulted my “to read” list and decided to try a Stephen King book that had been recommended by a local newspaper columnist – Under the Dome.  With the exception of some short stories, I haven’t read Stephen King before, but I’ve enjoyed a few of his movies.  So far, Under the Dome has been exactly what I’m looking for – page-turning excitement that is hard to put down!  The novel is about a small town in Maine that is suddenly and inexplicably cut off from the rest of  the world by a mysterious,  invisible – yet very real barrier.  Between trying to draft and enforce their own laws, keeping lawless individuals under control and townspeople from going crazy – literally –  and attempting to figure out what the dome is and how to get rid of it, the little town has more than its fair share of strife.

A few weeks before my request for Under the Dome came in at the library, I had decided I wanted to read the Bible, and so I find myself switching between two 1000+ page books in bed at night – I am so grateful we found a great sale on that e-book reader, which makes switching between these two books easy on my arms and my bed partner.  I know a lot of people are intimidated by the complex language of the Bible, but the NIV version is fairly easy reading, and I really enjoy reading it and especially learning more about the chapters I’ve read when I go to church on Sunday.

As if reading two 1000+ page books at the same time weren’t enough (though on the plus side, it’s not like I can possibly get the characters in the Bible and those in Under the Dome mixed up – a complication I used to run into in my heavier reading days when I would try to read a book for pleasure and a book for school at the same time), another one of my requests came in at the library – Caril by Ninette Beaver.  Being a more obscure book, I don’t know that I will get the opportunity to get it from the library again, so I’m attempting the book-reading tri-fecta.  Caril is the unauthorized biography of Caril Fugate, the alleged accomplice to Charles Starkweather who went on an infamous murder spree centered in Lincoln Nebraska in 1958.  Although Caril was tried and convicted in a court of law, there has been much debate about her actual role in the murders because of her age at the time – 14.  The book follows the cases and Caril’s incarceration and is written from the media’s point of view in the 1970’s before Caril was released from prison.  It’s been interesting to read about other news items of the day (breaking news items in 1958 included: Liz Taylor’s husband killed in a plane crash and Elvis being drafted into the Army) and also how differently people reacted to news reporters taking interviews for the brand-new medium of the day: television.  Family members of suspects, law enforcement, and attorneys were all much more willing and able to talk to reporters and share details for the camera than they are today.  You may have seen one of a number of movies made about the Starkweather cases; the most famous is Natural  Born Killers, although that movie DOES NOT follow the cases accurately and is, in my opinion, a terrible movie.  I  guess the reason I’m so interested in these cases is because Charles Starkweather was a different type of serial killer and one who has escaped the major notoriety of say, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.  I also lived in the lovely city of Lincoln Nebraska for a year, and I’ve seen many of the places where the crimes took place for myself – including the penitentiary where Starkweather was electrocuted and the cemetery where he is buried.

I’m really enjoying all 3 of my books right now, but reaching my goal of re-reading the last installment of the Harry Potter series before the final movie comes out mid-July is going to prove to be quite challenging!!

And one more note – further encouragement to read Under the Dome is the movie being made due to come out this year – looks like a made-for-tv movie, which is difficult for me to imagine based upon the violence involved and intensity of the story.  But if Stephen King’s other tv mini-series are any indication, Under the Dome the movie version will not disappoint and is an excellent reason to  pick up this great book for some perfect summer reading!

While everyone else dispersed to the various ballgames for the evening (a niece and a nephew actually played against each other on the t-ball field while another was in a neighboring community), I took my 5 year old niece to Story Hour at the library.  I had taken Syd to the first gathering a few weeks ago and learned that someone needed to stay for the entire hour (of course, this was after I left and came back after the hour).  Tonight, I stayed for the entire hour.

It was a cute hour… thankfully, I knew a few of the parents (one being a church organist I know). This week being dolphin and shark week, we heard true life stories about each of the creatures.  Then the kids sang “If You’re Happy and Ya Know It.”  Then, arts and crafts in which the little ones made tear out sharks.  They took a piece of construction paper and tore their sharks and glued them to another sheet of paper.  No snack… Sydney was slightly miffed about that.

I remember Saturday morning Story Hour at the old library.  I attended (until I was in the third grade) and later was the leader.  The one thing I remember aside from the stories, Farmer in the Dell, London Bridge, and musical chairs was my darling, Susie.  She was the library’s resident mascot.  A rather green, birdlike marionette. Who knows where she is now?  To the great aviary in the sky, one might surmise 😉

But, it was kind of fun to see the little ones hearing the stories (even adding their own commentaries at times) and being creative

I did it.  I’ve finished reading the first book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  And I really enjoyed it; I think I can officially call myself a Harry Potter fan!  The book was very fast-moving, and because it’s kind of a kids’ fantasy book (but don’t get the wrong idea – MANY adults like it too!), I was able to finish the entire 300 pages on my limited reading schedule without even having to renew it at the library once!

Tonight, I’m going to start the second book in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and if I can convince my husband, we’ll be watching the movie of the first book this weekend.  And now I am REALLY excited to see the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando.  They are being kinda secretive about the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey attraction, but it promises to use “entirely new technology” to bring the Harry Potter series to life “in a way never before experienced”!  Maybe something like The Mummy ride or The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman 3D?  How cool would that be for Harry Potter!!  And the shops and restaurants are all going to keep in the tradition of the boy wizard’s world.  Chocolate frogs, anyone?  The world doesn’t open until spring, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to get to Florida before the fall or next winter anyway, so if that becomes a reality, we will have to make sure we get to Universal – I really liked Islands of Adventure anyway, and now it’s going to be even better!  I just have to make sure I read all the Potter books by then.  And I almost don’t want to read too much about the new world on the internet for fear that it would be spoilers about things I haven’t discovered yet.

As much as I’m enjoying the Harry Potter series, I’m not usually one to stick to one type of book.  If I need a break from Hogwart’s before I get through all 7 stories, I might try The Zookeeper’s Wife, a story about a zoo in Poland in the 1930’s and how it’s destroyed during the holocaust – as long as it’s not too depressing of a read.

A few blog posts ago, I made a plea to save Ohio libraries because the governor was proposing a budget plan that included a major cut in library funding.  The vote went through the state legislature, and the budget was re-worked in such a way that the libraries received less than half of the budget cut that was originally proposed, so YAY!  Our voices were heard!  In this economic crisis, it is understandable that funding is going to be cut on certain community resources, so let’s hope that our libraries can figure out a way to continue their many services without changing too much in light of these cuts.  I received an email back from one of the congressmen, so I thought I’d share it below.  Not that the letter was written personally for me, but it’s nice to have my efforts acknowledged.  Hopefully my friends who work for the state can keep their jobs in light of the budget re-working!

Tuesday I was in the same district, but got to sleep almost an hour later.  I headed the same way in the morning, but turned off at the middle school corner to continue on northward to hometown-district’s northernmost school.  I checked in and headed to class.  The big difference in subbing for elementary versus middle school, besides the size of the students, is the lesson plans.  Most of the time in middle school I teach some or all lessons more than once, occasionally six times.  In elementary school however it is one class so there are a lot more plans.  Lucky me (not) I arrived on the no-specials day.  At least, no specials that gave me a break.  This was their computer lab day, so that at least was an hour I didn’t teach, but I still had to be there to help.  They learned about a website with books online, and when I say that I mean thousands of books- current and fully illustrated, in dozens of languages, accessible like a library.  Some even had audio tracks so they could listen as the stories were read to them.

Trying to remember the rest of the day- I worked in elementary again Thursday in hometown district and have fresher memories…  Ah yes, the math lesson was fun.  They had a test for half the period, and then I taught part of the next lesson.  What was fun was teaching them about standard units of measure.  We started off with a non-standard unit- how many 2nd-graders long is the room, then how many of one second-grader.  The answers were slightly different- 8 second graders, but only 7 2/3 of the one student.  I reminded them that if I chose the shortest student to measure the room, the number would have been higher and if we measured using a teacher, it would have been lower.  So then I introduced the yard by covering the last few inches of the meterstick (most metersticks have inches printed on the other side, and a meter is longer than a yard) and they estimated the the length of the room in yards before we ran out of time.

If I can recall any more good moments this day I will add them, but for the most part is was really a standard day otherwise with guided reading groups, social studies, silent reading, lunch…

I was doing a search in the library’s database, and I came across the title Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow.  Further investigation showed it to be a science fiction book about Walt Disney World in the future.  Not usually my type of novel (and I strongly prefer to read non-fiction anyway), but since we’re Disney affectionados, I couldn’t resist the read.  It took me over a month to read it, and that’s not even soley because I’m so busy.  The book is difficult to read – author Doctorow does a nice job at placing the reader in the characters’ futuristic universe, but it’s almost too much – he neglects to provide an explanation of certain things.  For instance, the characters all have “Whuffie” and “HUDs”, and these concepts are constantly revisited throughout the story, but it’s never explained exactly what these things are!  My interpretation is that Whuffie refers to a meter in one’s body that measures a person’s positive characteristics, experiences, and emotions – and others can see your Whuffie level.  A person with low Whuffie is shunned in society, and sometimes even denied entrance to Disney World.  HUDs seem to be a person’s computer – it almost seems to be a part of their brain.  They can look up stuff and send things to each other instantly with their HUDs like directions to places.  It seems to be kind of like today’s internet, yet it’s built right into people’s brains.  So, yeah, you can see why it was slow reading as the reader had to get around all of these unfamiliar concepts.  But onto the story itself…

In the future when Down and Out…  is set – and I don’t know what year that is, he never specifically says – Disney World is now a retro-park; something that is preserved only because it’s an example of the great works of our current time.  The main character, Julius and his girlfriend Lil (who was raised in the Magic Kingdom) are on a mission to save the Magic Kingdom and keep the attractions as they are: old-fashioned rides through vintage dioramas.  There is a group of people trying to “rehab” all the rides and give them a futuristic makeover, and they do get ahold of the Hall of Presidents – they make it so that the guests can actually see what it feels like to be Abraham Lincoln and the rest of the former Presidents.  It is the goal of Julius, Lil, and their friend Dan to keep the rest of Liberty Square (a section of the Magic Kingdom), especially the Haunted Mansion, away from the “ad-hocs” as the rehabbing group is called.  Throw in Julius’ murder (don’t worry, he’s been “backed up” and can reclaim his life in a clone) and the fact that he now has to find out who killed him and keep it from happening again, and that’s how the plot thickens.

Overall, it was a very interesting read, but probably not something I’d re-read.  It was worth stepping out of my usual non-fiction genre for the experience to read a science-fiction tale, but it wasn’t anything stupendous.  The story was interesting, and the author did a great job of detailing life in the future, even if it was at times confusing to the reader.  I kept feeling like I was coming in on a sequel having missed the first part.  I thought there’d be more details about the Magic Kingdom, and in that respect, I was disappointed.  But if you like sci-fi books and you’ve been to Disney World, I recommend this book only if you read a lot and have lots of spare time.  On a grading scale, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom gets a C- from me.  Up next for me is My Lobotomy by Howard Dully- a non-fiction book about a guy who was involuntarily given an “ice-pick” lobotomy as a 12-year old.

With the exception of Thinner, I’ve liked most of the Stephen King movies I’ve seen.  My favorite is Storm of the Century, a Prime-Time Emmy Award winning made-for-tv mini-series that aired in 1999.  Every winter when a big blizzard is predicted in our corner of Ohio, we plan on being snowed in watching our Storm of the Century dvd.  It never happens though; I think it has to do with trying to watch a 240 minute movie that’s not for kids when we have 4 of them.  But anyway, if we ever get time to watch Storm of the Century in the near future, I’ll definitely blog more about it – it’s awesome!

One of Stephen King’s lesser known films, Sleepwalkers, is a movie I saw as a teenager.  I liked it back then, so when I happened to see the dvd on the library’s shelf the other day, that’s what I quickly picked up since I was in a hurry.  My husband and I watched it the other night, and we both had the same opinion.  A fun little horror film, nothing great but still entertaining.  It is Stephen King-creepy, as only he can do, and much of the movie’s creepiness has to do with the mother-son relationship; I won’t go into detail except to say that it’s extremely disturbing.  Brian Krause and Alice Krige play the mother and son monsters who need to feed on a human virgin in order to survive.  They morph into strange cat-like creatures, which is even more strange because cats are drawn to their house, yet deadly to the monsters at the same time.  The special effects are extremely cheesy by today’s standards and even laughable, but sometimes I’m a sucker for that kind of thing and really enjoy bad special effects – my favorite example of this is Jaws 3-D.

While we’re on the subject of Stephen King, as I mentioned, I like most of his movies that I’ve seen.  I tried to read the book Carrie a really long time ago, but I found it hard to follow, either because I was a teen or because of the religious ramblings inserted throughout the book which were done in such a way that it’s hard to follow because it’s depicting Carrie’s mother’s craziness.  But anyway, Stephen King is very talented, of course.  He has a gift of making movies extremely creepy without stooping as low as many of today’s horror movies do with the constant blood and gore.

An interesting event took place in his life that almost reads like one of his novels, well, actually it does since he wrote about it.  On June 19, 1999, his life was changed forever when he was hit by a car while walking down a Maine road.  There are two creepy coincidences about this incident.  First, earlier that year, King had finished most of From a Buick 8, a novel in which a character dies after getting struck by a car.  Second, the driver of the car, Bryan Smith, who was only 43, was found dead in his trailer just over a year later of an accidental overdose.  He was found dead on Stephen King’s birthday, September 21.  The accident was inspiration for the Dark Tower series of books, and King is in talks with Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams to do an adaption of the series.  Since I’m a fan of Lost and Stephen King, that might be something I’ll have to check out.  Until then, I’ll probably be planning another snowy viewing of Storm of the Century this winter that won’t come to fruition.

This morning in an effort to promote our upcoming production of Little Women, a few of the cast members, director, and a rather outspoken woman who was attempting to interest a few children in the children’s theatre later this summer, met at the library for an impromptu presentation for young minds. It was rather enjoyable as each of us in turn introduced ourselves by telling who were were playing, past theatrical experiences, and what theatre means to us. Our director lead a short intro to theatre in general and asked our audience of approximately 20 children who ranged in age from about 8-14 a few questions. I was really surprised to learn that a young girl of about 10 knew why the stage directions of “Downstage” and “Upstage” were so named. For those not in the know, stages used to be built on an incline because the audience seating was flat. As the performers moved up the slant or down, the audience had a better view of the action.

Later, the little peoples engaged in theatre games. “Who am I” involved the children walking around with signs on their back. On the signs were names of people, animals, and occupations. Harry Potter, bear, and nurse were a few. The children wandered around asking each other yes/no questions in an attempt to figure out what was written on the sign. I was surprised that it took the only young man the entire game to come up with “Mickey Mouse.” Much like a game I am fond of called “Hedbanz” except the players wear a band with a card attached.

To wrap things up, the children’s theatre director presented a piece on audition etiquette. What to do and what not to do when auditioning for a play. Speaking loudly and clearly as well as having confidence were a few of the dos. Turning off the cell phone (that goes for audience members, as well), not chewing gum, and NOT ACTING LIKE A GOOF?! were a few of the no-nos (I believe I saw a few glances my way when the the word “goof” was mentioned… mostly from the person leading the discussion). I always thought that acting like a goof was a sure way to get the part.

So, a fun few hours. Anytime young people can be introduced to something fun and ultimately rewarding is time well spent.

Little Women (The Illus Children’s Library)

Funrise Toys Headbanz Adult Game