...especially this fine art print, UNBLOCKED, from Citrus Tree:
Love this too much... I'm buying one for me (or maybe four... I have a couple of favorite prints. Like this one... and this one. And this one gets my imagination going crazy). But you all get to enter to win your very own copy of this great print!
The fine print: This contest is open to new and old followers in the U.S. and Canada, but if you're a vintage international follower, you're welcome to enter too - I'd be happy to pay the extra shipping for my international friends. :) Giveaway ends 19 November (extended!).
Click here to enter...
in this - I also want to try it with my usual 
) 
by Cassandra Clare while on a business trip. Which led to me selecting 
for our camping trip last weekend, and encouraging M.J. to read 
Now, if you didn't know, the books revolve around a girl, Clary, who meets a boy named Jace who is a Shadowhunter - a demon hunter - and discovers that she's also a Shadowhunter. Because she's related to Jace. Who she is now in love with.
And the man still thinks I should bake him cookies this week, can you believe that?
and Azar Nafisi's 
). But I need to start looking for some new novels - and I'm thinking genre fiction deserves a turn.
, the last book of the Hunger Games series, this weekend. And I just finished book two, 
, of Stieg Larsson's trilogy. The two couldn't be more different - post-apolyptic YA versus tightly plotted thriller - but they have their similarities: they're both brilliantly written, and almost impossible to put down.
Blomkvist. I think that's because I started the books after all three had been released, and there's no waiting - and wondering - and daydreaming up my own ending.
. As usual, I'm a day late and a dollar short reading the books everyone's talking about, but this book was brilliant. Painful to read at times (I don't like graphic scenes of violence), but tightly plotted with intriguing characters. Sometimes Larrson's writing style is a little different (of course, it's also a translation, so I don't know how much of a factor that is). He goes into much detail about the characters - what kind of software products they use, what kinds of sandwiches they eat, what anti-establishment slogan is on Lisabeth Salander's t-shirt. I sort of enjoyed all those details, though, since the books are set in Sweden and it made me feel more a part of that world. I like knowing that they eat veal cutlets in a cream sauce and lots of open-face sandwiches on rye... usually, my only involvement with Swedish food involves dragging MJ to the cafeteria in Ikea.
for a system I can live with. Each payday, money goes to bills, retirement accounts, and into savings automatically, what Bach calls "pay yourself first". Then the rest of the money? Mine to blow on whatever suits my fancy. If I have the sudden desire to splurge on a new bag or to spend $100 on random crap in Target (not that this happens on a regular basis, cough cough) and the money's in my account... I can. Less discipline required than a budget, but the end result is the same as long as you a) pay yourself first faithfully, as automatically as possible, and b) only spend what you have!
. Yes, I'm not quite a full-on Gleek, but I like Glee. Enough to possibly own all the soundtracks. Anyway...
was my childhood heroine (although I also loved the 
books, also by Astrid Lindgren). In fact, if I were to ever get a tattoo? It might be of the girl with the iconic upturned braids. The New York Times highlights an interesting Pippi Longstocking/tattoo connection - 
, and I love this excerpt:
. This is a story set around the massacre at Columbine, so I was certainly prepared for a rough ride. It's a story about how victims respond and cope with trauma - as well as the people who love them, who form collateral damage. Lamb is a masterful fiction writer who creates utterly believable characters - even more painful than his description of the damage done at Columbine is the story of the damage that people do to themselves in the aftermath. But it's also a story about love and redemption, and it's just so beautifully told. I have some issues with the book's portrayal of military vets, but that's a post for another day, if ever - I still recommend it.
, which is a beautiful portrait of a mother and wife in a lovely, but imperfect, family. 
The main character, Mary Beth, worries about her teenage children - daughter Ruby and her fraternal-twin sons. Quindlen spends the first half of the novel building up their family life before a terrible act of violence wrenches her world apart. What I loved about this book, too, was Quindlen's quietly masterful use of tension - even though nothing exactly is happening in the first half of this book, about the family's life leading up to that destructive day, it's never dull. I really liked this book, which is a detailed and loving portrait of both family and the grief that we risk by having those families. Well worth the tears.
by William P. Young, continuing my (proud?) tradition of reading uber-popular books at least two years behind the crowds (I think the only one I've ever read promptly was The DaVinci Code, which was fun to discuss, and also someone gave me a copy for free). For those of you who somehow missed all the fuss about The Shack, it's the story of a man who returns to the place where his young daughter was murdered years before
to meet God. So, I was very interested in the theology behind the story, and there were some very moving moments in the book. For me, the writing style was a little irritating at times - the prologue, in my opinion, is the epitome of the Unnecessary Prologue we writers are often warned against. And, while I was sometimes in tears as I read, I also laughed - perhaps not quite as Young intended - at the utterly bizarre scene where God talks about too many greens giving you the runs. It's an interesting book, but it's not one that will find a lasting place on my bookshelf. I'd rather have a straight theology book, to be honest. But the idea - man meets God face-to-face - is an intriguing one, and the end is satisfying without being easy.
