Reading

I pretty much liked “The Book of Life”

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Deborah Harkness' "The Book of Life"I read Deborah Harkness’ “A Discovery of Witches” way back in 2011, for the BlogHer book club. It was a pretty weird book about vampires, witches, demons (spelled “daemons,” which irrationally annoyed me) and historical documents, and I loved it.

I was excited when I learned that it was the first book in a planned trilogy, so I read the follow-up, “Shadow of Night,” as soon as it came out. I picked the final book, “The Book of Life,” up this week when I spotted it on the shelf at the library. “The Book of Life” came out in July, which is indicative of how much I enjoyed the second book. (Spoiler: Not very much.)

“The Book of Life” was a very slow-starter, but the action picked up about halfway through. Once it finally took off, I enjoyed it enough to delay making dinner and then stay up far, far too late reading it. And then today I let the kids have extra computer time so I could finish.

“The Book of Life” is a pretty weird book about vampires, witches, demons (still spelled “daemons,” which still irrationally annoys me and also there weren’t enough of them in this book), historical documents and genetics, and I mostly liked it. It was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, but but I found the romantic/obsessive bits wandering a little far into “Twilight” territory for my liking.

Bandwagons, Homeschool, National Blog Posting Month

Astronomy (and “Star Wars”) activities for the homeschooled kid

In the Fall session of co-op, you may recall, I taught an astronomy / “Star Wars” class. Here’s a bit of what we did!

We started the “Astronomy and also some ‘Star Wars’ ” class at co-op by reading a Magic School Bus book called “Lost in the Solar System,” and we also read a little from “The Solar System” most weeks.

We made our own story cubes featuring “Star Wars” characters, planets and vehicles. Ours were made from card stock, but there’s a nice tutorial for wooden story cubes at RedTedArt.com.

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We made suns to go with our solar system models. There was a sun with the solar system that I printed, of course, but the swirly painted ones we made looked so much cooler.

We made little Yoda puppets on sticks. They were painfully cute, and Pete’s been using his as a bookmark.

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We discovered new planets, which we wrote about and illustrated. This was probably my favorite activity from the class. The kids were really creative in describing their planets, and the craft activity was simple and sweet.

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We made constellation viewers. This one was also pretty successful. The kids very much enjoyed punching out the stars with the ginormous thumb tacks I bought.

In retrospect, it would’ve been better not to make it a mashup. I’m not sure I would’ve had enough activities to cover 9 weeks of “Star Wars,” though, so I suppose it’s just as well.

p.s. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s the end of NaBloPoMo!

Bandwagons, Screen time

Q&A Saturday: Five questions about movies

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Movie you love.
“The Royal Tenenbaums” is probably my favorite. It made me laugh and cry, just like a good movie’s supposed to do. It’s also where I got the name “Butterscotch Sundae.”

Movie you vow to never watch.
Fievel taught me to “Never Say Never,” but it’s a safe bet that I’ll never watch the “Saw” movies. I’m not a horror movie fan anyway, and those look particularly atrocious.

Movie that literally left you speechless.
Wouldn’t “literally left you speechless” mean that you didn’t have anything to say about it? There have been a number of those. The last movie I saw that really stuck with me and gave Rockford and me a lot to talk about was “Boyhood.” It seems to have been a polarizing movie for a lot of people, but I’m on the “I Loved It” side of the fence.

Movie you always recommend.
You can’t go wrong with “Groundhog Day.” (Unless you’re my dad, who hated it.)

Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie.
Bill Murray! I even liked “Larger Than Life.”

Question source: I googled “movie questions meme.”