Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This was the second book in the Little House series and almost just as lovely as the first.

I say 'almost' because there was one thing that really, really bothered me in it. The portrayal of American Indians as scary savages. I was not able to get past it AT ALL and each and every reference made me cringe. The father's attitude wasn't too bad, but the mother and the neighbors were horrible! I did like it when one of the small girls asked about the Indians, saying something like 'but if this is Indian Territory then won't the Indians be mad if we make them move somewhere else?'. Yes, they will.

I hope that this gets better in the next books and that they all realise that we're all people, etc. Otherwise how does one explain such an attitude to a child? I like the series and planned on keeping it for when my son is old enough to read it, but I guess I need to give an explanation for the Indian bashing. Sigh.

(As an aside, has anyone read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown? I read about half of it and had to stop because it was too sad... I'd like to get through the whole thing at some point though.)

The Little House series has loads of good stuff too though - what I like most are the descriptions of their daily life, like of the father building the house. You can actually see him building it, log by log. Most of us don't really make things from scratch ourseelves anymore, so it's nice to read about how you can make things and use things and not produce any waste. That part's great for kids!

The Best Friends' Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood by Vicki Iovine

I really like this series of books about pregnancy and motherhood by Vicki Iovine. Last year, I read the Guide to Pregnancy and found it very helpful and honest. I'm happy to say that this book was just as helpful. And honest. :-)

Iovine provides information in an informal way, telling us about her own experience and the experiences of her friends. It's a fun and honest discussion of the beginnings of motherhood and includes the tough bits too. Getting lots of different stories means you get various perspectives but no judgment. Plus you see that you're never alone in what you're experiencing and that there are people who experience extremes of all situations. Sometimes things are better and sometimes things are worse.

The only criticism I have is that most of the book was really about the first 6 months. I've done that now and would have liked some more information about what to expect in the coming months. The title says 'first year' so I assumed it covered more.

I won't go into details here, since the subject matters appeals to such a small number of people, but if you're ever in need of such books, this series is a good choice. Not as good as Naomi Stadlen's What Mothers Do, Especially When it Looks Like Nothing, but still worth getting. It made me laugh out loud a good number of times and a new Mom sure needs that! :-)

My News

Well. It sure has been a tough year so far - and you all know it too, what with my constant complaining about being tired, stressed out or simply in a bad place. My concentration has been on and off, I can't seem to keep my mind on reading like I used to. And I have a good reason. I'm pregnant.

It feels so amazing to finally be able to write that. I've been waiting until after the infamous 12-week scan and here I am, at 14 weeks now, able to finally announce it to the world. :-)

Why were things so hard? I won't bore you with details, but the gist of it is that we did an IVF cycle pretty much right after moving house. So basically we had all the stress we could possibly have had at once. It was a horribly diffcult time and I don't particularly want to think about it. But we survived and hey, it worked!

I am thrilled and looking forward to what these next months will bring. I don't expect any huge improvements in concentration, but hopefully things will settle down a bit at least.

I do have thoughts on a pregnancy-related book too, I hope they count because as you can imagine with my addiction I bought pretty much every book I could find.

I now finished reading The Best Friends' Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki Iovine. The subtitle says 'Or everything you doctor won't tell you' and it lives up to the expectation. This book tells you how things will actually feel, not just what will happen to you. It's a funny take on the experience and after reading so many clinical books (which are also important) I totally needed this. I definitely this is one to read when pregnant.

It fits into a couple challenges too! :-)

Challenges: 999 Challenge, Non-Fiction Five challenge, A-Z Challenge

A-Z Challenge Completed!

I just finished Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a special edition of the stories, with beautiful illustrations by Felix O.C. Darley. It was my 'I author' for the A-Z Challenge hosted by Joy of Thoughts of Joy and the last book I needed to complete my list.

The stories were ok. I'm sure we studied them at school, but I couldn't remember the details. I think that I understand a lot more of Rip van Winkle now - what with the world changing so much all the time. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow made me want to see the film. Is that bad? I guess neither affected me that much, but they were entertaining. And I liked all the Dutch elements.

What affects me lots more is the fact that I finished one of my biggest challenges of the year a month early! Yay for me! :-) I had so much fun trying to fit books into this one and I discovered so many books that I may not have got to otherwise. An X author, a Z author - go check out my full list to see what else I read. The challenge included 52 books and there were way too many good ones to be able to pick favorites, so I won't even try.

I'll definitely be doing this again next year!