Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel by Audrey Niffenegger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Valentina and Julia are mirror twins who live with their parents in Chicago. Their mother Edie is also a twin and when her estranged twin sister Elspeth dies, she leaves her London flat to Valentina and Julia on the condition that her sister Edie and her husband never enter it. The girls move to London to live in the flat and get to know the other residents of the building.
I really liked the first three-fourths of this book. Like Time Traveler's Wife there are elements of science fiction but somehow they seem believable. The characters are well-developed and if not always likeable, intriguing. Martin, the upstairs neighbor with OCD, was my favorite character. The last fourth of the book was disappointing. It felt rushed and the very ending was particularly unsatisfying – it felt like the author just gave up.
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Christmas Morning

Santa left the boys a scavenger hunt for their big presents this year:

They loved them! They rode them in the freezing garage for a long time on Christmas morning. The next day Travis cleared the snow off the driveway and the boys stayed out there for at least an hour riding them.

Book Review: Pretty In Plaid

Pretty in Plaid: A Life, a Witch, and a Wardrobe, or, the Wonder Years Before the Condescending, Egomanical, Self-Centered Smart-Ass Phase by Jen Lancaster

Goodreads Summary: In Pretty in Plaid, Jen Lancaster reveals how she developed
the hubris that perpetually gets her into trouble. Using fashion icons
of her youth to tell her hilarious and insightful stories, readers will
meet the girl she used to be.

Think Jen Lancaster was always
“like David Sedaris with pearls and a super-cute handbag?” (Jennifer
Coburn) Think again. She was a badge-hungry Junior Girl Scout with a
knack for extortion, an aspiring sorority girl who didn’t know her
Coach from her Louis Vuitton, and a budding executive who found herself
bewildered by her first encounter with a fax machine. In this humorous
and touching memoir, Jen Lancaster looks back on her life-and
wardrobe-before bitter was the new black and shows us a young woman not
so very different than the rest of us.

The author who showed us
what it was like to wait in line at the unemployment office with a
Prada bag, how living in the city can actually suck, and that losing
weight can be fun with a trainer named Barbie and enough
Ambien is ready to take you on a hilarious and heartwarming trip down
memory lane in her shoes (and very pretty ones at that).

My rating: 3 of 5 stars I enjoyed learning about Jen’s formative years but I didn’t think this book was as laugh out loud funny as her previous books. If you haven’t read any of Jen’s other books, I would read them first. I don’t think this book would be very interesting to someone who didn’t know about Jen’s rise and fall in the corporate world as an adult.

The Sunday Salon: Christmas Loot Edition

I must have been VERY good this year:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls from my LibraryThing SantaThing.

Bad Faith by Gillian Philip from Leah in the Conversati-om book exchange. She also got me the really cute magnetic yoga girl bookmark.

Blue Bloods by Melissa De La Cruz from my mom.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood box set by J.R. Ward from my sister-in-law Jenny.

New Moon: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion from my brother Nicholas.

The Eat-Clean Diet and The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook from my mother-in-law.

And the piece de resistance from my sweet husband – A Kindle!!

On the non-reading front, Travis's dad and stepmom gave me a Garmin Forerunner 305 for running. I'm very excited to try it out – once all this freaking snow goes away.

Santa Was Here

And look – Rudolph's nose turned the water red!

Twas The Night Before Christmas

For the first year in a long time, we didn't have anywhere we had to be on Christmas Eve. We had a lot of fun at home getting ready for Santa.

First we made gingerbread cookies:

After dinner, we channeled our excitement about Santa coming into making foam gingerbread houses. (None of the real gingerbread house kits are peanut-free.):

West didn't want me to take his picture because he said his house wasn't done. But he kept taking it apart and starting over so it never looked any more done than this:

Then we read Twas The Night Before Christmas:

And finally, we put out treats for Santa and his reindeer:

We left hot chocolate instead of milk for Santa because Cash said Santa would be cold and want to drink something hot:

My plan worked – the boys were totally tuckered out after all of that and went right to sleep.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Ornament Cupcakes

Library Loot – December 16

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marge that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

I picked up a ton of stuff (for me) at the library yesterday because I had a bunch of holds come in at the same time. Funny how it always seems to work that way.

Books: Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, Kiss of Midnight by Lara Adrian, Bindi Babes by Narinder Dhami

Audio Books: The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

What did you get this week?

As Long As I’m Living, My Baby You’ll Be

Now that Tiny is here, West has been trying really hard to remind me that he's still my baby. He's been trying out all of the baby things, including wearing Tiny's size 12 month clothes. West is so skinny he can actually fit into them but the arms and legs are too short of course. The other day he took his nap using the Boppy as a pillow and one of Tiny's blankets.

You'll always be my baby sweet West.