28 | February | 2013 | Earful of Cider

A lot of math stuff arrived in my inbox this week . . .

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Tasty, Tasty Math

$Math Is Awesome$

Jane is learning to reduce and add and otherwise manipulate fractions.

It’s hilarious to watch.

“I can’t do these,” she says, gripping her pencil. “They’re stupid and I’m too dumb to work them . . .” She pauses and fills in four in a row. ” . . . and they don’t make sense. I mean, what’s 7 times 9 anyway? Sixty-six,” she mutters.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Sixty-six doesn’t sound right.”

“Sixty-three plus three, Mom, but it’s really 9 over 11—see? Do I have to do the bonus questions? I’m not going to get them right.”

“Try one. Just make the bottom numbers the same—“

“And stack ’em, yeah, yeah . . . done. Thank heavens.”

“See?” I say. “You complained about how you couldn’t do these, and tore right through them while you griped. You’re a cranky, little math whiz.”

“I am?” She reaches for her next assignment. “I don’t really get vocabulary-based reading comp. I can’t do the questions . . . “

“Sorry,” I said. “It only works for math.”

“Darn.”

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Gandalf, Take Me Away!

Gandalf--take me away!

Or, you know, earlier.

Coincidentally, my MIL is coming back Sunday . . .

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Take it One Page at a Time

Booking it

The romance panel was not fit for a family blog . . .

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Hey, an Award is an Award

My friend Wendy S. Russo tagged me in her the Alternative Booker Award post, for which I’m supposed to share my five personal favorite books.

This isn’t a post, it’s Mission Impossible—five, Wendy? Only five?!

I told my husband and he shook his head. “I don’t think you can do that,” he said. “Not you.”

In the end, I limited myself to the most recent fiction Flotsam Books I’ve touched. I’ve explained my theory of flotsam books before— the comfort reads that I pick up at random (HEY-o!) due to proximity and merge with as I move around the house before I resurface, put them down, and wander off. They’re in constant motion like literary seaweed caught in a tidal loop, though there’s a definite tide pool in the bathroom.

So, I scribbled down the last five I know I’ve encountered:

Monstrous Regiment Of Women by Laurie R. King — This is the second of Ms. King’s Mary Russell / Sherlock Holmes series and the one I return to, over and over. Set slightly after the first World War, Russell and Holmes investigate the charismatic leader of a suffragist enclave, whose cause has benefited from the deaths of several of her well-to-do followers. While Russell infiltrates the group, she struggles with her faith in science, her skepticism of spirituality, and her feelings about Holmes.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien — Do I really need to explain this one?

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett — No one does satire like Mr. Pratchett. Here, he does The French Revolution, corruption, and law enforcement, using a time slide, a serial killer, and one of my favorite characters in any and all universes, Commander Samuel Vimes. You can’t start with this one, but working up to it is a treat and a half.

Double Deuce by Robert B. Parker — Spenser, Hawk, ghettos, racism, drive-by shootings, psychological social explorations, and, as always, relative justice.

Last Hot Time by John M. Ford — A young man escaping from his post-apocalyptic small town discovers himself in an alternate Chicago populated with hustlers, mobsters, master magicians, and elves with tommy guns. This may actually be my favorite book.

Now I have to pass on the agony of indecision to five other bloggers—only five, Wendy? Really?

Lisa Blackman of Semi-Educational Reviews

Lyra of Lyrical Meanderings