Book: Anson's Way

This book had a lot more to it than I thought it would. It's Young Adult fiction, and the author is a professor at Calvin College, my alma mater. I expected it to be good, as Schmidt is an award-winning author, but it was even better than I expected.
Set in 18th-century Britain, Anson is the young drummer assigned to a military unit tasked with enforcing King George II's rule over the Irish. His own struggle plays out as he both serves in the military, which is not only a family tradition, but in a unit led by his father, yet sees a disparity in why it is necessary to have the laws the unit is then tasked to enforce.

In the end, he is forced to choose between honor of two kinds, making a choice beyond his years.

Unlike the last book club selection, this was a quick read. I enjoyed learning a bit about history and reading along as Anson learned lessons and made his choices.

Anson's Way

by Gary D. Schmidt

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Originally posted at: http://rebeccasmiscellanies.blogspot.com/

Book: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I'm about to post a bunch of books, so probably not going to say a whole lot about them...

I read this book with my book group, all 500+ pages of it. In fact, when our group first met about this book, I had only read about a quarter of it. It's a good book, but not an easy book. There are some sections that seem to drag on, and a few little discrepancies with the timelines that are confusing in the beginning. Very literary, interesting concepts, read if you like long, literary books.

Oh, one other thing... if you follow the Opr*h book club, you may have seen this title there. I didn't know it was one of her selections until after I read it, but I will say it fits perfectly in the type of books she normally selects, so it was not a surprise to learn that.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

by David Wroblewski

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Originally posted at: http://rebeccasmiscellanies.blogspot.com/

52:12 Easter Craft

One of the things I enjoy doing in my free time is creative projects. I was inspired by a post on the Make It and Love It blog to make this with my mom, because one of the things that makes creative projects even more fun is working on them with someone else. :)

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Originally posted at: http://rebeccasmiscellanies.blogspot.com/

These days

I was just looking over my blog posts for the last couple of... months, and realized that based on the blog, it looks like I'm reading a little bit and taking exactly one picture per week, you know, keeping VERY busy. But besides all that, I've been doing a few other things.

First of all, I'm job hunting. Yes, I've heard the economy stinks. Yes, actually, that does make job-hunting sort of depressing. But two years ago when I applied to grad school, while the housing market was shaky, nobody knew yet that the financial markets were also going to blow up, and that together these things would cause the "Great Recession." Lovely, isn't it? To many others out there who are also job-hunting: I feel your pain.

When I'm not sending out resumes and looking at job boards, I've really gone crazy on a new hobby, digital scrapbooking. I've gone so completely crazy that I started another whole blog about it. You can check it out here. In fact, I was recently selected to be on the creative team at a scrapbooking website, which has been kind of fun. At least I'm good at something, even though apparently that something isn't job hunting or world peace.

It's St. Patrick's Day today, and although I'm not much of a beer drinker and will admit that green beer is even less appealing in general, I'm pretty sure margaritas are green, too. Oddly, my favorite margaritas are blue, and those are VERY appealing, but that's not important. Today's margarita will be green. Also, in honor of the holiday, I want you to know that if you are reading this....

Thanks for reading!

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Originally posted at: http://rebeccasmiscellanies.blogspot.com/

52:11 Poppies

No, not those kind of poppies. I'm job-hunting, remember? I've heard that can be problematic.

Friends, meet the California state flower.

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Originally posted at: http://rebeccasmiscellanies.blogspot.com/