"...the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night..."*

Something Missing, by Matthew Dicks, is a strange and compelling little book - much like its main character. Martin Railback is a thief: he supports himself by stealthily entering the homes of his carefully vetted "clients" and stealing whatever he needs: a half-bottle of laundry detergent here, a box of cereal there, a roll or two of toilet paper, a book of stamps. Things most people would never notice missing. His thoroughness and his obsessive-compulsive tendencies lend themselves to the success of his chosen "career." But after he is almost caught one day, he throws caution to the winds (well, for him), and begins to interfere in the lives of his clients, people whom, after all, he considers practically family. Martin reasons, If he can make people's lives better, why shouldn't he? For a common house thief, Martin is a remarkably likeable and engaging guy, and I was surprised how thoroughly drawn into his story I became.

And now for something completely different:

*************
*I Thessalonians 5:4

"We're never getting off this island, Richard."

Sophie and Kristin asked the most frequently asked question: how do you choose what to read?

I read a bunch of blogs (a quick smattering: Pickle Me This, RubyRed Books, Make a Note). I get reccs from friends whose reading tastes I know and trust (often from their blogs – Jess, Suse, Katya) but also friends from the coffee shop or fellow librarians. Sometimes I just wander the library (usually the library) and pick up whatever looks good – I do this at the bookstore but usually with a pen and paper so I don’t have to BUY everything. Every couple months I run the names of my favorite authors thru Amazon to see if they have anything new coming out. And when I worked in an actual library, it was even easier. Every book that crosses my radar that might interest me gets entered into an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop. But I also have a little notebook I carry in my purse. I have even been known to text myself with book titles.
It’s an organized sickness.

I also find that I must be in the proper mood to appreciate the right book. Which is why I didn’t dive right into the newest Audrey Niffenegger, for example. My brain wanted fast and furious action, and so it was thrilled with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But after that maelstrom of emotion, I was ready for something calmer (albeit just as disturbing). This is why I have dozens of books on my TBR shelves, because you never know what mood may strike at 3am. And sometimes if I am in a slump, I reread an old favorite (Rosamunde Pilcher’s “big books" and Raffaella Barker’s Hens Dancing and Summertime are prime for this).

“…and then of course, there are the problems with follow-through if I actually get something home...”
Don’t let me fool you. For all the reading I do, there are dozens of books sitting on my bookshelves/floor/nightstand, etc. awaiting my attention. More often than not to be ignored for some fly-by-night newcomer…

Paula asked, Have you read The Lace Reader? Did you like it?
I have, and I did enjoy it. I followed it up with The Birth House though and for some reason constantly confuse the two.

sueeeus said...
Have you read Shantaram, and did you like it? (Long, but I liked it for the most part.)
Haven’t read it, and in fact had to go look it up on Amazon, but it looks good. So I will put it on my list.

Have you read Fraction of a Whole, and did you like it? (Tedious, but I eventually finished it. Parts made me laugh, but the tedium outweighed the rest.)
I haven’t read it, but and also had to look it up on Amazon. It doesn’t strike me as the type of book I enjoy.

What about The Housekeeper and the Professor? (Loved it.)
This looks fascinating. I think I will get this to read. The premise sort of reminds me of Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room.

And Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime? (Loved it.)
Really liked this. Read it in the “trilogy” of Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn and Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark, as suggested by Badger. Who was right, as always.

(I can read 4 books to your 47,212. How on earth can you read so much??!!!!)
I breathe, I eat, I read. Oh, and I neglect my children.

And now for something completely different, but also from Sueeus:
Are you a bar soap or body wash person?
I like body wash. I will be eternally bitter that SoftSoap stopped making their Milk & Honey bodywash. Bastards.

What's your favorite 70s music?
You're not serious? I don’t know. I listen to a lot of hip-hop crap from my zumba classes (Pitbull, Lady Gaga, etc.), and a lot of stuff like Coldplay and Radiohead because my husband digs them too. I don’t actually like music usually. I have noise issues…

Rachel:
I'm not a follower, but I read all your posts...and here in Australia we got AS Byatt's Children's Book months ago. I still have it sitting in my to-read pile, and felt guilty everytime you mentioned not being able to get it!
Feel guilty no longer – I have my very own copy sitting on my nightstand not being read right now too.

mouselegs [I LOVE that name, btw]:
I'm sure I have questions but can't concentrate with all the shouting (school holidays here). Maybe next week, when there is only one shouting, I will be able to think again.
I anticipate not being able to form a coherent thought until mine are out of the house permanently. In like, 20 years.

Jess:
I'm sure you've mentioned this before, but favorite pie and recipe? And is there a story behind having a basement oven?
Coconut custard pie. Yum. Recipe here.
And the story is that when we moved into our house 6 years ago, the upstairs oven had one setting: Broil the Shit Out of Something. Have you ever tried to broil chocolate chip cookies? No? Well, I recommend you don’t. We had brought out old range with us, and we hooked it up downstairs next to the functioning gasline, as an interim measure. Well, the interim lasted till last spring, when I finally got my upstairs oven fixed. I would never try to bake anything tricky like a soufflé in there, but for cookies, roast chicken, etc., it’s fine, and it makes scones remarkably well since they requite such high heat. And that is...the rest of the story. (Did anyone else read those Paul Harvey book when they were young? I loved those…)

Eleanor told me how wonderful my blog is (she’s so sweet, if delusional) and adds: Now that I've taken care of that... a question...If I tell you that I've tried to read the 1st 30 pages of "The Children's Book" 3 times already but kept falling asleep would you still love me?
Darling Eleanor, I would love you even if you told me your favorite book was Lace, followed by Lace II, followed by Flowers in the Attic.

Elizabeth:
1. Where do you store all your books?
Do you keep them all, hand them off to friends, donate, hoard?
I used to be manic about keeping every last one, but in the past few years, I have come to just want the ones I really love or use around me. My very favorites for the most part are in lovely custom-made look-built-in shelves in my bedroom, which were a Christmas gift from H. I have two filled cases in the living room for both my and H’s books. Most of my cookbooks live in a case in the hallway just outside the kitchen. I have a wall lined with shelves on the landing up to the third floor, for all the cheesy paperbacks and travel guides and things that I don’t want to get rid of but also don’t need to display. I have more cases in the third floor office for our computer books and H’s linguistics books and things like that. All my knitting and crafty books are in a smallish bookshelf in my sewing room. The boys each have big bookcases in their rooms for their books, and there’s a bookcase in the third floor playroom for my childhood books that I think they’d like to read someday. In other words, the books are everywhere.
I like to be able to lend out books, and I often buy duplicates intentionally if I run across favorites priced cheaply, so I can give them away. But if I have a book near and dear to me, I usually won’t lend it out, except to Gina.
I usually donate a few bags of paperbacks to our church’s annual book sale, and I sell some at Half Price Books (for example, I just sold all my pregnancy and baby books. And then bought more books with the proceeds.)
Clearly I am a sick woman.

2. Have you thought of writing one?
I have two “novels” sitting in my bedroom right now. One is an outline, a lot of research, and some random chapters. The other is just writing, but it fills about half a notebook. More likely than not, neither one is ever going to see the light of day.

3. How is Flat Edward holding up? Is he going to be replaced by Bill or Eric?
Flat Edward is hanging out in my sewing room. He can never be replaced by any other vampire. However Eric grows close to my heart the further into Charlaine Harris’s novels I get.

4. Did you ever get into the Outlander series?
I read the first one and really liked it (although I admit to some appallment (is that a word?) over the wife-beating scene, and how cheerful Gabaldon was about it.)
But I never read any more. I guess I didn’t see how much more she could possibly have to say, since the first one was like a thousand pages long.

5. My word verification: morusle.
What's the first thing that comes to mind?
Perusal, a small moral or morsel? Am I the only one who plays these silly word games?
I for some reason went to mollusk. So no, you are not the only one. Not by a long shot.

Stomper Girl: Not sure if you read crime fiction (as opposed to True Crime Fiction) but if you do do you have some favourites?
I love Josephine Tey and Elizabeth George, and I like Minette Walters’s earlier stuff. Am enjoying discovering Val McDermid, although she’s very gory. I also have recently discovered Ruth Rendell, who writes psychologically tense novels which just happen to have a perfectly plausible and exciting mystery embedded in them. I am quickly reaching the conclusion that the woman is a genius.

Julia wants to know:
…do you have a favorite A.S. Byatt book, and if yes, which one is it and why?
My favorite AS Byatt book is The Virgin in the Garden. The characters of Alexander and Frederica develop and mature throughout the quartet, but in the first novel, they are so young and vulnerable, and I love learning something else about them every time I reread. The twining of present day (in the book, 1950s) with historical events, and the way in which Byatt draws parallels, intrigues me no end.

Also, do you like Margaret Drabble as well?
I have read one Drabble (The Witch of Exmoor, about which I remember exactly nothing. I know I should read more, as she is Byatt’s sister and it’d be nice to discover another such brilliant author.

And finally, very interested to hear what you think of The Children's Book. I read it last month and am still cogitating over my reactions.
I haven’t started Children’s Book yet. Trying to read Byatt with 4 children around is like, I don’t know, trying to perform brain surgery in the center ring at a circus. My time will come. For now, owning it is enough.

Beth said...
Have you ever finished a book and then hugged it, or am I the only one who does that?
No, you are not alone. I have been known to sleep with said book under my pillow (Hens Dancing); alternately, I have gotten up out of bed and put said book outside my house or in my car because it could not stay in my house One. Minute. Longer (Salem’s Lot).

Penni said...
Okay, if someone were to hand you a girl baby and a boy baby, what would you name them? (I am name obsessed). Would you keep the babies?
(I am very curious where Penni intends to find these babies...Hmmm.) I am name obsessed too. I own way more baby names books than any one person probably should. I also am fascinated by the psychology of names.
If it were a boy – oof, this is tough. I think I used up all the boy names I liked.
If, God forbid, I were to have another boy baby, I would – all other things being equal and with my husband’s opinion mattering not one whit – name him either Eamon or Mark.
If it were a girl – well, if I’d ever had a girl baby, she would have been Eleanor. So I will stick with that. It was my mother’s middle name, and I think it’s lovely and elegant. (She threatened to come back and haunt me if I ever used her first name, which she despised (it was Elsie, which I think is actually sort of cute…))
And yes, I would keep the babies. I mean, why not? I already have the world’s most chaotic household, what’s two more babies? But someone else would have to sleep train them.

If you had to write under a pseudonym what would it be?
Kate something...something hyphenated. Kate Parker – something.
There. Clear as mud. Look for me: Kate Parker-Something.

What is your favourite thing about blogging?
All the cool people I have gotten to “meet,” some in real life.
And all the cool people whom I “meet” and then get to read THEIR books and talk about them on the blog (ahem). There’s something recursively exciting about that process!

Katya:
Do you like Margaret Atwood? If so, have you read Oryx and Crake? Did you like it? I keep hearing it's awful but feel like I have to read it because I want to read The Year of the Flood which sounds kind of sequel-y.
I usually enjoy Atwood immensely (Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace, I even liked The Blind Assassin and most Atwood fans panned it). Her scope and range are mind-boggling. However, I did not especially like Oryx and Crake. I am dreading picking up Year of the Flood, which I fear I must, since I own and have read everything else she has written, because I think I am going to have to reread O&C and I most emphatically do not want to.

I think this might have been asked, but what book have you hated the most? For me it was Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City.
Hands down Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full. I threw it away in an airport garbage can, I hated it so much. I didn’t even want to leave it on the airplane because I couldn’t inflict it on someone else.

ssheers asks the hardest question of all:
What are your five favorite books?
And then she followed with:
Above, I asked you "What are your five favorite books?" Feel free to modify the question any way you want: go ahead and give us your six or ten or 100 favorite books or change "favorite" to "desert island-worthy" or just tell us the five (or six or ten) books that you've read recently that you enjoyed.
I am such a glutton for books, I will answer ALL of these.

First, the easy question, books I have read recently that I enjoyed. This is marginally more difficult than usual because I stopped keeping a list of what I’d read. I find it freeing to not keep track. I was tired of being stressed about something that is the primary love of my life.
So, off the top of my head:
Friday’s Child - Georgette Heyer. Think fluffy Jane Austen.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larson. Riveting, once I got past the first 30 pages of boring financial crap. Lisbeth Salander made it all worth it.
The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club - Gil McNeil. Add to my list of comfort reading. Sequel comes out in May.
Aunt Dimity’s Death - Nancy Atherton. More comfort reading. Sweet and quiet.
Abide With Me - Elizabeth Strout. One of the most under-recognized authors of the day, if you ask me. (Although she did win the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge.)
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate - Jacqueline Kelly. Think Caddie Woodlawn tackles the scientific world.
Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakuaer. Fascinating stuff. What I plan to have in my hand the next time those nice young boys in black pants and white shirts ring my doorbell. I have some questions…

Also, I am really, really enjoying Audrey Niffenegger’s newest, Her Fearful Symmetry. Like, look forward to curling up in bed and stay up way too late reading it enjoying.

My five, no, six, no TEN favorite books (sort of…I played fast and loose with the “book” concept) (also, please note: I could revise and switch and add and subtract books to this all day long, no joke, AND it is not necessarily in order):
1. Possession/The Virgin in the Garden
2. Satanic Verses
3. Stones from the River
4. Roller Skates
5. The Sparrow
6. Emma & Pride and Prejudice
7. The Sandman graphic novels (Volume 7, “Brief Lives,” is my favorite in the series.)
8. Hens Dancing/Summertime
9. Miss Buncle’s Book/Miss Buncle Married
10. The Cunning Man

My ten desert-island books (see note above):
1. My Riverside Shakespeare
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. The Bible
4. Complete works of John Donne
5. Possession
6. Satanic Verses
7. The Divine Comedy
8. The Sandman graphic novels
9. War and Peace
10. The Michelin Green Guide to Florence

Desert island books differ from favorites because one never knows how long it will take to get rescued – you’d hate to run out of reading material.

I know I missed some questions; I swear it won't take me another week to get to them.

The Devil: We have work to do my loathsome toad. Smeck: Evil work? The Devil: No, knitting. Of course evil work!

Bearette24 asks, Are you answering these questions in your next post? I read your blog, but I don't have the Google follower gadget thingy.
Well, Gott in Himmel, why ever not? It will change your life. Or at least your blog-reading habits. But in short, I will answer questions in this post and then the next. I thought I’d split ‘em up by Book-related and Not, but I am not sure it will be that discrete.

Dearest Suse asked:
How is your knitting going?
I keep knitting Meathead Hats. Hat after hat after hat. I especially enjoy creating or picking out the little decoration at the end...My shawl languishes bedside. And just today I became completely obsessed with knitting rag rugs and sliced up a dozen old t-shirts. Am I insane?

Do you like green yarn? Worsted weight, approximately 200g's worth? Dark green or light green?
Green is my favorite color. Dark is nice, but so is light. And I love yarn. But of course. I just bought more today. And snuck it into the house and then logged it all on Ravelry and photographed it. In other words, I spent hours of my life playing with yarn today. See how sick I have become? I hope you’re pleased.

Have you a quilt on the go?
I do. I always seem to. This one is only in the planning and cutting stages right now. It’s for my niece who is about 2. It’s very pink and green and floral, and it may be the most “designed” quilt I have ever done. I really really like it so far, and hope she does too.

Are you around this weekend for a little Skyping?
Sunday? Saturday is impossible. (Gah! Where did my weekend go??)

My word verification is chokilat. What do you think of that?
It’s a sign from God saying, send Babelbabe more chocolate Timtams.
What? You asked.

Yes, Badger from Texas, what is your question?
I have questions! What book(s) have you just NOT been able to finish, after more than one attempt?
Please don’t hate me.
Life of Pi.
Sophie’s World.
Underworld.
Anna Karenina (although I have read most of this, just not in order).
And I fear The Elegance of the Hedgehog is going to join that list.

What has the weather been like up there?
The weather was crappy and cold and rainy-verging-on-snow-and-sleet until two days ago when the sun came out, the mercury rose, and it’s been a lovely week/end of Indian summer.

Are the leaves pretty yet, or are they done already?
Mostly the leaves are just changing. The maples especially are in full fall glory.

Do you like apple cider?
I love apple cider. I even have a favorite brand from a local farm. But cider mixed with things like cranberries is an abomination unto God.

What are your boys going to be for Halloween?
My boys originally wanted to be esoteric Pokemon characters but over the weekend they changed their minds and want to be a ghost (Terzo), a vampire (Seg), the Grim Reaper (Primo), and the baby is a mummy. (Haha, get it? The baby is a...oh, never mind.)

Which do you prefer: taking the kids around the 'hood to get treats, or staying home and passing out treats yourself?
I *prefer* to hole up in my bedroom in the dark and drink vodka till it’s all over.

Janet demands to know, and with good reason as I have been putting this off forever because, really, who wants to drive across Pennsylvania with four children by herself? Not I. Especially. When are you coming East to visit us and introduce us to your little hooligans?
Now that I’ve answered the above question (the Halloween one), are you sure you WANT to meet the hooligans?
I am hoping to get home in the spring, or whenever my next ancient relative dies, whichever comes first.

Blogger daysgoby said...(How much does it crack me up that each of you is labeled “Blogger.” Like I didn’t know that. )

What book do you keep beside your bed?
Hahahaaaaaa. Singular? Lemme see, there right now: The two Mason-Dixon knitting books. The newest Fables graphic novel, which H brought home for me this afternoon. The Girl Who Played with Fire. Her Fearful Symmetry which I started this morning. Two weeks’ worth of Newsweek. A couple blank books, full of things like random scribblings, Christmas planning lists, and work research notes. And any other books moving up the TBR queue.

What's your favorite thing to do in the winter?
I love ice skating. Love it. I used to skate two or three times a week pre-children. I also like to ski but it’s expensive and much harder to do, with or without children.

Are you happy living where you are, or would you rather be more citified/rural than you are now?
I adore where I live and would not trade it for anything. The only thing that would make it better would be a bigger yard – but I can live with our small one for everything else good here. (Although if we ever won the lottery, I’d buy the duplex next door, knock it down, and promptly install a fire pit and some chickens.) We are only blocks from several parks, so it’s not a huge big deal.

What type of conversationalist are you? Do you hang back, sip your coffee and nod a lot, or jump in and chat?
I never, ever, ever shut up and can’t seem to help myself. I often leave a conversation and ten minutes later become convinced that my partner in conversation is cursing me and thinking, “What an unpleasant, talkative, and rude person.”I console myself that I am fairly amusing, most times.

Do you have any pets?
I have 2 cats. They are brother and sister; the girl is Emmy and the boy is Septimus (named after Septimus Hodge in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia). Seppie is pretty sick right now, so I am hoping he is ok. And we are due for another goldfish (the last one was named Jasper; the next will be named Emmett).

What's your favorite thing to do that you don't write a lot of blog posts about?
Swimming or running. Although I do have a blog post somewhere in my Drafts folder all about swimming featured in novels.

I think I will wrap up this round with some questions from the Queen, Blackbird, whom I haven’t actually talked to in far too long.
Do you have any Winter plans for you and the boys? I'm always impressed with your trips to the zoo/parks/coffee shop.
Don’t be – if I just sat at home with them, we’d all be dead sooner rather than later.
There is a whale exhibit at the Natural History Museum Primo wants to see, and the boys are asking to go check out the Heinz History Center because of the Pittsburgh Penguins (hockey type) exhibit. There are also new penguins (the birds) at the Aviary. I owe them all a trip back to the art museum, which they loved the first time. Otherwise, we go to the library, I go to the gym where they hang out in the daycare and watch Pokemon cartoons, and we spend as much time as possible up at the park until winter closes in. We have lots of Halloween activities planned (parties, bonfire, parade, in addition to good old trick-or-treating), and hockey championships coming up...

What's going on with those boys anyhow? I feel like I'm not up to speed on them.
Primo is rocking 3rd grade. He is getting into computer game design bigtime, and I am having a tough time keeping him in books. On the other hand, his lack of bulk is not helping his hockey or soccer career, and as the games get more aggressive and competitive, and the other kids grow bigger, I am afraid he may have to look for another sport to play. I am also terrified our sick cat is going to die, which would KILL Primo. He adores that cat and is terribly worried.
Seg continues to come into his own in 1st grade, although I have had no fewer than 4 teachers pull me aside to tell me how different my two boys are. As if I was unaware. Please. If I hadn’t actually given birth to both of them, I myself would swear one of them was adopted. He is playing soccer and hockey, too, and his piano lessons are coming along beautifully. He plays with both hands now, with chords and runs and all kinds of complicated musical stuff I have never and will never understand. He is also reading much more than he used to, he is currently engrossed in the newest Wimpy Kid book.
Terzo is a love but channels my maternal grandfather, which can be disconcerting. He also has a startling and, frankly, scary propensity for fierce tantrums (or as my pediatrician terms them, “heroic.”) He is in preschool 4 mornings a week now, when I miss him very much.
And Quarto is a never-ending source of frustration and amusement. He moves at the speed of light, enjoys flinging trains at people, and refuses to actually USE his somewhat extensive vocabulary. He does, however, bark at every dog we encounter.

What's doing with the house? No reno projects to report on?
The house continues to fall down around our ears. We have installation of storm windows scheduled for the next month, and I am getting bids on a bunch of interior painting. We talk a lot about the kitchen redo, but never seem to actually ever get to it. Now that the oven upstairs works, who needs new countertops, I ask you?

Do the kids like to read as much as you do? C'mon, one of them MUST hate it.
I don’t think Seg is rabid the way Primo and I are, but that’s ok. But the baby shows signs of being as crazed as me...

Would you consider attending BlogHer 10? I can name at least four bloggers who would LOVE to meet you and, without your kidney cooler, could be easily convinced that you are a darling.
I. Am. There.
(Have you got room on your lawn for a smallish tent?)
I am sure no one would be convinced I was a darling, with or without the kidney cooler, but that’s ok. God, I could use the laugh…do you remember how much we laughed in Bethlehem? It was extraordinary, I am still surprised we didn’t do ourselves harm.

And on that pleasant note, I draw "Part I, Questions You Didn’t Even Know You Cared About," to a close. Thanks for awesome questions, and for making me feel so loved (awwww…..) I will answer the rest as soon as my hoodlums give me another straight twenty minutes of peace.

*******************

*"God, the Devil, and Bob"

"You like me! You really like me!"

Aw, you guys. I feel so loved.
(Per Debi's instructions : ))

I am splitting up the questions into two posts: one book-related, and the other not.
Will probably do the non first...

In the meantime, I have a favor to ask, as I use the power of the Internet for good.

A friend's son (hi, Janet!) is doing a project at school and it's got something to do with the fifty States. He is trying to get postcards from all fifty states (huh, I wonder if he needs Guam?). I am emailing a bunch of you (Liz, Blackbird, Velma, Joke, Badger) because I know where you live, but if any of you live in a state from which you'd be willing to send a postcard to a cute and hardworking kiddo, lemme know via email and I'll send the addy.

Because apparently some other kid's mom already has all fifty states and DC, and I hate over-achievers.

Thankyouverymuch.
You rock.

***************

*Sally Field

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.”

I can't help but notice I lost a "follower."
I only had 6 as it was.
Was it something I said?
Something I didn't say?
Was it my lack of stunning photography/amusing (or not) stories about my children/mundane taste in reading material?

I was GOING to maybe, kinda sorta, possibly jump on the Kim/Suse/Blackbird/Badger bandwagon and open the field for questions, but then I realized I have regressed to junior high and am, frankly, terrified that not only will no one want to ask a single question because who the hell cares, but actually, that no one is even reading.

So.
Um.


If you wanna ask something..., even something sorta silly or whatever , you can. You know, if you want to. But you don't HAVE to.

I already have the crickets cued up.

************
*Lloyd Alexander

I always look for a woman who has a tattoo...here's a gal who's capable of making a decision she'll regret in the future.*

30 pages in, I didn't get it.
Financial mysteries bore me, and I was ready to quit.
Besides, the translation is clunky and awkward.

35 pages in, I met Lisbeth Salander.
And I am still reading.

****************
*Richard Jeni

“Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.”

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Understood Betsy were both resourceful, clever, funny, smart girls with minds of their own but also with a huge capacity for love and family. I read the books over and over again, I treasure them as an adult, and I still think I would have been great friends with each girl. I wanted Aunt Miranda to come round and decide to love me, I wanted Uncle Henry to make me maple syrup candy on fresh-fallen Vermont snow, and I wanted Cousin Ann to help me discover my inner strength and courage.

Elizabeth Enright's Melendy books (The Four-Story Mistake; The Saturdays; Then There Were Five; Spiderweb for Two) entranced me. The Melendy family is delightful. They fight with each other just like a REAL family, but they also adore each other and have the most awesomely fun adventures ever. Their affection expands to include their dog, their housekeeper Cuffy, the handyman Willie, and the stately, elderly Mrs Oliphant. I figured if they could adopt Mark, they could certainly adopt me – after all, Randy and I were practically the same age! I grew up with two brothers, one younger, one older. I never actively longed for a sister - but then I met Randy and wanted HER as my sister.

Despite the fact that, unlike the above books, Hilary McKay’s novels (Saffy’s Angel; Caddy Ever After; Indigo’s Star; Permanent Rose (and there’s a new one coming out this spring, Forever Rose)) are set firmly in modern day England, complete with modern-day ills – the Casson family’s mother is a thoroughly distracted artist, their father lives away and eventually shows up with a girlfriend - the flavor is much the same. The children are charming and scrappy and funny and fiercely loyal to each other, and to their wingnut parents. As so many of their friends did, I could have slipped right into the warm, messy, friendly chaos of the Casson household.

Janine Boissard’s lovely (and hard to find!) novels chronicle the lives of the Moreau sisters, growing up in France with a nurturing mother and a fiercely protective father. I remember noting that French teenagers are much more sophisticated than American teenagers.

I adored Trixie Belden and her friendly parents, rambling, comfy house, and propensity for solving scary-but-not-dangerous mysteries. Why could I never find any mysteries to solve in my safe little suburb? Hmmm?

My favorite Anne of Green Gables book is Anne of Ingleside, the one in which Anne has a gajillion children tumbling happily around a big old house. I’d fit right in, of course I would, Anne (and Susan) would love me as she did Rilla and Nan and Walter and the rest.
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And sometimes I even dreamed of finding out I was Rose’s long-lost girl cousin - Uncle Alec would adopt me, too, and I could live in the Aunt-Hill, and he could make me eat porridge and brown bread and ride ponies and throw away my corsets. (I had a bit of a crush on Uncle Alec.)

Even though I had a family and a home of my own, something in each of these books made me long to be embraced by these characters, to become their friend, and to be welcomed to their homes and into their family. I wanted to be a real part of each of these families.

Last night I read Jeanne Birdsall’s second Penderwick book, The Penderwicks of Gardam Street. The first, simply titled The Penderwicks, didn’t do a lot for me, truth be told. The plot was ridiculous, the book's events absurd, and the ending completely unsatisfying. Nevertheless, I liked the girls. A lot. I loved Rosalind’s devotion to her family, Skye’s stubbornness, Jane’s creativity, and Batty’s resourcefulness. (Do we ever find out what Batty is short for??) I loved the way they functioned as a unit, and the way they helped each other and their dad.

I did not immediately read the second book when it was published but when I stumbled upon it at the library last week, I picked it up. Birdsall doesn’t do it *again* – actually, this second book is far and away BETTER than the first. Yes, the plot is predictable, but the girls are charming, inventive, silly, and downright delightful, each trying to figure out her place in the family and the world at large. Yet again, I’ve found a family I want to adopt me.

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*Matt Groening