Mrs. Riggs

A lot of the people I am grateful for in my past are teachers, but librarians also have a huge permanent spot in my heart. I’m pretty sure that my patronus is a librarian. (Unfortunately, I am a Hufflepuff and never did manage to get the patronus charm down well, so I can only assume.)

For the most part I’ve forgotten almost all of my librarians’ names. Not Mrs. Riggs though. She was my grade school librarian and she was ridiculously kind to me. She knew all the good books, film strips, and records and never batted an eye when I managed to talk my teacher into letting me out of class (which I hated) to go watch my Greek gods and goddesses film strip again.

Her little haven of books was my favorite place in the school. Loved it more than the playground. Certainly more than the classroom. I loved Mrs. Riggs more than any student in the school and more than all but one teacher. She had two things I value above all others, kindness and a really great collection of books.

 I was so disappointed by the junior high school library. It was run by managers who were always in the back, telling the student volunteers what to do. If my high school had an adult librarian, I never saw any evidence of it. I failed to be impressed by school libraries again until I was in college. For some reason, the University of California, Davis’ library, where my mother worked for a time, seemed rather commonplace to me, but BYU’s Harrold B Lee library filled me with awe.

Years later I was in my elementary school library and picked up a book that had fallen out of popularity—Twenty and Ten, I think. It still had my name written on the card a half a dozen times. I was just flooded with lovely library memories. And when the Yvil sister became a substitute teacher for a while about a decade ago, she ran into Mrs. Riggs who remembered her. Twenty years after the fact.

She also sort of remembered me. “There was another one of you. She talked. A lot.” Oh, yes, indeed, I did. How could I resist? A kind adult with rooms full of books that she couldn't wait to share with me. You betcha I talked with her. A lot. Bless her lovely soul!

This could be an actual picture of a patronus for bibliophiles.

The Brain Dump that Facebook Missed

I'm taking a break from Facebook right now for several reasons: The noise of all those voices and notifications. (As of now, I've got 71 waiting for me when I get back next Monday.) The politics and fractious sharing of religious opinions. The pull to look again and again to see if anyone has written anything new. And oh yeah, the life envy. I admit to shoving down a bit of life envy from time to time. (The week before my birthday a friend posted about how sweet her littles were being whispering and planning surprises to delight her for her birthday. I got bubkis. A little twinge of covetousness.)

But more than that I found myself turning again and again to my online community of friends whenever I needed support, not to my family, not to God,  but to Facebook. It was all well and good in moderation, but I'm not that great at moderation. I realized the face I wanted to see was God's face, metaphorically, of course. So I decided to stop immersing myself in my virtual community, seek out real-life interaction with people I love, and try out some of those "Sunday school answers" in real life. (Q: How do you feel the Spirit? SSA: By fasting, praying, attending your meetings and the temple, service, etc.) So here are a few of my insights a week in.

1. I miss it. I miss the noise and the arguments and the announcements. My nephew and his wife just announced a pregnancy, and my SIL had a huge proud mommy moment. My husband says it's "weird" when I tell him to tell them I said congratulations. My daughters agree with him, so I'm tapping my foot, trying to keep my weirdo commitment to not facebook for two weeks. 

2, I have a backlog of thoughts I want to share with the wide, wide world. I want to write, Hence the blog post.

3. I have logged way more hours on my spiritual and intellectual pursuits than I normally do. I've been cleaning up other people's messes in Family Search. (Honestly, doesn't anyone else notice the thirty kids, and six Janes and six Joes and six of everything? Then I have to go research and see which Jane, Joe et al are the real ones and merge a bunch of people which messes with their kids . . . but I digress.) I've also done a lot more reading out loud to Caroline.

4. I am no more physically able to do other kinds of things, like cleaning, exercising, moving things, gardening than I was prior to this fb-fast. So I have a fair amount of sitting around thinking, "Hm, I can't really move: what should I do now?" Luckily, I live in my very own library, filled with my very favorite kind of books. Also, I have six million Kindle books. (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit on the Kindle.) And a laptop. (Did I mention how hard it's been to NOT go to Facebook?)

5. I kind of hate Facebook, because Facebook destroyed casual blogging. Our easy likes, and short quips and one-stop shopping (all of our friends in one spot) was easy enough, but our status updates have been ridiculously easy. A sentence here, a paragraph there. I wrote when I blogged, and I made new friends through blogging. I miss it. But I love Facebook for all the reasons I hate it. I'm fickle like that. 

6, There have been new Doctor Who episodes and I've been staying away from Twitter and Facebook, so after I watch the new episode, my husband asks, "How was it?" And I respond, "SO GOOD!" and that's the end of it. No speculation about Missy's clever idea or chuckling over the clever lines or fist-shaking over Davros' evil plans or cheering over the Doctor choosing mercy and still winning the day. Nope. Nada. Silencio. However, point 3 sort of makes it worth it. I can squee with my online friends later. 

7. People know that I've written on my blog primarily though me posting a link on Facebook, so very few people will see this. Which is fine, I guess. It's the point, I guess. To talk to real people, not virtual ones. The problem is that some of my very favorite people in the world are ones I only have on-line contact with. I won't name names, but I'm fairly certain, they know who they are. 

So, given that maybe seven or eight people will read this, I'm not feeling all that motivated to put a big ribbon of a concluding paragraph onto this mess of thoughts, but please know I DO appreciate you reading it. 

The end. (Of this post. Sheesh. Don't get all dramatic on me.)

Too Many Books?

I have a lot of books. My sister has been teasing me about the fact that I am never going to read them and that I should get rid of them. I hate getting rid of books. Hate it. I got rid of a few dozen boxes in 2008 and I still miss some of them. Would I have read them again? I don't know, but I just loved having them around. ANYHOW, I've decided to read or re-read all of my books and make the decision book by book. I'm not sure this is even a possibility. Can I read them in what remains of my lifetime? I'm going to give it a shot. I won't read all of my husband's Birchy books or the reference books, but everything else I'm going to tackle. As I finish each one I'll decide whether I'll keep it or toss it. I started the other day on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I'll be tossing it because its binding is broken and I have a couple of other copies. There you go. Besides homeschooling, church, and caring for my friend June, that's what I'm up to. 

(Wish I had time to edit, but I don't so you get what you get. Also those aren't my books, just a pic from Google.)

Miss Delacourt is Très Charmante.

I love me a good regency.

And what, pray tell, is a regency?

Well, let me tell ya.

You know this lady, right?

She wrote these novels,

All are set in Regency England

when the Prince of Wales was regent during

George III's insanity, 1811-1820.

They wore clothes like this:

(Just spent thirty minutes

staring at 19th century fashion images.

Where does the time go?)

Anyhow, back to regencies.

So, the thing is Miss Austen died a while back

and many addicts fans needed more.

More clothes, more banter, more romance.

More. More. More.

(It's sort of an insatiable little habit.)

Writers began to oblige the market.

(Georgette Heyer, Elizabeth Mansfield,

and Marion Chesney,

to name a few of my faves.)

Lots of sparkling dialog.

Glorious clothes.

Some farce.

A little social commentary.

Plenty of variety,

always returning to the basics,

frothy, sweet, fun and CLEAN romance.

In the 90s, publishers began to lose sight of the basics

when they began to encourage writers to filthify their work.

I stopped reading them.

In fact, so many readers stopped reading them

that authors stopped writing them.

I could only get my fix by re-reading.

Which sucked.

Enter Heidi Ashworth, novelist

When I realized that she wrote clean Regency Era novels.

I begged an advance copy of her first novel

Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind

which I blogged about here.

In general, I'm against sequels in romance.

Most characters just do not have the oomph to

make it through a sequel credibly.

Miss Delacourt and Sir Anthony do.

Grandaunt Regina and Lucinda do.

Miss Delacourt Has Her Day

maintains the Ashworth sparkle

without taking itself too seriously.

It's filled

with fun and romance and

longing and doubts

and clothes and banter and

obnoxious relatives

and sweet resolution.

I love this book.

I'm betting you will too.

Goodreads is giving away a copy.

Go Enter.
(By clicking the highlighted words.)

Also Heidi is having a Miss D-inspired rosy giveaway at her place.

Go see.

A Waste of my Mortal Probation

So I read the first and last Twilight books. Two thoughts. One for each of them.

Twilight: What's with the apple? Really.

Warning! PG-13 comment on a PG-13 book:

Breaking Dawn: What's with the never-ending s@x?

The end is the best part. Just sayin'.

I Covet the Kindle 2

Ooooo-ahhhh!

Ain't she a beaut!

Just a few tidbits today.

As always, my miscellany contains some of the most insightful and fascinating tidbits to be found on the web. 

1. I took the "Which Hogwarts' House Do You Belong To?" quiz on facebook, and I'm a Hufflepuff. What?!? I'm brave. I'm smart. Hufflepuff? What a disappointment. Yeah, yeah, I make a great friend. Whatever.

2. Last weekend, I had an adventure. I went somewhere. Friday night and ALL day Saturday. Woo-hoo! The Yvil Sister and I went to Heidi Ashworth's book signing down in the East Bay. As expected, Heidi was a delight, her family and friends too. I had a fantastic time, and Yvil, the blog-hater, was a good sport.


Here's the one and only picture my sister took of the two of us. Yes, we are arm wrestling.  At Applebee's. I won. Easily. Only to be expected given my weight advantage.


3. Having closely examined the above picture, I have made a surprising discovery. I need to lose some weight. 140 is a nice even number. Roughly half of me. And yet...

My car is currently stuffed with them, all waiting to be delivered to our cookie-loving neighbors, tempting me. (Oh, how they tempt me!) I am not good with temptation. (She types, munching a Samoa/Carmel Delight.) It may be time to attempt a second fake gastric bypass.

4. Do not buy the Daisy Go Round Girl Scout cookies. You have been warned.

5. I am getting an unholy amount of money from my tax return. Hate to give TMI, but for those of you who question the socialist nature of our government, ponder this:

My husband made roughly $24,000 last year.  They took out $2,700 in federal income tax, a purposeful over-withholding. Our income tax return should be $2,700, what we paid. But no. The Earned Income Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit are both "refundable." In other words, if the tax credits are more than the taxes owed by a family, the family receives the difference added as a freebie to their tax return. To the tune of $6,000 additional dollars in the case of our family. That's $8,700 all together.


Wow, you say? Wow, indeed. Don't get me wrong; I'll spend it. It just doesn't seem especially fair to have you all support my family in this way. Yeah, I know you like me (I am a Hufflepuff, after all), but would you hand me the money out of your family's funds? Especially if I didn't even ask. Or say thank you. Anyhow...thank you. Sorry I didn't ask. I'll try to use better manners next year.

I Loved It First

I've been a regency romance fan for a long time. I still remember the first I ever read: Regency Gold by Marion Chesney. It didn't take itself too seriously and was laugh out loud funny. A charming heroine, a gorgeous hero, and a bunch of mischief. I was 12 and I was hooked. Good clean fun.

Not too long after my introduction to the genre, I ran into the works of Jane Austen. "Hey," thought I, "these are just like regencies. Only not quite so funny." Still I happily devoured Austen's works and every other novel set in the England's Regency era that I could get my hands on, nearly twenty years of delightful escapism. Sadly, those two decades have also included a dreadful decline. The regency genre has been dying and the few regencies that I've read in recent years have been disappointing. Not good, not clean, and not fun. Frankly, I have missed them.

Then along comes Heidi Ashworth with her book, Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind. A new regency? A clean regency? Gimme! Her countdown until the book came out was driving me crazy. [FOUR MORE MONTHS?] So I begged. Gimme, please.

Ms. Ashworth was kind enough to send me a galley proof, so that I could be among the privileged first to read it. I love being first. However, as I awaited the book's arrival, I began to worry. What if it was crap? What would I say? "Um, thanks for lending me a copy." "Loved the cover. What kind of rose is that anyway?" Uh...awkward.

No need for worries! I can whole-heartedly recommend Miss Delacourt. It is a delightful romp, everything I'd hoped for: an outspoken (yet lovable) heroine, a dashing (but repressed) hero, and all the impediments to true love I could ever want, all neatly resolved within a gorgeous hardback. It's fresh, funny, filled with love, Shakespeare, some rose patent infringement, and a lot of fun!

So now it's your turn. Sure I cheated, cut in line and read it first, but you can now order your own copy of Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind through Amazon with a pleasant little discount, or you can ask your library to order it so you can read it for free. I did both, but I'm betting Amazon will get it to me first. By a long shot.