It's Official! 2012 Book of the Year.

Well...I got a little waylaid this evening so I'm starting this post a little bit later than planned. What waylaid me, you ask? Facebook. Yup. Really. I just spent an hour reading through posts. Oops. 

In my defense, it's been a long and very rough day. I could seriously just curl up into a ball and go to sleep. But I will soldier on...you deserve to know my pick for the 2012 Book of the Year before the year 2014.

Here's where I left you...

Let's start with getting to the final four. What a sad time...four more books will need to be eliminated.

Match #1 :

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern vs. Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

These books are both in my list of favorites. I hated to make the decision on this one. But...in the end I had to default to my girl crush. I just can't say no to Jenny.

Match 1 goes to...

Match #2 :

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare vs. The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

I don't know what it is about The Shoemaker's Wife, but that book seems to make me very indecisive. I once again changed the winner of this bracket back and forth a pile of times before deciding on a winner. Obviously it was a pretty tight race. In the end though, it was defeated. 

Match 2 goes to...

Match #3 : 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green vs. Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Oh...look at that...Erin's two picks for the year are running against each other. Yup...she suggested both of these books - thus working her way towards redeeming herself from One Day. Yes...I am still holding it over her for that one. 

I'm sure even Erin knows which one of these books wins. Though they are both very good, this won really wasn't a contest. 

Winner of Match 3 is...

Match #4 :

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare vs. The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean

Yup. This one was tough. Like Match #2, this one kept getting tossed back and forth. Cassandra Clare, you are a trouble maker. I really enjoyed The Secret Lives of Dresses, but in the end...it comes down to the stars. No...not those stars...the rating stars. City of Fallen Angels was given 5 stars, The Secret Lives of Dresses was given 4. There you have it.

Match 4 goes to...

Phew. Down to four. Congratulations to Cassandra Clare for taking 2 of the final four slots. Impressive.

Let's keep going...

Left Bracket :

Let's Pretend this Never Happened vs. City of Lost Souls

Oh, come on. You know where this is going... I'm not even going to drag this out.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner...

Right Bracket :

Secret Daughter vs. City of Fallen Angels

Unfortunately, this is where Cassandra Clare's winning streak ends. Secret Daughter is just too amazing to not keep going.

Right side winner...

It's like ripping off a band-aid; the quicker I go, the less painful it is to scrap these books from the list.

This is where it gets sticky. Two fabulous books...one winner. It pained me to make this decision. I read so many great books in 2012 that it has been crazy difficult to get it down to just these two. Either of them would be a great pick. Granted, they are from two completely opposite genres (memoir vs. fiction; comedy vs. drama), but both so wonderful.

And yet, in my heart I always knew who would win.




And so...




...the winner of the 2012 Book of the Year...




...is...

Jenny is just wonderful. I love her. Perhaps a little too much. But she just makes me oh so happy.

Sorry Erin...better luck next year. :)

2012 BOTY Semifinals

Here's where we left off last time...

Today, it's on to round two. We have our sweet sixteen. Now they get whittled down to eight. It's going to be brutal...

Match up #1: 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern vs. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling.

Both of these books garnered 5 stars and both are excellent reads. 

The Night Circus is whimsical and fun. I loved it very much and it reminded me somewhat of Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I love the fact that it was able to be mystical without going over the top and seeming silly. It read very fast and I would absolutely read it again. 

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? is a really cute comedic novel. Mindy Kaling tells short stories from her life in a way that just makes you giggle. She's fantastic. She writes with a laid back and semi-sarcastic style that just made me love her. I laughed out loud several times and sped right through it.

This was a pretty tight race. Both books are seriously excellent and are very welcome in my own personal library. But...there has to be a winner. So, just basing it on which book I would grab first to read again, the winner of match #1 is...

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Match up #2:

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson vs. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

I hate to say it, but this match up was doomed from the start. Both of these books are great, but one is entering this round with a strong disadvantage.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened is a memoir based on Jenny Lawson's ridiculous life. She is hilarious and had me laughing out loud more or less consistently. It was to the point that I was taking photos of excerpts on my phone and texting them to Patti. I couldn't read it in public because I couldn't keep myself composed. I loved it more than I can tell you. Of course, I do have to explain that I may have a small girl crush on Jenny...so that might have worked in her favor.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is a really cute southern style novel. It is really fun and light-hearted. The characters are bubbly and wonderful. I really enjoyed the whole thing. It reminded me a lot of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Just fun southern women with some serious sass. 

Like I said, the deck was kind of stacked on this one. It's a tough one to beat. So...the winner of match up #2 is...

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Match up #3:

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen vs. City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

I seem to be reading a lot of YA Fiction over the last little while. I just find it entertaining and relaxing. Some of the adult fiction can get so stuffy.

The Sugar Queen was the second of Sarah Addison Allen's books that I read in 2012. I love her style. She is very simple, but with an air of mystery. It's marvelous. She is so fun to read that I wound up reading four of her books last year. Yes...she's that good. The books read very quickly and hook you quite easily.

City of Lost Souls was the third of Cassandra Clare's books in 2012. I also read four of her novels last year. Kind of a crazy coincidence that the two end up pitted against each other. City of Lost Souls is the 5th novel in Clare's The Mortal Instruments series. The books are filled with action and suspense, but they are mellow at the same time. I read her books terribly quickly, only frustrated by the fact that there is still at least one more book to come in the series. Ah, the danger of reading serial books.

This was a really good match up. Either of these books would be a great easy weekend or rainy day read. Once again, a difficult decision to make. There are some really good books in the 2012 BOTY list.  The winner of match #3 is...

City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

Match up #4:

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani vs. The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

I'm finding this very hard to do. There are such great books here. In fact, it's kind of making me want to read some of them again. I hope that this year yields such a good group.

The Shoemaker's Wife is just an adorable love story. It stretches decades and continents. It is in the perfect time period for me (turn of the 20th century). I loved the characters. I mean LOVED them. This was one of the books where the characters started to feel like real people. I wanted to know more about them and I was sad when the book ended and I had to leave them.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon was the first Sarah Addison Allen book I read. I'll be honest here and admit that I picked it for the cover. I had never heard of Allen before, nor the titles of any of her books. I enjoyed this book so much that I wound up reading three more of her novels before the year was out. I'm hooked.

I struggled over this one and bounced back and forth on the winner a couple of times. There are versions of the bracket with each as a winner. But ultimately, I had to put my foot down and put one above the other. Winner of match #4...

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

Match up #5:

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay vs. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Now we've entered the right side of the bracket. I'm glad we're half way. This is seriously making me uptight. It's so hard to let a good book go in the loss pile. It's a sad state of affairs.

Criminy. These are both crazy good as well. 

Sarah's Key requires a bit of a strong constitution. It is a difficult read (from an emotional standpoint), but a good one. I typically don't seek out WWII era historical fiction as a favorite, but this one was flat out amazing. Dramatic and poignant and just beautifully written.

The Fault in Our Stars was kind of a surprise for me. For some reason, I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. Maybe I was judging it harshly because it's YA fiction. Perhaps because of that I held it to a lower standard. Whatever the case, this one was wonderful. I couldn't put it down. In fact, the first line of my Goodreads review?  READ THIS BOOK. 

The winner of the very emotional match up #5...

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Match up #6:

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda vs. Ape House by Sara Gruen

Okay...seriously...you pretty much just need to read all of the books on this list. Every time I move to the next section of the bracket all I can think is, "oooh...that book was soooo good." It's killing me.

Secret Daughter was a book I read because Erin would NOT shut up about it. She kept telling me to read it and I kept telling her I had a stack of books planned. I finally caved. Holy crap. This book is amazing. I loved it. Like...LOVED it. I took it to work with me to read in down time. (I never take books to work.) I couldn't wait for my lunch hour so I could get a few more pages in. I read until 2 A.M. a couple of times on work nights because I couldn't put it down. It was just fantastic.

I read Ape House simply because it was written by Sara Gruen and I had adored Water for Elephants. It wasn't what I expected and was totally different from Water for Elephants, but it was still great. In fact, I think I liked it better than Water for Elephants. Yup...it was that good.

But...once again Erin comes through with a winner. Match #6 is taken by...

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Match up #7:

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare vs. Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur

I've discovered that this is much easier to do on my lunch break, when I don't have a ten-year-old hovering over me asking me to check spelling words and querying as to whether I would like to watch the TV show that I am currently obviously watching or if he can play Skylanders. Oy.

City of Fallen Angels is the 4th book in The Mortal Instruments. Like I stated earlier, this series is awesome. It reminds me of the Twilight series, but with less sparkling and a less whiny heroine. I'm a fan. I am currently not-so-patiently waiting for the 6th book in the series to be released...in 2014. Aaaarrrrgghh!

Eight Keys was recommended/lent by Patti. She won it as a FirstReads win on Goodreads. This book is a really cute read. It would be great for anyone from middle school age to adulthood. It's very well done. I quite enjoyed it.

For the second time in the 2012 BOTY, Cassandra Clare pulls ahead. Pretty impressive. The winner of match up #7 is...

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

Match up #8:

The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean vs. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

We've made it to the final section of the bracket!! Yay!!!

Both of these books are super cute reads. They're both very girly, but I loved them. 

The Secret Lives of Dresses was fun to read and one of those books that you're sad to have end. It was mildly more ChickLit than I typically like (read: the main character can be a little whiny and occasionally predictable), but I still had a good time reading it. It had a super sweet premise and I just wanted to know more.

Garden Spells is yet another Sarah Addison Allen novel. I'm telling you, this girl can rock it. I just really enjoy her writing. It's like CoverGirl...easy and breezy. Magnificent. I can read her books in one sitting and they've all let me wanting for more.

And the winner of the final match up (#8) is...

Tada!!! And we have eight! I have to tell you...not the easiest decisions to make. I still stand by the fact that any of the books in this bracket are worth the read.

Tomorrow...the final four and the announcement of the 2012 BOTY. Hooray!!

2012 BOTY Sweet Sixteen - Finally!!

It's been a rough couple of weeks and I've been horribly neglecting the blog. I've been incredibly mopey and lazy and it's time to dig myself out of the rut. I am still working through the loss of Harley. It's just so hard not to have him around. But...life has to go on.

So...even though I'm two weeks later than I planned, it's finally time to work on announcing my pick for my 2012 Book of the Year. Since it tends to become a lengthy situation, I am breaking the BOTY bracket announcement into three separate posts. Today is Sweet Sixteen, followed by the semifinals, and then the finals. It should be fun. All of the books are wonderful.

Last year's goal was a total of 64 books. I didn't make it. Such a sad day. I ended up with 56 books completed. Still 6 above the 2011 count, so I'm happy about that. (This year's goal is again the 64. I'm doing pretty well so far, having completed 14 books already.) Because I didn't have the full 64, lining up the bracket was difficult. What I ended up doing is taking the books that rated 5 stars and putting them in the final 16. I filled up the remainder of the 16 slots with the best of the 4 star books. So here is where we end up :

Not a bad group of books to begin with. Since the bracket is too small to read without clicking directly on it, here are the contestants in list form. (As of today, some of them still have not been reviewed. Those that have been reviewed are linked to their individual posts. Those that have not will be linked up as their reviews are completed.)

1. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

2. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

3. Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

4. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

5. The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

6. City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

7. The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

8. The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

9. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

10. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

11. Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

12. Ape House by Sara Gruen

13. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

14. Eight Keys by Suzanne LaFleur

15. The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean

 16. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

As with last year, we have a couple of authors with multiple entries. Cassandra Clare shows up in both sides of the bracket with two of the books from her Mortal Instruments series. They are fabulous books. Sarah Addison Allen enters her first BOTY bracket with THREE entries. I just discovered her last year and I absolutely adored everything I read of hers so far.

Any of these books would be a fabulous read, but we'll see which one came out on top (yes...I already know the winner). Take your bets. The semifinals show up tomorrow.

A Little Nerd Math

A couple of weeks ago, I read a post over at Padded Cell Confessions. I've been reading Maggie's posts for a while and she's always quite entertaining. It seems that she and her husband had been having a discussion on how many guinea pigs it would take to haul a person in a cart. 

Well...I'm one of those oddballs that thinks about strange things when I really should be sleeping. So...of course I was contemplating Maggie's guinea pig situation. I decided that I needed to solve the problem using math and physics. 

Now...keep in mind that it's been double digit years since I've taken either physics or math...so bear with me. I had originally posted the following comment on Maggie's post:

"I am in agreement with the more than 100 comment. I think they're pretty wimpy. Most of the ones I've seen don't do much more than lay around and stare at things."

Well...it turns out that guinea pigs are a lot stronger and faster than I gave them credit for.  However, they also apparently have really crummy back structure. One website suggested that you can train your guinea pig, but that you shouldn't train it to "play dead" as the shift in weight can cause damage to the spine. So...the mathematical answer is probably just a bunch of hooey, as there are really a lot of other factors at play. As my brother stated, they would probably run in different directions. You'd have to hook them up reindeer style.

But...let's take a look at my math and go from there...

For the sake of this argument, the guinea pigs will be pulling three different shopping carts, on concrete. The first cart will contain a 70 lb. child, the second a 130 lb. woman, and the third a 185lb. man. An average shopping cart weighs 40 lb.

So...the basic physics formula at work here is: force = mass * acceleration. If you figure out how much force each guinea pig can generate as well as how much force would be needed to move the cart, then you should be able to figure out how many guinea pigs you need.

The average male guinea pig weighs 3 pounds, females weigh an average of 2 pounds. So I figured on a mix and put the average weight at 2.5 pounds. Of course, everything needs to be completed in metric, so this is equivalent to 1.14 kilograms. Tada! Mass solved.

The tricky part is the acceleration. And this, honestly, is where I may have gone wrong. If we have any guinea pig experts out there who know the average acceleration rate of a guinea pig, I'd be happy to redo the math...but this is how I figured out my estimated acceleration:

According to the interwebs, the average domesticated guinea pig can run at a rate of 19.5 mph for long distances. However, apparently they have clocked "wild" guinea pigs at a rate of 41.16 mph (for up to 8-15 sec). I took these two numbers to guesstimate that a guinea pig could reach a speed of 30 mph in 15 seconds. This gives an acceleration rate (using change in velocity over change in time) of 2 mph/sec. Convert this to metric again, and you get 0.894 meters/second/second (no...i don't know how to get superscript on here...let it go).

Using this rate of acceleration and the mass calculated earlier, this means that every guinea pig should be able to generate a force of 1.019 Newtons.

Now...obviously, pulling a shopping cart with smooth wheels on a smooth surface will be easier than pulling say a wooden wheeled cart on sand. So...we need to use a coefficient to accommodate for the different friction present in the situation. Since we're dealing with wheels, we're using a rolling resistance coefficient for hard rubber wheels on concrete...a value of 0.01.

Using this coefficient, as well as the force of gravity holding each object to the ground, I calculated the force required to move these objects from rest. Based on that answer, I then divided by the force calculated for a guinea pig. Obviously, partial guinea pigs will not be helpful here (unless we're dealing with zombie guinea pigs), so I rounded up from the devised answer.

So...according to this math, it will take 5 guinea pigs to pull a child, 8 guinea pigs to pull a woman, and 10 guinea pigs to pull the adult male.

Honestly, I'm still not sure I agree with this. But...the other answer I came up with doing it a different way required over 1500 guinea pigs...which seemed rather excessive. So, I'm waiting on that guinea pig expert. Does anyone know how fast a guinea pig can accelerate or much weight a single guinea pig can pull? I don't feel like performing this experiment in real life. (Though I'm sure there is probably some fraternity somewhere that has tried it.)

Farewell, Friend.

Today I lost my buddy...my lab/chow mix, Harley. He was only 9. It's been a really difficult week and a half for our family.

I got Harley from the local shelter when he was just six weeks old. I got him as a companion for Piper since I worked all day and she was home alone. They bonded right away and have been inseparable ever since. It makes us worry that maybe Piper won't handle his passing all that well.

He was always a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. He loved everyone... He was perfectly happy just to hang out and follow you around. What a nice, mellow pup. He could be a super goofy dude, too. He wasn't the brightest penny, but he always had a smile on his face.
 

Harley was our ball dog...our water dog...our chow hound. He was a pretty typical lab. He LOVED to go swimming. He would head straight for the nearest patch of water anywhere we went...no matter if we wanted him to or not. What a happy little clam.

Harley had never been sick. He's always been the easiest pet to take care of. Just went with the flow. What an awesome guy. But around Christmas time, he developed a cough. We took him to the vet and they gave him some pain medication. The cough subsided, but he developed a lesion on his leg and started having issues with eating. Harley was never one to turn down food. 

We took him back to the vet. During exam, the doc also found an anal abscess. We felt awful. He was put on antibiotics, started eating again, and seemed to be doing better. We were keeping him indoors more, out of the cold and laying on blankets to help him rest easier. But...then he started having trouble breathing and we noticed that the sore on his leg was getting worse. Back to the vet we went.

It was at this visit that things really turned for us. Harley had started losing substantial amounts of weight, but gaining substantial amounts of water. The doc ran some tests, but couldn't determine exactly what was wrong. His blood was low in protein and full of white blood cells. They gave him a shot of antibiotic and referred us to a clinic more specialized in emergency medicine so that he could have an ultrasound. X-rays had been inconclusive, other than revealing the fluid buildup.

Though we weren't ultimately fans of this clinic, they did try to figure out what was wrong with him. 4 liters of fluid were taken off of his chest and abdomen, allowing him to breathe much easier and rest more comfortably. After 3 days, he came home on Friday night. He was freaked out being alone, so I slept on the floor next to him. He was better by Saturday and he seemed to be back to his old self. 

Last night, he started struggling to breathe again. Between 9pm and 5am he put on a substantial amount of fluid and we could tell that he was hurting. We were up with him for most of the night. We made a beeline for our vet as soon as they opened. They removed a whopping 6 liters of fluid from the poor guy's abdomen. They said that he was feeling much better, walking around and seeming comfortable. He laid down to take a well-deserved nap. He never woke up.

Collin and I went to say goodbye this afternoon. His collar came home with us. He will be cremated and his ashes will be scattered in an orchard a few hours from home.

It's really hard to say goodbye to my sweet boy. We're going to miss him so much. I am glad that he was comfortable in his last hours and that he was with people who cared about him. I was upset that we couldn't be with him, but in the long run it was probably easier this way.  His photo is now on our mantle, with his collar. We won't forget him.

We love you buddy. We'll miss you. Thank you for being such a good boy.

Mondays Should Be National Holidays

I've decided that nothing good comes of Mondays. In order to alleviate the bologna (boloney?) that we all seem to go through on any given Monday, I vote that we create a permanent Monday holiday. I know that I would've been much happier to sit on my couch and be lazy today. How about you?

So...as it goes with Mondays, I had grand plans for the blog. In fact, I had more than one plan. But I'm scrapping them both for today. Why? Well...because my body has decided to revolt and that all excess fluids should be removed from my head by either allowing them to dribble slowly down my nostrils or become aerosolized for everyone's enjoyment. Yup. Apparently, going out every morning at 2 a.m. in my pajamas and cute sparkly black flip flops to let the dog go to the bathroom has resulted in my acquisition of a cold. Boo. Thus, I will be a lazy blog poster.

However, I will give you a few happy thoughts.

1. Maggie over at Padded Cell Confessions, who I've been reading for over a year, posted the other day about her conversation with her husband regarding the ability of guinea pigs to pull a human in a cart. Yup, you read correctly. Maggie's just awesome that way. I'm convinced that if we lived closer that we would be good friends and hang out all the time. But...oceans have a way of wrecking things. Anywho...You know those odd things that your brain comes up with right before you fall asleep? Well...my nerdiness has come through. So, I will be posting my mathematical calculations in a blog post this week for my official answer. Yup...you sucked me in Maggie.

2. I've almost made it to my 2012 BOTY declaration. In fact...I am so determined to get there that I will be posting it by the end of the week, regardless of how many reviews from 2012 I have remaining. Them's just how the chips fall. (That and the fact that I really need a break from book reviews so that I can start crafting again.)

3. Darian says that he too will be doing up his bracket in the next few days...so you'll get his 2012 BOTY as well.

4. My Etsy shop will be opening here in the next week or two. I had a small delay due to the doggy drama over here and his need to be constantly babysat (he cannot go upstairs). But...the crafting will resume and I will hopefully have projects ready for display soon!

And that's it. That's all the happy thoughts I have. In fact, that may be all the thoughts I have at all. The congestion is worming it's way into my brain and everything is getting nice and fuzzy. Oh...and we're out of Nyquil. Damn you, Monday.