Bloggy Book Club Week #2

[To All Of You SITS-tas popping over to check out my "saucy" blog, welcome! You may be interested in starting with the posts listed in the sidebar over there to the left. The Parenting For Dummies posts are aimed at those of us who are moms, and the Most Popular Posts category provides more general amusement. Everything is G-rated, as long as you don't mind the lingerie talk in "Size Matters."]

Ha! Bet you didn't think I could finish another book in just a week and still keep up with my blogging addiction, did you? You folks don't know who you are dealing with. Of course, not being able to sleep for the past week provided me with some extra reading time. Seems that every time I manage to doze off, I can snooze for only 15 minutes before I rouse myself with a hacking cough. And when I'm not coughing, Susie is. Fun times!

Bah! Who needs sleep? Not me! Instead of sleeping, I read Fifty Acres And A Poodle by Jeanne Marie Laskas. It is a funny and well-written true story of how she and her boyfriend/fiance, both urban dwellers, buy an honest-to-goodness farm as part of a sort of midlife crisis. She maintains a charmingly self-deprecating tone throughout most of the book (look at us stupid city slickers!), while providing thought-provoking descriptions of the sort of folk one doesn't generally run into in Starbuck's; people, that is, who drive tractors and raise sheep and go hunting.

While Ms. Laskas is an amusing writer who can tell a good tale (and really, it was hard for me to put the book down), she is also an exceedingly self-referential one. If you are someone (like me) who got married and started having kids in your 20's, there is something vaguely disorienting listening to an almost middle-aged person be so wrapped up in what she is thinking and feeling about herself. People who don't have kids, it seems, have so many issues.

No, no, that's not right. We all have issues. But people without kids have time to think about those issues. All I think about is where my next good night of sleep is coming from and who the heck is driving the girls to flute camp in the morning. Oh, and blogging. I think about blogging. In fact (and I am embarrassed to admit this), I dream about blogging.

So maybe it would be healthier for me to be talking about my own personality issues, as Ms. Laskas does, rather than to be obsessed with people I have never even met; but, truth to tell, other people are much more interesting than I am. So I'll stick to being shallow and non-introspective.

There is a lot about animals in this book. Given, Ms. Laskas writes about animals in such a way that even a person as disaffected as I am (when it comes to the animal kingdom) can understand her attachment to her pets and her farm animals. But I still had to draw a line at the mule. (See? You have to read the book.)

[By the way, speaking of animals and wildlife, I sort of wish I didn't know that this could happen. I doubt I will ever reach into my washer again without looking first, you know?]

So, anyway, whoever is interested in reading this book next, please tell me so in the comments.

(Wait, let's make this a little more difficult. You also need to tell me what animal is featured in the news article I linked to 2 paragraphs ago. That will teach you to pay attention!)

(On second thought, never mind - you can cheat by other people's comments. Duh. Read the darn article, will you? It contains important safety information.)

I will hold a drawing on Sunday to determine the winner. Remember, if you win the book, you need to read it, talk about it a little in your blog (and really, no matter what you say, it has got to sound more intelligent than the blather I come up with), and then give it to someone else to read and comment on. Fun, right? Sort of?