January 1 2015 – December 21st 2015

From the website that brings you the weekly meme, What Are You Reading, it seem only appropriate that I continue to host the WHERE Are You Reading Challenge.  I started hosting this challenge in 2010 and have enjoyed marking off the states every year  🙂

How do you decide what state a book is categorized under?

1.  In a fiction read it would be the State or Country that the book spends the most time in.  (Ie. If your main character is from Wisconsin but the book is all about his/her time in college in California – the books should categorize under California….)

2.  Non fiction reads categorize  in whatever State or Country it is about (Ie…. a book about fly fishing in Colorado is a Colorado point, and a book about women in Afghanistan is an Afghanistan point.

3.  If the book goes from one state to another… go with the state that most of the time is spent.

How to get started

Grab the challenge button (above) here for your posts and sidebar.

Set up a page to capture your states, countries, etc… however you want to do it.  Here is mine for a sample.

Additionally, some like to add their books to a Google Map which can be fun to put all the book titles on a map and watch it fill up but of course this is completely optional.

Questions?

Do you have to have a blog to participate? No.  You can do everything on an excel spreadsheet or in a notebook without linking the book to a review.

Do I have to have my post up by January 1st, 2015? No, but I would think you would want to get started right away at the beginning of the year.  However, you will be able to sign up throughout January as well.

Do audio books count?  ABSOLUTELY!

Once you are ready and have your list and/or map set up please create a blog post (those who have blogs) using the meme picture I provided above as well as link to this post so others may join in.  Then come back and link that post here to Mr Linky (below) so I as well as other participants know that you are participating and we can pop in throughout the year and see how we are all doing.

This is actually a fun and easy challenge as all books you read qualify and it will be fun to see where you generally read books as well as searching out books to fill in areas that you need.

For those who have covered the 50 states by the end of 2015, they will go into a drawing for a $25 gift card to Barnes and Noble or to Amazon.  **  All other areas beyond the 50 states are bonus points and we will have a drawing ($10 Amazon or B and N gift card) using random.org for those who read 10 or more books throughout 2015 in that category.

That’s it!  Here is a link to tips on how to do it.  Any other questions – please leave them in the comments section below.

I can’t wait to see WHERE You Are Reading!

Ready to sign up?

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  Banned Book Week is here!  Please check out the giveaways happening around the blogs – and here!  Enter the post page here and find all the current giveaways and banned book posts!

*Note:  Commenting on any of my banned book related posts this week will enter you into my giveaway.  (one entry per relevant comment)

This is a sticky post.  All current posts are below – this post will remain on top during banned books week.

Did you know that one-third of your day is on auto pilot?  And I don’t mean when we are sleeping.  I mean when we are working, working out, cleaning, eating… and yes – driving.  Jeremy Dean explains why habits are so hard to break, but not impossible.  This book is how to take charge of our brain and make it stick, resulting in a happier, healthier, more creative and productive you.

Honestly…. I have been listening to this audio off and on for so long now I do not even recall why I first wanted to listen to it.  I believe it was because I find the human psyche to be fascinating.  What makes us tick?  Why do some think it is ok to do the things they do (thus my interest in true crime), and why do some of us work so hard to do good and others really do not care…

Habits, I guess are one of the things that interest me.  Why is my routine to get up around 6 am each morning 7 days a week, grab my coffee and merge with my lap top for at least an hour?  Why do I not instead put on some pounding music, and hit the downstairs treadmill right away for 30 minutes as I wish I would do?  Why do I constantly notice what time it is in the morning and say “Oh crap!” And run to get ready for my day?

And I know this isn’t just me…. we all have our routines/habits and some are good – kudos to you that do get up and take a morning walk consistently or hit the gym… you are my heroes and I strive to be you!  But maybe some of us have trouble rolling out of bed by 9?

While the book gives good advice on how to break a habit and the research is well laid out and even fascinating, I did not come out the other side feeling I had learned anything I did not already know or if I did not know, once I heard it thought it was common sense.  While interesting, probably not a book I need to listen to again.

And yeah…. I still get up at 6 am and drink my coffee and putz on my laptop and ignore my treadmill. 

GAH.  😉

Happy Saturday!  Another week has flown by!  This week I have been working in my office on rewrites, research, a couple of days dedicated to the baskets for the auction next Friday prep,Book club and an author event, and I spent some time extracting honey.  Yup honey.

For this weeks Saturday Snapshot and Weekend Cooking I thought I would share some pictures of the amazing process of honey extracting.

My friend Amanda started raising bees a little over three years ago.  The fun thing about her story is that she is pretty much self taught between books (yay books!) she purchased at our local book store and You Tube Videos.  What started out as a hobby has grown into a full grown commercial bee business from rearing her own queens, splitting hives, providing bee nucs for other companies (pretty much a bee starter kit), pollinating almond trees in California – and of course producing and selling honey.

Her business, Buck’s Busy Bee’s has grown exponentially and as of this fall she will have over 2,000 hives.

A few months ago I was contracted to write her story for our local magazine Her Voice.  That article came out this week but unfortunately while in magazine format, has not yet been put on line so I am unable to link to it.

I have helped Amanda off and on through the years from going into the hives, to building the frames that go into the boxes they live in, to harvesting honey, and now most recently; extracting the honey.  When giving my notice recently to invest more time into the writing opportunities that are coming in, Amanda asked me if I would want to assist her with the bees when I am able to.

Uhhh…. YES.

I really do enjoy learning about the bees and this is the final push before the bees are trucked off to the warmer states – Florida and California where they will spend their days in the sun, probably in the next 5 weeks or so.  Amanda’s husband owns a trucking company so he takes the bees to their warmer destination as they do not do well in the cold Minnesota winters.  Lucky bees!

So here is the process:

Each host home, (a home that has given space for there to be hives on the property) will receive a case of honey as a thank you.  The rest of the honey will first go on sale at the Little Falls Craft Fair which is the 6th and 7th of September and after that what is left will be on sale on her website.

It really is a fascinating process and who knows… maybe someday I will write a book about bee keeping, or have a bee keeper character in it.  😉

Stop by Buck’s Busy Bee’s on Facebook and like the page.  Giveaways are going to start on Monday on the Facebook page and winners will be drawn from the page likes 🙂

This post is a part of Saturday Snapshot where people all over the world post pictures of what they are doing, or what they have done in the past.  It’s great fun so pop on over to West Metro Mommy Reads and see what others are taking pictures of 🙂  I am also linking this to Weekend Cooking found over at Beth Fish Reads because this is kind of a foodie post too 🙂

A few days ago I posted my thoughts on Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline.  Last night, the Bookies Book Club met for pizza and reviewed this book as well and then followed up by seeing the author speak.

The whole Orphan Train experience has been fun.  First, our Book Club won the books from a Harper Collins on line contest.  Then our Library secured her to come and speak in our town, AND it just happened to be on the day our book club normally meets AND happens to be the Bookies Anniversary month (13 years!), it sounded like a fun night.

When we went to see the author of  Orphan Train speak we were in for a real treat.  Christina Baker Kline was a delight to listen to.  She put an impressive amount of research into the book, fueled on to the topic as her husband’s grandfather was an orphan on the train.

When Christina asked the audience if anyone knew someone who had been on an orphan train, a third of the rooms hands shot up.  Wow. 

As you can see, Minnesota was one of the higher states as far as the count of orphans were that road the trains.  It was sad to learn that only 30% of the children were orphans.  Many were abandoned, and some were even taken.  Christina said that you did not want your children outside after dark for fear that they be snatched and put on the trains.

The children mainly were between the ages between 2 and 14.  Preferred were boys between the ages of 9 and 14 as they were handy to use on the farms and they could sleep in the barn.  Babies were the next in demand and these trains of babies were called Mercy Trains.  The hardest to place were girls as they could not do the physical labor that was needed and they were more underfoot as girls did not sleep in the barns but in the homes instead.  Harder yet to place, Christina said, was red heads.  No one wanted red headed children or children with freckles.  Christina had articles where they specifically said they do not want any red headed children claiming that they were more prone to disobeying and fights.

Most of the children were not adopted by the families that took them in.  Adoption meant inheritance and people did not want these children to inherit their lands.  They were chosen and signed for with very little paper work – and yes, like in the book Orphan Train, some were abused.

The trains ran from 1854 – 1929.  Over that time more than 100,000 children were placed in homes – many with no records of who they were or where they came from.  Christina had documented conversations with some of the Orphan Train riders she had spoke with and even though the survivors are now in their later 90’s, they still say they always felt something was missing – while they may have been placed in good homes, they still felt somewhat disconnected and knew that “these were not my people.”

When Christina first started her research she was able to connect with around 60 Orphan Train Riders.  Now she said there is about 25 left in the world, and it is their descendants that have picked up the torch to carry on the research and the questions yet unanswered.

The Bookies overall rated the book a strong 4 out of 5.  Most of us really enjoyed the historical fiction mixed with fact.  Following up with the author event was a real treat and for me, has left a need to know more.  This will not be my last look into the Orphan Train.  Thank you Christina Baker Kline for opening our eyes to such an important part of our history.

 

Do you know anyone who has ridden the orphan trains?