The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin by Stan and Jan Berenstain

by Carol4 Comments
The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin by Stan and Jan Berenstain I have to admit that even though Amber has long outgrown them, I still enjoy a visit to Bear Country occasionally. Papa Bear has grown a big pumpkin and is entering it into the annual contest during Bear Country Thanksgiving Festival. Sadly it doesn't win, but the Bear family learns a lesson about the true spirit of the holiday and about all they have to be thankful for. Papa Bear acts like a kid himself a lot of the time, this time getting so wrapped up in winning and his pumpkin that he forgets about everything else. He even trespasses on a neighbor's farm to get at peak at "The Monster," a rival pumpkin. (Can pumpkins be rivals?) So the lesson learned is for him too, not just the cubs. It's cute and just what I expected from a Berenstain Bears story. Purchase at Amazon. Purchase at an Indie Bookstore. 32 pages First published...
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Game Night – Stone Age

by Carol6 Comments
We played Stone Age last weekend. I talked a little about the game last year. At that time I said that I felt like I was getting an idea on what it took to win. I was wrong. Here's the blurb: The times were hard indeed. Our ancestors worked with their legs and backs straining against wooden plows in the stony earth. Of course, progress did not stop with the wooden plow. People always searched for better tools and more productive plants to make their work more effective. In Stone Age, the players live in this time, just as our ancestors did. They collect wood, break stone and wash their gold from the river. They trade freely, expand their village, and so achieve new levels of civilization. With a balance of luck and planning, the players compete for food in this pre-historic time. Risk and grow as your ancestors did. Only then the victory...
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“The Ear of Corn” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

by Carol2 Comments
"The Ear of Corn" by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm This is one of the Grimms' shorter Household Tales. In a time when God still walked on the earth and each stalk of corn produced far more than they do now, a woman tore up a handful of ears of corn to clean mud of her daughter's dress. God was angry and threatened that the corn stalks would produce no more food, but relented when the people cried that even if they were undeserving, the birds would starve. The Lord, who foresaw their suffering, had pity on them, and granted the request. So the ears were left as they now grow. We need to be thankful for what we have, for what God's given us, because we can lose it. Definitely a good moral, but not one of my favorite stories. I read...
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Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

by Carol6 Comments
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner A Three Reasons Review 1. Why I chose this book I read this for an on-line discussion group, but I was actually the one who nominated it. The theme was "prize winners" and this won the Man Booker Prize in 1984. It was short, which sadly sometimes plays into my book choices, and I liked the sound of the plot. Edith Hope, a romance novelist, is banished to a hotel in Switzerland to allow her time to more or less regain her senses after making a decision her friends and acquaintances found embarrassing. While there though, she comes to some realizations about herself and about love in general. "I mean that I cannot live well without it. I cannot think or act or speak or write or even dream with any kind of energy in the absence of love. I feel excluded from the living world. I become cold, fish-like, immobile. I implode." (pg. 98) 2. Reasons I liked...
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A Fatal Feast by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain

by Carol7 Comments
A Fatal Feast by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain I was looking for a Thanksgivingy book and saw this at my library, so I had to pick it up. I remember watching the Murder, She Wrote series on TV back in the 80s or 90s, so I was familiar with the characters and setting. Yes, I was a mystery lover even then. Jessica Fletcher has a guest in town for Thanksgiving, her would-be beau George Sutherland, a Scotland Yard Investigator. I have to say that Jessica is more attractive and adventurous than I remember her, flying planes and flirting with men. Of course, maybe my memory has tamed her over the years. Anyway, Jessica is preparing a Thanksgiving feast and the list of people who are planning on being there keeps growing, including and odd drifter who has been hanging out in the road in front of her house and her new neighbors, an odd couple themselves. It's really no surprise, though, when...
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