some suggestions...

I've gotten back to my old stomping ground of juvenile fiction, and I am LOVING it. When I was my son's age, I was a huge fan of Avi and Rinaldi. I was not a horse, teen drama kind of reader. I liked the epic drama, historical fiction kind of reader. But, I tried something new the last time I was at the library with my boys. It's all about being random.

Which is about all I have time for anymore, which, it might turn out, is not that bad. What it turns out looking like is this: I grab the first two books nearest me from the kids chapter books, then the one nearest me from the adult fiction.

This strategy has led to some very interesting literary experiences.

The first few books I ended up reading (and really enjoying) were titled Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go (which ended up being a play on Dante/Virgil, heavy on the humor), Toad Rage (another funny one about the adversity of cane toads in Australia), Kafka's Shore (a seriously out there surreal novel by one of Japan's most popular authors... although, yeah guilty! I had never heard of him before), and The Dechronization of Sam McGruder (a fictional account of a atypical time traveler by some very well-known paleontologist named George Gaylord Simpson. Pretty quick reads for someone who's into reading whatever is lying around. And really fun to boot. It's kinda nice to pick up a book with no expectations whatsoever and find it genuinely enjoyable.

The one other I can remember is called Dragonbreath, which my boys absolutely love! So, that's been fun, to have a book I picked out that they are enjoying sharing with me. Course, it helps that it's about dragons, iguanas and sea serpents! I mean, come on! Who doesn't love that combination.

And last night, Mike spotted an owl in our front yard tree. I had heard over NPR that Washington state is the home to the most species of owls in the entire USA. I've been working as a volunteer over at the Raptor Rehab House that takes in local hurt raptor species and returns them to the wild, so I've seen my share of owls, especially barn owls, who, as babies, have a tendency to bury themselves in hay stacks and thereafter fall off the back of trucks.... but I'd never seen an owl in my neighborhood, let alone my front yard! That was awesome!

It sat there hooting at us for a few minutes til we finally made out this furry little ball with shining eyes staring at us from one of the many crooks in our ancient tree that perpetually looks like it was the victim of a very bad haircut this time of year. Then, a couple minutes later, as I was turning back to go inside, Mike reports that it flew off across the street.

Completely awesome, but it might put a bit of a damper on my plans to have some free range chickens in the back.