Midweek Morsels: Enchilada Casserole

I'm a day late... again... but I'm sharing a Midweek Morsels recipe anyway! This week, Kristina is asking for casseroles! And I'm calling enchiladas a casserole!

Easy Bean and Rice Enchiladas

1 can tomato soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can enchilada sauce
1 cup cooked rice
1 can refried beans
grated cheddar cheese
flour tortillas

Heat soups and enchilada sauce. Layer each tortilla with beans, rice, cheese, and soup mixture. Roll up and put in casserole dish. Put remaining soup mixture and cheese on top. Cook for 45 min. at 350 degrees.

Booking Through Thursday: Storage

Booking Through Thursday

This week’s question is suggested by Kat:
I recently got new bookshelves for my room, and I’m just loving them. Spent the afternoon putting up my books and sharing it on my blog . One of my friends asked a question and I thought it would be a great BTT question. So from Tina & myself, we’d like to know “How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?”

If I could organize my books like I wanted, I would put them in author order, within genres. I've tried to do that on my shelves in our basement, but they get very messed up very fast. I have several shelves of a classics section, a YA/MG section, a picture book section, several shelves for old school books, a non-fiction section, and the really messy section is the current literary fiction shelves where I've just been throwing and shoving things on because I've run out of room. What I need, is more shelves!

On my shelves in my room, I try to organize all my TBR piles. I've tried to bunch challenge books together and old TBRs in one spot, then new TBRs in another spot. Then once they are read, they get put on yet another shelf until I decide to purge and take all the "done" books downstairs. This system REALLY doesn't last long and ends up with the "throw-it-on-anywhere" system really fast. Right now, there are stacks everywhere and it's starting to get harder to find what I'm looking for. It's time for a purge right now I'd say!

On the shelves in the living room, I have one shelf of really really old books, like the ones my grandparents have given me from their childhood days. Then, there's a couple of shelves of church books, one shelf for souvenir books, a shelf for pretty hardback books, and a shelf for signed copies of all kinds of books. I still have a couple of random unorganized shelves there too. But this particular book shelf I try harder to keep looking unmessy, though sometimes it still doesn't work.

The Bookword Game: Voting Results and a New Word

The votes are in! And we have a very clear-cut winner!

Question: What do you call a book that everyone else loved, but that you hated?

Answer: RecommenDUD!!!!

Congratulations to Suziqoregon at Whimpulsive for the winning suggestion.

(For those interested in statistics, RecommenDUD got 49% of the vote, or 39 votes out of the 79 total votes.)

Thanks to everyone that voted and supported our first installment of The Bookword Game!

Now, on to the next bookword! After much pondering which bookish situation needs to be defined next, I've decided to ask:

What do we call a book that nearly every time you turn the page, you check to see which page you're on? Perhaps you feel like you are making no progress and you keep checking to make sure those page numbers are really going up. Or perhaps you are extremely anxious to get to the end and you are keeping a mental page countdown going. So, what should we call a book like that? The book where you are always aware of what page you're on.

Comment with your suggestions! Voting will take place next week at Raidergirl3's blog, An Adventure in Reading.

Thanks everyone for playing along!

Review: The Hunt for Dark Infinity by James Dashner

Book: The Hunt for Dark Infinity (The 13th Reality Book 2) by James Dashner

Genre: YA SF/Fantasy

Rating: A

For: Fun

First a story. Did I ever tell you about how I got a hold of this book? I don't think so because it's a bit embarrassing. As you know, a month or so ago, we went to the Utah Book Bloggers Bash hosted by Natasha (Maw Books Blog.) And Mr. James Dashner was kind enough to participate in our little shindig, which we all thought was quite exciting.

Then at one point during the party, he brought out a little stack of books, ARCs of this #2 book and one copy of the first 13th Reality book, then handed them to Natasha and told her to deal with it! My eyes lit up and she noticed. I begged, I pleaded. I even played the "my son is a huge fan" card (which is totally true, he is.) Lucky for me, it worked and she handed me a copy! THEN, everyone else drew for who would get the other books. My husband was so embarrassed at my obnoxious behavior! But then, it all ended well when James Dashner got everyone's email and told them he'd send them all a copy! So in the end, I didn't have to feel too bad. But seriously, I don't think any of them had read the first book yet even. (Am I right guys?) Anyway, hopefully they don't hate me too bad.

So back to the book. Both my son and I have now read it. It comes out just next week, so I figure we at least owe Mr. Dashner Dude a review.

Quick Summary: In the first book, Tick gets a bunch of letters, all with riddles that he must solve, in order to prove himself worthy to be a Realitant and become a member of this elite group that keeps track of and protects all the different Realities. (For my review on that book click here.)

This 2nd book picks up at the end of a boring summer (especially after all the excitement of the first book) with Tick and his new friends waiting to hear from Master George, the head of the Realitants. They are anxious for their next mission. When it comes, of course things go wrong and suddenly, they are off on an adventure that is making no sense to them. It's like they are being tested all over again. What could be going on?

Meanwhile, back at the headquarters, their other friend, Sato, gets sent on his own scary adventure, complete with an amazing, breath-taking chase scene. Then there's Master George who, along with his eclectic group of Realitants, is trying to figure out exactly what's going on because things are all a bit confusing. And then also, we learn much more about the villains, both the new one and the old one.

The book is full of heart-pounding chase scenes, many explosions and destruction galore! There's also lots of riddles to solve, just like in the first book. I'm lousy at the riddles. Good thing the kids in the book seem to always figure them out!

Bottom line, I totally enjoyed it! I think even better than the first book. It's extremely fast-paced with never a slow moment. There's more character development, with back stories on many of them. I really hope we get to hear more about Mistress Jane in future books, especially. Well, I'm quite sure that's going to happen!

I wanted my 14 year old son, who's been reading James Dashner's books from the very beginning, to share his feelings about this book too. He gets very nervous about these things, so we just did it interview style.

Me: So, what's this book about anyway?

Him: It's about these kids who go into different dimensions called Realities and they have to protect the Realities from the bad guys. It's cool because it's all based on the idea of quantum physics.

Me: Did you like it? And if so, why.

Him: Yes, I liked it a lot because it has a fast pace. I liked the storyline, it has lots of good twists and curves, and in a way, it's even somewhat realistic. The characters are great and have really unique personalities.

Me: Who's your favorite character?

Him: Paul, one of Tick's friends, is my favorite character because he's funny.

Me: What did you think about the villains?

Him: They were good and mean. But, at one point I did feel sorry for Mistress Jane. She was even trying to help Tick, I think.

Me: What was your favorite scene?

Him: It was when Sato was getting chased by the crazy people, trying to get back to the elevator. There was no way I could have put the book down then.

Me: Could you figure out the riddles?

Him: I figured out one of them, sort of. The one in the smelly reality. The others were pretty hard I thought.

And now, instead of doing the customary author interview, I just thought I'd post a couple of fun tidbits I've learned about James Dashner from reading his blog:

• He has another book coming out this year called The Maze Runner. It sounds wonderful!
• He loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.... and The Hunger Games.
• He refuses to watch movie trailers... but loves movies.
• He graduated from high school in 1991.
• He grew up in Florida.
• He's a fan of The Office, and Lost.
• He likes to ski and takes amazing snow pictures while out there.
• He's a big sports fan.
• He's married with four kids.
• He quit his day job in the summer and has been full-time authoring ever since!

So be excited this book comes out next week! Get it! You'll love it, but especially (and to quote Marty McFly) your kids are gonna love it!

Blog Post Bingo and Tuesday Stuff

Hey look! What'dya know? I won the Blog Post Bingo Game! Now that makes all the posting last week worth it, right? I get to spend $10 at Amazon, and I think I'll be buying this:

Next up for Blog Improvement is to do some basic blogging updates such as the About Me page, the blogroll, contact info, picture, etc. Much of this stuff I've been doing already, but there's always more to work on.

**********************

It's Tuesday! Where am I? Back to Inkworld! Yep, and it's much more exciting this time.

Teaser Tuesdays

Okay, another one from Inkdeath, page 423:

"The happiness in her voice moved him, and he wondered, not for the first time, how it was that the book that had told him so much about fire-elves and giants said so little about the Adderhead's daughter. To Fenoglio, Violante had been only a minor character, an ugly, unhappy little girl, nothing more."


Be sure to visit tomorrow and leave suggestions for our new word in The Bookword Game!

The Sunday Salon: What a Week!

It's been a fun week for me around here. I feel like I've been posting a ton. That's mostly due to my attempt at all the different kinds of posts for Blog Post Bingo. Hopefully it was as fun for you as it was for me, and not too overly annoying.

Also, The Bookword Game made it's debut on my blog this week, with the voting of "what we should call a book that everyone else loves, but you hate." Thank you to everyone that's dropped by to vote! If you haven't yet, you still have a couple of days. We'll announce the winner, and open the floor for suggestions for the new word on Wednesday.

I finished a couple of books this past week. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper and The Hunt for Dark Infinity by James Dashner. Reviews to come this week. I need to watch The Seeker now, to go along with my Lit Flicks challenge project, but I'm finding it hard to get a hold of. The library status on it says "claimed returned." Not a good thing for me I'm thinking.

And today I plan on concentrating on All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Strange, different writing, but surprisingly engaging at the same time. If I finish it, maybe I'll try Inkdeath some more. But I'm also dying to dive into all those book fair books I bought!

Okay, well. I think that's about it for my book life. My other life? Well, we'll leave that all for another day.

Weekly Geeks 2009.6: What's in a Name?

The Weekly Geeks assignment this week is to explore the names of some of our favorite characters and share what we've learned and if it seems to fit the character's... well... character!

After some pondering, here's a few I've come up with:

Anjuli: the heroine from The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye... one of my favorite books and a name I remember thinking was so pretty. I looked it up and it means "gift to God" in Hindi. Perfect for this character I'm thinking.

Tess: of Tess of the D'urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) fame. Looking this up, I've learned that it's a nickname for Teresa, an English name meaning "late summer." Once again, I think this fits the character quite well. Poor Tess.

Molly: from Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. This is a nickname for Mary... interesting. And Mary (English) means "wished-for child" according to this site anyway. Hmmm... don't know that this has much to do with our Molly. What do you think?

I'm having more trouble with the male character names. I keep thinking of the made up ones!

Well, how about:

Collin: from An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. Another English name, this one meaning "victorious people." And, once again, it's a actually a nickname for Nicolas. Is Collin victorious in his particular story? I would say, yes. Sure!

Edward: I couldn't resist! An old English name meaning "wealth protector." Interesting. It would make more sense for Twilight purposes if it meant just plain old protector. Another interesting tidbit from my research.... it says this: "This name was popular earlier in the 20th century, then fell off in usage, but has begun making a comeback in recent years." Got a kick out of that.

Gilbert: from Anne of Green Gables of course. It's an old French name meaning "bright promise." I think that fits our Gilbert perfectly!

Fun little exercise! But I think the thing I learned the most is that I have a hard time remembering character names from all the books I've read!