There are several different types of bluebirds in North America. In the eastern US, Mexico and southeastern Canada we see the Eastern Bluebird. Western Bluebirds are seen in parts of the western US and Mexico and the brilliantly colored Mountain Bluebird can be found in the western US, Canada and Mexico.
Males are vivid, deep blue above and rusty or brick-red on the throat and breast. Females are grayish above with bluish wings and tail, and a dull orange-brown breast.
They are generally found in open areas and nest at the woodland edge. Eastern bluebirds rarely visit feeders but will nest in backyards if you have enough open space and a suitable nestbox is provided.
I never see bluebirds in my yard but I don’t have to travel far to find them. Several parks near my house have bluebird trails. It’s always a treat for me to stumble across a pair building a nest or feeding their babies.
I took these photos last April. The male was standing proudly on top of his nestbox displaying for the female who was hard at work building the nest. That’s pretty much his job until the young are born. Only the female will incubate the eggs but the male helps feed them and protect the nest.
—————————————
Photo taken at Cantigny Gardens.
—————————————
Saturday Snapshots is hosted by Alyce. Head on over to At Home With Books to see more great photos or add your own.
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
by Charles Yu
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Pantheon
Publish Date: September 7th 2010
Format: Hardcover | 239 pages
Rating: 3 of 5
Charles Yu, not to be confused with the author Charles Yu, is a time travel technician; more specifically, Charles is “a certified network technician for T-Class personal-use chronogrammatical vehicles”. His job is to fix the errors of other time travelers.
In Minor Universe 31 time travel is commonplace. Anyone can rent a machine and go for a ride. Breakdowns occurs when people try to do things they are not supposed to do. Give people the opportunity to travel back in time and most end up choosing to go to the worst day of their lives and try to fix it rather than going back to a day they enjoyed. Fixing the past is not allowed and ultimately their machine gets stuck in place until Charles arrives to rescue them.
Charles lives in his time machine. Instead of parking it when not working he continuously travels in the Present-Indefinite mode except when he is peeking into alternate universes to spy on other versions of himself. P-I mode allows him to avoid straight forward travel and live achronologically. He can ignore the future and see everything as the present. He has been living like this for the past 10 years while in reality only a few weeks have passed.
All this sounds like the makings of a great science fiction adventure; but it’s not. The story does not revolve around Charles’ adventures as a time travel repairman or anyone that he might be sent to rescue. There are lots of science fiction elements and we are in a science fiction world but it’s more of a literary story about a young man searching for his father, worrying about his mother and confronting his dysfunctional childhood. Charles has issues. He is searching for his father, an inventor of time machines, who disappeared into time years ago and was never seen again; he visits mother who lives in a time-loop of her own choosing, “the sci-fi version of assisted living”, but only observes her; and now he is stuck in his own time loop because he abused P-I mode and the gear broke down.
This was not an easy book to read, follow or understand. I’m still not sure I understand it. I could not get engaged in it and I really tried. After reading about 40 pages I thought, “huh? what? I’m lost”. So I went back and re-read them hoping to gain better understanding. At about half way through this book still wasn’t happening for me but I finished it anyway. There was just enough there to keep my interest and, frankly, I wanted to know how it ended.
I liked the concept but the story wasn’t going anywhere. The idea was original, the writing clever, sometimes a little too clever, quite a bit geeky and often funny. I loved the blending in of pop culture and science fiction references. Time Warner Time, a division of Google, owns the rights to Universe Minor 31. Charles has a software boss called Phil – Microsoft Middle Manager 3.0 who doesn’t know he’s software (that one made me laugh out loud) and a neurotic operating system named TAMMY. As children, everyone wants to be Han Solo, except Charles.
I kept waiting for a plot to develop, but it never happened. Everything was about the main character, Charles, and he spent too much time pontificating and whining. We learn little about anyone else. Sentences were rambling, often with long wordy paragraphs, to the point where it got tedious to read. I kept thinking this would have made a great short story. Perhaps I was expecting a Doctor Who type adventure or a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy type universe, and that is not what this book is. Or maybe, as an old-time science fiction reader (think Heinlein, Asimov, PK Dick, Bradbury) I’m not the target audience. Or maybe the book needed more editing for my tastes.
This is not a book for everyone. If you don’t read any science fiction at all I can’t recommend it but if you enjoy the genre you might want to give it a try. Would I read any future works from this author? Yes, definitely. There’s a lot of promise here, I just didn’t like the way it was carried out.
————————
I participate in Book Review Party Wednesday. Click the link to read more great reviews.
One More Challenge
One more challenge for 2011: Read 50 books. Goodreads has a little app on the home page that will track your progress each time you enter a book as read for 2011. I made that my last official challenge and really more of a personal goal. My reading slows down in the summer when my gardening activities increase. This year I’m going to listen to audio books when I garden so I can keep up with my book a week goal.
More Ways To Follow
I now have a Facebook Page for Under My Apple Tree. For those that do Facebook all you need to do to access it is click the facebook icon. That will take you to my page. Then click ‘like’ and any updates to the blog will appear on your wall.
I also publish my feed to twitter. I find twitter difficult to use to follow blogs but I know a lot of people are using it. I use Google Reader to follow most of the blogs I read plus I follow a few on Facebook. I can’t use the Google Friend Connect widget here because WordPress doesn’t support it. What’s everyone using to follow?
Some Book Humor
Really Random Tuesday is hosted on random Tuesdays by Suko at Suko’s Notebook. It’s a way to post odds and ends–announcements, musings, quotes–any blogging and book-related things you can think of.
Although the snow can be pretty and almost serene, I’m tired of seeing it. I know those of you in warm climates enjoy the snowy pictures so I’ll stay with the season.
I took this shot early in the morning after the snow had stopped falling at my favorite bird watching area.
————————
Photo taken at Cantigny Gardens.
————————
Saturday Snapshots is hosted by Alyce. Head on over to At Home With Books to see more great photos or add your own.
On the weekends I often feature a bird accompanied by some of my photos. This weekend I would like to introduce you to a blog I really enjoy, Birds In Hats.
Spotlight On: Birds In Hats
Merlin in a Wizards Hat
If you were a bird what kind of hat would you wear? Alice Tam answers that question with a delightful collection of illustrations of birds wearing hats.
Winter Wren in a Santa Hat
These are a couple of my favorites, but really, I love them all. So head on over to Birds In Hats and enjoy the rest of this clever, whimsical collection for yourself. These make me wish I could draw.
You Know When The Men Are Gone
by Siobhan Fallon
Genre: Women’s Literature
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
Publish Date: January 20, 2011
Format: Hardcover | 240 pages
Rating: 5 of 5
You Know When The Men Are Gone is a beautifully written slender volume of short stories centering around the wives of deployed soldiers based at Ft. Hood, Texas. The stories are loosely related involving different families and different situations, but with a common thread running through each of them that highlights the emotional drain of having a spouse deployed in Iraq and away for a year.
Sometimes depressing, sometimes sad and occasionally humorous, all are written with the compassion and knowledge of someone who has been there. These are not war stories; there is no political agenda. It is a window into the lives of our military families, opened for a brief moment, giving us a glimpse of their world. Some have children, some do not, others are newly wed and barely know each other while others know each other only too well. All are moving tales and all will make you think.
I read this book quickly and then I wanted more. The author has a wonderful writing style with smoothly flowing words and quickly developed characters. It was easy to feel their emotions: loneliness, pain, obsession, suspicion, distrust. Many of the stories deal with infidelity and how difficult it is to be separated from a spouse.
Most of the stories are told from the point of view of the wives. Several are told by the men. Leave is one of the stories told by a husband who is suspicious that his wife is cheating on him. He plots and plans a way to find out the truth and carries his plan out as if it were a military mission. I found this one to be particularly haunting and powerful and am still thinking about it now. He gets his answers but we are left to wonder what he does with the information.
This is a wonderful book, a compelling look into the personal relationships of the men and women in the military, and I highly recommend it.
About the Author
Siobhan Fallon lived at Fort Hood while her husband, an Army major, was deployed to Iraq for two tours of duty. She earned her MFA at the New School in New York City. She lives with her family near the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA.
————————
Source: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing for review.
————————
I participate in Book Review Party Wednesday. Click the link to read more great reviews.
Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.
Not including the ARCs I have already committed to reading, here are the top ten books that I want to read in 2011, listed in no particular order.
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Under My Apple Tree 