The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

January 2, 2015 -- Book 001

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

I had listened to this book at least once before.  And when it came available from the public library's OverDrive service in the last couple of days in 2014, I decided to hold on to it to make it the first book I listened to in 2015.  **sigh**  I am glad I did. 

As usual, Terry Pratchett delivers an entertaining story.  And, that is probably one of the biggest understatements I can make about anything written by Sir Pratchett.

Maurice is a cat.  His educated rodents are rats.  Their accomplice is that "stupid looking boy" who plays the pipes fairly well.  They all arrive in a town called Bad Blinitz, intending to run their "Pied Piper" scam one last time.  What they find and what happens to them all is not what they expected at all.

You can  find a description of the book, hear and excerpt and find out if your local public library offers the audiobook version of Maurice's amazing story here:  OverDrive

Or if you'd like to own a copy, check out Powell's Books -- a variety of purchase options (editions of the book, scroll down for the list) will show up in the right column:  Powell's Books

When I went looking for this book at OverDrive's main site, I discovered they have 5,283 juvenile fiction audiobook titles in the English language!  WOW!  If only I could get through them all -- LOL!  Then, when I finally scrolled through the list to the books beginning with "The,"  I discovered that Maurice is considered a YA book ... so off I went to scroll through almost 3,029 English language audiobooks in the fiction category here!  So many books, so little time.  ENJOY!

Welcome to 2015 and My Reading Challenge for 2015

WOW!  It is the second day of 2015 already!  And I am into the second book of 2015 toward my goal of 500 books "read" this year.

According to my list, I was well over that in 2015, but when I found out about the GoodReads Challenge toward the end of December, and I decided to list the books I'd "read" in 2014 -- I discovered 2 things:

a)   Goodreads does not allow multiple readings of the same book to count toward the count;  only one read per book counts;

b)  I had, around September, stopped being careful to "reuse" numbers of book that I had started and paused for whatever reason and failed to complete.  So right now, the count in my list is not accurate.  I intend to go back and remedy that soon so I can give an "accurate" counting.

How did I end the year with so many books? 

a)  AUDIOBOOKS!  I don't use TV as a diversion -- cancelled satellite TV a number of years ago and because of where the TV and VCR/DVD player are, it is not convenient to use DVDs.  The disk player of my laptop is incredibly finicky and unless a disk is pristine new, it rarely plays well ... so, AUDIOBOOKS.  Why not radio?  Radio through the radio just doesn't work well where I live -- the local station just isn't powerful enough to reach the 8 miles (driving distance -- less, as the crow, canadian goose or sandhill crane fly) from their studios to my house on the hill -- I'm not sure where their tower is, though ... and internet radio just doesn't interest me.  And my internet browser of choice doesn't work with most players, it is too old.  That is, I am using Firefox 12 and they recently released version 33 or 34 ... and every update ifs not an update but almost a totally new version that is no longer compatible with the majority of add-ons I use to make my computer use actually useful to me instead of the myriad of advertisers and marketers who want to control my internet experience.

b)  CHILDREN'S BOOKS!  I love books for all ages but relish children's books, especially beautifully illustrated picture books.  Two years ago, I got interested in them for a proposed series of posts for the month-long A-to-Z posting challenge.  I did not keep up with the challenge but got about 50+ A-to-Z picture books from the library to investigate.  I was amazed by the artwork, the texts, and how much picture books have changed through the years.  Last year, 2014, I spent some time with a series of picture books based on the Cinderella tale and discovered a huge variety of tales from around the world and fanciful retellings of the tale (for instance, one was a Bigfoot version).  I asked my husband for ideas for this year's journey into children's books and he suggested Richard Scarry -- illustrator of many of the books we grew up with.  So, I will see what I can find -- is his work still available even?  And then other illustrators rather than the tales, at first, will be my picture book foray in 2015.  :-)  Children's books are short and easily "bulk" out my count of books (mua ha ha ha ha ha!) ...

A quick note about Amazon and me -->

Back when there was that huge disagreement in 2014 over Amazon not selling books from certain publishers because of pricing disputes, I decided I did not like Amazon and looked for different online sources of books with "affiliate" programs.  I found Powell's and Abes.  Turns out that Abes is an Amazon company.  Audible is an Amazon company (one I need to continue using because they are, right now, the only source of audiobooks that I know of).  GoodReads is an Amazon company.  And, Shelfari is an Amazon company.  **SIGH**

I used to use Shelfari but did not keep up with is.  I tried to log in without opening a new account but the "forgot your password" email hint never showed up, so I decided against opening a new account there.  I've had a GoodReads account for s while but rarely used it until I saw about the 2014 Reading Challenge (in December 2014) and tried to get all my 2014 reads on a shelf there -- which I did, but it is not as easy to use as I would like and when working on a long list, I found it tedious to input all the info.   So I put in all the titles, intending to go back and edit each one to the correct version and add in the "date read" info ... slow going.

So, I have some info on a variety of "goal tracking" widgets that I may or may not adopt to track how many books I do read this year.  We'll see.  But hopefully I will be more regular in my posts here as I read (understand that to usually mean "listen to") books in 2015.

And the first book for 2015 is (drum roll, please) "ta dah":

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Who Needs Donuts? via ...

From Powell's Books. Turns out I did not need to wait for an application process, I just had to fill out the forms and Voila, I'm a Powell's Books "partner." Now the book I am sharing with you today is ... WONDERFUL! 
A couple of weeks ago, Book Riot (a page over at Facebook) shared a link to a list of kids books that adults should reread.  Hmmm ... lots of the books were newer than when I as a kid, so many are first reads for me  :-D
I went through the list with my public library's inter-library loan catalog up and running and found a few of these books.  Hubby's most recent visit to the library brought home a few of them.
Who Needs Donuts?  is one of the ones that are a "first read" for me.  There are a couple other books that he brought home that I will share with you very soon.  
Sort of like Where's Waldo, in that the pages are full of things to explore.  In this book, you are not seeking anything or anyone specific, just having a fun time reading all the signs and messages, seeing all the interesting items that fill all the space.  You've heard of "abhor vacui" in art?  Fear of White Space.  Well, it is certainly true here and well worth the time it takes to read the story (excellent) and to peruse the pages at a leisurely pace.
The book has a copyright of 1975 and I was afraid I might not find it at Powell's but I did.  I think you will love this book -- and if you borrow it from your library, you may decide to visit Powell's Books to find a copy for your own bookshelves!

Okay, a little more about the book so you know whether to seek out this book.  First, the story is about a little boy who wants donuts -- gazillions of them (not actually the amount referred to in the book), and far more than his parents could ever buy for him.  So, one day he peddles his trike to a big city and goes searching for donuts.  He finds donuts and more.  Great story even if you don't take the time to inspect the pages.  In fact, you probably want to read the story all the way through, then go back and spend a lot of time enjoying the pages at a slow pace.
What's on these pages that will make you want to spend so much time with them?  Well, they are pen drawings, in the cartoon style of Where's Waldo.  
I'm looking at the back cover of the book -->

• Inside the trash can, empty bottles labeled "Banana Cider"
• A pigeon, but with a horse's head, drinking from a can being held out to it that is labeled Yaussot's Hay Soda
• A can in the detritus on the ground labeled Chive Soda
• An old woman 
• A copy of "Old News" in another trash can with the headline "Worm Eats Building"
•  Another horse-headed bird, flying, wearing tie shoes, smoking a pipe that is putting out a shirt, a sock and a hair ribbon instead of smoke
• And lots and lots of artsy details

Yep, check out Who Needs Donuts, and maybe even revisit Where's Waldo while you are at it.


[edited -- added 5/30/14 -- I headed over to Book Riot to see if I could find their "Critical Linking" link to the list of children's books that adult's should reread.  Couldn't find it (easily) and gave up.  So just typed in the address bar (it will do a search from there -- cool beans) "kids books adults should reread" and got a few articles to choose from.  Here is the one I went through:  http://www.businessinsider.com/kids-books-adults-should-read-2014-2?op=1]