Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I don’t have internet.  AGAIN.

This is after not having internet for most of the day before we left for Idaho last week, on a day when my hubby was out of town (he being the technical talent in our relationship).  My junior high student now has homework for which she must be able to access the internet, by the way.  And she stresses about things.  AND she had hours–quite literally–of homework to do last night.  Could she have done some of it earlier?  Probably.  But still.  When it went out (again) last night, my hubby called Comcast and spent a good part of his evening working on the problem.  The upshot?  They have to send a tech out to do something with the line, and that tech can’t get there until tomorrow morning, and in the meantime, I DON’T HAVE INTERNET.

I am CRANKY about this.

Thankfully, I have good friends; I’m sitting at one of their houses right now, because I didn’t want to skip today’s post.  I finished listening to The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict yesterday, and if I review it, I can return it to the library before my daughter’s hold on the brand-new Mysterious Benedict book comes in.  And everybody wins!

So, the book review.  I did like Extraordinary Education; I don’t know that I loved it, though.  It has a lonelier feel–which is unavoidable, yes, given Nicholas’s story–that affects me as a parent more than it would have affected me as a child.  I ‘m not going to dock it stars for that, but it was definitely a factor in MY reading experience.  Orphaned Nicholas is a lonely, cynical 9-year-old, and his fixation on treasure hunting rather than being a friend lasts longer than I want it to.  (Not unrealistically longer, necessarily, but still.)  My other issue may also be a function of my stage in life, because I also felt the book dragged a bit.  The target audience has more time to read and often likes its mystery/adventure stories to be fat, but I was getting impatient for resolution with more than a hundred pages left to go.  I might be more enthralled with the intricacies of the mystery if that were more my thing, but I’m a historical fiction lover at heart; I’m reading this series more because my oldest LOVES mysteries.  (And puzzles.  And adventure stories).  Ultimately, I think this prequel is best suited for fans of the series, but then again…I’m cranky today.  So I guess you can do with that what you will.