Sister Noon- I've just started this one, and it's by the author of the Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler. I'm really liking it so far, it's got interesting female lead characters (like JABC).
Excerpt from amazon:
Subtle undercurrents of race and class propel this intriguing novel laden with historic fact and fancy, mystery, voodoo, frontier rough-and-tumble and turn-of-the-century social conventions. The characters rooted in this rich, exotic loam are an unforgettable crop. In 1890s San Francisco, Lizzie Hayes is a 40-year-old spinster, the well-born volunteer treasurer of the Ladies' Relief and Protection Society Home, familiarly called the Brown Ark because of its "shipwrecked, random air, like something the tides had left. In this respect, it matched the fortunes of most of its residents." One day, the notorious, fascinating and possibly dangerous Mrs. Mary Ellen Pleasant arrives at the door of the Brown Ark with a girl, Jenny Ijub, a disturbing and winsome child, perhaps four years old, rumored to be the daughter of a mother buried at sea and an unknown father, though Lizzie suspects he could be rich and thus a valuable resource for the Home. Every character's tale is complicated, unpredictable and often engrossing. Mrs. Pleasant, for instance, is a former slave (or is she?), wealthy as a railroad baron, charitable, a witch and a legendary cook. Still beautiful at 70, she is a purported dealer in underground markets where sex, opium and even murder are for sale. Fowler (Sarah Canary; The Sweetheart Season) moves her principals through time and space seamlessly and gracefully, and exquisitely renders San Francisco as it grows from outpost to city. The temporal shifts and the unreliability of some characters' histories may be temporarily disorienting, but readers who bear with Fowler will be handsomely rewarded.
I am also looking through Taking Charge of Your Fertility, which is really interesting and I'd recommend to anyone who is interested in knowing more about their cycle. For anyone looking for information on birth control or pregnancy it would be really useful as it helps you determine exactly when you are ovulating and when you can expect your menses.
I started reading the Camping with Kids book I described below and had to laugh outloud when I read an excerpt about how the author was asked to write a book about camping with children when she was pregnant. After camping in a tent for 5 day with her 8 month old she said the book would be one word: DON'T. I tented with Blackbird Jr when he was 3 months old in a 2 man tent we had to crawl in and out of (while holding the baby) and he was too little for mosquito spray or suntan lotion. Other cherished memories are sitting in a mosquito tent double pumping breastmilk (part of my daily routine made more special through camping) and fantasizing setting the campsite on fire. So yeah. Don't. Wait until they are older or at minimum, a big enough tent.
Back to the campsite book though, it has some nice reviews of campsites but the ones for Alberta are mostly all larger campsites that are for RV'ers, as the author ended up purchasing an RV to camp with her kids. That made it less relevant for me as a tenter as we prefer the smaller, walk-in tenting sites.
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