Friday, July 6, 2007

Book blog -- need help with a title!

OK, I'm sharing this with you all in hopes you can help me. I'm going to put together a book blog to review and recommend new books that are good reading and -- even better -- fairly clean. No vulgarity, not much bad language, etc. There are lots of websites with info about good books that are clean, but not ones that have just been published. So since I'm in a position to know about these things, I figure I'll put a website together to fill this niche. My only problem is trying to come up with a name. I'm only going to focus on fairly newly-published books, and I'm not going to review Christian/faith books. Other people are doing that. And I don't want to focus exclusively on an LDS or even a larger Christian/faith community, though they will obviously be among those who would want to read my site. I could use a title like "clean books review," but I'd really rather not use "clean" in the title. Subtitle, probably, but I don't want it to sound all "squeaky-clean." I'm just aiming to write about books that are for a fairly general audience -- kind of like "PG-rated" books. Since there's no rating system for books, I'll kind of focus on books I consider to fit that kind of a "rating." Make sense? But I can't use PG because it's copyrighted.
Here are some of my ideas:

Tasteful tomes: Recent books that check out clean
open book
page preview: reviews and ratings
Above reproach reading
Higher standard books
Checked out
of good report books
nontoxic tomes
safe for your shelf
reliable reads
respectable reads
tasteful tomes

Most of them I don't really like. And I've found that tomes isn't a word a lot of people know or use. So that's kind of out. I could just call it "Lit lady" or "Lim Lit" or "Cathy's book something-or-other." I usually am pretty good about coming up with names but this is really eluding me. I've been brooding over it for almost two weeks.
So, if you have bright ideas, let me know. I'd SOOO appreciate it. Then I'll have the page up and running, and you can all see what I've got for recommendations. Then you can pass along the link to interested parties and so on. I think it could be a lot of fun.
Thanks!!

Summer's half over

For those of you who live where school ends in June and starts in September, you'll be surprised to hear me say that summer is "half over." But it's true. The girls start back to school in a little over a month. They've been out of school for a month and a couple of weeks. So I'm pretty much on the home stretch! I have to admit that it's not been too bad and I've kind of enjoyed the summer in some ways, but I'm still not the one who's all eager to get out and do all kinds of fun things with the kids. It's probably their ages and the fact that I have a baby around who is making me tired, thus sapping me of much energy or enthusiasm that would be required for those fun outings. The girls have been good in many ways but they have still definitely had their share of fighting and fussing and screaming and squealing. I am looking forward to some regular peace and quiet once school is in and it's just Charlotte and I during the day. REALLY. I'd sometimes just like to throw them all in a room and lock the door from the outside and go downstairs and put in earplugs.
But I have to say that I really, really appreciate Brianna's age and size. She has been extremely helpful with Charlotte. It's made having a baby around much easier. Still tired, but I can sometimes get naps more readily with Brianna's help. So here's a shout-out to my eldest, who 11 years ago made me wonder how I would ever make it through her infancy. She is now a great boon.