We’ve got this.

Sometimes I really think the backyard is the nicest place to be.

• I could kiss the guy who invented the rotisserie chicken. Except he was probably some hairy, unwashed caveman fella, so, um, maybe not. #
• Um, but, but, WHY??? http://bit.ly/SfBvx #
• Matthew Lickona’s ALPHONSE may be the creepiest thing I’ve ever read. I mean that as a compliment. http://www.alphonsecomic.com #
• Baby is singing to me. OK, maybe it’s more like gargling. But still adorable. #
• Yup, she’s my kid all right: “Mommy, I want some pizza crustses.” #
• Boy, these farming games sure are good for math practice. Harvest Moon, Farmville, Farm Town. My kids keep running profit analyses on crops. #
• I would like some bedrest to re-read all those exact books. Just a little bedrest, though. I dont wish to make light of it b/c bedrest hard. #
• Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie book discussion at Bonny Glen: http://tinyurl.com/lycevn #
• Other people in Target seemed to find it amusing when Scott called me, causing David Cassidy to start singing on my phone. #
• I think I love you, so what am I so afraid of? #
• It’s a reading-books kind of dinner. Kids reading: The Way Things Work, Half-a-Moon Inn, The Ransom of Red Chief. #
• My three oldest have just left for another adventure. I miss them already. #
• The baby just sneezed on the 5-yr-old’s leg. 5yo: “Aaaahhh! Help! He got bless-you on me!” #
• Youngest twitterer ever? http://twitter.com/alphonsecomic #
• Santa Claus visited my house yesterday. Who knew he shopped at Costco? #
• Alone this week with my three youngest. Seems SO STRANGE to have only five-and-unders. #
• By noon: cleaned bathroom, took kids shoe shopping, returned phone battery, picked up stuff BIL left at hotel. Unaccustomed to efficiency. #

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows. Have you read it? Let’s discuss!

If you haven’t read it yet, be warned: there may be plot spoilers in the comments below. Hurry up and read it so you can come chat with us here!

All those marvelous personalities. Who was your favorite?

A moment to hold: standing in the kitchen with Rose, eating sunwarmed tomatoes with fresh basil and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, while Rilla practiced snipping stray basil leaves.

A book I really enjoyed: the one Scott stole from me the other day, Shannon Hale’s The Actor and the Housewife. He finished it quickly and I got my turn. It’s a unique sort of book; I’ve never read anything like it—and yet it felt comfortably familiar in a very good way, as if I’d been expecting this story to come along. I hadn’t, but that’s how it felt. The novel opens with a chance encounter between Becky, a 34-year-old Mormon housewife seven months pregnant with her fourth child, and Felix, the world’s most devastingly handsome and charming British movie star. I kept shifting between picturing Hugh Grant (he’s a little too old for the beginning) and Colin Firth (because, well, duh)—but really I think there was more Hugh in Felix than Colin, and probably I shouldn’t have been picturing anyone specific at all but I couldn’t help it, because the whole thing is about the unlikely friendship between Becky, my own personal Mary Sue if ever I met one, and this British actor. You know who else would work? For the movie version, because there is bound to be one? That guy, what’s his name, tall and charming dark-haired fellow, played Julia Roberts’s other best friend in My Best Friend’s Wedding. And was also in The Importance of Being Earnest. I could look him up in two seconds. I’m being stubborn here. Wanting to grab his name, but all I’m coming up with is Rupert. Everett? Rupert Everett? Is that a person?

Jude Law would also work. Oh! EWAN MACGREGOR!

But really the guy is a total Hugh Grant.

Enough already. What is my problem tonight? See, this is how my brain really works, and then I try to scrub out all the nonsense for you before I hit ‘publish.’ Tonight I’m too punchy to bother polishing the prose. Feh.

Anyway, the book. The book that I really really enjoyed. Becky and Felix meet because Becky has managed to sell a screenplay, something that happened quite by accident and wasn’t remotely a lifelong ambition or anything like that. Felix wanders into the office at the production company that winds up optioning the screenplay, and he and Becky do not hit it off, except that really they do. They fall easily into sarcastic banter with one another, and the insults quickly escalate, but it’s really a connection between two quick-witted minds, and one thing leads to another, and—they become friends.

Both are happily, swoonily married. Neither finds anything remotely appealing about the lifestyle the other leads. There’s a question floating underneath their first encounters, a worrisome will-there-be-romance question (worrisome because of the happy marriages), and since that question is part of what this book is about, I won’t say more right now. HOWEVER, I would love to discuss the book (or any book I mention on this blog, always, got it?), so if you’d like to chat away in the comments, let’s do so—just lead off with a big spoiler warning if you’re going to get into particulars.

Of course I know it’s a new book so maybe not many of you have had a chance to read it yet. If you’re wanting one nice fat book to take on vacation, this is a good pick. I have to say I really enjoyed Becky as a character. Which is, I guess, something one should NOT admit after having already named that character a Mary Sue. But, you know, she’s a type we seldom see in contemporary fiction. Unlike the whiners who had me rolling my eyes throughout The Ten-Year Nap, Becky’s a woman who embraces the wife-and-mother gig with her whole being. She loves creating a home for her family. She’s got no restless itch—the screenplays are something that bubble out of her creative energy, not the product of unfulfilled longing or restlessness. Fabulous character. It’s about time.

However, I will say this—she’s so awesome she makes me look bad. I said to Scott, about halfway through, “Wow, I don’t come close to measuring up to Becky!” and he replied with appropriately Felix-like snark, which is exactly the sort of thing I married him for. Becky, let me tell you, is the kind of supermom readers of this blog sometimes mistakenly think I am, and whereas I have to gently set those folks straight with posts like this, Becky really is kind of super. I mean, she cooks! And bakes pies, extra pies for giving away! Just because!

Thank goodness she’s a fictional person. We needn’t envy her; we may simply enjoy her. Her story made me laugh out loud a good many times, and I cried at least three times. And right here is where I run into the problem I always run into when I blog about books. So much more to say, but I don’t want to give anything away. Have many thoughts (both positive and negative) regarding specific things, but don’t want to affect anyone’s first reaction. Oh dear. This is a complication of blogging I will never resolve. I have no wish to write reviews in the official book-review sense; I write about books out of my enthusiasm for the things I have read and enjoyed. So what I need you to do is read it and tell me if you enjoyed it too, and if, hmm, you had the same reaction to the ending as I did. Comparing notes! That’s what I like to do. Right.

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Gazing adoringly at his daddy, of course.