Books
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Just In Case
If fate were trying to kill you, how would you escape its deathly grasp? If your solution were to change your name, disguise yourself by dressing and acting differently, and protecting yourself by obtaining an imaginary dog, a greyhound named Boy, then you might be David Case. David is 15, and lives in a suburb of London with his parents and his baby brother, Charlie. One day he saves Charlie from jumping out of a window to his certain demise (Charlie was wanting to fly like the birds), and rather than feeling blessed and fortunate, he instead snaps and decides that Fate is out to get him, and his best…
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Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is the story of a ten-year-old Irish boy in 1968. The book is told in Paddy’s voice, and Roddy Doyle captures the confusion and attempts to make sense of the world that go along with being 10, suppositions and extrapolations that children make. Paddy on death and religion: When Indians died – Red ones – they went to the happy hunting ground. Vikings went to Valhalla when they died or they got killed. We went to heaven, unless we went to hell. You went to hell if you had a mortal sin on your soul when you died, even if you were on your way…
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
(cover found here) I LOVED this book. Really, really loved it. So charming and quirky and wonderful, I suspect I’ll be buying it as a gift for a few people, and recommending it to many others. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the story of Paloma and Renée, two inhabitants of an elegant apartment building in Paris. Paloma is the youngest daughter of a wealthy couple who inhabit one of the apartments, and Renée is the building concierge. Both Paloma and Renée hide their true selves from the world around them, fearing the consequences if people find out their secrets. And their secrets are the same: they are both fiercely…
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The Member of The Wedding
“A last difference about that morning was the way her world seemed layered in three different parts, all the twelve years of the old Frankie, the present day itself, and the future ahead when the three of them would be together in all the many distant places.” Frankie Addams is the bored twelve-year-old protagonist of Carson McCullers’ novel, The Member of the Wedding. Frankie’s boredom comes from the invisible prison walls that she feels trap her in her mundane existence. Though World War II rages on in the world outside, there is no part in it for her. She cannot go overseas and fight, she cannot even donate blood in…
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Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Darwin & Abraham Lincoln
Today is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist who proved the theory of Evolution and Natural Selection. Perhaps the most clear and concise book that I’ve ever read on how Natural Selection works is Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution, by Steve Jenkins. That this is a children’s picture book is immaterial. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to understand Natural Selection, or especially to anyone wanting to explain it to a child. The SF Chronicle had a book review the other day for what looks to be another great book on Evolution, Why Evolution is True, by Jerry A Coyne. This book is for…
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Criss Cross
“Wanna go to the movies?” he asked. No one had ever asked Debbie this question before. She had imagined, often, being asked this question, but not by Lenny. He was the wrong person. Wasn’t he? She had never felt that way about him. Had she? His question caught her off guard, and she didn’t know what to do with it. The part of her that was open to the universe was facing in another direction just then. She felt disoriented and uncomfortable and there was Lenny, waiting for her to say something back. “I think it’s better if we’re just friends,” she said. To her relief Patty arrived with a…
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Tamar
“He was not what you’d call a lovable man, my grandad. It wasn’t that he was cold, exactly. It was more as though he had a huge distance inside himself. There’s a game I used to play with my friends. One of us had to think of someone we all knew, and the others had to work out who it was by asking questions like “If this person was a musical instrument, what would it be?” I used to think that if Grandad were a place, it would be one of those great empty landscapes you sometimes see in American movies: flat, an endless road, tumbleweed blown by a moaning…
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Casual Classics Challenge
MizB over at MizB Challenges You is hosting 5 different challenges this year, one of which is the Casual Classics Challenge. I’ve been looking for some motivation and accountability to inspire me to read “Mrs. Dalloway”, in case I decide to read “The Hours”. Do you find my life pathetic when you read that sentence? I sorta do, but also, I suspect that those of you who read book blogs and participate in challenges probably understand. The rules of this challenge are quite casual, which is nice. The goal is to read 4 Classics in 2009. That’s it. And the definition of Classics* is pretty loose, too. Any book written…
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Revolutionary Road
“He felt as if he were sinking helplessly into the cushions and the papers and the bodies of his children like a man in quicksand. When the funnies were finished at last he struggled to his feet, quietly gasping, and stood for several minutes in the middle of the carpet, making tight fists in his pockets to restrain himself from doing what suddenly seemed the only thing in the world he really and truly wanted to do: picking up a chair and throwing it through the picture window. What in the hell kind of life was this? What in God’s name was the point or the meaning or the purpose…
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Dewey’s Book Challenge
I was looking around for a Classics Reading Challenge yesterday, hoping for some accountability that will get me to read a few classics, when I came across this excellent blog, A Novel Challenge, which lists a TON of current reading challenges. Really. A lot. If you’re looking for a chick lit challenge? She has links to one. Historical Fiction more your thing? She’s got that, too. Practically anything you’re looking for, it’s there. I found a classics challenge there, and as soon as I figure out what I’m going to read for it, I’ll put up a list. Anyway, one of the challenges I came across is the Dewey’s Books…
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2009 TBR Book Challenge
Having just finished the TBR Challenge for 2008, I’m ready to set my sights toward 2009. In honor of one of my favorite book bloggers, Dewey, who passed away recently, several of the books on this list are books I came to via her blog, The Hidden Side of a Leaf. So many of the books I’ve read in the last couple of years, I found on her blog. I am going to miss her. The challenge is to read 12 books in 12 months, all at once or spread out, whichever way you want. They cannot be re-reads, and you have to make a list and stick to it,…
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The Pillars of the Earth
(picture and game found here) The Pillars of the Earth is set in 12th century England, and sweeps a period of about 40 years. It is the story of the building of a grand Cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge (there is a real Kingsbridge, but not this one), and the people involved. That doesn’t sound like it would make for a very interesting novel, but it turned out to be a page-turner of a book with flawed characters and enough twists and turns to keep any soap opera buff happy. There is sex, violence, murder, sabotage, intrigue, historical fact, and lots of ups and downs. The main characters…
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Life As We Knew It/The Dead and The Gone
Life As We Knew It and The Dead and The Gone are companion young adult/science fiction novels covering the same events from the points of view of two different characters. In both stories, the moon is struck by a very large meteor, pushing the moon off its axis and closer to Earth, resulting in tsunamis, violent storms, droughts, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. These natural disasters result in power shortages, food shortages, crop failures, widespread death and disease, and the failure of communication systems worldwide. Life As We Knew It centers on 16-year-old Miranda and her family, who live in rural Pennsylvania. It is written in the form of Miranda’s diary,…
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Charming Billy
Billy Lynch, alcoholic, romantic, kind and loving man, has died. His friends and family come together to comfort his widow, and to celebrate his life. And Billy’s life seems to have two stories to it. The sad story of his alcoholism, which his friends and family tried again and again to guide him away from, with no success. And the sad story of his first love, an Irish girl whom he intended to marry, but who goes back to Ireland and dies. At least, that’s what Billy is told. The truth is, she took the money he sent her for her passage to America, bought a gas station…
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Run
Run begins with the story of Bernadette’s statue, an heirloom especially treasured by the women in her family. The statue is of Mary, Mother of God, and looks remarkably like the women in the family. The daughter who looks the most like the statue inherits it, and the others bitterly wish it were theirs. Now that she has died, with three sons and no daughters, her sisters show up, demanding that her husband give it to them. We hear the history of the statue, which is sweet and sad and full of lies. Bernadette and her husband Bernard had three sons. They both wanted large families, and though they had…