Books
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Boom or Bust
For awhile there, this was starting to look like a book blog…I had so many book reviews, and I was just tearing through books at an alarming rate. I love reading, and I like writing the reviews, so this seemed like a good thing to me. But lately….not reading so much. You might think that with the writers’ strike affecting the quantity of new programming on television, and the fact that we didn’t move meaning I’m not quite as addicted to HGTV (though now I’m watching for ideas of how to fix our place up for us, not how to get it ready to sell), plus the fact that I…
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What to eat in the New Year
One of my gifts for Christmas this year was a cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters. So far I’ve made exactly one meal using the cookbook, but I’m going to say, GREAT gift. Really, I think if one buys the right cookbooks, one needs very few, but they need to do certain things. They need to give you good, basic information about how to cook good food. That’s it. This book does that, including tips on putting together a great home kitchen (what knives you really need, what pots and pans, that kind of thing), and tips on how to make really good food, rather than just…
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The Golden Compass/Northern Lights
The Golden Compass (published first in the U.K. under the title Northern Lights) is the first book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The protagonist, Lyra Belacqua, is an 11-year old girl being raised by the professors and staff of Oxford’s (fictional) Jordan College. She leads a fairly rough and tumble life, learning what the professors have the time to teach her, and the ability to teach, considering they are used to talking to college students and fellow professors, not children. She also learns the arts of lying, self-defense, and the value of loyalty in her life outdoors, running semi-wild with the Gyptian children who frequent Oxford. Lyra has…
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Paradigm Shift
I’m a reader, and I grew up in a family of readers, and even the side of the family that I didn’t know until I was an adult, all readers. I grew up surrounded by books, where the most expensive part of moving from one state to another was the books, because the furniture we had wasn’t really worth shipping, but the books were. So, the biggest walls in our house were always covered with books, which were alphabetized (for fiction) and categorized then alphabetized (non-fiction). Always, books were the number one thing in the house. In my adult years, however, we have often had the luxury of a room…
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Don’t Look Behind You
When I was a little older than Maya is now, I discovered the semi-creepy world of Lois Duncan. She writes young adult fiction, and her books all seem to dwell on the darker side of life. You may recognize her name from one of my favorite of her books, I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was made into a slasher film starring the Gorton’s Fisherman as the arch villain, which I never bothered to see because heck, there was no Fisherman in the book, and it wasn’t a slasher book. That book is the story of the aftermath of a tragic evening, when four high school kids are…
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Rhett Butler’s People
While preparing for this post, I discovered that a new book was being released in the Gone With the Wind family. I knew I had to read it, knew I had to find out more about my favorite characters, and what might happen with Rhett and Scarlett. Last week, we walked to the library, where a fresh copy was being held for me. Pant pant. (That’s my eagerness to get home and dive on in…) I have a couple of different thoughts on this book. First off, I really liked it. I found it to be well written, much better than Scarlett, and I liked how the author took characters…
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Children’s Book Week
I found out over at Scribbit that this is Children’s Book Week. The post on Scribbit had some wonderful suggestions on how to encourage reading in children, if you’re interested. Then she came up with part two… We don’t have that problem around here, as Maya is just as much of a reader as her parents are. (This doesn’t always follow…I know several couples who both love to read, read to their children, model reading in front of their children, maybe even have one or two children who love to read…and one or two who just don’t enjoy it at all. Some is nature, and you just have to accept…
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Wordless Wednesday?
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Suite Française
Because I read mainly novels, the identity and experience of the author is usually immaterial to me. Of course, who they are and where they are from shape their words and the stories they tell, but seldom do I pay attention to these things. My belief is that the authors would want it to be so – that they would wish for their stories and characters to stand on their own, and to be authentic without our knowing anything about the artist who brought them to life. Sometimes, however, this isn’t possible. Having looked at the copyright of The Grapes of Wrath, for example, I know going in that John…
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Nonfiction Books
I’ve been looking around for a non-fiction challenge. Anyone know of one? I certainly don’t have the energy or nerve to host one myself, but I find these challenges very motivating, and when it comes to non-fiction, I needs me a bit of a cattle prod on my flank to get me going. But there are a few books that I’ve been thinking about reading, and I’m waiting for a challenge to come along, maybe in 2008? My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes I wrote about this book here, so I won’t go into it again, but it’s composed of essays written by Iranian women, discussing…
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the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
I loved this book. Again, it was a quick read, which I seem to be getting a lot of lately, so I polished it off in 2 sittings. The first thing I noticed when I started this book was that the first chapter appeared to be chapter 2. Hmmm. Did I get a bum copy? Doesn’t look like a bum copy. The next chapter is 3, then 5, then 7. Oh, OK, prime numbers. Christopher Boone is writing a murder mystery, and he is an autistic savant living in Swindon, England, and loves ‘maths’. He finds great comfort in numbers and the way they work…it helps him to cope with…
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The Almost Moon ~ Alice Sebold
I read The Lovely Bones a few years ago, and it almost broke my heart. If you haven’t read it, it’s the story of a teen aged girl who is raped and murdered by a neighbor, and it takes awhile for her body to be found. The oddly uplifting story is mostly of the girl watching her family from heaven, wanting to comfort them with the knowledge that she is OK now, and trying to come to terms with the transition from her earthly life to the non-corporeal existence where she now finds herself. It’s shattering and very well written. Alice Sebold’s other book, Lucky, is a memoir, and I…
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Ethan Frome
I read Ethan Frome as part of my 2nds reading challenge, where you read a second book by an author of whose work you’ve previously only read one book. That’s just awkward…I always have trouble explaining this challenge. Anyway, awhile ago I read The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, for last winter’s classics challenge. I thought it was a sad, tragic tale, and so well written, that I wanted more of Ms. Wharton. So when I saw this challenge, I thought it would be the perfect time to pick up Ethan Frome. If you haven’t read Ethan Frome (wikipedia page, plot spoilers!), it is the story of a man…
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Number the Stars
Number the Stars is the story of Annemarie, a 10 year old Danish Christian girl in 1943. Denmark is occupied by the Nazis, and now they are preparing to deport all of the Jews, including Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen, and her family. Annemarie’s family works with Ellen’s family to spirit them away, and the events occurring around Annemarie do not always make sense. But she wants her friend to be safe, desperately, and is willing to be brave to help. While the characters in Number the Stars are fictional, the events portrayed are very much real. I had never read anything about the rescue of the Danish Jews before. What…
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March
I’ve been intending to read March, by Geraldine Brooks, for awhile now. I first brought it up way back in January of ’06, when I was pretty new to blogging, and was thinking of books I might like to read. Well, I went book shopping, and intended to buy it, but they didn’t have it, so I grabbed another book by the same author, Year of Wonders, which I really liked. Finally, I bought March, but I put it on my bookshelf, and then it got packed away with 99% of our other books, and is now all cozy in our rented storage space, in an attempt to convince prospective…