Archive for November, 2009
« Previous EntriesBook Review: Step By Step by Lawrence Block
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
I’ve long been a huge fan of prolific writer Lawrence Block, so I was of course immediately interested when Step By Step A Pedestrian Memoir turned up in the Biography stacks a few weeks back. Block is one of those writers who writes so well that he can get me [...]
November Jacket Flap-a-thon
Submitted by Book Nut
It’s Cybils time around here at chez Book Nut, which means this is the Middle Grade edition of the Jacket Flap-a-thon. I haven’t forgotten about the drawing for the $25 gift card… you have until midnight (U. S. Central Standard Time) to enter. I’ll pick a winner tomorrow. Follow the link to [...]
Love, Aubrey
Submitted by Book Nut
by Suzanne LaFleur
ages: 10+
First sentence: “It was fun at first, playing house.”
Support your local independent bookstore, buy it there!
I’ve read about a lot of grief, trials, abandonment, and loss in the books this year for the Cybils. But few have touched me like Love, Aubrey did. Eleven-year-old Aubrey has suffered quite a [...]
Cotillion
Submitted by Book Nut
by Georgette Heyer
ages: adult
First sentence: “The Saloon, like every other room in Arnside House, was large and lofty, and had been furnished, possibly some twenty years earlier, in what had then been the first style of elegance.”
Support your independent bookstore: buy it there!
Now this is quintessential Georgette Heyer. Silly, fun, captivating, and [...]
The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had
Submitted by Book Nut
by Kristin Levine
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I’ve been wrong before.”
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It’s 1917, Moundville, Alabama and Dit is not quite 13 years old. He’s also the sixth of ten children, and tends to get lost in the crowd. All Dit wants to do is play baseball and earn [...]
Black Angels
Submitted by Book Nut
by Linda Beatrice Brown
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Luke took the key out of the sideboard drawer in the dining room, took a rifle and put the key back very carefully.”
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Support your local independent bookstore, buy it there!
Fiction about children during wartime is pretty overdone, in my humble opinion. [...]
Christmas Gifts From The Kitchen
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
Christmas Gifts From The Kitchen by Georgeanne Brennen was a book that Alan brought home. But I had to read it, not only for the recipes, and not only for the luscious illustrations, but for the memories it brought back. When I lived in rural Louisiana, my then lover was [...]
Book Review : Lost in the Meritocracy by Walter Kirn
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
Lost in the Meritocracy by Walter Kirn is quite an interesting book. It chronicles his journey from eager to learn child through elementary school, and then High school and college. Learning the wrong things, like how to drink and take drugs, and how to play the system and his teachers [...]
Teaser Tuesday- November 24, 2009
Submitted by BOOKS ON THE BRAIN
Miz B and Teaser Tuesdays asks you to: Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your [...]
Book to Movie Friday: New Moon
Submitted by Book Nut
Happy Black Friday, everyone! You didn’t think I’d pass up this opportunity to talk about this particular movie, did you? Admittedly, it has been a while since I’ve seen a movie based on a book, so I’m a bit out of practice… but giving it a good go.
If you recall (you probably [...]
Library Loot #46
Submitted by Book Nut
Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans out there. I managed to squeeze in another small trip to the library amid the cleaning and the visiting and the baking.
You didn’t think I’d miss a week did you?
For A/K:
Goldilicious, by Victoria Kann
Katy Did It!, by Lorianne Siomades
A Book, by Mordicai Gerstein
Robot Zot!, by Jon [...]
The Brooklyn Nine
Submitted by Book Nut
by Alan Gratz
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Nine months ago, Felix Schneider was the fastest boy in Bremen, Germany.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
This book is one of the more unique ones I’ve read recently. It’s not that it’s tackling something different or controversial. Rather, it’s quite the opposite: it’s a sweeping [...]
Book Review: Busted by Edmund L Andrews
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
Having previously featured volumes of dream homes, architectural eye candy and even a few practical manuals for home buyers, I suppose it is appropriate now to feature a book about the mortgage market meltdown. Edmund L. Andrews is an economics writer for the New York Times. In Busted he chronicles [...]
My Geeky Best of 2009
Submitted by Book Nut
This week’s geek is a reprise from last year: help the Weekly Geekers come up with a Top 10 for 2009. The basic guidelines:
This year, when you submit your novels, you must include the genre it is from as well. Last year, when I was trying to categorize everything, I had to [...]
Book Review : The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
I have a confession to make. I am now 53 years old and I never gave up reading comics (or graphic novels, if you will). That is a drive I have come to understand as they present a world where good always triumphs over evil, which is markedly different from [...]
Book Review : Cooking In Cajun Country
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
Some of you may remember that Alan was born in New Orleans, and I lived there for ten years. And this book brought up a lot of memories for both of us. And made both of us very hungry for the cooking we remember from when we lived there. [...]
A (Thankful) Sunday Salon
Submitted by BOOKS ON THE BRAIN
I don’t know about you but I hate those posts where the blogger apologizes for not blogging because they are _________ (fill in the blank) busy, lazy, distracted, sick, tired, *whatever*. So, I won’t do that. Because really, nobody cares.
But from looking around I see it is time to dust [...]
Happy Blogoversary to Me
Submitted by Book Nut
Five years.
When I started this blog, I had no idea that it’d develop into something I enjoy doing so much.
When I started this blog, I had no idea that I’d write more than 1,000 posts.
When I started this blog, I had no idea that I’d make as many friends and read as [...]
Wild Things
Submitted by Book Nut
by Clay Carmichael
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Humans were diggers and buriers, the cat thought, like dogs.”
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
It’s a familiar story: girl — who has been forced, because of a crazy and neglectful mother, to mostly raise herself — finds, after her mother’s [...]
Also Known as Harper
Submitted by Book Nut
by Ann Haywood Leal
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Winnie Rae Early followed ten steps behind me the entire way home from school.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Eleven-year-old Harper Lee Morgan loves to write poetry. It’s possibly fate — her mother named her after the author, after all — but she thinks it’s [...]
Library Loot #45
Submitted by Book Nut
Um… it’s not bigger. It’s smaller. On the upside, I’m getting a lot more books in the mail, thanks to the Cybils.
For A/K:
Dora’s Book of Words / Libro de Palabras de Dora : A Bilingual Pull-Tab Adventure!
Waiting for Winter, by Sebastian Meschenmoser
Two at the Zoo, by Danna Smith/Illus. by Valeria Petrone
One Fine [...]
A Season of Gifts
Submitted by Book Nut
by Richard Peck
ages: 9-12
First sentence: “You could see from here the house was haunted.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I’m not a big Richard Peck fan. Sure, I’ve read his other Grandma Dowdel books, but while I think I found them charming, I think that’s about all I found them to [...]
Fifth Business
Submitted by Book Nut
by Roberston Davies
ages: adult
First sentence: “My lifelong involvement with Mrs. Dempster began at 5:58 o’clock p.m. on the 27th of December, 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I first became aware of this trilogy several years ago when Julie at [...]
Library Loot #44
Submitted by Book Nut
Because Veteran’s Day was Wednesday, the library was closed. And because the library was closed, I didn’t get to go on my regularly scheduled library day.
As a result, this is two days late and really small since we’re going back in just a few days. Next week should be bigger (says the [...]
Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies
Submitted by Book Nut
by Erin Dionne
ages: 10-13
First sentence: “‘No way,’ I hissed through the slatted dressing room door.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Celeste has never really worried about her weight. That’s not to say she was super-skinny: she’s not. But, she’s comfortable in her track pants and hoodie, and she likes her chips, [...]
