Archive for February, 2010
« Previous EntriesCatcher in the Rye Read-a-long
Submitted by Book Nut
Here’s your chance to leave a link to your review/thoughts, start spoiler discussions (if you haven’t read the book, you may not want to read the comments), rant or rave about the book, and bascially say whatever you’d like (about the book, please).
Thanks for reading along!
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Lady Macbeth’s Daughter
Submitted by Book Nut
by Lisa Klein
ages: 12+
First sentence: “The nameless baby lay on the cold ground, wrapped in a woolen cloth.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.
The one thought that kept running through my mind while reading this was: Lisa Klein is to Shakespeare as Marion Zimmer [...]
Peace, Locomotion
Submitted by Book Nut
by Jacqueline Woodson
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Dear Lili, As you know, in a few days I’m going to be twelve.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by the publisher for the Cybils.
This book was about second chances for me. I read one Jacqueline Woodson book a long time [...]
Library Loot 2010-08
Submitted by Book Nut
Survived Hubby being gone, though I didn’t read much. I did enjoy the Vicar of Dibley, though. Funny stuff, and Richard Armitage really is nice to look at.
I missed story time this week because I had a preschool parent-teacher conference for K. I’d say it was a waste of my [...]
Going Bovine
Submitted by Book Nut
by Libba Bray
ages: 15+
First sentence: “The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I think this is one of those books that if you don’t read it at exactly the right time — whenever that is for [...]
Sunday Salon: Fanfiction
Submitted by Book Nut
This will have to be a quickie… I’ve been meaning to get to the computer to write a bookish musing post, but the laptop’s down again (we just — finally — caved and bought a new one), and M’s been hogging the desktop, whenever she can, for the last week.
Doing what, you [...]
Friday Blabber
Submitted by BOOKS ON THE BRAIN
Hello out there.. I felt like doing a Sunday Salon style post, but since it’s only Friday I’ll have to call it something else. Friday F F F F.. ok, no “F” word is leaping out at me.. we’ll just call it Friday Blabber.
Life has been so crazy around here. [...]
Book-to-Movie Friday: The Lightning Thief
Submitted by Book Nut
So, I took M and C to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief this past Monday.
We had a grand time.
I went in excited, yet apprehensive: Chris Columbus pretty much hacked the first two Harry Potter books to death and I really wanted the Percy Jackson movie to hold together [...]
Book Review: New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
The best fiction, I have long believed, educates as much as it entertains; it is sometimes possible to learn much more social history from a good novel as from a good text book. In its scope and breadth, Edward Rutherfurd’s New York: The Novel can rightfully be compared to the [...]
The Lost Conspiracy
Submitted by Book Nut
by Frances Hardinge
ages: 11+
First sentence: “It was a burnished, cloudless day with a tug-of-war wind, a fine day for flying.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
This book is much like that proverbial boulder: it takes a while to get going, but once it gets started, it rolls down the hill until [...]
Library Loot 2010-07
Submitted by Book Nut
Not too many books this week for a couple of reasons. 1) Hubby’s out of town, and I generally spend my nights catching up on bad romantic comedies that he won’t sit through, which means less time for reading. (Though I have The Vicar of Dibley: A Wholly Happy Ending coming from [...]
Saved by the Music
Submitted by Book Nut
by Selene Castrovilla
ages: 14+
First sentence: “The taxi’s spinning wheels spit pebbles and dirt as it left me behind at the marina’s gate.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me by a publicist.
The question is not what is in this book, but what isn’t.
We start with Parental Abandonment: 15-year-old [...]
Review and Giveaway: American Rust by Philipp Meyer
Submitted by BOOKS ON THE BRAIN
American Rust by Philipp Meyer is a contemporary fiction novel set in a dying Pennsylvania steel town, where the largest employer has shut down years before, where few opportunities exist for the town’s youth or the adults who’ve spent their lives slaving away in the steel mills.
Isaac English is a [...]
The Catcher in the Rye
Submitted by Book Nut
by J. D. Salinger
ages: 16+
First sentence: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind [...]
Charles and Emma
Submitted by Book Nut
The Darwins’ Leap of Faith
by Deborah Heligman
ages: 12+
First sentence: “In the summer of 1838, in his rented rooms on Great Marlborough Street, London, Charles Darwin drew a line down the middle of a piece of scrap paper.”
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I’ve read a couple of books on Darwin and [...]
Storm Glass
Submitted by Book Nut
by Maria V. Snyder
ages: 14+
First sentence; “The hot air pressed against my face as I entered the glass factory.”
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Four years after Opal helped Yelena capture the Warpers in Fire Study, she’s still dealing with the aftermath. She’s a student at the Keep, learning to be a [...]
Graphic Novel Adventures
Submitted by Book Nut
Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom
by Eric Wight
ages: 8+
First sentence:”I’ve been called a lot of names: treasure seeker, relic hunter, grave robber.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Frankie Pickle (aka Franklin Lorenzo Piccolini) is just your average adventurer. Rescuing cities from destruction by your evil robots. Battling lava monsters. Avoiding [...]
Library Loot 2010-06
Submitted by Book Nut
It’s a smallish pile of loot this week. I thought I had more holds coming in, and both M and I are in the mood for fluffy romances, but I didn’t see any that caught my eye. What I really need to do is hit the bookstore and actually *buy* My Most [...]
Book Review: 100 Heartbeats by Jeff Corwin
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
If you’ve watched him on television, it would be easy to mistake Jeff Corwin for an intellectual light-weight– a kind of peppy Preppy class clown and animal lover. But such a characterization would surely sell Corwin short. In this November 2009 release, Corwin (who in fact has a master’s degree [...]
10 Questions for Lauren Mechling
Submitted by Book Nut
Sometimes, you meet an author — whether by email or in person — who is just so incredibly cool that you know that hanging out with them would be incredibly fun. Lauren Mechling is one of those authors. I want to go to New York City and just hang out with her [...]
Winter Reading Series: KEEPING THE FEAST Discussion Questions
Submitted by BOOKS ON THE BRAIN
Hello Winter Readers!
This month we’re reading Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini, a beautiful and inspiring memoir of food, depression, marriage, and family that took us on a journey from the dinner table in her childhood home in Connecticut all the way to the open air markets in sun-drenched Italy. [...]
Sunday Salon: Odds and Ends
Submitted by Book Nut
Some bookish and non-bookish musings this Sunday morning.
My email program’s spell check, for some reason, has decided that I speak French. It’s actually quite frustrating that I can’t figure out how to convince it that I don’t actually speak French. And now Firefox is acting up. (So far I’ve misspelled: spell, some, [...]
A Wind in the Door
Submitted by Book Nut
by Madeline L’Engle
ages: 9+
First sentence: “There are dragons in the twins’ vegetable garden.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
I always remembered this one, from when I read it as a kid, as my “favorite”. Though, if you had asked me, I don’t think I could have pinpointed why. So, I was [...]
Book Review: The Overlook by Michael Connelly
Submitted by The Thin Red Line
When I reviewed The Scarecrow on its release day, I mentioned that Michael Connelly was one of those authors whom I had sold and shelved but never read. I enjoyed that latest release so much that I am now digging a bit into Connelly’s backlist. And The Overlook proved to [...]
The Undaunted
Submitted by Book Nut
by Gerald N. Lund
ages: adult
First sentence: “David Dickinson’s eyes were wide open.”
Review copy sent to me by someone at By Common Consent because I volunteered for this torture.
Five ways to ruin a historical novel:
5. Write in dialect: “It be joost fur me, Dah?” If I have to read it aloud to understand [...]
