My Crazy Life

Check out this Harry Potter sky I snapped a shot of at 5th grade Field Day yesterday.  I probably should have been looking for the Death Eater symbol to appear to send the kids screaming.  Honestly I think they'd probably scream for any reason, judging by the uproar that ensued when one of them saw a wasp.

In other news, I finished reading Hotel No Tell, sequel to Super in the City (which I loved).  I really enjoyed this one too, although I suspect I was a little too distracted to really give this one the attention it deserved.  I'll have to read it again in a few months (which is all it takes for me to almost completely forget the plot of a book).  Last night I started reading Charles and Emma, The Darwins' Leap of Faith, and despite only being on the second chapter, I have to admit I'm already fascinated.

In other news, I'm waiting for rain, and have even committed to participate in a little dance number the PTA is doing as part of this year's teacher talent show.  Here's the song...picture it if you will...me as a Ferbette.

Wish List (just a sample)

January 2012

September 2011

June 2011

October 2011

May 2011

Happy Weekend!

May it be filled with books!

The Power of Book Blogs

Once upon a time I considered this somewhat of a book blog.  It is, first and foremost, an author blog, but it is the blog of an author who, like most, loves books.  Wants to gush about books, and covers, and really cool metaphors.  (Or maybe that's just me.)  Anyway, I said 'once upon a time.'  Why?  Because I've recently come to the realization that this is not a book blog.  Not in the way that some blogs are book blogs.

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A couple of weeks ago (you may remember), I signed up to participate in a blog hop, hosted by two book blogs:  I Am A Reader, Not A Writer and Books Complete Me.  Over the course of that experience/experiment, I discovered several things:

1.  Book Blogs have a LOT of fans and a LOT of traffic...they can drive pre-order sales (not to mention post-launch sales).
2.  Book Blogs are strictly about books.  They hype new releases, host a crazy number of giveaways, interview authors, share the love with other book bloggers...  You name it.
3.  Book Blogs participate (and host) blog hops and book tours.
4.  Book Blogs post an astounding number of reviews, some of them for ARCs donated by authors and publishers
5.  Book Blogs host and advertise book clubs and hold (and promote) contests

In fact, Book Blogs are one-stop-shopping as far as books are concerned.  You can find out about new releases, read reviews from reviewers you trust, *win books* and other book related paraphenalia, read author interviews, and get in the loop on all the latest hype.

In my 'research,' I've discovered that the bulk of the big Book Blogs tend to be focused on either YA books or paranormal, or both.  Which is understandable, given the current trends in publishing right now.  But if you look, you can probably find Book Blogs dedicated to any genre you're interested in...like say, Jane Austen fiction...or chick-lit, should you be so inclined.  These Book Blogs wield a lot of clout with a LOT of readers, so no author...and no reader should be unaware of such an awesome resource.

Do You Trust Me?

I talk about books a lot on this blog, whether it be in the form of formal reviews, casual mentions, TBR lists, or book cover love, and I started wondering if it's had any impact.

I'm curious how many of you (even you lurkers!) have read a book as a result of a mention or recommendation here.  Let's say in the last year or so.

To refresh your memory, here's a quick, but not necessarily comprehensive, list...

1.  Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn
2.  The Thing About Jane Spring by Sharon Krum
3.  The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
4.  The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James
5.  The Luckiest Girl by Beverly Cleary
6.  Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
7.  Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen
8.  Nick of Time by Ted Bell
9.  The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
10. Murder Boogies With Elvis by Anne George
11. I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
12. The Swiss Courier by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey
13. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig  
14. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
15. Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene Low
16. The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

Read any of these?  If not, what are you waiting for??

Book Covers That Can Edge Out a Kindle

Top 10 TBR for Toddlers

Seeing as my brother and sister-in-law just had their first baby, and several of my blogging friends are soon expecting, I felt inclined to reminesce over some of the books, without which my boys' childhoods would simply not have been the same.  For this list I'm sticking to the baby/toddler crowd.  Later years will have to be another post another time.  So...here we go!

#1:  Anything by Sandra Boynton.

What's to love?  Simple drawings, silly rhymes, snazzy colors...even music!  We have a ton of her books (I refuse to give them away), and my kids loved reading them.  We also have all four of her music complilations (with celebrity guests), which are creative, diverse, and super fun.  I dare you not to sing along.

#2: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
What's to Love? Vibrant colors, nibble holes in the pages of food, fun story that builds and builds until the glorious transformation of caterpillar into butterfly. 

#3: The Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak What's to Love?  Adorable little stories with charming pictures, made for little hands.  If you can get the audio version, do it! It's wonderful! (I'd also add Where the Wild Things Are.)

#4: The Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown 
What's to Love?  If you get the deluxe version, the book is actually covered in fake fur, which is very luxurious.  A cozy story of a little furry dude that spends his day having an adventure and then happily returns to a warm and loving home.

#5:  The Olivia Books by Ian Falconer
What's to Love?  Olivia's incorrigible, irrepressible attitude and unerring ability to turn things on their head...in a charming way.  Her little brother is quite something too.

#6: The Frog and Toad Books by Donald Lobel
What's to Love?  The simple stories of two best friends having adventures.  So amusing, so charming, so very sensible.




#7:  The Francis Books by Russell Hoban
What's to Love?  What's NOT to love??  Francis is irresistible, with her clever little songs, and her crafty ways of meting out justice, and her picnics and parties.  Oh, I can't say enough!

#8:  Anything by Richard Scarry
What's to Love?  The crazy amount of detail that goes into every book.  It's impossible for a child not to be engaged when simultaneously a pig's falling off a truck, a moose is stepping into a manhole, and a cat is about to get hit in the face with a pie.  They call it Busy Town for a reason!  And then there's the educational value...whether it's shapes, colors, occupations, numbers, or fruits, you're learning something.

#9:   The Little Quiet Book by Katharine Ross
What's to Love?  It's such a soothing transition into bedtime.  Simple, sweet, and perfect.
I read this book to my oldest son every night for months (with a few other selections mixed in too).

#10: The George and Martha Collection by James Marshall
What's to Love?  Two charming hippo friends just living their lives--sounds pretty awesome, right?  They understand the importance of friendship.  But then there's the silliness, and the subtle humor that have you grinning all the way through. We were late comers to these, but my eight-year-old still likes reading them, giggling the whole time.

And there you have it...our list.  What would you add??

Lusting over books...again.

I will be skipping out on Barrie Summy's Book Review Club meeting this month, seeing as I haven't had a chance lately to work my way through any books other than those already touted here, and a couple that maybe shouldn't be. I do have The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise out from the library and have exactly three days to decide if I like it enough to renew it or just let it slip away.

I definitely recommend you stop by Barrie's blog for this month's round of reviews, but here the best I can do is bring your attention to some beautiful children's books I found in Anthropologie today.  They're Puffin Classics, the kid version of the popular Penguin Classics (also sold by Anthro).

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I wanted the entire set (despite cursing the designer for making Anne of Green Gables that cotton candy pink! There should have been bottles of raspberry cordial and currant wine and broken slates!) I came the closest to buying The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which coincidentally, is the only one of these books I've ever read, but I walked away empty handed. They're still on my mind.

Impossible to resist...

I went to the bookstore today for the express purpose of purchasing a keeper edition of Emma, and barely got out of there for under $25. Believe it or not, sometimes I go in a bookstore, and nothing grabs me. Like an overwhelming feeling of 'Eh.' And sometimes I go in thinking, I can get that from the library...or I'll wait for that to come out in paperback...or I'll add that to my Amazon order to push the total past $25 and get free shipping.

Not so today.

Today I bought a nice, hefty, substantial version of Emma, and also The Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn, book four of the Lady Julia Grey novels.  I have loved this series, which follows the often shocking exploits of an inquisitive and intellectual Victorian widow, including her romantic involvement with the unorthodox Gypsy detective Nicolas Brisbane.  And the book itself is beautiful...the colors, the simplicity, the Indian-inspired edging on the midnight black book flaps.  I can't wait!
 
I also bought The Captive for my younger son.  No doubt inspired by the movie coming out tomorrow (Guardians of Ga'hoole--don't those owls look majestic??), he checked out book six in the Ga'hoole series from his school library.  Well apparently that triggered an unexpected urgency inside me.  He can't read book six first!  Ludicrous!  And since book one is not available at school or at either of the two libraries we frequent, I need to buy it.  It makes no sense to wait!  He might check out book three, and then book eight...  The madness has to stop!

So that made it to the checkout counter on my stack too.  I literally had to wrench myself away from the new book display in the kids section.  I could have done some serious damage.

Lucky Girl

Specific books don't stay with me for long. I remember reading them (for a time) and even vaguely what they're about, but not the plots. There are, of course, a few notable exceptions. Consequently, I can read books over and over and over again--even mysteries--and it's almost like I'm reading them fresh. But unlike many people's, my memory is not strewn with books. I can't remember the books that influenced me as a kid or as a teenager. If a book is mentioned, it triggers my memory slightly, but otherwise, my reading history is almost like a blackhole in my brain.

A few things though, have lingered, readily accessible. For instance, I remember that in fifth grade, I had to read the entire list of Texas Bluebonnet nominees--and I remember a few of them. I remember LOVING Ellen Concord.


And I remember The Luckiest Girl.

This book has been in the back of my mind for quite a little while. I couldn't remember the title or the author (although I suspected Beverly Cleary and was right). All I remembered was that it was about a teenage girl who spent the summer with family in California. (I believe she was from the East Coast.) I remember the orange groves and her crush on a boy and how I thought that book was just about perfect. And I wanted to find it again.

I'd considered posting to ask if anyone could identify this mystery book, but I imagined I didn't have enough to go on. And then I found it myself, via Beverly Cleary's website, and now it's on request at the library! The cover posted is the one I had. I'm not all that fond of the new one.

What's your 'Big Memory' book?

Impossible to put down...

Even if you're very careful about picking your 'To-Be-Reads', you will likely end up with the occasional dud, unless you are extremely fortunate. Well, my friends, so far this year, I have been extremely fortunate in the books I've read. Certainly several of them were by favorite authors, and a few more were well-reviewed by a trusted book-advisor, but some were just random picks. And they've ALL been good.

My latest was one of the random ones. I selected it from Target's Bookmarked selection and bought it almost completely on the strength of the reviews alone. I say that because there was no summary--only an author's note indicating that the book was inspired by her interest in the Simon and Garfunkel song, Scarborough Fair. But the reviews! My gosh--there were tons! And all gushing. So, I snapped it up, very much looking forward to reading it.

And then I looked it up on Amazon. And things went haywire.


I figured it might be nice to know something about the book. Instead I found a review titled, 'Rape. There. It's right up front.' Something you should know about me before we go further. I don't like reading books or watching movies that include a rape in any form. So, after seeing this review, the book was sort of tainted in my view. It sat on my nightstand, waiting, and I glanced at it everyday, asking myself if I was ready to read it, knowing what I knew.

I wasn't ready until this past Sunday when I locked myself in my bedroom, braced myself, and started reading. Based on the little bit I'd read on Amazon, I figured the incident would need to happen early on, so I read...and read...and read. The stress of it was KILLING me. I got to page fifty and had to stop to make my kids dinner, and not only was I tense and anxious, but the book had already lured me in. I felt like I just had to get past 'that part' and I was home free.

A few more chapters later and it was over--and not nearly as terrible as I'd imagined based on that review. It was handled well, and necessary to the storyline, and I felt immensely relieved.

After that, I read the rest of the book ravenously, pulled along by the very unique storyline and the easy flow of the narrative. I finished it yesterday and must say, even with a rocky start, it was excellent. Very, very clever. I'll give just a quick summary here.

Lucy Scarborough discovers, through a life-shattering experience (i.e. a rape and its aftermath) that she is descended from a cursed line of women who must either accomplish three impossible tasks or else get pregnant at eighteen, go mad, and become the possession of an Elfin King.

Intriguing, no? The book is Impossible by Nancy Werlin. Read it.

Books, Glorious Books

As Sharp-shootin' Tex (below) will tell you, ain't nothin' better than a good book. And for this here post I rounded up a posse of 'em, all of which I've set my sights on for 2010. And these, ladies and gents, are some dadgum good authors and some right fine covers. So pay attention...

January: The Betrayal of the Blood Lily by Lauren Willig. Another installment in the half-chick-lit, half historical fiction novels surrounding the spies at work in nineteenth-century Britain and France.


February: Scarlett Fever, sequel to Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson, story of a spunky teen living in her family's hotel in NYC. Little bit of wackiness, little bit of romance....perfection!
and Brava, Valentine by Adriana Trigiani. Love her.

March: Woo doggies, there's a whole passel of 'em!
The Spellmans Strike Again by Lisa Lutz. The Spellmans are simply hilarious, and I can't wait for the movie!

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley. Can't wait to read more of the adventures of Miss Flavia de Luce.

The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn. Not sure about this one--sounds very dark and gothic--but I loved the Lady Julia Grey novels.

Wild Ride by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Need I say more??


April: Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus by R.L. LaFevers. I love, love, love Theodosia, a Victorian era Egyptologist-In-Training who must save a bunch of bumbling adults from evil spirits and bad mojo.

May: I So Don't Do Makeup by the lovely Barrie Summy. Sure to be crowd-pleaser (and a hoot).




July: The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman. I LOVED her debut, Enthusiasm, and while her second book doesn't seem to have any ties to Pride and Prejudice, it looks awesome. Basically there is a 'Circulating Material Repository' in NYC, where anything and everything is lent out, except the items stored in the secret room in the basement: magical objects right out of the Grimm fairytales. When the items start to go missing, there is a mystery afoot...

August: The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May, and June by Robin Benway. Loved her debut, Audrey, Wait! and feel certain this second novel will not disappoint.

The Eternal Ones by Kirsten Miller, author of the Kiki Strike series. Pulled from a blurb on goodreads.com: Haven Moore "visits the Ouroboros Society and discovers a murky world of reincarnation that stretches across millennia. Haven must discover the secrets hidden in her past lives, and loves¸ before all is lost and the cycle begins again." Mmm hmmm. August is looking way too far away.

October: You Again by Jenny Crusie. A brand-new standalone Crusie--say no more!

Near as I can tell, that's all, but I think it's plum near perfect!

Lunching with books

Thank you for all the kind comments about my hair. Today is the day that Emma gets her haircut. Her mom is pulling her out of school because the stylist didn't have any other openings before Christmas, so I am eagerly awaiting the after-school viewing.

So anyway, it occurs to me that a casual reader (or even a regular reader) would hardly recognize this as the blog of a book-lover. Other than my participation in Barrie Summy's Book Review Club, I've hardly had a word to say recently on books. Let me tell you why that is...I haven't been reading!! I haven't been reading, and I am feeling the loss. For the past two or three weeks, the only reading I am getting in is while I'm eating my breakfast or lunch alone. Once the last bite has been chewed up, it's back to work. And it's just going to stay busy all the way till Christmas. But I thought I would tell you about the books that have been read in little snippets as time presents itself.

I did just finish Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange. Quite honestly I've had enough of vampires for right now, but I was intrigued--I couldn't resist picking it up. And while it was certainly an entertaining, well-written book, it was, I think, a little slow. I don't want to post any spoilers, but let me just say that it was some time before Elizabeth found out about Darcy's secret, and in the interim, it was just life, if not normal, then at least not overly abnormal. Read between the lines if you can...

Now I have moved on and am allowing myself to switch back and forth between my meat-and-potatoes book and my dessert book (classification style courtesy of Ms. Summy). My M&P book is The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, which we've had for a while now and I'm just now getting to, and my dessert book is Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. I'm just starting both of them, and yesterday was a serious-minded lunch, complemented by The Lost Symbol, so today I chose Angus and spent the entire meal laughing out loud. Seriously, that book is hilarious. I'd had my eye on it for a while (who wouldn't with that title?), but after the Dec. Book Review Club posts, Angus having been reviewed by Barrie herself, I decided I needed to read it. Dan Brown is just going to have to wait, because I plan on lunch dates with Angus for the forseeable future.

What's everyone else reading?