Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Room For Two by Abel Keough

Just a little background first: I've been reading Abel's blog online since he was on diary-x. I bookmarked it because we had one thing in common I knew of right away: we were both widowed and then had remarried. Even though there are differences in the ways we lost our spouses many of the feelings we had in the aftermath were very similar. Abel subsequently moved to another website and called that blog Running Forward which I think is a very apt name. Over the years Abel and his second wife have had 3 children and I was thrilled at the news of each birth. Yes, there is love after the death of a loved one. It can happen. I was also thrilled when Abel announced his book was being published and was eager to read it.

Room For Two was hard for me and it's not because there was anything wrong with Abel's writing style. It's a painful story and I was shocked at how many of my own feelings came back to the surface, particularly guilt that I hadn't been able to do more to save Rich. Now, I think that is universal with widowed folks. In Abel's case, he had some premonitions of danger but felt he didn't act enough on them and when he entered his apartment, he heard the gun go off. His first wife had killed herself.

Abel did all the right things. He called 911. He was also in a state of shock. When my son and I found my first husband, Rich, on the floor he was already gone but I also went into shock. I remember calling 911, trying to keep the children from their father's body and leaping around like a frightened deer scooping up Rich's medications to take to the hospital. And even though I was stunned, I was still beginning to berate myself for not insisting we go to the emergency room the night before. Well, that's another story not related to the book but the fact I'm rambling about it is just testament to the fact that reading Abel's book brought back all those memories and feelings.

After Rich died, I belonged to an online community called Widownet. There were other widowed spouses whose loved ones had committed suicide. There's a stigma associated with suicide and that was an issue that everyone could try to understand but unless you've been through it you can't really "get" the shame of saying that your spouse killed him/herself. And so there was a separate sub-board called SOS (Spouses of Suicides, I think).

Abel mentions the isolation of being widowed. Yes, he is right. Ministers of churches I talked to said "oh, yes, the widowed--that's a group of people with needs we need to address" but had just never gotten around to it. Luckily the Catholic church has a good bereavement program and that's where I met other widow/ers. My friends and relatives were all single or married and I was totally uncomfortable with married couples after Rich died. I felt like a third or fifth wheel.

Another issue Abel addressed was dating. Only the widowed person knows when is the right time and yet everyone wants to tell you what's right for you. Abel's family was shocked when he began to date after his first wife died. I think it was about six months after but it doesn't matter. I felt "skin hunger" and a deep loneliness for the sound of a man's voice and the touch of his fingers and that wasn't disloyal to Rich. When TB and I met online and then began dating, members of both of our families said, "But didn't you love ....?"

Yes we did. But our loved ones were gone, away from us forever and somehow you have to go on or dry up and die.

Anyway, Abel's written a excellent book, one that is helpful to understanding the thoughts and feelings of being widowed. I can't do justice to it because it hits me too close to home. It's definitely something everyone could read--and there is a happy, hopeful ending. You can lose your love but still find love again before your own life is over.

Changing the List

I don't know if you're supposed to change a reading list after you've already made one for a challenge but I just have to do it because I need a little Christmas right now! I feel like Mame at the moment: older, colder, and in need of an angel on my shoulder!

From my original list, I read these:

Non-fiction:

A Matter of Degree: The Hartford Circus Fire and The Mystery of Little Miss 1565 by Don Massey & Rick Davey

Room For Two by Abel Keough

Fiction:

Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

A Dangerous Woman by Mary McGarry Morris

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

The Cloud of Unknowing by Thomas H. Cook

And I read two that weren't on my list at all:

Born On A Blue Day by Daniel Tammet (non fiction)

The Dream Hunter by Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm still planning to read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

I'm also planning to read as many of these as I can between now and the end of the challenge...right on through the New Year:

Deck the Halls and Santa Cruise by Mary Higgins Clark & Carol Higgins Clark

The Christmas Tree by Julie Salamon

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans

Christmas Feast (collection)

Christmas In My Heart (another collection)

I didn't know...

...that John Robison (Look Me In The Eye) and Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors) are brothers! That's good to know because now I'll read one after the other!

The Cloud of Unknowing by Thomas H. Cook

This is one of those very few times I've felt wishy-washy about a book. It sounded intriguing to me when I read the back cover. I hadn't read anything by Cook before. David Sears narrates The Cloud of Unknowing with two different voices in alternating chapters. David is an average attorney, partner at an average law firm. He's always been in the shadow of his older and brilliant sister, Diana, and their father--also brilliant but also a paranoid schizophrenic--has made it very clear that David is lacking.

The book starts out with David's "you" voice, seemingly disembodied and removed from himself. He mentions a story written by Leo Tolstoy about the deaths of three people and how a sense of dread grows when one person is murdered and then another...and there is this anticipation, when is the third one going to happen? David reveals he is talking to Detective Petrie. David seems to be a material witness or a suspect to ... what? Murder? And whose? The "you" David slowly spins the story of madness, grief and ...is it murder? The second David speaks in the more normal and attached to reality "I" voice. He adds to the details "you" David parcels out.

Diana was devoted to caring for her mad and brilliant father for almost all of her life. After his death, she falls in love and marries but the son she bears seems to bear the taint--"it's in the blood"--of mental illness. The boy drowns and it's ruled an accidental death...or was it an accident? Diana is obsessed with learning the truth and draws David's young daughter Patty into the increasingly weird investigation.

I'm trying to get a handle on why it is I didn't love the book. There was lots of mystery and suspense. It's pretty obvious almost from the get-go that we're supposed to think that the grief stricken Diana is losing her mind. The more I read, especially of what "you" David was telling the detective, the more I wondered who might have really gotten the schizophrenia gene. Keep that Tolstoy story in mind because I'd forgotten and it does foreshadow what's to come in this story. How many deaths were there? And how many were murders?

One thing I'm not wishy washy about: I didn't care for the title. There's no zing to it and I probably wouldn't have picked it up at all were it not for the fingertips reaching up out of the water. The title is very blah and I wonder what Cook and his editor/agent/publisher was thinking?

I liked the book enough that I wanted to read others written by Thomas H. Cook. Check it out and see if you like it!

A Dangerous Woman by Mary McGarry Morris

After reading A Dangerous Woman I've decided that Mary McGarry Morris is my new favorite author. She is amazingly perceptive about people and life in small towns and makes you feel like you are there watching the story unfold--sometimes like you are a part of it! I think we all know someone like Martha Horgan: "different", difficult to talk to or to be around and someone who is just "weird". There's been something "different" about Martha her whole life. She is socially inept, painfully honest and unable to maintain an adult relationship with anyone because she becomes obsessed with that person. Is it because she's lonely? Or autistic? Or is she psychotic?

Martha was already "different" when something traumatic and horribly unspeakable happens to her when she is seventeen. After that, and particularly after the death of her father, she is sheltered by her Aunt Frances who really isn't all that much older. Frances is the one who arranges for Martha's job and room in town and is usually the one who has to deal with any of her problems.

Martha's only "true friend" is a co-worker, Birdy. To Martha's horror, Birdy becomes involved with a despicable type of man, one who uses Birdy and pilfers from the cash register. You can't tell someone in love that their lover is bad, though, and Martha just cannot understand why Birdy won't listen to her. Martha loses her job when she's falsely accused of being the thief and throughout the book, she is determined to make Birdy listen to her.

Martha just wants to be normal like you and me, to love and be loved, to have friends, a life, a purpose and to be happy.

That's what the other wonderfully depicted characters in this book want too. Frances has invested years of her life with a man she cannot claim. A ne'er do well by the name of Colin Mackey appears, a troubled man who'd like to be a famous writer and seduces both Martha and Frances. There are the ladies at the boarding house, at least one of whom appears in another great book by Morris, Songs In Ordinary Time. Now that I've read this book, I'm very much looking forward to reading other books written by this author. It's definitely an excellent book to read!

The Dream Hunter by Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Dream Hunter wasn't on my original Fall Reading Challenge list but I won it in a drawing, the first time I've won anything in years and I was curious to read it. I thought it was part of a vampire hunter series and wanted to give it a try. It turns out that this is a separate new series by the same author about dream hunters.

What are dream hunters? It's a little bit involved but they are Greek in origin; they were placed under a curse by Zeus, god of all Greek gods, and haunt the dreams of humans so that they can temporarily feel emotions again. I can't remember exactly what they did to piss Zeus off so much that he condemned them to a void of emptiness, a world without emotions. One of these dream hunters, Arikos, is particularly addicted to the dreamer's emotions and when he finds someone with especially vivid dreams he tends to latch on like a drug addict.

He finds such a dreamer in Dr. Megeara Kafieri, whose father spent a lifetime seeking Atlantis. She has some pretty bitter feelings toward her father because over the years, almost everyone in her family has died in this search for Atlantis. After his death, she receives from an old family friend coins that her father found and wanted to give her. They seem to be from Atlantis and so she becomes re-energized and decides to take up the search again.

Meanwhile, Arik keeps invading her dreams. It gets to the point where one of the other dream hunter gods comes and forbids Arik to visit Megeara again but Arik is too hooked on a feeling and so he makes an outrageous bargain with Hades: make him human for two weeks in exchange for a human soul.

The beginning was all right and I rolled along thinking this was a nice light fluffy bit of story, probably best at the beach, but not terrible at all. All of a sudden, about a third to half way through the book, it bogged down and at times was very unpleasant to slog through. Too many unfamiliar characters were introduced and the story just seemed to go from whimsical to silly. Oh well. Although this particular book ended up being disappointing, I wouldn't give up on the author yet. I would still like to try one of the vampire hunter books.

Booking Through Thursday

Booking Through Thursday

Would you say that you read about the same amount now as when you were younger? More? Less? Why?

I'm sorry to say that I read less now than when I was younger. One reason is because of the distraction of the internet. While TV can't keep me from my book, the internet and all its temptations can: blogging, memes, emailing, forums and other message boards, fan sites, and so on. I also don't seem to be able to read as fast as I used to nor retain information as well. It's part of the Fibro Fog I struggle with.

Oh, Horror!

Booking Through Thursday

What with yesterday being Halloween, and all . . . do you read horror? Stories of things that go bump in the night and keep you from sleeping?

I thought about asking you about whether you were participating in NaNoWriMo, but I asked that last year. Although . . . if you want to answer that one, too, please feel free to go ahead and do both, or either, your choice!

The answer to both questions is: yes! I especially enjoy reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz's books, as well as Peter Straub and Anne Rice (well, not so much her anymore).

And I'm also participating in NaNoWriMo!

Born On A Blue Day by Daniel Tammet

Wow! I read this book because I wanted to understand more about autistic spectrum disorders since T (my grandson) was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified. When Born On A Blue Day first came out, I wanted it right away. What better way to learn about autism than by reading a book by a person who has it?

Daniel Tammet has another form of autism, Asperger's Syndrome. Asperger's is considered a higher functioning form of autism because the kids diagnosed with it usually don't have language delays. All ASDs involve problems with socialization and with connecting to people. One of the issues the author discusses is his lack of feeling toward other classmates. He didn't care that they teased him or tried to embarrass him. He barely noticed them. Another example is when his father became very ill. Tammet writes that he wasn't sure how to react as his father collapsed. He knew that he should stay with his father until his mother arrived. At the end of the book, he does write that he realizes how much his family loves him and as much as he is able, he loves them back.

Parts of the book just totally blew my mind away. Tammet describes how he thinks--in shapes, numbers and colors. He explains his thought processes as he solves a puzzle. There is no way I can repeat any of it here because it was beyond my ability to understand or conceptualize. We don't think that way, most of us, and that's not to say it's wrong but it is most definitely different. Reading this book helped me to understand better why our T has trouble processing language and repeating sounds.

Daniel Tammet also has savant syndrome. He is able to do the most amazing feats with numbers. He raised money for the epilepsy foundation by memorizing a record breaking number of decimal place numerals for pi--over 20,000. It took him over five hours to recite all those numbers by memory!

One of his proudest moments was meeting Kim Peek, the autistic savant upon whom Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man was based. Tammet has participated in a lot of research projects to help us understand more about how people with autism think and process. He is self-employed and works from home although he did recount troubles he's had with job interviews. He is in a long lasting relationship with his partner overcoming issues of becoming emotionally close with another person. He and his partner own their own home.

It's an amazing, inspiring story. Daniel Trammet is awesome. Read his book and see for yourselves!

Read With Abandon

Booking Through Thursday

Today’s suggestion is from Cereal Box Reader

I would enjoy reading a meme about people’s abandoned books. The books that you start but don’t finish say as much about you as the ones you actually read, sometimes because of the books themselves or because of the circumstances that prevent you from finishing. So . . . what books have you abandoned and why?

It's been a long time since I abandoned a book. I think the last one was a fluff book that I tossed because I didn't have the patience to "waste my time" if that makes any sense...

There have been a couple of books recently that I was really tempted to abandon because they were just not my cup of tea and I became very irritated with the plot. One was Beach Road by James Patterson and another was Brimstone by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.

One more book I almost put down was a recent read about the Hartford circus fire and that was because the first part was so emotionally wrenching for me at a time I was feeling very depressed.

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

This is one more of those very rare books I've read in which I was sorry to come to the end! It was funny, poignant, riveting and inspired anger against bullies and crooks. It had all the elements a book lover would want: mystery, action, adventure, horror, love ... and animals.

Jacob Jankowski is the narrator, telling his story at two critical points in his life: at age 90--or is it 93?--and at 23. When he is 23, he is within days of graduating with a degree in veterinary medicine and joining his father in practice. His world is shattered when his parents are suddenly and tragically killed in a car accident. It is around 1930 and his parents were penniless because of the Depression. Jacob is too grief stricken to concentrate on his studies and with no where else to go, he decides to jump a freight train.

But it's not a freight train...it's a circus train, belonging to the Benzini Brothers' Marvelous Travelling Show (or something like that). The ring master and owner is not a Benzini but an unscrupulous and ruthless fat man named Uncle Al. Jacob is befriended and protected by a circus worker named Camel, who finds him employment and shelter.

Camel warns Jacob about an especially vicious roustabout named Blackie and the cruel practice of "red lighting"--which is throwing someone from a train, usually to avoid paying them their salary. Jacob begins working for the man in charge of the animals, a seemingly charming man named August who is married to the lovely and very talented Marlena. August has a secret, though--he is a jealous man given to violent and unpredictable moods. He reminded me of the character Klaus from The Greatest Show on Earth.

Uncle Al abandons one city for another in attempt to snap up what's left of a defunct circus for a cheap price. It's there he buys a very special elephant named Rosie.

There is love and there is a murder. Who is murdered and who did it? Read and find out! It's a great book!

Typography

Booking Through Thursday

You may or may not have seen my post at Punctuality Rules Tuesday, about a book I recently bought that had the actual TITLE misspelled on the spine of the book. A glaring typographical error that really (really!) should have been caught. So, using that as a springboard, today’s question: What’s the worst typographical error you’ve ever found in (or on) a book?

Oh boy, that is some boo-boo! I belong to the Stephen King Book Club and one month they sent me a copy of Salem's Lot. Many of the pages are out of order, at least 20 of them! When I notified the company, they sent a replacement book...same problem. So I called and explained what the problem was and apparently they weren't going to redo the books because they sent me a refund. Duh!

Booked By Three For October

Shelly's Book Shelf

1. Do you have favorite sites for getting book info? Share 3 (or more!).

I sure do. My top favorite sites are:

Book Crossing
Paper Back Swap
Good Reads

2. How about favorite author sites? Share 3 (or more).

Dean Koontz

Stephen King

Diana Gabaldon

3. And finally, are there 3 or more book review blogs you never miss reading? And no, you don't have to name this one! :)

Well...the two I like to read most are:

Callapidder Days and So Many Books, So Little Time I'm looking for more book lovers' blogs myself!

The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

The Book of the Dead is the last of three in the Agent Pendergast series. I'm not sure why it's a trilogy, though, because there are actually six or 7 books with that character and they're all somehow related. Dance of Death and this book focus on the hatred and battle between the Pendergast brothers, FBI Special Agent Aloysius and his brilliant but murderously pathological brother Diogenes. The previous book left off with Diogenes framing his brother for some horrific crimes and then stealing millions of dollars worth of diamonds from the Museum of History. Aloysius goes to prison and Diogenes drops out of sight...or does he? These two books reunite some old favorite characters from early stories.

Of the Pendergast trilogy, I was most disappointed in this book. I know I'm in the minority because most people really enjoyed the series and I wondered if I missed the boat somehow. The first part of the book was too slow for me. There was too much time spent on trying to break Pendergast in prison, friends trying to break him out and police captain Laura Hayward being too proud to listen to Detective D'Agosta. One thing is for sure: poor Museum of Natural History, site of more brutal serial killings than any where else in the world probably. Two murders occurred before the opening of the Tomb of Senef...given the past history of disaster within the museum you'd think everyone would be more cautious? I guess those monkeys never learn. The one thread I found spooky was when Hugo Menzies/Diogenes came visiting Margo Green. Very creepy!

There was a character that turned me off and why was his last scene with the warden necessary? Agent Coffey. The man should have been deposited in a prison himself, not deported to another FBI office! Everyone of the books has had the prerequisite Ass in Charge.

A plotline that was a total turn off but ended out well: Diogenes seducing Constance Green. I guess it was predictable but it was done too easily. What came later was awesome!

The second part of the book was a lot more interesting and the only reason I gave the book 3 stars. At that point, Pendergast has been broken out of one of those "no one can escape from here prisons" and reunited with his old crime fighting buddy Vincent D'Agosta. Laura Hayward's come to her senses and realizes she needs to unite with D'Agosta and Pendergast to save all those unfortunates in the Tomb of Senef...oh, and she loves him, too.

Best of all was the sudden change in Constance Greene. Her pursuit and battle with Diogenes scenes were the best I've read in a long time.

I felt cheated by "The Event". I absolutely can see one brother goading another into trouble, I just can't see that particular outcome. Diogenes supposedly suffered brain damage in the ventromedial frontal cortex from the incident, which involved lights and sound. For revenge, he wanted to induce it in millions of people. His first two victims had total psychotic breaks and became violent. They were beyond reason and so I wondered how Diogenes was able to think at all or be around people--years of self control? Too weird. I couldn't find any information on the so-called "Higginbottom region" but maybe it's out there somewhere.

I know there's at least one more book now, one that focuses more on Constance Green. I haven't decided whether I want to read it or not. I've been alternately exasperated, bored, and enthralled with the story so far...not sure I've been enthralled enough to move on to the next level.

Live and In Person

Booking Through Thursday

I said in August, when we talked about fan mail, that I planned on expanding that to live meetings when the time was right. Well, that time is now!

* Have you ever met one of your favorite authors? Gotten their autograph? No, I wish!
* How about an author you felt only so-so about, but got their autograph anyway? Like, say, at a book-signing a friend dragged you to? I got autographs from Lara Parker and Stephen Mark Rainey at Dark Shadows festivals some years ago. I wasn't dragged there. I wanted to go and enjoyed the books they wrote, they're just not my favorites.

* How about stumbling across a book signing or reading and being so captivated, you bought the book? Nope, hasn't happened...not yet anyway!

Decorum

Booking Through Thursday

Do you have “issues” with too much profanity or overly explicit (ahem) “romantic” scenes in books? Or do you take them in stride? Have issues like these ever caused you to close a book? Or do you go looking for more exactly like them? (grin)

Once upon a time when I was younger, more curious and more passionate, I liked finding erotic passages in books. I used to go looking for more. Now that I am an old gray mare, I take them in stride but find it annoying if the scenes don't add to the story. One reason I don't like R movies is because they have gratuitous scenes of violence and/or sex. I don't read romance novels at all anymore. The only "romantic" scenes I've enjoyed in the last few years were in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of books. Ahhhhh, Jamie...

A Matter of Degree by Don Massey & Rick Davey

I'd never heard of the fire that nearly destroyed the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus in 1944. Recently, I met one of the authors, Don Massey, and he gave me a copy of this book. I was curious to read it as soon as I could.

The first half of the book is very moving and sometimes difficult to read. The authors made good use of some foreshadowing of the horrific fire that occurred in Hartford, CT on July 6, 1944, including two previous small fires in the same week, a cancelled performance and a red moon--all spelling doom to suspicious circus performers and employees. In addition, one of the families followed, the Cooks, went on an outing and a young girl drowned while they were at the scene.

There is pathos in this part of the book, too, and that's what makes it so gripping. The mother, Mildred Cook, is loving and devoted to the point where she made a most painful decision. Because her worthless husband abandoned her and the children, she gave custody of the young ones to her brother so that she could work and earn money to eke out an existence to help support them. She would see her three children only rarely and that July 4th holiday of 1944, she planned some very special activities for them to enjoy.

As a mother, I can only imagine the horror of being in an enclosed place like the circus, enjoying the show with my kids--a big treat in those days--and then having this killer fire break out. In those days, tents were waterproofed by using a mixture of wax and gasoline which is deadly in a fire--it makes napalm. Because WWII was still raging, fire proofing supplies weren't available. The fire burned at such an intensity metal melted and bodies were fused together. In the stampede to escape, Mildred Cook was separated from two of her children.

Another person was introduced--a disturbed young pyromaniac recently hired by the circus. Not so coincidentally, the fires all occurred after the teenager was hired as a member of the crew who had access to lighting materials.

Most of the people killed in the fire were women and children. One young girl virtually untouched by the flames was never identified and was buried anonymously as "Little Miss 1565".

The second part of the book was devoted to the research and hard work of a fire investigator named Rick Davey. He was captivated by the little girl's picture and saddened she'd never been identified. As he worked to learn her identity, he uncovered some very shocking things that had been covered up by the investigator for the City of Hartford. He also learned the identity of the little girl lost in the terrible tragedy.

This is a very good book for those interested in our history and in justice.

Dance of Death by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

We have seen glimpses of the insane and diabolically evil Diogenes Pendergast in at least two earlier books by Preston & Child, dogging the steps of his brilliant and hated older brother Aloysius. Aloysius Pendergast is a special agent for the FBI with a multitude of talents, including being an escape artist and a master of disguises. I've seen him compared with the Sherlock Holmes character and I don't think I'd dispute that. Pendergast's "Dr. Watson" would have to be Lt. Vincent D'Agosta of the NYPD.

In Dance of Death Diogenes "returns from the dead" to torment and taunt his brother by killing off Aloysius' closest friends and acquaintances one by one in not only a brutal way but also a way that mimics the deaths of ancestors of the Pendergast family. Apparently, this family has a big insanity gene running through it and Aloysius seems determined not to pass it on. Diogenes is also unattached and seems not to have any children.

Why does he hate his brother so much? That's a question I asked myself throughout the book. I found Diogenes to be thoroughly despicable with not one shred of redeeming quality about him. On the other hand, Aloysius Pendergast may be emotionally distant and an oddball but he genuinely cares about his friends and partners in crime and investigation. How could two brothers be so different? There was one scene that really intrigued me but left me feeling unsatisfied. Pendergast and D'Agosta go to visit a profiler, a character that appeared in an earlier non-Pendergast book. Eli Glinn has Pendergast hypnotized to try and find out the source of Diogenes' hatred...but the episode goes no where. It just seems that Diogenes is a "bad seed". Somehow, I get a feeling it's not the whole story. Maybe it's one of those "Mother always liked you best" reasons--that's my guess anyway.

I felt frustrated by the Constance Greene character. I may have to go back and read Cabinet of Curiosities again (I believe she was introduced in that book) but I have a feeling I would still be mystified and I don't like that feeling being dragged on book after book.

This book was more interesting for me to read than the first one in the series, Brimstone. I think it was because I was anticipating this battle between the brothers in the first book and it just didn't happen. Sometimes I had the feeling I was reading a movie, not a book especially with the wild chase scene on Eastern Long Island. Look forward to the next one and I sure hope the Constance Greene mystery is eventually explained. I also noted that there is a character named Margo Green and wonder what is up with using that color as a last name?

Fall Into Reading Booklist

I thought I'd narrowed my "Fall Into Reading" booklist down to a final fifteen but even now as I'm typing I've decided to make some changes. This is pretty much the way I want it now:

Non-Fiction:

A Matter of Degree: The Hartford Circus Fire and The Mystery of Little Miss 1565 by Don Massey & Rick Davey

Room For Two by Abel Keough

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

Classic Literature:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Fiction:

Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

A Dangerous Woman by Mary McGarry Morris

Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg

Picturing the Wreck by Dani Shapiro

Fall On Your Knees by Ann Marie McDonald

Alternates

The Case for a Creatorby Lee Strobel (non-fiction)

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Lost & Found by Jacqueline Sheehan

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Bloom

The Cloud of Unknowing by Thomas H. Cook

And before I get to those, I need to finish the two I'm reading now:

Dance of Death by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
The Insulin Resistance Diet by Cheryle R. Hart M.D. and Sharon Kay Grossman R.D.

Sunshine & Roses

Booking Through Thursday

The reverse of last week’s question:

Imagine that everything is going just swimmingly. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all’s right with the world. You’re practically bouncing from health and have money in your pocket. The kids are playing and laughing, the puppy is chewing in the cutest possible manner on an officially-sanctioned chew toy, and in between moments of laughter for pure joy, you pick up a book to read . . .

What is it?

Whatever is next on my TBR (to be read) next list! If I am really feeling up and everything is going well then I am in the mood for any type of book!

Fall Into Reading

Fall into Reading at Callapidder Days!

I'm falling!

For more information, click on the picture above--you, too, can fall into reading!

Reading Room

T.G.I.F. had a book themed topic this week so I decided to answer it here!

1. On average, how many books do you read in a year? I guess my average is 26

2. What are your favoite books? I have many! Among them:

To Kill A Mockingbird
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
The Stand
Outlander
Gone With The Wind
Mystic River
Odd Thomas

3. Any favorite author? I have a lot of those, too: Stephen King, Diana Gabaldon, Dean Koontz, Pearl S. Buck and Amy Tan just to name a few

4. What are your favorite magazines? Entertainment Weekly, Prevention and Readers' Digest

5. When you pick up a mag, what sections do you automatically zoom into? I look for stories or updates on my favorite TV series, Lost first

Comfort Food

Booking Through Thursday

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

I don't think any book would make me feel better under those circumstances but the first one I'd probably pick up (no, not the Bible!) would be Rabbi Kushner's book about why bad things happen to good people. Even if it's not warm, it's got comforting information in it! Then I would move on to a book that would pull me into the story and help me forget my troubles. Some books I've read in the past that would work:

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
The Stand by Stephen King
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Christy by Catherine Marshall

Disappointed

I was so looking forward to reading Brimstone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child but I was so totally disappointed when I finished.

I have to admit that I read the books out of order, probably a bad idea. The first one I ever read was Still Life With Crows and, while I enjoyed it and liked the Pendergast character, there were a couple of sections that confused me. There were references to people I didn't know and there were a mysterious pair of eyes, one hazel, one blue. At least, I think the eyes were in that book. I didn't plan on reading any more in the series but then I came across Cabinet of Curiosities and I was totally hooked. At that point, I realized I ought to go back and read the first two and I enjoyed them as well.

By then, Brimstone and Dance of Death were out in hardcover and/or paperback. I was eager to get to them, looking forward to this confrontation between Aloysius Pendergast and his mad brother Diogenes. I thought I'd be introduced to the brother in this book but there were just a couple of references to him and that was my first disappointment.

The next one was that a mysterious character appeared, Constance Green, and she didn't make any sense to me. I get it that she was in the Harlem mansion from the Cabinet book and that she was in hiding throughout the story. I get it that experiments were done on her and that she is actually very much older than she looks (she appears 19 or 20). If I remember correctly, Pendergast's great grandfather (or some relative) was the one performing life prolonging experiments on her and then he died. Now Pendergast is taking care of her, slowly easing her into the 21st century by reading to her from newspapers. You'd think she was a very fragile being but no, Pendergast also has her research the most hideous topics like soul snatching by the Devil and what have you. I kept getting this feeling of huh? and I don't like that feeling.

The book began well with the mysterious murders of two men in New York--with the stink of brimstone in the air and the burned out shells of bodies left behind, it sure seemed the work of Satan. Enter Pendergast--who has a special interest in serial killings--and Vinnie D'Agosta, now a trivial sergeant from eastern Long Island. This was another huh? section. Apparently D'Agosta returned from the NYC police force, dragged his unwilling wife and son to Canada, went bankrupt writing books and came crawling back sans family. Okay, I can't see a city cop leaving New York, sorry.

Another WTF moment: where was obnoxious reporter Bill Smithback of the New York Post? Apparently he and his old rival Bryce Harriman swapped jobs? Now Smithback is on his honeymoon and Harriman is struggling in Smithback's old job. Why? As far as I can tell, the entire Harriman/Buck-the-preacher segment was totally irrelevant to the story. It could have been left out and I think the story would have moved a lot faster for me.

Once Pendergast and D'Agosta went to Italy I began to get bored and impatient. I didn't like Count Fosco--he was an admittedly purloined character taken to honor the author who came up with detective stories. Really? Okay...yawn. I couldn't stand Count Fosco, didn't find him really believeable as a psychopathic villain. And the authors also purloined the story from Edgar Allan Poe: The Cask of Amontillado. Give me a break. I thought that story worked better for Dark Shadows than it did for this book.

But lots of people loved this book and I didn't. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because I wanted to see the battle between Pendergast and his brother begin. Where is Diogenes and what exactly is this perfect heinous crime he's planning? So I have to wait for Dance of Death to meet the guy? Although...

whose hazel and blue eyes peeked into that bricked up room? Well...I could have skipped this book and went right to the next one as far as I'm concerned.

Spring Moon by Bette Bao Lord

I enjoyed the first part of this book very much. From the title, I assumed the main character would be Spring Moon and that the story would be told from her point of view. I read somewhere that it's been compared to Gone With The Wind but I have to disagree--except to say that it concerns a family torn apart by civil war. Other characters were introduced into the story and subsequent chapters would go between Spring Moon's point of view and some of the others. I found it distracting, particularly after Spring Moon returned home after the death of her husband. The illicit romance between Spring Moon and her uncle didn't really ring true to me and I thought it detracted from the story. Otherwise, I enjoy historical fiction and particularly learning about events in history occuring in other countries--in this case, China.

What Kind of Book Crosser Are You?

What kind of bookcrosser are you Your Result: ring in bundles   They come and come. Ringbooks come in herds, that's what you say! You made a basket on your mail box, otherwise the frontdoor woldn't open when you return from work. You know your postman by christian name.
Playfull RBACKer
Obsessive releaser
Thematic dropper
Talk of the toy
Love to meet
lucky lurker
strange looking bystander
What kind of bookcrosser are you Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Indocrination

Booking Through Thursday

When growing up did your family share your love of books? If so, did one person get you into reading? And, do you have any family-oriented memories with books and reading? (Family trips to bookstore, reading the same book as a sibling or parent, etc.)

The one family member who really got me into reading was my mom. I remember going to the library with her when I was about five and being totally awed that I could bring books home with me. also, when my grandmother would take me grocery shopping, she would let me choose a Little Golden Book to keep at her house. I loved to look at the pictures at first and then when I learned to read, I'd read them to my younger cousins and brother.

My mother loved to read and had a bookcase full of what would be called classics now. When I was 10 or 12, I began wanting to read those books. She made several recommendations to me: Gone With the Wind, Imperial Woman, Love Is Eternal, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and many others. She'd warn me that some of the books would be difficult to understand and that I should look in a dictionary to understand more of the words.

About a year later, I began begging to go to the library and she'd take me 2-3 times a week before finally complaining it was too much. She told me to check out the max allowed on my card so that she could make fewer trips. I was delighted. I was checking out about 15 books at a time. She was always checking out books too.

Once I became an adult, we'd pass books back and forth on occasion but then our tastes began to diverge. That was okay. We could still spend an afternoon together just reading contentedly. My father and brother are not readers and they were not into that. In fact, my dad was sometimes jealous of my mother's love for reading and he'd find reasons to interrupt her.

Lucky me, my husband is a reader too!

I really appreciate this question today. I have many unhappy memories of my mother and it is really nice to remember this and be filled with a warm glow.

This Really Is Sad!

I saw a post on the forums at Book Crossing called "This is so sad" and went to read the full article. One in 4 Americans didn't read any books at all last year, is that possible? To me, it's mind-boggling, totally unfathomable! Yet here is the article:

The New York Times


August 21, 2007
One in Four Read No Books Last Year
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:12 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- There it sits on your night stand, that book you've meant to read for who knows how long but haven't yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing -- you are not alone.

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year -- half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

''I just get sleepy when I read,'' said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.

That choice by Bustos and others is reflected in book sales, which have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way indefinitely. Analysts attribute the listlessness to competition from the Internet and other media, the unsteady economy and a well-established industry with limited opportunities for expansion.

When the Gallup Poll asked in 2005 how many books people had at least started -- a similar but not directly comparable question -- the typical answer was five. That was down from 10 in 1999, but close to the 1990 response of six.

In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled ''Reading at Risk'' found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.

Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn't read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

At the same time, book enthusiasts abound. Many in the survey reported reading dozens of books and said they couldn't do without them.

''I go into another world when I read,'' said Charlotte Fuller, 64, a retired nurse from Seminole, Fla., who said she read 70 books in the last year. ''I read so many sometimes I get the stories mixed up.''

Among those who said they had read books, the median figure -- with half reading more, half fewer -- was nine books for women and five for men. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger.

Pollyann Baird, 84, a retired school librarian in Loveland, Colo., says J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series is her favorite. But she has forced herself to not read the latest and final installment, ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' because she has yet to file her income taxes this year due to an illness and worries that once she started the book, ''I know I'd have to finish it.''

People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.

There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.

The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre -- including politics, poetry and classical literature -- were named by fewer than five percent of readers.

More women than men read every major category of books except for history and biography. Industry experts said that confirms their observation that men tend to prefer nonfiction.

''Fiction just doesn't interest me,'' said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Ala. ''If I'm going to get a story, I'll get a movie.''

Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners, rural residents, Republicans and conservatives.

The publishing business totaled $35.7 billion in global sales last year, 3 percent more than the previous year, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade association. About 3.1 billion books were sold, an increase of less than 1 percent.

The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted from August 6 to 8 and involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

------

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

(This version CLARIFIES that people in the West and Midwest are more likely to read at least one book a year, but that Southerners who do read tend to read more books.)

Reliquary by Lincoln Child & Douglas Preston

A year ago, I read the prequel to this book, Relic. I shouldn't have waited so long to read The Reliquary but I could remember enough of the basic facts from the first book so I wasn't lost. To my disappointment, Agent Pendergast wasn't introduced until almost half way through the book. I like the other characters but I didn't think they were strong enough to carry that first half. The "yellow" journalist Bill Smithback was just flat out obnoxious as was most of the upper echelon of the police department. That had a stereotypical or cliche-ish feel to it that I didn't like. You have to suspend belief in reality in several places throughout the book. Sometimes that was annoying; sometimes it was amusing. When I looked back at what I wrote about the first book it seems that I enjoyed it much more than this one. I really like the Pendergast character so I'm looking forward to the next two books--I think he's supposed to be the "star" in those...I hope so!

There is one thing that I appreciated in this book: the authors focused a lot on the issues of the homeless living underground in New York City. Many are veterans of our wars or are mentally ill; I liked the fact that the authors humanized them and brought attention to their needs.

The Great Deluge

One of the saddest, stupidest things about being human is the seeming inability to learn from history--collectively, anyway. I mean that we as a group of people can repeat the same stupid mistakes over and over. Isn't the definition of crazy doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result? Maybe we are collectively crazy.

At any rate, here is one thing I know: we are not prepared for a natural disaster. We are probably equally unprepared for a man-made disaster but I don't want to go there at the moment. If there was a massive storm, a tsunami, the worst type of tornado, an earthquake, a plague -- I think it would take FEMA about as long to get their act together as they did for Katrina. Or ... did racism really play a part? I'd hate to think so but I wondered as I read this book.

Douglas Brinkley is a historian who happened to be living in the area when Hurricane Katrina came to visit and wreak terror and death and destruction on the Gulf States the last week of August 2005. He may not have checked all his facts (that's a criticism I read elsewhere of the book) but I have to say that The Great Deluge seemed pretty spot on from everything I can remember of the horrifying media coverage.

The book begins on Saturday, August 27--before the storm hit. It was pretty apparent from all the reports that this was a significant, dangerous storm and yet Mayor Nagin of New Orleans did not order a mandatory evacuation of the city until it was too late. That was just one in a long series of stupid mistakes made on the part of government officials from the mayor on up to President Bush.

Some points struck me as being particularly horrible:

1. Worst of all, they knew it could happen. By "they" I mean everyone who whined they had no idea the levees in New Orleans could be breached. All along there have been reports that the levees were inadequate and crumbling and needed fixing. The money that could have been spent on repairing or upgrading the levees went to shipping interests--i.e. dredging and other projects to make more profit. There was even a simulation presented at least a year before Katrina. In the hurricane Pam simulation, New Orleans was flooded out -- basically it was the Katrina scenario. Did anyone pay attention? No!

2. Here's one more worst of all: it could happen again! You'd think we'd have learned from this but nooooooo, New Orleans is in the same situation it was in before! Well, duh! And duh! And duh duh duh!

3. There was never a plan to evacuate the poor and the elderly. There was a "looks good" plan on the internet talking about using buses to get the people out but no one ever intended it should happen. Huh??? And even if they had, by the time Nagin called a mandatory evacuation, it was too late to get all those people out of New Orleans--and there were a LOT of elderly, disabled and/or poor people trapped in New Orleans.

4. There was no food or water or medical supplies at the stadium for the people who had to evacuate there. Why? It's explained but not to my satisfaction!

5. Some hospitals were abandoned and left to fend for themselves! The stories of the courageous doctors and nurses and other personnel who tried to care for their sick and dying patients under the worst dire circumstances made me want to cry. I know that recently a doctor was acquitted of mercy-killing a patient...welll, if you read this book you'll agree with me when I say had I been one of those patients I would have been begging the doctors to end it for me then and there.

6. Nagin "fiddled" while New Orleans drowned. The man just seemed to come totally unglued. This isn't pick-on-Nagin day because President Bush and Governor Blanco made some very serious errors but Nagin hid in a high rise hotel, avoided the evacuees because he was afraid of them, took a week long "vacation" to Houston a week after Katrina and otherwise exhibited some pretty strange behavior.

7. Most of the New Orleans police department left their posts and some of them even stole cars! The rest, heroes all, were treated abominably by citizens and officials alike because the bad apples gave them all a bad name

8. I also had no idea about "the big dump" which just turns my stomach. I don't think there's an excuse for this kind of behavior no matter how bad things get. "The big dump" means that vandals and looters took the time to move their bowels on whatever or where ever they pleased--on desks, in deep fry cookers, in freezers, on equipment, clothes, and so on. Basically the message was supposed to be: "Shit on you." They were even dumping in public in the stadium and in the convention center. What ignorance!

In ten years, a different history will be written. That always happens--a new spin is given to a historic event. I'm sure what happened will be "cleaned up" considerably and all the mistakes will be glossed over. Maybe that's why we don't learn from the past. We are doomed to keep going 'round and 'round.

Fall Into Reading

It may be a little premature but I've been thinking about which books I'd like to read between September 23 and December 21st. I need to get moving on books I've been hoarding from places like Book Crossing and Paperback Swap so here is my first tentative list (subject to change as we draw closer to the holidays!). In no particular order:

Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes

Standing on the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton

Picturing the Wreck by Dani Shapiro

Fall On Your Knees by Ann Marie McDonald

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

Vanished by Mary McGarry Morris

How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas by Jeff Guinn

The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Summer Reading So Far

Of the books I originally picked to read, I've abandoned three--two by Jonathan Kellerman (I decided I wasn't going to read any more Alex Delaware books) and My Life Among the Serial Killers. I just didn't have the stomach for that last one. I read four of the books on my list so far and have four to go. I'm in the middle of one book I substituted and finished another. I used to be able to finish a "big" book in less than a week but that was before I had kids and a busy life. I'm hoping I can finish the four I have left by mid-September, which is when the Fall Reading Challenge begins.

Multiples

Booking Through Thursday

Do you have multiple copies of any of your books? Yes I do :)

If so, why? Absent-mindedness? You love them that much? First Editions for the shelf, but paperbacks to read? Actually ... it's all 3. Most of the duplicates I have are because I want either the hardback or signed copies for my shelf and the paperback to read and pass along. Sometimes I forget I have a book on my TBR already and I pick up a duplicate copy by mistake. That's why I've made a data base. I have over 430 books, still counting! And finally, if I love a book enough to pass it on to someone I'll keep one and buy/trade for another to pass along.

Letters! We Get Letters!

Booking Through Thursday

Have you ever written an author a fan letter? Yes

Did you get an answer? Yes, from one author named Stephen Mark Rainey

Did it spark a conversation? A meeting?

(And, sure, I suppose that e-mails DO count . . . but I’d say no to something like a message board on which the author happens to participate.) Emails for a short period of time

Mystic River

I thought this was one of the best mystery thrillers I've ever read! There was no "formula" feel to it--I would say it was more character driven than plot driven. For a year of Saturdays, Sean, Jimmy and Dave are friends. Then one day a car comes down the street. One of the boys gets into the car and is abducted for 4 days. The incident changes all three of them. They grow apart and grow up, their lives taking different directions. They are brought together by a savage and tragic murder. As the pieces began to fit together, I thought about the expression "what goes around comes around". It certainly does! Definitely a great read!

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

I'd seen the movie in 2001 or 2002 and so I knew how the story would end but I was curious to know how the author, Sebastian Junger, would present the story of the Andrea Gail when there'd been no survivors. One of the things I really liked was that Junger didn't try to make a fictional accounting of what might have happened. He said straight out he didn't know. Instead, he interviewed people who'd survived the storm, rescuers and people in need of rescue. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the two ways a person can drown. Reading the accounts of survivors and what happened when the boats were rolled by ginormous rogue waves was hair raising! To balance it out, I enjoyed reading about the area's fishing history and how the industry evolved. The background information was informative, not boring. Most of all, I felt for the loved ones left behind

The DaVinci Code

Originally posted May 2, 2005

I'm no professional book critic but I do have opinions about what I read.  Since I joined Book Crossing, I've been making an effort to journal a little about what I read and I've just finished Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code.  I am behind the times when it comes to reading what's on the best seller list and I sort of passed this one by because of time constraints and I wasn't sure I'd like it.  Recently, I saw a special on TV about cracking the DaVinci Code and knew it's to be in a movie starring Tom Hanks so I thought let's give it a try.  If you haven't read the book yet and you want to, STOP HERE.  There are spoilers!

I could have passed.  Mystery thrillers and suspense are just not my cup of tea.  Usually, I find them to be kind of shallow, confusing, contradictory and lots of times the reader gets cheated because the author has action take place that isn't written about or revealed until later.  That's how I felt reading this book.

First of all, the murder itself was quite a stretch of the imagination.  The victim "posed" himself to present clues to finding a secret he was guarding.  Okay, I can buy that ... but then there came a point when the police evacuated the building, all of them, and left their body sprawled out behind.  I don't think so.  Not even in France. 

Some of the characters had extraordinary talents that just seemed a tad unbelievable.  The young woman cryptographer seemed to be a genius at figuring out how to outwit the police by breaking a window and throwing a bar of soap with a transmitter in it onto the back of a truck that just happened to be passing underneath (how convenient) and the whole police force took off after this truck.  They left the body!  Oh, but I said that already ...

The hero seemed half-wimp (he was always getting caught or put on the hot spot) who would have these sudden enlightening moments of clarity and he'd figure out a clue instantaneously.

The bad guy was a mysterious person called "The Teacher" who turned out to be the hero's friend!  And the hero and this girl ran right to his house after eluding the police.  That was a good twist.  I didn't like it, though, that things happened out of sight and then were presented toward the end of the book.  It totally turned me off.

It all gets neatly concluded in the last couple of pages and, yes, once again, the hero has more brilliant insights and solves the biggest puzzle of all.  Ho hum.  Oh...and he kisses the girl, who coincidentally turned out to be the victim's granddaughter.  They make arrangements to meet in Venice (I think) for a week of something *other* than sightseeing.

Um...when did the romance happen?

The book was just 'eh' for me but if you like thrillers, it's a good one.  As for the movie that's coming out, well, I really like Tom Hanks so I'd probably go see it.

>

Ghost Riders

I wrote this entry May 12, 2005:

What a frustrating book!  On the one hand, I liked the voices of the characters very much.  I could just about hear them speaking in my mind.  I truly enjoyed some of the characters very much but they didn't appear as often as I liked.

On the downside:  what was this story supposed to be about?  I was drawn to it because of the title and the summary I saw in the book club newsletter:  it's the Civil War and a young woman dresses up like a man and follows her husband off to war.  There were not-so-subtle hints about a ghost story, too.  Well...look at the title, Ghost Riders.  But ... I feel like I was misled!  Yes, young Malinda Blalock dressed up like a soldier and followed her husband to war ... that was about one chapter.  There were small chapters interspersed that told of the spirits of Civil War soldiers stirred up by the re-enactments going on around them.  There wasn't enough of that.

There was an awful lot about Zebulon Vance, an ambitious mountain boy who becomes a lawyer, then a politician, then a soldier, then the governor of North Carolina...so?  I kept waiting for him to have more encounters with the Blalocks but he never did.  Their paths crossed just once, back when Malinda disguised herself as "Sam".

What was the point of the book anyway?  Feuds don't die?  Be careful not to stir up the restless ghosts by dressing up in Civil War uniforms and shooting off weapons of the time?  I couldn't figure it out.

It's not a bad book because I think Sharyn McCrumb has a way with words and characterizations.  I wouldn't recommend it to anyone though. I wouldn't know what to tell them it's about!

Down Came The Rain & A Child Called It

I have an old blog on Bravenet and recently stumbled across it. When I read books, I'd write about them in blogs all over the internet instead of keeping them in one place. Well, so now I'll collect them as I find them and keep them here!

Down Came The Rain
by Brooke Shields

I saw Brooke Shields' appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show a few months ago and was intrigued with the episode.  The book had just been published and Winfrey was asking questions about Shields' terrifying experience with post partum depression (PPD).  Here was an actress I'd seen over the years and she was being very open about what happened to her.  I would say that is what I enjoyed about the book most of all -- it's very honest.  On the down side, it does get a little repetitive -- I don't need to be told more than once or twice this was the last thing she expected after trying so hard to have a baby. 

The book was easy to read -- Shields seems to write down what she thinks.  I could almost hear her voice recounting what happened.  I think that the title was very apt and very creative.  It's from Shields' favorite nursery rhyme:

The itsy bitsy spider
climbed up the waterspout
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out
Out came the sun
and dried up all the rain
And the itsy bitsy spider
climbed up the spout again

It was almost literal.  When Shields suffered from PPD, she cried almost all the time.  Once she realized what was happening, got help and began to get better, her life began to improve -- all her rain dried up in the warmth of the emerging sun.  I liked the image--it's very very clear.

I'm glad that she wrote the book because I think it will benefit anyone who has a new baby in his or her life:  the moms, the dads, grandparents, and all the friends and relatives.  A mom hopefully won't feel stigmatized or afraid to get help after reading this book.  The people around her will have a better understanding of how serious a problem PPD is.

 

A Child Called "It"
by Dave Pelzer

This was one of the most disturbing books I've read about child abuse.  I can think of only two books that upset me more, Sybil and When Rabbit Howls.  After all the awful things this poor boy went through, it's a miracle that he is not seriously disturbed.  Well...maybe he is and we just don't know it!  This book is the first in a series of three.  As I was reading it I kept wondering, what kind of mother does this to her own child?  Obviously the mother had to be seriously disturbed herself.  Pelzer describes a loving mom early in his life.  She seemed to be affected by alcoholism and possibly some kind of mood disorder.  She had two more babies while she was doing all this drinking and I wondered if they were damaged in any way from fetal alcohol syndrome.  What shocked me as much as the mother's abuse was the father's inability or unwillingness to help his son.  I practically cheered when the boy was finally "rescued" and placed into the foster care system...how ironic is that?  I had so many questions that possibly will be answered if and when I can bring myself to read the next in the series.  It's a very difficult book to read but a very valuable one.

Best Moustache Twirling

Booking Through Thursday

Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most “evil,” so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author…oh, you know what I mean!

For me, it is without a doubt "Black Jack" Randall from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Although he has to be one of the most brutal and sadistic characteristics I've ever seen written, he did have a human side to him -- a younger brother he cherished. He tortured and sexually assaulted my favorite character. He was cold blooded, cunning and ruthless. And yet ... when his younger brother was on his deathbed, he was totally humbled, crushed. I haven't hated a character more than him.

I missed last week's frenzy and decided to answer the questions anyway!

1. Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it? Yes of course

2. If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties? No midnight parties, not reading it until it comes out in paper back probably because the arthritis in my hands makes holding heavy books nearly impossible

3. If you’re not going to read it, why not? Not applicable

4. And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to? I think Harry will survive because otherwise Evil triumphs over Good and we just can't have that. I guess I am most looking forward to the climax. I think Harry will defeat Voldemort. And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

When The Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman

When I realized I had a copy of the very first Dr. Delaware (I have lots of books I don't remember acquiring) I decided I had to read it next. I've read a couple of books by Kellerman and the Alex Delaware character and stories are okay but not what I would call spell binding. They were fast on plot advancement and thin on character development. I thought possibly all that back history was explained in the first few books. Well ... no. All I really learned is that Alex Delaware is a gung-ho child psychologist who doesn't mind putting himself in danger or breaking the law (or bending it) to break a case...and it's not even hiscase! He is a consultant to the Los Angeles Police Department, most especially Milo Sturgis. Alex has a partner, Robin, that he occasionally becomes passionate with although the scenes sort of leave me cold. They seem forced. Milo is gay. I mention that because it gets mentioned in every single book so far. I thought maybe a slow reveal as Milo and Alex become friends but ... no. What motivates Alex? Why is he such a cowboy? I don't know and will it ever be revealed? Maybe that will come out in a later book? Many times with the mystery thrillers you have to suspend some sense of reality and it's okay with me as long as its somewhat believable. A lot of this story wasn't somewhat believable to me and so I was glad when I got to the end. Eh.

Black Creek Crossing

I've finally found an author I know I would read again--John Saul. Admittedly, Black Creek Crossing probably isn't his best book but I did get a sense of his style. He writes in complete sentences 95% of the time! His plot line makes sense, his characters are developed enough so that I cared about them and wanted to keep reading.

Angel Sullivan is 15, overweight, lonely and an outcast at school. Her father, Marty,is a lazy alcoholic who can't hold a job and her mother, Myra, is a fervent believer in prayer and visions of the Holy Mother. For years Myra's sister Joni Fletcher has been trying to get her sister's family to move close by. She convinces the Sullivans to purchase the house at Black Creek Crossing at a real bargain price.

Why is it such a bargain? It's got a horrific story behind it and, by law, Joni has to tell them that it was previously owned by a family whose father went berserk and murdered his wife and daughter. In spite of the story, the Sullivans decide to buy the house and Angel is drawn to the smallest of the bedrooms. She finds a black cat hiding in the closet--how did he get there? In my head, I hear the Jaws theme begin to come up.

And so the Sullivans move to Roundtree. Angel, who'd been hoping for a new start, finds herself being rejected again thanks to the influence of her hoity-toity cousin Zack. She does make one friend--another boy who is mercilessly teased and tormented by the others. The boy, Seth Baker, is also physically abused by his father.

Angel and Seth become friends and allies. They are fascinated by the house, by the things they see and hear happening. As they become further involved in investigating the house, they learn that there is more evil present there than they ever suspected.

The story is also about the evil of kids being cruel to each other for no good reason. The story is sort of a Carrie Lite. Angel and Seth are able to give pay backs but at a terrible price. I call it Carrie Lite because it wasn't graphically gory.

I liked the book enough that I am looking forward to reading others of John Saul's books.

Celluloid

Booking Through Thursday

1. In your opinion, what is the best translation of a book to a movie? There are a couple but I'll say To Kill A Mockingbird

2. The worst? The Relic

3. Had you read the book before seeing the movie, and did that make a difference? (Personally, all other things being equal, I usually prefer whichever I was introduced to first.) In both cases, I read the book first. I usually like the book better because there's more character development and details. I find movies have to leave out much--for instance, in Gone With The Wind Scarlett only had 1 child in the movie. I know this isn't a significant detail but it did leave me with a feeling of "wrongness". As for The Relic, it was so awful because it was changed around and the most important character was totally left out!

Beach Road

This summer, I wanted to try authors I haven't read before. I'm always looking for a good book to read. I picked up Beach Road by James Patterson & Peter De Jonge and took it with me on vacation. I've read good things about Patterson and his books. Beach Road is set on the east end of Long Island which appealed to me. I recognized many of the places Patterson mentioned in the story.

The trouble is ... I didn't like the book very much and felt disappointed.

It started out all right. Tom Dunleavy, the main character, is a sort of lack luster lawyer. He used to play pro basketball but washed out after an injury. Apparently he didn't have such a great family life because his older brother is more like a father to him. Naturally he used to have a wonderful girlfriend years ago but dumped her for reasons unknown and now she is a high power city lawyer. And also naturally, Tom has a dog.

Three of Tom's friends are murdered some time after a game of basketball at the home of one of those absent ritzy rich folks who happened to have a very nice court built on the property. Tom, his brother, and the three murdered friends challenged Dante Halleyville, a giant of a high school athlete, and four of his friends. There was a scuffle that turned a little ugly during the game and so when the three guys turn up dead, naturally suspicion falls first on Dante and his pals. Up to this point, I thought it was interesting.

The story is told from several view points. Among them: Tom, Kate Costello, Dante, a knowledgeable cop from Brooklyn named Connie Raiborne, a psycho drug dealer named Loco, Dante's grandma, and a very minor character named Nikki Robinson (cleaning person and cousin of Dante's).

Some of the obvious: Dante is arrested and accused of the murders. Although Tom doesn't step in at first to act as his attorney, he does become lawyer for the defense. He also persuades Kate to join him. Grandma is staunchly supporting her grandson. Raiborne does his job, carefully seeking out clues and figuring out what happened. All of these things aren't terrible, just predictable.

The reason I didn't like the book? There was a twist in it that just didn't ring true. If you read the book you'll see what I mean. When I read it, I thought there is no way that these people would act like that, I just don't believe it. I think it's because the authors didn't lay enough of a foundation to suggest the possibility. It just seemed to come out of thin air and that is very annoying.

I felt like one of the characters from the movie Murder By Death, who gathered all the great literary and movie detectives together to solve a murder. The character, Lionel Twain, totally bamboozles these detectives and then says: "You've tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it." Like I said, that stuff is very annoying.

One more thing annoyed me: in the book, the press dug up a tidbit about Tom Dunleavy that I suppose was supposed to be a clue. Whether it was or not, we never found out whether it was true or not. That's one thing I would have liked to have known. There's several other questions but I don't care enough about the book to even post them.

I'm going to try another of James Patterson's books before I cross him off the list. Maybe it wasn't such a great book because he wrote it with someone else. I thought I would give one of the Alex Cross books a try. We'll see what happens.

Lost

I truly felt lost while reading Lost by Gregory Maguire. This is the second book I've read by this author so I can say that I really don't care for his style of writing. Unfortunately, I have all his other books to read. Critics call his prose "rich" and maybe it is that but I find it confusing to point of sheer frustration sometimes.

There is a thoroughly unlikeable (to me anyway) "heroine" named Winifred Rudge. She writes children's books but would like to write one for adults with a heroine named Wendy Pritzke. She's become blocked and unable to write. She thinks if she goes to the old family homestead in Hampstead, Great Britain she'll be able to get a jump start. The family originally owned the whole house but it's since been turned into "flats" and sold off to other people. Only Winnie's cousin John still owns the top floor flat and she plans to stay with him.

This is good so far, I can understand it. The first mystery comes right in the beginning of the book when she attends a meeting for parents who want to adopt internationally. She says she is writing a book about that topic but later we learn she is lying. So why was she there? I like little mysteries like that. What I didn't like was the conversations between Winnie and the other characters. I felt like I was trying to follow a maze and that feeling continued throughout the book with her interactions with all the other characters.

When she arrives in England, she finds another mystery: her cousin has disappeared. Where did he go? Was he kidnapped, murdered? Is he in hiding? And what is that knocking noise behind the wall? There are repairmen there to do renovations in the flat but they are afraid of the knocking. Winnie takes it upon herself to go visiting all the neighbors to see if she can figure out if it's a ghost, a trapped cat or just what.

At first Winnie's behavior seems okay if a little odd. As she is running around offending the neighbors and trying to find her cousin or the ghost or the cat or whatever, she is imagining scenes in her mind from her adult book. Some of the questions begin to be answered about what is really going on. As they're answered, she's becoming weirder and weirder.

I was so ready for the book to end. I'm not even sure what really happened to Winnie during those last couple of chapters.

Reviewers say that the book is about loss and being lost. Yes, it is definitely that. If you like Gregory Maguire and you haven't read the book, go for it. Otherwise, it's not on my recommend-to-friends list.

The Stolen Child

I really enjoy books that are "different" and tell the story well. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue is one of those books. It's the changeling story, a tale that is not new or different at all. Henry Day, a 7 year old boy, runs away from home one day and goes into the woods. He falls asleep and awakens to find himself being kidnapped by a troup of faeries that call him "Aniday". Meanwhile, another child--one who used to be a faery and has now molded his features to match Henry's exactly--goes "home" to take Henry's place.

Here is what I meant by the book being "different":

The new Henry and Aniday narrate the story in alternating chapters. Henry is angry, resentful and fearful of his old troup, calling them "hobgoblin" and "monsters". He is trying to learn how to be the boy who once lived in the house but there are differences that threaten to give him away and raise suspicions amongst family members. He is plagued with flashes of memory to the time he himself was taken by the faeries.

Through Aniday, we learn that there is a structure and a method to the madness of these faeries. There's a hierarchy about who leads and who gets to be the changeling next. They don't just choose any child. The child they decide upon has to be observed for a year and there are rituals to follow. At first Aniday misses his family but as he realizes he can never go back he becomes resigned and learns the ways of his troup. He makes good friends with one of them, Speck, and begins a rudimentary written account of his life with the faeries. Like the new Henry, he has flashes of memory and sometimes resentment against he who took his place.

The years go by. The new Henry grows up and the world changes. The environment is not especially friendly toward the faery troup anymore and they meet with several tragedies. Henry traces the memories of his first life back to Europe and actually finds his identity.

Inevitably, Henry and Aniday meet again. Henry now has a 7 year old son. He is tormented by his past life, his life in the woods and what he's done to Aniday. Does that make the son vulnerable to being kidnapped by what's left of the troup? Does Aniday have vengeance on his mind?

Read to find out! I was hooked right from the first page!

Dessert First

Somehow I forgot to do this one...

Booking Through Thursday

1. Do you cheat and peek ahead at the end of your books? Or do you resolutely read in sequence, as the author intended?

Unfortunately, I usually do cheat and read ahead. Usually it happens as I'm about to go to bed and cannot read any further. Usually I'm about half way through the book and I go take a peek at the end one night and what's coming up next on other nights. Maybe fatigue has something to do with this compulsion because I don't peek during

2. And, if you don’t peek, do you ever feel tempted?

Obviously yes

Summer Reads

I thought this summer I would go easy on the non-fiction and classics and try to get more of my Paper Back Swap books back out into circulation. After I finish reading The Stolen Child I plan to read:

Billy Straight by Jonathan Kellerman

Black Creek Crossing by John Saul

Brimstone by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Constantine by John Shirley

Dance of Death by Preston & Child

Flesh & Blood by Jonathan Kellerman

Lost: A Novel by Gregory Maguire

My Life Among The Serial Killers: Inside The Minds Of The World's Most Notorious Murderers by Helen, M.D. Morrison, Harold Goldberg

The Perfect Storm : A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

A Dangerous Woman by Mary McGarry Morris

The Insulin-Resistance Diet : How to Turn Off Your Body's Fat-Making Machine by Cheryle R. Hart M.D. and Mary Kay Grossman R.D.

Icy Sparks

Sometimes when I come to the end of a good book I feel a little sad because I've enjoyed the story so much and now it's come to an end. That's how I felt when I closed the book on Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. I'd picked up the book because it was one of Oprah's selections and the book jacket sounded interesting--a little girl with a troubling affliction grows up in 1950s Kentucky. As one growing up with deaf parents, I felt very different from the others as a child. I would be able to relate to this character.

Icy Sparks is going to be one of those memorable characters for me, like Scout Finch and Francie Nolan. Orphaned at a very young age, spunky Icy is raised by her loving grandparents. When she is about 10, she begins to struggle with a frightening condition--she'll get an urge to tic, pop her eyes, or croak. She tries really hard to hide what is happening to her but it all comes out in the presence of one very cruel teacher.

Icy spends time in a mental institution which seems brutally cruel but, after all, this is the 1950s when people didn't understand about these kinds of things. They didn't accept people's differences as easily as they do today.

Luckily, Icy is surrounded by enough love from her grandparents, her friend Miss Emily, her principal Mr. Wootten and the hospital aide Maizy that she isn't lost forever. She's got a gift that helps her deal with what's happening to her--a lovely singing voice.

I thought this book was fantastic and definitely recommend it as an excellent read!

Two Other Books I Read Earlier This Month

Sunday, May 6
Pervasive Developmental Disorder: A Different Perspective

Someone (I wish I could remember who) recommended that I read Pervasive Developmental Disorder: An Altered Perspective (by Barbara Quinn and Anthony Malone) so that I could understand better about PDD-NOS. I would like to thank that person because yes, this book helped so much! There are some sections in the book that are a little difficult to understand because the discussion is about biology and how our brains work. However, the authors suggest that the reader start out where the greatest needs or questions lie and skip around. I learned the differences between the spectrum disorders but basically it all boils down to this: the kids with PDD have some issues all of their lives, especially with socializing. There are a lot of interventions and medications available so a diagnosis of autism or PDD is not the end of the world. The book concludes with stories told by the parents of four kids diagnosed with PDD. The stories are hopeful without being sappy, realistic without being scary. I would recommend this book to anyone whose family member has PDD.

Posted by Irishcoda at 1:15 PM 0 comments

Labels: Books I've Read

Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince

Reading the Harry Potter books is like watching Everybody Loves Raymond: I don't care for the main character but enjoy the supporting characters. Harry's become a cheeky, selfish bratty teenager--not all that much different from your typical adolescent. I just want to grab his shoulders and shake him for the disrespectful way he treats adults and other people he doesn't like. He's been known to criticize even those people he does like--Headmaster Dumbledore for one. He thinks he knows more than anyone else does and this in spite of all Dumbledore's wisdom and experience. Well, all right then.

Harry's been through an awful lot in his sixteen years. First, he was orphaned by the very evil Lord Voldemort when he was barely a toddler. Voldemort was trying a pre-emptive strike against Harry (the intended target) because of a prophecy made about the two of them. Harry's mother put herself between the baby and the dark lord after her husband was murdered and refused to budge, thereby saving the baby's life. Voldemort was weakened by his attack on Harry and ran off into the unknown. Dumbledore and several other protectors stepped forward to see to it that Harry survived. They left him with his aunt and uncle, a pair of truly despicable foster parents.

Once Harry was eleven, learned he was a wizard and went off to Hogwarts the wizarding school, he faced more traumatic events. For each of the years he was at Hogwarts, an attempt was made on his life. Voldemort was determined to come back to power but Dumbledore, headmaster of the school and prime champion, protected Harry throughout the years...until now. Each book has become darker with more twists, more deaths, and more tragedy for Harry. Lonely and neglected Harry learned he had a godfather--who was killed shortly thereafter by Voldemort's supporters. Not surprisingly, he's turned into a very angry boy.

Now that he is aware of the prophecy, Harry finds he has to learn all he can about Voldemort. His guide is his beloved mentor, Albus Dumbledore, who shows him through memories how Voldemort became the monster he is. At the climax, Dumbledore is betrayed by someone the headmaster believed to be an ally. Or was it a betrayal? Harry seems to think so but I'm not so inclined.

The half-blood prince refers to a certain someone who "helps" Harry get through one of his classes. It's totally ironic to me that Harry would feel such a pull toward taking the student's advice. Like Hermione, Harry's friend, I'm a bit miffed he felt it was okay to cheat. Well, we're all human right?

Speaking of seeing the human side, I also enjoyed seeing the "softer" sides to some of the previously thoroughly obnoxious characters...even Lord Voldemort was a thinking, feeling child once.

This was a very good book if you can get through the teenage angsty bits, the adolescents' crushes and loves, and other little boring details. There is enough of the good stuff to keep you going.

The last book is set to come out in print in July. Everyone is up in arms, worried that Harry Potter might die in the book. Stephen King, Lemony Snicket & other book writers have been appealling to Rowling to spare Harry. I sort of hope he lives even if he is bratty!

Posted by Irishcoda at 12:58 PM 0 comments

Labels: Books I've Read

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Living Well With Depression & Bipolar Disorder

I wanted to read Living Well With Depression & Bipolar Disorder: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You...That You Need To Know by John McManamy so that I could learn not only more about my own depression but also about Heidi. Her doctor has told me that she is bipolar and I don't doubt it. I sort of suspect that my mother was or is too and as I read the book, it crossed my mind that I have some of the symptoms. But that might just be my own hypochondria, who knows?

The author has bipolar and so I found the book to be especially insightful. He has a website and a newsletter called McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly. I'm definitely subscribing to it.

Some things that I learned:

Unipolar and bipolar depressions are so closely linked the only thing that seems to separate them is an episode of hypomania. So, in other words, if you don't have any of those symptoms at the time you see a doctor and if you don't think to tell the physician about other behaviors and issues, the diagnosis is unipolar depression. I think psychiatrists ask more about the other symptoms now (like irritability) than they used to but even still...for instance, Heidi's doctor said irritability is considered "mania" in a teenager. But what about in an adult?

What about a person (like me) who cycles up to a state of feeling all right before spiralling down, someone who doesn't go up so high?

I was surprised to read about a study that links bipolar disorder with panic attack syndrome.

McManamy explained the differences between types of depression and bipolar. This was particularly insightful for me:

To me, bipolar disorder is the equivalent of being stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a race car.

The biology and chemistry of it all is harder to understand but I got my highlighter out and marked the book so I can refer back whenever I need to.

I found the book to be a very valuable read.