The Low Down on Kid’s Books
How do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms – Yolen
This is Ayla’s first dinosaur book and the first thing we’ve read by Jane Yolen. Cute, clever, and rhyming this is great board book for a 14 month old learning to put her toys away before she leaves a room and goes to another. Its quickly becoming an afternoon favorite.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs – Barrett
Ayla and I read this recently for the first time. She seemed to enjoy it when I made the action loud enough, but its definitely going to be more exciting when she’s a little older. All in all, though, it does not live up to its hype.
Punctuation Station – Bryan P. Cleary
Ayla and I love Bryan P. Cleary books and are trying to collect them all. We checked this one out of the library this week, and as usual she found the rhymes exciting, even if she doesn’t quite know what they mean yet!
The Sea of Bath – Bob Logan
Ayla loves this one. She’s really into the illustrations and there’s the perfect amount of story per page, so she is able to sit still for just the right amount of time before she turns the page for you. We checked this copy out of the library, but I think I’ll have to go buy a copy soon.
Where to, Little Wombat – Charles Fuge
Ayla wasn’t sure about sitting through the first page, but by the second she was hooked. The first time we read this she made me read it three times in a row and carried it around the house for an hour after that. The illustrations are fun and she loved being introduced to new animals she hadn’t seen before: wombat, emu, and koala. Plus, the story is super cute too.
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Christie the Queen of Mystery
Title: Mysterious Affair at Styles
Author: Agatha Christie
Join Hercule Poirot in Christie’s classic whodunit series, starting with the first! The lady of the house of Styles is poisoned and it’s up to Poirot and the narrator to uncover the culprit.
I’m sure you’ve heard that Christie is the mother of all mystery, and after reading my second Christie mystery ever, I must say I understand where that idea comes from. I was reading another blog today (http://resolution52.com/adventures-in-resolution52) and the writers really summed my thoughts on Agatha Christie and the mystery world up well when they wrote:
Agatha does it better – but, without Doyle, she probably wouldn’t have done it at all.
You can feel the cornerstone in the structure politely put in place by Doyle’s existence as a writer, but despite my deep love for Sherlock Holmes, you can tell Christie really mastered the whodunit art.
I’m on a mission to read all of Agatha Christie’s crime collection and starting at the beginning did not disappoint. Christie’s cozy mysteries make for pleasant little “FridayReads” (if you’re a twitter follower you know how much I love those) and I look forward to continue my year with Poirot! And soon after following with Miss Marple and the rest.
The goal is to finish the entire crime collection in 23 months, starting now. I’ll be reading three titles a month, so feel free to join me for some or all: http://www.shelfari.com/groups/79392/discussions/418226/Agatha-Christie
How to Buy a Love of Reading… Just buy Gibson’s book
Title: How to Buy a Love of Reading
Author: Tanya Egan Gibson
Publisher: Dutton, a member of Penguin group
Genre: Fiction
Length: 389 pages
I cannot begin to count, honestly, the number of times I was brought to tears by this book. Something that was supposed to be light and fun proved to be something beautiful and amazing, something that moved me more than words can express.
I cannot begin to count, honestly, the number I times I fell in love with Hunter. Over and over again, reminding me of boys I fell in love with in real life. Stranger still, reminding me of myself.
I found Carly amazing, and brave, and beautiful, a character who reminded me of people I both love and hate.
I found Gibson reminding me why I fell in love with Fitzgerald in high school and how I cherish every blessed word of Gatsby and every word written about it.
I found myself wanting to share this jewel with a dear friend who has already left this world and lonely because of all the disappointment in his missing it.
I sit here writing the most incoherent review in the immediate moment of completion because I’m blown away, dazed, and I don’t want it to end, even though the ending is so perfectly final.
Believing the Lie – A Review
Title: Believing the Lie
Author: Elizabeth George
Publisher: Dutton, a member of Penguin group
Genre: mystery
Length: 610 pages
Dutton Books, to my surprise and excitement, kindly provided me with a copy of Believing the Lie, Inspector Lynley’s 17th book appearance, just weeks before its official release date. Despite this book being number seventeen in a series, and having never read any of George’s previous work, I often wondered which characters were reoccurring ones and which were unique to this title. The work and the character development was so seamless, this was unclear until nearly toward the end.
“[…] Darling, secrets and silence caused all of this. Lies caused this,” Inspector Lynley summarizes the novel of which he is supposedly the star. It is refreshing to read a crime writer who gives you such a large cast of characters in such detail, its surprising to find that the lead inspector is more like the wood frame that holds a canvas together than the paint that creates the work of art itself. He is ever in the middle of the action, but rarely the focus, he merely serves as the reason for the story’s existence in the first place.
George writes human tension beautifully. More than a typical mystery, George has written a well crafted drama involving social issues surrounding homosexuals, transsexuals, and the families who love but fail to understand them. During all this family drama, international culture issues, marital affairs, and even a child pornography ring, the biggest truth to be revealed of this murder mystery, is whether there has even been a murder at all.
Typically, when I read mysteries I take the cozy, less than 200 page ones for what I call “bubble bath books,” something I can read in one sitting in the tub. As much as I love those (my cotton candy for the soul), I say with the highest compliment intended, George does not write bubble bath mysteries. And quite different from those sorts of books, this one left me wondering: What Next?
How Alcott Raises Little Women
Title: Little Women
Author: Louisa May Alcott
Publisher: Little, Brown
Genre: Young Adult Classics
Length: 502 pages
I don’t remember learning to read, as I did it from such a young age. I do, however, remember the first books I fell in love with and the first books I read that were difficult for my limited vocabulary. Laura Ingalls Wilder I fell in love with first, I read the entire series several times by the end of first grade. Little Women, however, I fell in love with and learned from in second grade. Little Women taught me new words and phrases, culture, and how I wanted to live.
Josephine March has been one of my heroes since I was seven and first read about her chopping off all her luxurious hair. As a young girl, I identified quite well with her “one beauty” (that amazing hair) and tomboyish ways. I myself, was a ruddy, freckled girl, often found either playing tag football with boys at recess or perched in an oak tree reading a book, hair flowing every which way that my mother did not allow me to cut. My first significant hair cut, I donated two feet to locks of love, and who else was on my mind? Jo March.
I re-read the book multiple times before I left elementary school, getting more and more out of it each time as my reading skills improved. And despite cherishing it always, I set the book aside and did not read it again until my twenty-seventh year, this year, to my one year old daughter.
I opened it up a week or so before Christmas, not realizing it would spur a desire to re-read it every Christmas with my kid for the rest of her life if she likes it as much as I do. It’s such a great Christmas book! Upon this fresh re-read, I also discovered many other things that my brain had forgotten, but my soul must have internalized. For instance, the girls are all distraught and Hannah, bless her soul, “came to the rescue armed with a coffee-pot.”
Like every good American, I am wholly addicted to that black magical brew, it’s in our veins and culture, look at how well Starbucks has taken off. But my family did not keep coffee readily available, my dad won’t touch the stuff and my mom’s mother died of cancer the doctors blamed on her caffeine intake so she never kept it around growing up. So part of me wonders if Alcott played a role in my introduction to it, as I don’t remember a time when I did not love it. I remember sneaking cups of it from the employee break room at the bus barn where I waited with my bus driver between routes in elementary school. In hindsight, I believe it was the reverence that writers hold for it, the way it is talked about in books, that drove me to love it so much, and it very well may have begun with Little Women.
Then, there is Theodore Laurence. I believe every guy friend’s worth that I ever had my whole life was measured against the character of Laurie. He is whimsical, gallant, a rascal and a gentleman. Theodore Laurence is handsome, a friend, and all around a good time. Every girl needs a Teddy-Dear in her adolescent life and if you can’t get one in the real world, its time for yet another read of Little Women so you can live vicariously through Jo!
Jo March taught me to love, to read, to pursue life with a fiery passion, and how to pick my friends. It was Jo March that sparked the first desires in me to be a writer. It was Little Women, and the romance of Jo and the Professor, that set the stage for me to fall in love with the art of Jane Austen and the Brontes. It was the pen of Louisa May Alcott that taught me how to really enjoy books and the thrilling life they have to offer.
The Forgotten Garden, an Overlooked Book
Over and over again, I saw Kate Morton’s House at Riverton lurking on the general fiction shelves at Half Price Books. I never picked it up, the cover just wasn’t right. Book jackets are magical things. Between the author, the publishig company, brilliant marketing people, and the perception of the onlookers – a book jacket tells all. The House at Riverton just wasn’t telling me what I wanted to hear. Then one day, my boss waves The Forgotten Garden in front of my face. “This is amazing.” It looked amazing. The antique cream color, the ivy, the fairies, the magical nostalgia of a Frances Hodgson Burnett novel… I desired it immediately. I was dumbstruck to realize it was the same author.
The Forgotten Garden is beautiful. Twins, secrets, best friends, a family saga, England, Australian, painters, storytellers, an authoress, spooky deaths… It was the perfect mood follow up to The Thirteenth Tale. It was an amazing read. It took me too long to discover it due to the terrible marketing of the author’s previous book. Thank God, the publisher’s finally gave Morton’s writing her book cover art due.
If you are wondering, I have broken protocol and abandoned my book cover instincts for the sake of reading Morton’s previous work – I bought The House at Riverton and its horrible cover. I plan to read it around Christmas, a review to follow. Her third book, Th Distant Hour is scheduled for me to read Spring 2012.
Crack in the Edge of the World
A Book Review
Simon Winchester never fails to fascinate and inform. When I picked up Crack in the Edge of the World, I was surprised to discover that the author I dearly remember for writing The Professor and the Madman (a history of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary) was also a geologist and highly knowledgeable in both language AND the science of rocks – what a foundation! This particular history on the great earthquake of San Fransisco met high expectations of Winchester’s talent compared to his previous work and I recommend this to anyone who likes history, science, or just plain good storytelling.
The Woodlanders
A quick blurb:
I’ve been up and down with The Woodlanders, mostly based on my mood. I loved it, it lulled, I hated it, and now with its final sentence I love it again. I am finding more and more that this is the sway of things with Hardy and me. His characters are so dynamic and unique and yet you find familiarity in each one every time you turn. He has nailed the human race time and time again, yet he is most known for his nature descriptions. I truly recommend every avid reader to enjoy at least one Hardy a year for literary sustenance.
Scentsy pairing: Shades of Green in the room you are sitting in, but keep Honey Peared Cider going in the adjacent room and let them subtly linger together.
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
A Review of Helene Hanff’s sequel to 84, Charing Cross Rd.
At the end of 84, Charing Cross Rd. when Helene’s correspondence with London bookseller Frank Doel seemingly came to an end – I cried. Now, in Duchess of Bloomsbury Street when Helene first sees Charing Cross Rd. with her own eyes – I cried again. Helene Hanff is simple, witty, clever, and utterly enjoyable every time she takes pen to paper. I enjoy romping through London with her and cannot wait to read what she has to say about life in America when I finally find myself a copy of Apple of My Eye. And, if I ever visit London, I hope I have even half as many wonderful people available like The Colonel and PB to escort me to all the best sites, and then maybe my trip could be almost as perfect.
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
A Review on the biography by Amanda Foreman
For starters, I am baffled by how many people mistake this book for a novel. I have read so many reviews that say it was too historical, too dry for a novel, and that they didn’t get a chance to get into the characters because the story read like a research paper. These people are ridiculous, because it’s a biography and because it was the most fascinating ‘research paper’ I’ve ever read.
I was amazed at how many people Georgiana managed to charm in her life. When you read about all her flaws and mishaps, you expect the world to hate her. I expect that I would have hated her. She constantly gambled, lost all her money, and was continuously lying to everyone around her. She seems silly and a bit hairbrained. But when it comes down to it, everyone that knew her loved her. She set trends, led a political party to greatness, and was a best friend to her children. (Despite the few years she neglected them to go have another child from another man, even her children thought her to be the best mother in the world.)
Prior to this biography, I had no idea that she was a great ancestor to the infamous Princess Di. I also found it refreshing to read a biography on royalty that was non-Tudor related. I highly recommend the book, and the movie made after it starring Keira Knightley, although after reading the biography I find the movie a bit deceptive on the character of the Duke.
Anakalian Whims 