Top Ten Tuesday

 
  Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's question is to list the top 10 characters with whom you would want to be BFF's.

1. Lisbeth Salander (from Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy):  She's not a very friendly person, but I'd totally want her to be on my side rather than be the enemy.  And I wouldn't mind learning a few things from her ...
2. Rebecca Brandon (nee Bloomwood) (from Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series):  Yeah, she's flaky, and downright annoying at times, but I do think she'd be a lot of fun to hang around with; and it goes without saying that she would be a wonderful shopping companion.
3. Renee and Paloma (from Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog):  We could sit and talk for hours about anything and everything.
4. Nancy Drew:  I wanted to be Nancy Drew when I was a kid, and I think I still do.
5. The gang in the 100 Acre Wood:  because I don't think you could ever be sad with that group (yep, even Eeyore makes me smile)

And the Blogiversary gift goes to ....

Bev (My Reader's Block)

She will be receiving  a copy of The Haunted Tea-Cosy by Edward Gorey.

Congratulations and thank you again to all of you who take the time to read and comment!

It's Monday -- What are You Reading?

  It's Monday - What are you Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at bookjourney to allow us to share with others in the book-loving cyberworld what is on our reading plates.

  This week I only finished one book:  Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King.  I'm hoping to make it to my non-fiction book group to discuss it.

   Books in progress:

• The Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon
• Great House by Nicole Krauss
• War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy (I've finished Volume I, Part 1!)

   I did some War & Peace math and determined that to finish it in time for our discussion of it in January, I will need to read about 160 pages a week.  Not entirely unreasonable, but for me it is not the type of novel I can just dip in and out of -- I need a block of time to properly concentrate on it.  Plus even in paperback it is heavy and not one that can be carried around easily.

   My parents are still visiting after a quiet Thanksgiving with them and my in-laws.  On Thursday we are all heading up to Toronto to celebrate the first birthday of my twin nieces which will be a lot of fun. 

   What are you reading this week?

Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons

 
  Jack and Sadie Rosenblum were lucky.  They were able to flee Germany to England at the beginning of World War II with little else but their travel documents, their young daughter Elizabeth, and their Jewish traditions.   Upon arrival in England, they were given a brochure on how to "act" English, a document that Jack takes to heart.  As he settles into life in London he adds his own thoughts on what makes a true Englishman; and as he becomes a successful businessman he aims to accomplish the last item on his list, what he believes will make him accepted as an Englishman:  become a member of a golf club.
  Alas, Jack is not accepted for membership at any golf club, despite being nominated by other members and/or offering free product from his carpet manufacturing firm.  Disappointed but not deterred, Jack takes a drive into the English countryside, sees a piece of land, and decides to purchase it and build his own golf course. 
  While Jack spends virtually all of his time on this project, the pinnacle of his English dream, his wife Sadie struggles with the memories of life in Germany and the fate of  family members left behind.  Though never overtly stated, we all know what happened and Sadie seems wracked with guilt for leaving and living. 
  I have to admit that I almost gave up on this novel once the Rosenblums moved to the country because I didn't think that the construction of golf course would be all that interesting.  But really, that was only the genesis of Jack's quest to become an Englishman, and his and Sadie's experiences  - with a quirky group of town residents - were funny, sad, and quite entertaining.  For a storyline that I was not expecting, I enjoyed this novel very much.

Check out these other reviews:
leeswammes

It's Monday -- What are You Reading?

  It's Monday - What are you Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at bookjourney to allow us to share with others in the book-loving cyberworld what is on our reading plates.

  Books finished this week:

• Purge by Sofi Oksanen.
• Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons

  Books in Progress:

• Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon
• Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King
• War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy  -- only 35 pages in but I think I will enjoy it, once I get a handle on all of the characters

  Because of Thanksgiving, this is a short work week (though I do have to go to work on Friday -- boo), but with the holiday and my parents arriving on Tuesday for a visit, it's going to be a busy one nonetheless.  I hope to find some quiet reading time.  Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it.... don't eat too much!

It's my Blogiversary and you could get the gift!

    When I started my blog one year ago, I wasn't really sure what I was doing -- I knew I wanted to write about the books I'm reading, but other than that I didn't have much of a plan.  I still don't have a plan, and I don't have nearly enough time to spend on my blog as I'd like, but it has been a great deal of fun.

     That said, even if I was having fun with it I probably would have stopped long ago if I didn't receive any comments on my posts.  I know that there are readers who don't comment (and that's ok too), but it's a great stroke to the ego when you receive positive feedback.  So for all of you that have taken the time to comment on a post, and to follow my ramblings, I thank you.

     So to celebrate, I would like to provide someone with an early Christmas/Hannukkah/Kwanzaa/Winter Soltice gift.  Comment on this post with the name of a book you have on your holiday wish list, include an e-mail address, and on Sunday, November 28, I will randomly select a commenter and will purchase and send that book to you.  And because I'm a worldly kind of gal and know of several followers outside the US, I will send internationally (though if it's a local book you're looking for, guidance to a reliable source for it is appreciated!)

    (ahem, I do reserve the right, though, to purchase a copy of said book for myself as well if it sounds good ...)

An observation

I sort of reorganized my bookshelves last night.  I thought it would be interesting to count how many books were on the to-read pile. 

201

(not including library books or the 15 or so books waiting on my nook)

I say this partly in jest, but would the publishers please pretty please not publish any interesting books until I can catch up on what I already have?  Thanks so much.

Do you know about Friday Reads?

   Every Friday, a phenomenon starts on Twitter -- #fridayreads -- where readers tweet what they are reading.  The craze has expanded through cyberspace; Friday Reads now has its own Facebook page and an official blog partner -- The Book Lady's Blog -- where anyone anywhere can announce what they are reading.

  What's in it for me, you say?  Well, there's prizes!  As the number of Friday Reads participants grows, so do the prize packages.  This week the prize is a Kobo e-reader, and if the number of participants reaches 5000, Friday Reads' creator, The Book Maven will donate $250 to First Book.  So get on your social media of choice and let everyone know your Friday Reads!
 

Book Beginnings on Friday

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme created by Becky at Page Turners, and is now hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence.

My beginning this week comes from Purge, by Sofi Oksanen:

Aliide Truu stared at the fly, and the fly stared back.

  To me, this sentence does not have a lot of bearing on the storyline of the novel, but it does foreshadow the large presence of flies and other insects in the narrative (really -- was Estonia that overrun by bugs?). 

  I'm about halfway through the novel and it's a good story, but for anyone interested in reading it I don't recommend it while eating .... the bugs seem to be most prevalent in the kitchen.

The Forgotten Garden

   Cassandra's grandmother, Nell, has passed away and left everything to her; not only her home and antique stall in Brisbane, but also a cottage on the English coast.  Why would Nell have a home in England?, thinks Cassandra; and thus the plot for Kate Morton's novel, The Forgotten Garden, is formed.

    The story is told primarily from the perspective of three women in three time periods -- Cassandra in 2005, Nell in 1975-76, and Eliza Makepeace in 1900-1913.  It is apparent that Eliza's narrative is linked to Cassandra's and Nell's in some way, but how?  Ms Morton does a fantastic job of linking the narratives so the reader is able to put the pieces of the puzzle together themselves - not all at once, just gradually enough that you feel you must keep reading to find out more information. 

   The Forgotten Garden is not a short book - my paperback edition is 549 pages - but I found it quick and easy to read and extremely enjoyable.  It's a mystery, a love story, a tragedy, and in many ways a fairy tale; it's a great novel to escape the present day, even if only for a little while.
     

Celebrity Chekhov by Ben Greenman

 

  In the last year or so, several classic works of literature have been the subject of mashups with a science-fiction-like element -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and Android Karenina, for example.  Celebrity Chekhov:  Stories by Anton Chekhov, by Ben Greenman, is also a mashup, but of a different sort.  Greenman takes eighteen of  Chekhov's short stories and inserts celebrities (ranging from Paris Hilton to David Letterman to Eminem) into them.
 
  I have to admit that I had not read any of Chekhov's short stories (yes I am ashamed), so I read these adaptations with an open mind.  Some of the stories were quite entertaining:

• "A Transgression" - David Letterman finds an abandoned infant on his doorstep and must admit his infidelity to his wife
• "Joy" - Kim Kardashian is overjoyed at being named online and as a result being now known throughout the world

Other stories, such as The Darling (featuring Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Keith Urban, and - Brad Pitt?), did not make a lot of sense to me.

  Afterwards, I read a few of the Chekhov stories upon which these selections were based and was quite impressed with how Greenman was able to successfully weave the celebrities into the narrative (especially in "A Trangression", mentioned above).  As a result, I am determined to read more of Chekhov's work; which I assume was the overall intent of this collection to begin with. 

(received for review from the publisher, Harper Collins, via NetGalley)

It's Monday - What are You Reading?

 
  It's Monday - What are you Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at bookjourney to allow us to share with others in the book-loving cyberworld what is on our reading plates.

  This week I finished the following books:

• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
• Silas Marner:  The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

  Books in Progress:

• Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King
• Purge by Sofi Oksanen
• The Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon

  Also -- ta da -- I will be starting War & Peace sometime this week.  I've started on the introduction but haven't gotten to page one of the novel yet.  I'm actually looking forward to it -- there was a great blog post last week on The Blue Bookcase with tips on reading this novel and that gave me a boost.

  This week is reading group week -- I have meetings on Monday & Wednesday -- and I have to start thinking about cleaning my house in preparation for Thanksgiving next week (we are having dinner at our house and my parents will be visiting from Winnipeg) so I will likely be a busy beaver with hopefully a few minutes to spare for reading.  Oh, and my Blogiversary is next Sunday, so I'm also planning something for that. 

  What are you reading this week?

I Think I've Created a Reader! (yay!)

 I don't have children of my own, but I have 4 nieces and a nephew whom I adore and frankly spoil rotten (being the auntie is so much more fun in my opinion).  Since they've been born, I've always made a point to give them books, and since I don't live near them, when I visit I always make a point (or they ask me) to read them stories.  One of my favorite memories with my oldest niece, Madyson, was when she was three and I was reading her a Dora the Explorer story for the umpteenth time and she said "You're a very good reader auntie". *sniff*

  Well, Mady is now nine years old and she can read on her own, and she does it avidly.  She's a chip off ol' Auntie's block - reading in bed long into the night, looking forward to trips to the library and to bookstores (when they were coming to visit me a few summers ago she asked her mom if she thought Auntie Sue might want to go to the bookstore with her - *sniff*).  And now that she has an e-mail account through school (yeah, she's NINE) we can talk about what she's reading and what I read when I was her age;  she's reading a Judy Blume book right now - Double Fudge - that I don't remember ever seeing (I had Superfudge?)

   Mady is a lovely, smart young girl (I'm biased, I know) and she has a wide range of interests and activities other than reading; but it warms my heart to be able to share this with her and feel that I may have had a little part of generating her love of reading.

It's Monday -- What are you Reading?

 
  It's Monday - What are you Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at bookjourney to allow us to share with others in the book-loving cyberworld what is on our reading plates.

  This week I finished the following books:

• Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
• Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach
• The Violin of Auschwitz:  A Novel by Maria Angels Anglada
• The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
• Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

 (I was having a rough week, and reading seemed to be my only solace; of course the subject matter of most of these titles were a little on the bleak side, so I don't know how much help it was....)

   Books in Progress:

• Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon (he was to have attended a reading from this anthology for the Chicago Humanities Festival yesterday, but sadly his one-year old daughter died earlier in the week and he understandably was not there; the presentation still went on and it was ok, but it was a subdued atmosphere).
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
• Silas Marner:  The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot

  Hopefully this week will be better than the last -- on Saturday I will be volunteering at my library book sale (yeah, I know, fox in charge of the hen-house) so if I need to feel better I can just spend a little money for a lot of new (to me) books.

  What are you reading this week?

A Blogger Recommended - Tulip Fever

   Welcome to A Blogger Recommended, a series where I will periodically write about a book I've read based on the review/post of another blogger.


    Today's recommendation  is Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach and I learned about this book on leeswammes' blog.

    The novel is set in 17th Century Amsterdam and is about Sophia, the young wife of an older, prosperous merchant.  The marriage is rather happy, although Sophia has not yet borne any children, and Cornelis - her husband - has decided to immortalize their union by having their portrait painted.  The painter - Jan van Loos - arrives; he and Sophia are initially hostile to each other, but of course that only masked their mutual passion.

     Sophia realizes what she is missing in her life (or what she thinks she is missing) and wants to be with Jan, but she also does not want to hurt her husband.  The lovers - with the cooperation of Sophia's maid, Maria - concoct a plot that not only touches on the tulip fever of the title (immense speculation on tulip bulbs that caused prices to rise dramatically) but which also reminded me a little bit of the first season of Glee.

    As leeswammes mentioned in her review, I too would have liked to read more detail about the Tulip Fever that gripped Amsterdam and the rest of Holland.  I would have expected it to have a larger presence in the novel given the title and I was left unsatisfied with how this part of history was described (*sigh* I guess I'll have to find some more books about the subject to read).  Having said that, though, I've always enjoyed novels that represent "average" life in a past era and this was no exception; the descriptions of the markets and taverns of Amsterdam were very enticing and make me want to visit the city even more to see if I would be able to experience at least a sense of what it was like at that time. 

   Thank you, leeswammes, for introducing me to this novel!

Book Beginnings on Friday

 

  Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme created by Becky at Page Turners, and is now hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence.


  This week's beginning comes from The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson, winner of this year's Man Booker Prize:

He should have seen it coming.

  This sentence makes me want to read further -- what happened?  I'm not that far into the novel yet, so I still have no idea what it is that he should have seen coming.

November's Reading List

  It's hard to believe it is already November -- the weather is cooling off, the days are getting shorter, and the holidays are fast approaching, but there is always plenty of reading to be done!

  My book club reads for this month are:

• Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
• Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King

 Blogger Recommendations this month are:

• Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach (recommended by leeswammes)
• Annexed by Sharon Dogar (recommended by see scoot read)

  I am also going to get started on War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, which is my Classics group's January book for discussion.  When I do begin I will post my progress.

  Aside from these books I will certainly work through my TBR piles (that thing I mentioned last month about not buying books?  yeah, didn't happen).  I have to spend some time organizing them so I can be reminded of what is there, but I'd really much rather spend the time reading .....

  Oh, and later this month will be my one year blogiversary!  I'm thinking of offering some sort of giveaway, so stay tuned!

Top Ten Tuesday -- Books that made me cry

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's question is to list your top 10 books that made you cry:

   1.  Terry Fox's autobiography.  Terry Fox was an amazing Canadian who attempted to run across Canada on one good leg and one prosthetic one to raise money for cancer research. I can't remember the title because I read it when I was about 12 (many many years ago) but I distinctly remember crying my eyes out when his cancer returned and he wrote about giving up the run and accepting that he was going to die.  His mother, Betty, was one of the final torchbearers at the Winter Olympics' opening ceremony in Vancouver this year and I cried at that too (yep, I'm a marshmallow)

   2.  The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.  That ending.  I closed the book at the end and just thought for a moment, then the tears started.

   3.  Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  OK, I did see the musical first and bawled through most of the second act, so when I cried while reading the book it could have been a Pavlovian response (I still can't hear some of the songs without weeping) but the scene where Eponine dies in Marius' arms gets me every time.

   4.  The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.  My response to this one was proof that I could never own a pet.  Too emotionally draining.

   There have been other books that have made me horribly sad:  The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Room by Emma Donoghue, The Tower the Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart, but I can't say that I cried upon reading them. 


   What books make you cry?

It's Monday -- What are You Reading?

It's Monday - What are you Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at bookjourney to allow us to share with others in the book-loving cyberworld what is on our reading plates.

This week I finished the following books:

• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
• Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones
• At Home:  A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

 Books in Progress:

• Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya
• Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach
• Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
• Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon

  On Saturday I will be attending a reading of the Best European Fiction as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, so I'm going to try and get through as much of it as I can before then.  It should be an interesting event.

  What are you reading this week?