Tess Gerritsen

I'm now into Tess. She wrote (writes) medical thrillers and authored the Rizzoli and Isles series. Yes, the one that is on TV. That's how I got on to her. I like the show and decided to try one of the books and I liked it. So I'm reading all the Macon Library has. Now I'm reading "Call After Midnight" a kind of spy thriller. I like the way she writes. Easy read with some excitement and intrigue.

First new post in years!

Literally. I wanted to start off with a bang, so I'm going to talk about a book I read a couple weeks ago and then passed on to Jeremy. It's a Rex Stout, so probably many of you have already read it, but it's noteworthy I think. I love Rex Stout and have enjoyed every Nero Wolfe book I've been able to get my hands on, but this one really stood out to me. It's called Some Buried Caesar. It's thrilling for long time fans because Archie meets Lilly Rowan near the beginning, and manages to stir up some trouble with her throughout the story. Also fun is the fact that Nero Wolfe leaves his house and then spends most of the story looking for a comfortable chair. There were so many people with motive that I had a very difficult time figuring out the mystery, although Mr. Wolfe had it solved from the beginning. Jeremy and I were both wondering about one part of the book that never were solved. "What's the difference between a Catholic and a river that runs uphill?" is a joke that Archie starts and never finishes. Apparently there is no ending! A cruel joke played on the reader by not providing a punchline! I recommend it anyway. You can preview it on Google Books.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I have been sick and this book was exactly what I needed for a long weekend home in bed. It creates a very good feeling--that there are lots of people out there willing to help their neighbor at their own expense. Has me questioning why I don't know my neighbors very well, and why so much has changed in neighborhoods in general. Anyway, it is very uplifting and has some really funny moments. All about post WWII and how the people cheered themselves up. Nice little romance in it also.

I have read many books in the last few days, but another of note is And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander. I picked it up because it said lovers of Anne Perry and Elizabeth Peters would enjoy it. It did not disappoint. Suspenseful and romantic historical novel. Full of feisty women who break the rules etc.

"Chester" (It's a Cat's World)

I heard about this from Nancy Pearl on one of her NPR spots. Here is the Amazon description:

"Chester is more than a picture book. It is a story told and retold by dueling author-illustrators. Melanie Watt starts out with the story of a mouse in a house. Then Melanie's cat, Chester, sends the mouse packing and proceeds to cover the pages with rewrites from his red marker, and the gloves are off. Melanie and her mouse won't take Chester's antics lying down. And Chester is obviously a creative powerhouse with confidence to spare. Where will this war of the picture-book makers lead? Is it a one-way ticket to Chesterville, or will Melanie get her mouse production off the ground?"

The cat even crosses Melanie's name off the cover and prints "Chester" in the author's place. ;-)

Coincidently, I am writing this while sitting on the floor of the apartment, as Edmund took my only chair.

The Uncommon Reader

I think someone recommended this already, but I don't remember who. It is a very quick read by Alan Bennett. The book is about Queen Elizabeth II finding out how fun reading is. She begins to read everything and annoy her staff. Here is a quick excerpt I thought some of you would enjoy.

"The librarian at Windsor had been one of many who had urged on Her Majesty the charms of Jane Austen, but being told on all sides how much ma'am would like her books put ma'am off altogether. Besides, she had handicaps as a reader of Jane Austen that were particularly her own. The essence of Jane Austen lies in minute social distinctions, distinctions which the Queen's unique position made it difficult for her to grasp. There was such a chasm between the monarch and even her grandest subject that the social differences beyond that were somewhat telescoped. So the social distinctions of which Jane Austin made so much seemed of even less consequence to the Queen than they did to the ordinary reader, thus making the novels much harder going. To begin with, at any rate, Jane Austen was practically a work of entomology, the characters not quite ants but seeming to the royal reader so much alike as to require a microscope. It was only as she gained in understanding of both literature and human nature that they took on individuality and charm."

For another excerpt from this book visit petrified.

Kansas Bookseller in the news!

So the guy from our own Rainy Day Books was on Morning Edition! Here is the story--it is full of great looking book recommends. Everything these 3 booksellers recommended sounded GREAT! But especially the ones that our Kansas guy talked about. Not that I'm biased.

Email from BJ

since it has been a year or more since i have posted on the book blog, i now don't know how to do it. i have a great book I'd like to post called Three Cups of Tea.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Cups-Tea-Mission-Promote/dp/0143038257/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211590121&sr=8-1

the book is a nonfiction account of a guy named Greg Mortenson went from being a mountain climber to creating a non-profit organization dedicated to building secular schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

i'd love it if you could throw this up there for me!

love,
bj

A Mystery of Errors

For all you mystery lovers, try Simon Hawke's A Mystery of Errors. It is very funny and one of the main characters is Will Shakespeare! There were many references that I caught, and I am sure many more that I didn't. Here is a little of the author's own explanation from the afterword:

"It may be thought the height of arrogance to use William Shakespeare as a fictional character in a novel, and I imagine there will probably be those who will curl their lips with disdain at the idea, but at the same time, I have a strong suspicion that Shakespeare would have approved, or at the very least, been rather amused by the whole thing. After all, it is precisely the sort of thing he did himself."

Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse

Maci went to the bookstore with Leah, Stella, and Madeline this weekend. Leah read the new Skippyjon Jones to Stella and Maci. These books are a hoot. We brought "Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse" home with us. Maci thinks is it great. She picked right up on the clapping to the songs (just after seeing Stella do it once).

NY Times Article

Well it's not a book review, but I thought this article in the NY Times was very interesting.

Also, because it made me remember when I was first dating Adolfo and saw that he had "The Fountainhead" on his bookshelf. When I asked him about it, he responded that it had been a gift and he never read it. Phew!

The Abstinence Teacher

I just read this book by Tom Parrotta. It was a different kind of book for me as there was no mystery. It was a book about people and the troubles some of them face. One main character was a health teacher (middle school) who responded to a student comment about oral sex "some people enjoy it." The fallout from that was kind of maddening. The other main character is a born again Christian who had been a doper in college. The politics and sociology of these two matching up was well done.

Funny Fiction List Request

Ok, I looked online, but it is not listed. It's a 3 page pamphlet (front and back!) so I'm not likely to type them all in. But my library does have an EXCELLENT "find a good book" webpage. Check it out if you're stuck for something good to read.

Funny Fiction part II

The Stately Home Murder. Could have been funny but not enough character development. Not a bad mystery though.

Emma by Jane Austen. Hilarious of course! I read this one already awhile back, but I may be reading it again just fun for. I was thinking of re-reading all the Austens this summer.

Royal Flash, From the Flashman Papers

Take a peek at this book. I found it on a "Funny Fiction" List from my library. It was indeed funny. I am not sure about an excerpt, since the main character is a little... well, himself and not always appropriate. In fact rarely appropriate, but very funny. He is a MAJOR coward who has been decorated for bravery in war (I am planning on reading the first book to find out how that happened) and he looks at every situation in a way that provides the best outcome for HIM. Fortunately the situations are ridiculous. Funny adventure book.

Also read off the funny books list:

Faith Fox (not funny)

Mapp and Lucia (very funny! Hurrah it's also a series!)

Percy Jackson

Madeline brought this home from school. I love to read a good kid book and picked it right up. We have both read through book three now, "The Titan's Curse" and are having a great time. These remind me of Artemis Fowl, by E. Colfer and Harry Potter. We have already pre-ordered the next one coming out in May.
Percy Jackson is a middle school boy who finds out his dad is Poseidon. It turns out this is why he has such bad ADHD, :-). He goes off to a camp for kids who have both a mortal and an Olympian god as parents. He is pursued by monsters and greek gods and has to drag up a good deal of knowledge about the Greek gods to figure things out.
Here is what Booklist had to say:
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Just after finding Bianca and Nico, two newly discovered half-bloods, Percy, Grover, Annabeth, and Thalia end up trapped between a helicopter and a manticore. Artemis and her Hunters save the day, but Annabeth disappears over a cliff; then Artemis rushes off to hunt a dangerous monster. Back at Camp Half-Blood, the Oracle foretells that Artemis must be rescued and makes a prediction that bodes ill for one of their number—but which one? Percy, who is supposed to remain behind while others pursue the quest, follows in search of the missing Annabeth. Their adventures range widely across the U.S., taking them to locales that include Washington, D.C., and the deserts of the Southwest and pitting them against the usual assortment of colorful adversaries. The Percy Jackson & the Olympians series is built around a terrific idea—that the half-mortal offspring of Greek gods live among us, playing out struggles of mythic scale—and Riordan takes it from strength to strength with this exciting installment, adding even more depth to the characters and story arc while retaining its predecessors' nonstop laughs and action. Tixier Herald, Diana
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

New Grisham Book

I eagerly awaited the latest Grisham book and now it is here, and I have read it. Unfortunately, it is not my favorite John Grisham. I liked "Playing For Pizza" better I think.
For me the problem with this book is that he is busy making important political statements about our judicial system and not just spinning a good legal thriller. I imagine many people will enjoy this book, however I read for fun and it was just too real. "The Testament" still remains my all time favorite of his books. I refuse to read his nonfiction works (The Innocent Man and A Time to Kill) but have read and enjoyed all of his other books. If you like legal thrillers and don't mind real stuff you'll probably like this book. If you like to read mindlessly like me for pure pleasure, then maybe not.

Political Thrillers

I used to like Tom Clancy but lost interest as his books "dried" up. Recently a colleague told me he liked Vince Flynn so on a lark I tried him. I'm hooked. Kind of like when I first read a Kathy Reichs. He does the thriller/suspense part quite well. For a political/spy type thriller, try him, you'll like him.
I've just read about Barry Eisler who apparently writes the same type and his protagonist is half American half Japanese. I'll let you know how that goes when I get one read.

Animal Vegetable Miracle

I LOVE Barbara Kingsolver. When Della introduced me to her I immediately read everything she ever wrote (sadly, not nearly as many books as I had hoped). Well, now she has a new one that J gave me for Christmas. I just started reading it 5 minutes ago and I am only to page 11, but it is FANTASTIC. So I thought I would post right away so that you would all go read it immediately and wouldn't have to suffer through one more minute of not reading this book. But you are going to have to go get your own copy, because there is no way you are going to be able to pry it out of my hands. Jeremy has already been circling suspiciously. I guess there is a possibility that once I read more than 10 pages that my ardor will cool, but I doubt it. I will let you know. Anyway, here is a tasty tidbit for you:

(Upon moving from Tuscon, AZ to Virginia--thoughts on agriculture in the US)
"We also have convinced ourselves it (farming) wasn't too important. Consider how Americans might respond to a proposal that agriculture was to become a mandatory subject in all schools, alongside reading and mathematics. A fair number of parents would get hot under the collar to see their kids' attention being pulled away from the essentials of grammar, the all-important trigonometry, to make room for down-on-th-farm stuff. The baby boom psyche embraces a powerful presumption that education is key to moving away from manual labor, and dirt--two undeniable ingredients of farming. It's good enough for us that somebody, somewhere, knows food production well enough to serve the rest of us with all we need to eat, each day of our lives.

If that is true, why isn't it good enough for someone else to know multiplication and the contents of the Bill of Rights? Is the story of bread, from tilled ground to our table, less relevant to our lives than the history of the 13 colonies? Couldn't one make a case for the relevance of a subject that informs choices we make daily--as in, What's for dinner? Isn't ignorance of our food sources causing problems as diverse as overdependence on petroleum, and an epidemic of diet-related diseases?

If this book is not exactly an argument for reinstating food-production classes in schools (and it might be), it does contain a lot of what you might learn there. From our family's gas-station beginnings we have traveled far enough to discover ways of taking charge of one's food, and even knowing where it has been. This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew. We tried to wring most of the petroleum out of our food chain, even if that meant giving up some things. Our highest shopping goal was to get our food from so close to home, we'd know the person who grew it. Often that turned out to be us, as we learned to produce more of what we needed, starting with dirt, seeds, and enough knowledge to muddle through. Or starting with baby animals and enough sense to refrain from naming them.

(skipping forward a little)

Absence of that knowledge (farming) has rendered us a nation of wary label readers, oddly uneasy in our obligate relationship with the things we eat. We call our food animals by different names after they're dead, presumably sparing ourselves any vision of the beefs and the porks running around on actual hooves. Our words for unhealthy contamination--"soiled" or "dirty"--suggest that if we really knew the number-one ingredient of a garden, we'd all head straight into therapy. I used to take my children's friends out to the garden to warm them up to the idea o eating vegetables, but this strategy sometimes backfired: they'd back away slowly saying, "Oh man, those things touched dirt!" Adults do the same by pretending it all comes from the clean, well-lighted grocery store. We're like petulant teenagers rejecting our mother. We know we came out of her, but ee-ew."

One more opinion

Here is Time's thoughts on the matter,one's non-fiction and the second is fiction:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686244_1691768,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686244_1691840,00.html

One lady's opinion

Here's the Boston Globe's pick for the best fiction of 2007, if you're interested. I'll also post Time's when I find it.

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/12/02/the_best_fiction_of_2007/