Showing posts with label FF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FF. Show all posts

Friday, December 12, 2008

Friday Finds (12/12)



Unfortunately, I didn't get to post what I'd found last week, so this one's a double-shot...

Bookopolis reviewed
An Exact Replica of A Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken - This memoir talks of the loss of her child in her ninth month of pregnancy and how she dealt with her grief.

Bookopolis also recommended In the Land of Invisible Women by Qanta A. Ahmed, MD, who spent two years working as an ICU doctor in Saudi Arabia and offers an insider’s account of the restrictive society and the challenges faced.

Gautami reviews Booth's Sister by Jane Singer, a book about Asia Booth Clark, the sister of Abraham Lincoln’s assassinator John Wilkes Booth, and the shameful legacy she was forced to carry with her.

Bermudaonion reviews See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America by Logan Ward, is the story of Logan and Heather Ward who felt like they didn’t have time for anything anymore and consequently decided on a year-long experiment where they would live like Americans did in the year 1900, without electricity, cars, or any other modern conveniences.

Rebecca
posted her review of, (and highly recommends) The Declaration by Gemma Malley (first in a trilogy) on the Science Fiction Challenge site

Vertigo has another series of graphic novels! Chris reviewed volume 2 recently, and now has me hooked *shakes fist at Chris*: Fables, vol. 2: Animal Farm is completely unrelated to Orwell's work.

These two Don't Hex with Texas and Enchanted, Inc. by Shanna Swendson came up in the "recommended" bar on amazon while I was gathering information for some of my other Friday Finds. And yes, they're exactly what they sound like: Magickal Chick Lit. I'll have to see if any of my RL friends have read this series, and see what they think about it.

Queen of the Road by Doreen Orion was one of the selections from Book Giveaways (from which I have never won a book, is there a secret?). I'd love for my RVing friend Linda to see this book.

As I was cleaning out my feed for Early Word last night, I found the following titles:
The fourth book (Princeps’ Fury) in the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher (yes, the same author who has given us The Dresden Files), but of course I'd want to start at the beginning, with this title: Furies of Calderon. Battles in a magickal kingdom--perfect!

American Farmer: The Heart of Our Country by Katrina Fried and Paul Mobley "Photographs of 300 farmers in 35 states. Subjects are farmers who work 50 acres of organic vegetables and those who keep 3,000 acres of cherry orchards; many are barely getting by and no one says they are getting rich, although some are doing very well with everything from avocados to alligators. Fried transcribes their stories into engaging narratives."

Why We Suck, by Denis Leary is probably as un-PC as it gets, but I find myself in the mood for that sometimes. There is, apparently, a bad riff on autism, but Leary's apologized and clarified his position, and I'm willing to give him the benefit of doubt for now.

I'm sure there will be a big stampede for this one: The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling.

Early Word also pointed me to Stephen King's column in Entertainment Weekly, and in his "Best of 2008" were these two: The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (Bookmarks magazine describes it as "a murder mystery with many plot twists, the novel most successfully reveals complex human desires, motivations, and relationships.") and The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III (King says "this book is so good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it. ")

And lastly, a Christmas book that I'll try to get hold of for next year's holiday season (although I could really use it now, see yesterday's post): Christmas Sucks: What to Do When Fruitcake, Family, and Finding the Perfect Gift Make You Miserable by Joanne Kimes. Latest in her "Sucks" series, the title pretty much says it all.

And that, my friends, adds at least 3 months worth of reading (counting the unlisted books in the 3 series noted here) to my already-burgeoning life list.

I hate you all.

;)

Friday, November 28, 2008

Friday Finds (11/28)




A little bit of everything this week! Part of me says that I really need to stop torturing myself by finding more books to add to a growing-faster-than-I-can-whittle-it wishlist. The other part says "shut up and code it pretty." Meet my evil twin, y'all...

A Dog Named Christmas by Greg Kincaid from mizb17

Digging to America by Anne Tyler and Company of Liars by Karen Maitland from Beth F

The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie from Kylee

Nose Down, Eyes Up: A Novel Written by Merrill Markoe. I found this ad while browsing one of the other books.

Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith from Kim

North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headly and ABC3D by Marion Bataille from earlyword.com

The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and
Saffron And Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand from NYT Book Review 10/26/08

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Terri Windling (Editor) from an ad I found while browsing the previous titles.

Mighty Queens of Freeville, The: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them by Amy Dickinson from Marcia

I hope that everyone is in the midst of a wonderful (holiday) weekend and that no one has any Black Friday horror stories.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Friday Finds (11/21)

The wishlist took a bit of a hit (as in upwards) this week, but I can't help browsing!

Honeymoon in Tehran by Azadeh Moaveni from Callista

33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women's History: From Suffragettes to Skirt Lengths to the E.R.A. by Tonya Bolden (Editor) from Kylee

Dating da Vinci by Malena Lott and The Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett from gautami

Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum from Joanne

King Rat by China Mieville from Nymeth

Friday, November 14, 2008

Friday, October 24, 2008

Friday Finds



These are the books I've added to my TBR and wish lists this week:



Atonement by Ian McEwan

"We meet 13-year-old Briony Tallis in the summer of 1935, as she attempts to stage a production of her new drama "The Trials of Arabella" to welcome home her older, idolized brother Leon. But she soon discovers that her cousins, the glamorous Lola and the twin boys Jackson and Pierrot, aren't up to the task, and directorial ambitions are abandoned as more interesting prospects of preoccupation come onto the scene. The charlady's son, Robbie Turner, appears to be forcing Briony's sister Cecilia to strip in the fountain and sends her obscene letters; Leon has brought home a dim chocolate magnate keen for a war to promote his new "Army Ammo" chocolate bar; and upstairs, Briony's migraine-stricken mother Emily keeps tabs on the house from her bed. Soon, secrets emerge that change the lives of everyone present....
The interwar, upper-middle-class setting of the book's long, masterfully sustained opening section might recall Virginia Woolf or Henry Green, but as we move forward--eventually to the turn of the 21st century--the novel's central concerns emerge, and McEwan's voice becomes clear, even personal. For at heart, Atonement is about the pleasures, pains, and dangers of writing, and perhaps even more, about the challenge of controlling what readers make of your writing."

Atonement qualifies for the Lit Flicks Challenge I signed on to recently



The Dangerous Alphabet
by Neil Gaiman (Author), Gris Grimly (Illustrator)

"A is for Always, that's where we embark . . .
Two children, treasure map in hand, and their pet gazelle sneak past their father, out of their house, and into a world beneath the city, where monsters and pirates roam. Will they find the treasure? Will they make it out alive?
The Dangerous Alphabet is a tale of adventure, piracy, danger, and heroism told in twenty-six alphabetical lines—although even the alphabet is not to be relied upon here."

Props to Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings for posting this one. My boy is letter-obsessed, and this will be one of the 26 alphabet books we read for the A-Z Challenge.




The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser

"Epic poem that was published between 1590 and 1609 by Edmund Spenser. It is the central poem of the Elizabethan period and is one of the great long poems in the English language. A celebration of Protestant nationalism, it represents infidels and papists as villains, King Arthur as the hero, and married chastity as its central value. The form of The Faerie Queene fuses the medieval allegory with the Italian romantic epic. The plan was for 12 books (of which six were completed), focusing on 12 virtues exemplified in the quests of 12 knights from the court of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, a symbol for Elizabeth I herself. Arthur, in quest of Gloriana's love, would appear in each book and come to exemplify Magnificence, the complete man. Spenser took the decorative chivalry of the Elizabethan court festivals and reworked it through a constantly shifting veil of allegory, so that the knight's adventures and loves build into a complex, multileveled portrayal of the moral life. The verse, a spacious and slow-moving nine-lined stanza (see SPENSERIAN STANZA), and Spenser's archaic language frequently rise to an unrivaled sensuousness. The first installment of the poem (Books I-III) was published in 1590; the second, which contained Books I-III and Books IV-VI, in 1596."

I'll read this book to fulfill the Really Old Classics Challenge.

[descriptions from amazon]