I love hearing from authors and publicists who’d like me to read and review their books. If you have a title you think I’d be interested in, please feel free to contact me at ibetnoonehasthisdamnid@yahoo.com .
For more information about what books I like and how I choose which books to review, check out Mt. TBR's review policy.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Sigh. Double Sigh. Yay saints. Second best team in the NFL won the (not so) Super Bowl this year, but y’all have a nice story and all. Drew, the broke-down QB signed by the broken city. And now ya got the win. Yay. I guess if the Colts had to lose, and honestly I don’t think they even tried, anyone who watched the game would think the same thing, then gifting the game to the saints, wrapped up all nice with a pretty bow, is not the worst thing ever. At least it was the Colts gifting the game and not the Pats. Yes… I’m still upset by the game and so a bit of snark is going the saints way. I do give it up to y’all: The onside kick was a good move, you made a good choice challenging the conversion call (which you ended up NOT needing the extra 2 points anyway), you did give the Colts a good run-around, and the interception just broke our blue hearts beyond recovery.
All that said, it was one of the worst and most forgetable Superbowl events in recent history. The game was mediocre with nothing to commit it to memory, well.. I guess the onside kick was a first successful 3rd quarter one in SB history, but other than that, it was a big yawn. Worse than the game, which can’t really be helped much, was the commercials and the halftime show. Honestly, it was like a big CBS plug show. How many commercials for the company’s own shows were played? Then, to top it off, the geriatric performance of the Who, who played a “best of CSI theme songs” medley. Bah and double Bah! Even the lone Clydesdale commercial was lame.
It was all so pathetically sad that I had to wander over to my best friend, the You Tube, for some comfort and solice. Here are a few of my favorite commercials of SuperBowls past.
Pigeons have been great stars of Superbowl adds. I remember the second one here from when I was a teenager, I think. Now THAT’s a good ad.
Cats, too, have played great stars in superbowl commercials. I laugh hard and loud everytime I watch the first one here.
This one has local ties, and is another one I laugh at everytime I watch it.
By far, my favorite Superbowl commercials are the Clydesdales.
A few other favorite ads:
One of the ONLY good commercials this year:
Oh, almost forgot!
Thanks @bookaliciouspam for the NOOOoooo! button. The Saints had me using it hard. Go ahead, give it a try 😀
Okay.
I think I feel better now.
Congratulations, New Orleans. Good game. Here’s to hoping for the win next year, Colts. Drew Brees (grats on MVP) was a Purdue graduate, and Tracy Porter is a Hoosier, so I guess it’s still an Indiana win. And if Colts had won, the NOLA could claim a piece, too, since Manning is from there. I think the best quote about the game I’ve heard is Caldwell’s succinct comment, “The Saints played a good game and we didn’t.”
Okay, so I’ve had just about enough of this wispy white and cold crap. I’m not fond of having my breath stolen from my lungs because it’s so cold it’s painful to breathe in at all. Maybe if I just hibernate for the rest of the winter? Gah! I’d still have to go out to get groceries. Oh, well… I guess it’s either run away to Florida or just suck it up. Since I don’t have the money for a road trip, I guess that means I’m in for the sucking part.
So, January was a fairly productive reading month. I finished off eight books, and am about half way through two others. Since just having year-long goals only made me quick to start and race to the finish, while dropping off the face of the reading world the other five or so months, I decided to post monthly plans to keep me accountable 🙂
I was surprised I hit 8 last month, but I need to get that every month if I’m going to accomplish all the challenges I’ve signed up for. There were two books I had planned to read in January that I didn’t get to, so they go on the top of the list. Also I have a blog tour book, so that goes to the top, too. And I’m doing the Lord of the Rings Readalong, so The Fellowship of the Rings is a topper, too. LOL, heck, they’re all top books!
Currently Reading:
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl ~ I’m reading it with Magggie, and we’re on page 30.
Graceling by Kristin Cashore ~ Really, I’d only picked this one up because Fire is on my ARC-alanche pile, but I’m completely wowwed by this YA fantasy book! I only wish I’d read it sooner!
Planed Reading:
The Mom’s Guide to Growing Your Family Green by Terra Wellington ~ This is one of the two I’d meant to get to in January. It was won in the March 2009 ER batch, so I’m needing to get it done this month.
Holy Roller by Julie Lyons ~ The second overdue ER book, I think it’s also a March 2009.
Tainted by Brooke Morgan ~ I’m down for February 24th for the TLC Book Blog tour. I’m looking forward to reading this one, it sounds intriguing.
The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy ~ I have a second book for a giveaway for this one 🙂
Strange but True, America by John Hafnor ~ I also have a second book to giveaway on this fun book 😉
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein ~ I’ll probably space this out all month so I can both enjoy it to the most, as well as get it done while reading everything else.
I also intend to keep up on my Google Reader. I’ve done really well at keeping it under 100, which I was feeling panicky about that much until Jen and Natasha were laughing at me and wanting to get theirs below 1000. Okay, I’ll stop stressing because there’s 20 still sitting in my reader… lol. And I’m trying to post something everyday. I only missed 3 days in January, and if I can get a few rainy day posts in the can, I should be able to have one everyday. I’ve been thinking about doing some mini-reviews of books I read before blogging.
So what kinds of post would you like me to do? Does anyone miss Viral Video Wednesday? What are you planning to read in February?
This weekend, my local library held their first book sale since before Thanksgiving, which meant I had gone TWO WHOLE MONTHS without being able to peruse, pet, and purchase previously loved (some more lightly than others) books. I LOVE the library sales! If I could, I’d just pack them all up and take them home. As it is, I have to limit myself for two reasons: 1) We always walk to the library, and it’s about 6 or so blocks, so I have to carry home everything I buy. 2) I would go broke if I didn’t watch myself. So I went in with a self-imposed $10 cap on my total, and I left having forked over $9.50 for two sturdy bagfuls of lovely books.
One of the things I love about the book sales is that I can get books that I might not otherwise ever know about, and they often turn out to be quite a treasure. This weekend’s loot has introduced me to Angela Thirkell, who has quite a pedigree and a life well-worth reading her biography (and I hate biography books!). As I was looking through the titles on the tables, my attention was caught by Wild Strawberries.
A witty romp through English Country-house life at its most delightfully absurd. At Rushwater House in West Barsetshire, Lady Emily Leslie and her family are entertaining an assortment of house guests, hangers-on, and French monarchists. Amid a perfect welter of rapturous embraces and moonlight madness, a marriage is finally arranged. A glittering summer party provides a hilarious climax to the various intrigues. -from product description at Amazon.com
A couple of books I picked up just to put on BookMooch and PaperBackSwap. Obsession and Intimidation by Wanda Dyson are the second and third, respectively, in Dyson’s Shefford-Johnson Case series. The library didn’t have the first book in the series, Abduction, but the books looked nice and new and I thought someone some where would appreciate them.
A couple books I picked up I did so after reviewing Islands Apart and making the statement that there were no women authored Waldens out there. Care of Care’s Online Book Club commented that Eat, Pray, Love (one of her favorite books in 2007) was one such book, so when I saw it sitting in one of the boxes, I snatched it up. Then, as if by fate, the title Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman caught my eye.
I am a modern-day nomad. I have no permanent address, no possessions except the ones I carry, and I rarely know where I’ll be six months from now. I move through the world without a plan, guided by instinct, connecting through trust, and constantly watching for serendipitous opportunities. -from the author’s site.
After separating from her husband, 48-year-old Gelman looked around at her well-to-do life and her soul cried out for change. She took off to explore the world and hasn’t had a permanent address since 1986. As you would expect, she initially got flak from her friends and family for running away. Of course, her kids were in their early twenties when she began her new life as a nomad, which still leaves me saying that if it were a mother instead of a father who took off to explore the world like McAlpine did, she would get hate mail from readers, society would label her a bad mother, and she’d likely lose her children. And YES! I am still jealous that they can jaunt all over and see the world 😉
I had to do the book-victory dance when I found a book that I have wanted for a LONG time, and was the basis for one of my all-time favorite movies: The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. I was initially “forced” to watch the movie when Turner Classic Movies first showed up on our cable box and my dad never changed the channel again. Ingrid Bergman is one the greatest and most beautiful actresses of all time, so it didn’t take too much coaxing. When I found out it was based on a book, I made my way to the library, only to discover they didn’t have a copy. Years have passed, and I’ve never forgotten I wanted to read the book, but never found it in the bookstores or library. So seeing it in the book sale was quite a surprise. Where have they been hiding it all this time?
A couple of the other books I picked up in response to the Persons of Color discussions and The POC Reading Challenge that will be, I’m sure, the last challenge I sign up for this year, as I’m getting to where I can’t remember which books are for which challenges and what challenges I’m doing. The books for this challenge are to be either by authors of color or are about persons of color. The levels are:
I’ve committed at the 3rd level, though I’ll probably read more than 9. I’ve never really sat and specifically thought consciously about the race of the author or characters, though I’ve generally leaned toward POC books anyway. So, now that it’s something that I’m more aware of, I snatched up the following books:
Mah revisits the territory she covered in her adult bestseller, Falling Leaves, for this painful and poignant memoir aimed at younger readers. Blamed for the loss of her mother, who died shortly after giving birth to her, Mah is an outcast in her own family. When her father remarries and moves the family to Shanghai to evade the Japanese during WWII, Mah and her siblings are relegated to second-class status by their stepmother. They are given attic rooms in their big Shanghai home, they have nothing to wear but school uniforms, and they subsist on a bare-bones diet while their stepmother’s children dine sumptuously. Mah finds escape from this emotionally barren landscape at school, but the academic awards she wins only enrage her jealous siblings and stepmother, and she is eventually torn from her aunt, her one champion, and shipped off to boarding school. That Mah eventually soars above her circumstances is proof of her strength of character. The author recreates moments of cruelty and victory so convincingly that readers will feel almost as if they’re in the room with her. She never veers from a child’s sensibility; the child in these pages rarely judges the actions of those around her, she’s simply bent on surviving. Mah easily weaves details of her family’s life alongside the traditions of China (e.g., her grandmother’s bound feet) and the changes throughout the war years and subsequent Communist takeover. This memoir is hard to put down. -from Amazon.com
The “Babur Nama”, a journal kept by Zahir Uddin Muhammad Babur (1483-1530), the founder of the Mughal Empire, is the earliest example of autobiographical writing in world literature, and one of the finest. Against the turbulent backdrop of medieval history, it paints a precise and vivid picture of life in Central Asia and Afghanistan – where Babur ruled in Samarkand and Kabul – and in the Indian subcontinent, where his dazzling military career culminated in the founding of a dynasty that lasted three centuries.
Babur was far more than a skilled, often ruthless, warrior and master strategist… [This is] a unique historical document that is at once objective and intensely personal – for, in Babur’s words, ‘the truth should be reached in every matter’. -From the back of the book
This sounds like it might go good with The Art of Warfare.
The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou – I love Maya Angelou! She’s a fabulous woman and writer, and I always have to chuckle when I think about Nikki Giovanni. When I was in college at IUK, Nikki was a guest professor, though I never had the privilege of being a student in her classes. I had never heard of her as an author, so when she donated her time as a tutor in the math and language lab, I just chatted with her like you would with any normal person. One day, we were all talking about her upcoming trip to a writing conference for African-American women (I still hadn’t realized Nikki was, herself, an author) and she asked me if there was anyone’s autograph I’d like. “Maya Angelou” was quickly off my tongue, as I’d recently read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and was, to be honest, the only black author I’d known of at the time other than Alex Haley (I read Malcolm X a couple years before, and who hasn’t heard of Roots?). I spent the whole school year never realizing the secret treasure that was in my friend, and didn’t know until the school held a book signing at the end of the year.
Nikki is one of the people God had put in my life at a perfect time period in my life who helped combat the racism I had grown up with. The names of some of the others I’ve forgotten now, not realizing at the time how important they were to me. Phyllis and Manny, good friends when I desperately needed some. Nikita, who patiently answered every stupid question I had ever wanted to ask and my mother forbade me ask (“Why are your palms white? Are there other spots that are like that? Can you sunburn?” among others). Kisha, who opened my eyes to the fact Jesus was NOT white with blonde hair and blue eyes, and who told me flat out, “God didn’t put me on this earth to answer your questions about being black.” Scotti, who was a friend and fellow mom, who was there for me when I was stressed out beyond belief. And the Professor Emeritus, whose name I’ve long-since forgot, who challenged my thinking that I’d inherited and made me see the world in a different way. I am eternally grateful to all them 🙂
One last look around before leaving yielded the last 50 cents spent. A beautiful copy of Alice in Wonderland (I now have 3 different copies of this book) by Lewis Carroll and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury. It’s an updated version of this classic, and I thought Maggie would love it.
A quick look through shows a more modern Alice, colorful illustrations, and larger print than my other two copies. I have loved this classic since I myself was a little girl, and remember my mom reading it to me. So I thought Mags would be able to enjoy this book as much as I had, and maybe we could enjoy it together 🙂 AND it’s worth 12 AR points 😉 which made her smile.
The only book I haven’t mentioned is The Stolen White Elephant and Other Detective Stories which is a collection of Mark Twain’s detective stories, including Tom Sawyer, Detective. I adore Twain, and have since I first discovered Tom and Huck. I actually had a book crush on Huck for about 3 or 4 years as a kid 🙂
So are you a book glutton, too? Do you go to your library’s book sales? Do you like used books? or do you preffer all new ones?
Okay, before you get too excited, it’s NOT the whole thing that’s closed or closing, The Sunday Salon is just closed for new membership.
Let me explain.
When I started The Welsh Reading Challenge, it was my first book challenge, and I was doing it out of a love for my own heritage as well as giving myself a prod to read those books I’ve really been wanting to, but just not done it. I hadn’t really expected very many people to join in, though I wasn’t closed to it. So when a few people joined in, I got excited. I looked around at everyone else’s challenges, especially those who were finishing up with their firsts and starting their second ones, so I could glean from their experiences. One thing that was mentioned by a couple was that having a separate blog just for the challenge was a preferable way to keep the challenge better organized and thereby easier to navigate for participants. So during Bloggiesta I decided to take the big step and give the challenge it’s own space to live and flourish.
I’ve been working on the challenge’s blog and adding pages and content, as well as beginning to get some offers for prizes (Thanks Ceri at Americymru!). It’s been a bit of a reading distraction as I’ve been hunting up titles for the suggested reading page and worked a bit on a Welsh culture page called “Hiraeth” (which actually took a lot of reading and exploring). Even when I have been trying to read, my mind drifts to the challenge and ideas for the blog to make it more fun (Pam at Bookalicio.us made the delicious suggestion of having a Welsh movie mini-challenge and we could sit around and drool over Ioan Gruffudd among others -what others? After she invoked the name of Mr. Fantastic, I was like Homer for donuts! Mmmm… Ioan.. nom-nom-nom!), as well as informative. It’s a labor of a lot of love, and even if no one else enjoys it, I do.
So when I thought about how to do a weekly wrap post to let everyone know what books were read with links to reviews and other Welsh-related stuff, I thought immediately about The Sunday Salon. It’s a great weekly meme that many bloggers participate in, and the posts are linked through the site, yahoo tubes, as well as tweeted. I jumped out of bed and ran the five steps to the computer to sign The Welsh Reading Challenge up!
Imagine my shock when I read this message:
as of January 3, 2010, we won’t be accepting new members in the Salon.
You see, apparently this fabulous meme has grown to over 500 blogs and is more than YahooPipes can handle. LOL! How fantastic is that? To think that, right now all over the world, more than 500 people are at this moment writing a post like this one, or thinking about what they’re going to write, or reading other SundaySaloner’s posts after publishing their own. I don’t know if The Sunday Salon is the largest meme on the Internet, but it’s amazing no matter what.
So what do you think? Do you participate in The Sunday Salon? How does it make you feel to know it’s closed?
Good morning, bloggie world 🙂 The sun is shining bright and warm… through my window it’s warm, outside the temps are brutal. I’ve been very productive with Bloggiesta housekeeping, mini-challenges and stuff, this weekend and I feel good. I even finished a book, went to the grocery store, library and breakfast yesterday. It’s just been a busy weekend!
Of course, it’s not all roses, either. I have teenage people living here. One who’s almost 17 and has recently returned to the mentality of a TWO year old, telling me “NO” and actually trying to stand on that. Then there’s the 15-year-old who seems to have forgotten how to speak English, but is fluent in WHINE-ESE. I bought a box of Cream of Wheat for the first time in about 12 or 13 years and she’s dying to try it. But, instead of reading the box’s directions or waiting for help, she starts making it like instant oats. She came in with the dessert bowl full of dry mix asking, “Is this how you do it?” NO, it’s not how you do it… that’s enough to make a pot of the stuff! *heavy and frustrated sigh* So she stormed off to her room, demanding I let her know when I’ve finished cooking her breakfast. Grrr…..
Teenagers… dontcha just wanna BITCH SLAP them sometimes?
Lenore at Presenting Lenore is starting an International Book Blogger Mentor Program to help those who live outside the US and Canada be able to read and review the newer books that they’d otherwise not be able to receive as most publishers and blogging contests aren’t open to them.
Any book blogger who blogs in English about books and lives outside the US and Canada can apply. Each month I will pick one blogger to send 2-3 of my most recent review copies to.
I myself have always held my contests open to anyone, anywhere, so long as they have an address to send to, because I know it’s gotta suck to see a book you’d love to have, only to find out you’re geographically ineligible. So Lenore’s idea is pretty cool 🙂
Random rant…. Why is it that SPAMMERS suddenly think I’m a randy, philandering, inadequately equipped middle-aged man? Judging by my INBOX… the one’s that my spam filter thinks I WANT to read, I’m in the market for Extenze… GAWD, I HATE those commercials! I want to rip that chick’s face off and monkey-stomp her… grrr……… AND that I’m in need of Viagra or the cheaper substitute. The latest additions to my inbox are:
“I missed you at the bar” – really? That’s probably because I wasn’t there.
“Why Wait have an affair with a cheating wife today” – K, erm… I like to eat fish at the dinner table, cooked and with tartar sauce, NOT in the bedroom… or any other room they might want to hang it. And eww… JUST… EWwwwWWWwwww… Not that there’s anything wrong with that, right Jerry?
“Engagement Ring. Make your proposal memorable.” Apparently, not only am I a randy cheater with a tiny willy, but I’m lookin’ to get hitched, too!
I’ve been deleting all these messages, then emptying the trash, but maybe I should keep ’em for a while, then share them all in a blog post. WordPress’ Akismet filter seems to work better than Yahoo’s, maybe they should work together and then I won’t get such craptastic emails. But, then again, what would I have to laugh at?
Okay, I’ve been sitting back this last week and evaluating my last year in reading and blogging. I’ve come to the conclusion that my mama was right, I need more organization! LOL… Seriously, I think I need to do a monthly proposed reading list and see how close I get, as opposed to a yearly one. The yearly one ended up with me in the sprints for the first half of the year, then almost nothing from June through November, then sprinting to the end for the last six weeks. I did actually make it to 75 books, with one to spare, even, but was it quality reading that way? Some of the books I’ve read I don’t even remember, except what’s in my blog posts.
Which is another thing… I used to think I was blogging reviews of books for other people to read, but I think I’m the one who has benefited the most from them. I can look back to a book I read in 2008 and get an accurate feel for how I liked the book. Sometimes, I don’t really even remember reading the book at all. So blogging is as much for my benefit, if not more.
So, 2009 was my first full year of reading and blogging (In the Shadow of Mt. TBR began in June of 2008) and I tried to join a few challenges, to varying degrees of success. First off, I completed the 75 book LibraryThing challenge, and I’ve already joined it for 2010 (The Kool-Aid Mom cracks the whip!). I’ve also joined LibraryThing’s Books Off the Shelf challenge, a challenge to read books you already own *what a concept!*. I’ve started out with the conservative goal of 35, but I think I’ll hit higher than that. You can find my thread here, The Kool-Aid Mom’s Wet Dream of 35.
My reasoning for believing this will be a low figure is because I intend to clear out my intimidating stack of ARCs that have sat and loomed over my right shoulder for almost a year (before that, they were a smaller stack of books on the desk to my left, but after we couldn’t find the phone anymore, I decided to move it). It mocks me, points out my failures, and never lets me get a moment’s peace. So, 2010 is the year I will slay this beast once and for all!
**?**?**?**?**?**?**?* Was that over the top? *?**?**?**?**?**?**?**
And it is in this spirit of conquest that I have decided to join Teddy Rose’s ARC Reading Challenge 2010 at So Many Precious Books, So Little Time. I’ve recently updated my ARC-alance Pile page to reflect where I am right now, and It’s a list of 65, which leaves me only 10 extra in the 75 books to play with. Also, if I do the Manga Challenge again, then I’ll either go over the 75 (which is a good thing) or I’ll have to take the manga’s out of the 10. AND, I’m in the Sookie Stackhouse Challenge, which I signed up for 2 books, and it ends in June. So, I’ll probably go over…. oh, crap! forgot a book… fixed. 66 ARCs to read… you do the math on the rest of all that, I have a brain ache.
A book with a food in the title: Clockwork Orange, Grapes of Wrath, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
A book with a body of water in the title: A River Runs through It, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, The Lake House
A book with a title (queen, president) in the title: The Murder of King Tut, The Count of Monte Cristo, Lady Susan
A book with a plant in the title: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Wind in the Willows, The Name of the Rose
A book with a place name (city, country) in the title: Out of Africa; London; Between, Georgia
A book with a music term in the title: Song of Solomon, Ragtime, The Piano Teacher
Making a total of 6 books for this challenge. I’m going to try to get as many of them to overlap with my ARC challenge, but I’ve only gotten 3 that I can for sure make work: The Crying Tree will fill #4, The Mysterious Receding Seas will cover #2, and Strange But True, America: Weird Tales from All 50 States takes care of # 5. I’ve been debating where “Father” counts as a title, since that’s not the man’s name, in which case I can read My Father’s Paradise for #3. And would Spiced count as “A book with a food in the title”? If I can slip those two in, then I just have to find a music term… WAIT! The Organ Grinder‘s Monkey takes care of #6 😀
So what’d’ya think? “Father” and “Spiced” count?
The Sookie Stackhouse Challenge continues through June 30, 2010, and is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. As it stands I still have my original TWO (so pathetic!) books to read.
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
And I guess I’ll go ahead and go for the Manga Challenge. Mags will demand I continue to read Fruits Basket with her, so I might as well fill a challenge with it. LOL, too bad I don’t have ARC mangas 😀
The goal is to read a minimum of 6 mangas. There will be the odd prize throughout the year and bonus points if you manage to watch at least one anime film or 3 episodes of a series.
Well, the bonus will help A LOT, since we’ve been watching xxxHolic (I’m dying to get my manga for it, but it got lost in the mail… boo!), Oh! My Goddess season 2, and plan to watch Negima, as well as a few other anime serieses… serii? just series? SHOWS. lol. And they watch Fruits Basket anime constantly, so I’m good to go on the bonus 😉
Okay, so in an attempt to start out this year a bit more organized, here is my planned reading for January (Subject to change at a whim, though I’m going to try to be stronger than whimsy 😉 )
Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan – This was the Barnes & Nobles First Look book sometime last summer or so, and I’ve been “reading” it since then. Okay, so I’m trying a little harder to actually read it now, but still… every time I crack the spine a gazillion interruptions fly in. I feel like Elias being annoyed by the bees. And when I’m left alone, and it’s nice and quiet, I get about 3 paragraphs read before falling asleep. I swear, I’m shocked I don’t have a permanent crease mark running down my face like a vertical hold pattern! It’s a really cool book, I just seem to keep slipping into unconsciousness with it.
Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland – I got this book back in FEBRUARY as a LibraryThing Early Reader book. FEBRUARY. 10 months ago. I feel like I’m going to go to LT Hell for this, and it gets worse…
The Mom’s Guide to Growing Your Family Green by Terra Wellington – A BONUS book in the February (or March, not sure anymore) LT ER round.
The Blue Notebook by James A Levine – Won in the March batch of LT ER program. This book thoroughly fascinates me and I’ve been wanting to read it… but just not done so. Did I mention I have reserved seats for LT Hell?
Holy Roller by Julie Lyons – Snagged in the April ER batch. I don’t even look at the ER list at this point, because I feel horribly guilty for taking books that have sat so long, and other people never even get a book. Yeah, I’m at the right hand of the MC in LT Hell.
These are the ones I plan to get through this month. You can see why they’re so urgent, as well. If I get through these 5, I plan to read The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy and Strange But True, America by John Hafnor, as I have copies of these to give away.
Oh yes! and don’t let me forget about Bloggiesta! Last year, I didn’t officially participate, but I did do a lot of the activities. So this year I’m gonna throw my sombrero in the ring and partic-a-icpate. This year’s event will be from January 8th-10th. Here’s a quick description from the Maw Books Blog announcement page:
Some of you may be asking what is Bloggiesta? In short, it’s a blogging marathon. An opportunity to cross those nagging items off of your to-do list and improve your blog while in the good company of other awesome bloggers doing the same thing. Break out the nachos, enchiladas, drinks, mariachi music and whack a pinata or two!
I’m gonna grab some tortilla chips and medium-heat salsa to munch along for the event, just to keep in the spirit of things. Maybe I’ll even make Saturday here Taco Night… mmm… better yet, make my own taco casserole 😀 * drool * ‘K, now I’m hungry.
Edited to add: I solved my trouble with which books to put in the What’s In a Name?3 Challenge’s food and title title. Since I’m doing the Manga Challenge, I’ll be reading Fruits Basket books and Vampire Knight, so those will cover the WIaN3 needed titles.
Also, I’ve added another challenge to my reading for 2010. I’m hosting it, as well, and that is The Welsh Reading Challenge. I’m planning to read 12 books for that. I’ve realized that if I get ALL my challenges done this year, I’ll have nearly 100 books read by the end of the year. I can do it, but it’ll mean sticking to it all year and not getting bored, or distracted, or sidetracked, like I am prone to do. The REAL challenge for me in 2010 will be to stick to my schedule and stick with it. I think it’ll be good for me. 🙂
This is the last Sunday Salon of 2009, and it’s got me thinking about how things has gone this year, as well as what I want to do next year. For one thing, in looking back at all the books I’ve read this year (76 as of right now), it seems like it’s been a LOOOONG year, lol. AND I started the year late, finishing my first book, Bedlam, Bath and Beyond by J.D. Warren on February 10. I also took a detour into the land of Azeroth, discovering the world of MMORPG (the acronym for “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game”) when I decided to check out what all the WoW fuss was. And while I still enjoy playing, I’ve gotten over it as such an obsessive distraction. Recently, a friend of mine tried to get me into another game like World of Warcraft (or WoW is like it, since it was first) called Guild Wars, but I didn’t really dig it. I also gave Warhammer a try, and was unimpressed by it, as well. Books just beat any other medium of escape!
For the most part, I’ve enjoyed the books I’ve read this year and it’s hard to pick favorites. But I shall try! The following are my stars of 2009 (in no particular order):
1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak ~ My all-time favorite book, I fell in love with the story and Zusak’s writing style. I hope to give his other books a read as well someday. After finishing this book, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t start another book for awhile. I still find myself thinking about the beauty of the writing, the characters, and I want to reread it sometime soon.
2. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury ~ First off, I love dystopic books, it’s probably my favorite genre. My definition of dystopia is: Someone’s Utopia is another’s HELL. I’ve been thinking a lot about this book lately, as I look at pictures I’ve taken of my 16-year-old this year. In every one she’s got her mp3 player going in her ears. At one point in time this year, all four of us were sitting in the same room, all of us listening to our own little soundtracks of our own lives. We were all in huggable difference, and yet we were in different universes. All I could think about were the seashells that Montag’s wife wore in her ears. It was a disturbing and surreal moment.
3. Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen ~ This book was vivid and well-researched, and it made me feel the magic of going to a circus as a child for the first time. It had intrigue, romance, and the Great Depression. The moving back and forth from the present Jacob Jankowski (who was 92, or 93, or 94.. he couldn’t even remember anymore) to the young Jacob who walked away from his vet finals after the death of his parents, becoming the vet for the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.
4. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen ~ I recently finished this one, but in my rush to reach my goal of 75 books I’ve put off writing a review. Hopefully I’ll get to it this coming week, but it’ll probably not happened until after the kids get back to school in the new year. Northanger Abbey is my FAVORITE Austen book. It’s witty and fun and Austen uses it as a great vehicle for arguing the criticisms of her day. Reading this book was like watching myself as a teen. I was soOOo Catherine Morland! Dreamy, romantic who read way too many books and had no grasp of how the real world worked.
5. Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper ~ Probably the book with the longest full title I’ve read: Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, Or How I Learned About Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat. This is my pimping-book for the year, meaning it’s the book I’ve been telling EVERYONE I see to read. In addition to mad reco’s, I gave away copies as Christmas presents. It’s such an inspirational and heart-warming story that I just can’t stop talking about it. I know I’ll reread this one again and again 🙂
So, what are my plans for the New Year? Well… I don’t really want to say I’ve made RESOLUTIONS because they never really work. I’ve been thinking in terms of REALIGNMENTS. I’ve gotten a bit lazy or distracted about things and have gone a bit off mark from where I wanted to go at the beginning of this year. So, here’s what I’m wanting to do as we begin 2010:
1. Um… I really need to do some house cleaning. Bad. I keep waiting for Miss Niecy to show up, lol, but I don’t think she’s coming. Honestly, with all my online game-playing (WoW and facebook games being the main offenders) in the last few months, the laundry has piled up as have the dishes, and it’s starting to look like we have a dirt floor in the kitchen. So, that’s first on my list of what I need to get done.
2. I need to get back to cooking dinners. Again, I’ve been lazy about not wanting to stop playing the games, and Domino’s has become #1 on my speed dial. My kids are probably the only ones in the world that have said “Please, no more pizza! I’m sick of pizza!” And no, frozen dinners don’t count as “cooking more”… lol.
3. Get back to blogging regularly. I’ve been bad about writing meme posts (which I enjoy) and writing reviews (which is sometimes a bit of work, but I also enjoy), mostly because *cough* it’d require me to get off the game and write them. Yeah… like I said, I’ve been bad about the games here lately.
4. Try to take things in balance. I have a bad habit of going “all one thing at the expense of everything else”. When I’m reading, that’s all I’m doing. That’s how I’ve managed to read almost 20 books in a little over a month. It’s pretty much all I’ve done. When I was playing WoW, that was all I did, too. All day, every day… sometimes for more than 24 hours straight. I just don’t seem to know how to do moderation.
5. Get through all my ARC-alanche pile. Period. Some of them have been on this pile for almost 2 years now. I still have Stealing Athena, The Aviary Gate, Zoe’s Tale, and The Good Thief on it. SOME are now available in AUDIOBOOK FORM. I really need to focus on getting these books done. I have FIVE LibraryThing Early Reader books to read, including Any Given Doomsday which I received back in February.
So, how about you? Any resolutions? What do you hope to do in the year to come?
Mags and I love watching Style Network’s Clean House (the ones with Niecy Nash… not the other lady) and we love to veg in my bed together and watch marathons of the show. Miss Niecy is lovely and hilarious, and after a few shows we can’t help but walk around doing Miss Niecy impressions… lol. But, of course, it’s never as good as the original 😉
Read. Read read read read read. and then Read some more. Having been distracted by life and video games, it would seem that the end of the year has snuck up on me.. again. This is very familiar. It seems that I was racing to the end of the year last December, as well, only Second Life was my distractor then… World of Warcraft has done it this year (the facebook games don’t help, either). But I think I’ll make the 75-book goal this year. I’ve already read more this year than last. I ended with 63 last year, but I’ve read 71 already, and with only eleven more days to go, I’m confident I’ll hit 75.
This week I finished three books ~
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen is the fifth of the sixth Jane Austen novels. Though it was written first, it was published, posthumously, next to last. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and have to admit that it’s my new Austen favorite. I crushed harder on Henry Tilney than I did on Mr. Darcy, and that’s saying something. Tilney has a bit of an edge over Darcy… Henry is actually a nice person, as well as being funny and smart. Darcy, while sweet in his private way, was a bit of an ass. I guess that went along well with Elizabeth, since she liked to jump to conclusions and was a bit proud herself, but it did a little to put one off. Of course, the ingenue.. the innocent, country flower.. who is a blank slate and, therefore, non-threatening to Tilney’s intellectual authority, ready and willing to be molded by him, which suits his fancy, I think.
All in all, I enjoyed Austen’s wit and sarcasm, as well as her parody of Gothic novels of her day.
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a humorous walk through many schools of philosophy. The authors, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, use jokes to illustrate what each school of thought is about. Like with Teleology, the philosophy that all things exist for a purpose, one joke used to illustrate this is:
Mrs. Goldstein was walking down the street with her two grandchildren. A friend stopped to ask her how old they were. She replied, “The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven.”
I also finished my appointment read, Three to Get Deadly, the third book in the Stephanie Plum numbers series by Janet Evanovich. I’d been missing Stephanie lately, so I picked this, the next in the series for me, up to read when I was away from home. I learned an important lesson with it. Just because a book can fit in your coat pocket doesn’t mean it’s a good appointment book. By the time I’d gotten to the end of the book, I’d forgotten some of the beginning. Also, it lost a bit of it’s momentum this way. In the future, I think I’ll stick to short stories for appointment books.
I’ll write up real reviews for these books later this week… I hope. I’ve already jumped into my next book, and I’m about 40 pages in it already. Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert is the second of the Dune series. I read the first book earlier this year, and I was in the mood for a good sci-fi book, so I picked this up. I had forgotten how fascinating and fantastic the first book had been, and the second book is, so far, every bit as good. It is also, however, as much a thinking book as the first. My brain hurts after a while. Trying to picture Edric, the fishy-humanoid Guildsman in his tank… picturing the Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale manipulate his physical body to be one form one second, then turn into the ghola version of Duncan Idaho (also a mind-bender of a thought), then back again… it’s all an exercising of my imagination muscles… both enjoyable and tiring at the same time.
Reading may be a little easier to do here… but I won’t guarantee it. Sam, my oldest, has gone to her dad’s for the two-week vacation, and Gwen will go closer to Christmas day, but only stay gone for a week. Maggie, however, will be here throughout, as her dad has moved back to town. She’s happy about this, but it has it’s downside, too. He’s here more, which means he’s nit-picking about my housekeeping more… which means less time to read. And it means that he no longer needs to take her home with him to spend time, since he can see her whenever he wants.
LOL.. the remainder of my reading may be Magic Treehouse books with Maggie.
I’ve been watching the Tudors, also. I got hooked on it when I was sick with the flu last month. I watched Seasons 1 and 2 straight through on Netflix’s Instant thing. When the third season came out on DVD this past week, it was on the top of my queue. I watched the first two discs last night, but I’ll have to wait for the third to come on Monday. Watching it reminds me how we tend to judge history with modern day values. Henry VIII was quite a tyrant through 21st century eyes, but was he all that bad or different in his own time-frame? Sure, he had the north of England hung without trial for rebellion, but the Catholic Church had the Inquisition. I suppose it all balances out.
I have to admit to a bit of cheating. I had forgotten which wife Henry took after Jane, so I watched this video. Now the rest of this season’s lost all suspense for me!
Happy Reading and have a safe and Merry Christmas, everyone!
This week has turned out to be the week of cats. I finally got my review of Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper written and posted, then realized I’d forgotten the video clip I had wanted to tack on it. A couple days ago, Maggie introduced me to an adorable website that also has an app for facebook (I spend entirely TOO much time on facebook lately) called FooPets, offering virtual cats and dogs (really kittens and puppies, perpetually) that you can feed, water, play with and even dress up and enter into fashion shows, as well as become a virtual breeder. Now I have a virtual pet of my kitty-baby-son who passed away about 8 years ago, as well as a virtual one of our kitty-boy Dabu. And then, to put the hairball frosting on the tuna cake, an adorable creamy orange tabby kitten followed us home from the grocery store and decided we were his people… no matter how much I screamed NO MORE CATS!
So, first up… the forgotten Homer video 🙂
Some people don’t want to read animal books for fear the beloved pet will meet an unhappy end. These people were no doubt scarred by books like Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, and The Yearling as children, and have vowed to never read a depressing pet book again. For those people, as well as those curious to see and hear Gwen and Homer… like me… I had planned on putting the following video clip at the end of the review, as is my normal thing. But being a bit out of practice, I totally forgot. Better late than never 🙂
Able to leap tall bookcases! Catches flies mid-buzz! Yet the feline hero of HOMER’S ODYSSEY is blind, and this is his inspirational love story that completely changed the life of author Gwen Cooper.
Oh, and a new one I hadn’t seen before… Gwen reading a passage from the book while Homer really gets into the gift of catnip 🙂
When Maggie came home the other day announcing she had just adopted a new kitten, I immediately boomed an emphatic NO! She quickly chimed in that it wasn’t a real cat, but a virtual one found on a website her friend had shown her while they surfed on the computer farm at the library. We sat down at my computer and she showed FooPets. You’re greeted at once by the soft, furry face with big, hopeful eyes waiting to be loved and fed.
You can interact with your pet, feed and give him water, pet and play with him. You can also take him shopping and buy him clothing and enter him in fashion shows. And you can make him a her if you so prefer. Maggie’s pet is a grey tabby named Laya (her own real-life cat is a grey tabby named Leia, but she couldn’t spell it 😉 ) This one is my FooKitten named Rambo. Here he is dressed and ready for a fashion show.
Honestly, only a virtual cat would allow someone to dress him that way…
And all of that led up to the short-lived stance against taking in any new pets. I mean, honestly… we already have 2 cats and a dog and 3 children. Isn’t that enough animals? I had told the girls months ago that as the pets died off, I would NOT be replacing them. I’m tired of buying pet food and cleaning up the after effects of the pet food. Tired of rewashing clothing because a cat enjoyed the comfort of the full laundry basket. Tired of hairballs on book covers and seat cushions… do you know how much work you have to do to get cat vom out of upholstery?
Then Thursday night, as Mags and I walked home from the grocery store, we happened to cross paths with a creamy-orange tabby cat. Being the ever-loving animal lovers, we put down our bags and gave him a few appreciative strokes and some warm, cooing words, then set off for home. Maggie updated me every few houses that the kitten (about 4 months old) was still following us, had crossed two streets and was continuing to follow us, and then all evening she informed me that he was still on our front porch. To which I immediately resounded “NO, we’re NOT keeping him!”
When bedtime came, I kept having to yell at them to go to sleep everytime I heard the front door creak open. Sometime around 11:30, Maggie whined that she couldn’t sleep because the poor kitty was crying (I never heard him) and it was cold outside. Genuine tears of concern ran down her tired cheeks. I told her to put on a CD and turn the volume up. The cat was NOT staying.
By 3:30 in the morning, when I was couldn’t sleep because I knew that poor baby kitty was cold and hungry, I went to the door and opened it to see if he was still there. He was lying on the table on the porch, curled up tightly to keep warm, and didn’t even offer to slip in through the door crack. It was as if he was saying it was enough to just dwell on our porch… to expect a place inside was too much to hope for.
I picked him up and carried him in and cuddled in my bed with him. I’m worse than the kids. LOL… I have no spine. My will power was no match to this:
We’ve already named him Kyon-Kyon after the Fruits Basket character, Kyo. He’s very loving and friendly, hisses a little at the dog and at Leia, but oddly enough gets on well with Dabu, who’s also a male… go figure. And there just seems to be this gratitude that rolls off of him whenever you pet him, like he’s thankful to have a warm home and a family that loves him. He’s a Thanksgiving kitty 🙂
And now for a mostly video Sunday Salon… Well, we did read Fruits Basket, volumes 1 and 2 this week… So now for some fun stuff.
We went for a walk out in the gorgeous day yesterday… it was a little on the warmish side, but not too bad. We decided to go to Hardee’s for supper and took Missy with us…
Right now, Missy is sitting by me in her bed with her ears cocked up and a very excited look on her face (and a tail that’s going 30 miles a minute 😉
On a normal walk to Hardee’s, we walk the main streets, but with Missy in tow, we have to walk down what we call Ex-Lax Alley. There are about 6 or 7 dogs in the yards on that alley, and Missy gets so excited that she never makes it out without… erm, “Paying the TOLL.”
Missy’s very interested down there in her bed… I should cam her when one of these vids are on. The dog in the next vid, I think, is a boxer or a pit. He’s gotten out a couple times and is fairly good natured. I still pick up Missy and carry her when he gets out, though. Nice doggy though he may be, she’d still just make a two-bite brownie for him!
and the next video is a group of dogs that Missy USED to be friends with…. apparently they’ve had words and are now Frenemies or something…
It was surprising to me that they were no longer doggy-pals. She’s either getting crotchety in her old age (all of 4, I think) or the dogs just don’t like her no more, but she’s running out of pals! Just the Jack Russell next door, named Spike, and that’s it. Poor sad lonely friendless Missy 😦
LOL.. and NOW, as we were almost to Hardee’s, I was telling Maggie about how many views Missy’s videos have gotten compared to theirs… a fact that she firmly believes is Gwen watching them 500 times. I joke around with Maggie, who’s the youngest, that Missy is, IN FACT, my baby and that the dog is my favorite “child.” Maggie always play-fights with me and Missy when I say it, and this time Gwen had to chime in with her two-cents. Maggie gave it back to her with interest! (It’s all play and fun, btw, no one got hurt).
And then we made it to Hardee’s, got our food and went home. The End. LOL.. I did have a vid of Missy getting her food, but my messy dining room was visible in the background so I deleted it. She loved her food, though, and ate it with great relish.
And now… off to make supper. Maggie has requested Meatloaf. Yum!
Tainted by Brooke Morgan
The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Strange But True America: Weird Tales from All 50 States by John Hafnor
Red Letters by Tom Davis
Dragon House by John Shors
Book reviews, entertaining and humorous posts, as well as memes and giveaways, In the Shadow of Mt. TBR is a fun and informative place to relax in the shade!
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In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 