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!
Who’s your favorite author that other people are NOT reading? The one you want to evangelize for, the one you would run popularity campaigns for? The author that, so far as you’re concerned, everyone should be reading–but that nobody seems to have heard of. You know, not JK Rowling, not Jane Austen, not Hemingway–everybody’s heard of them. The author that you think should be that famous and can’t understand why they’re not…
Well, I suppose Neil Gaiman doesn’t count on the list of “unknowns”, lol, but he’s probably my favorite author. I love his writing style, he sings the stories into being and paints the canvas of my mind with words. Fragile Things was my first Gaiman book, and I’ve never been the same since. But do I campaign for him? Hmm… not really.
I think the best author to fit into the category of “unknown favorites” who I evangelize and believe in would be Gwen Cooper. I told absolutely everyone I met that I thought might read something more than the funny papers that Homer’s Odyssey was a wonderful book and that the author, Gwen Cooper, is an amazing person with a big heart.
Well, the kids are home from school today. Apparently buses don’t run well on sheets of ice, and outside it looks like a giant donut maker drizzled glaze all over. My attempts to write something intelligent is greatly inhibited by the blaring yellow sponge on the TV, and Gwen and Maggie fighting about the latter writing something about the former’s Meez character ON her character. I think they need to do some extra chores.
When it comes to children… especially when they’re your own and you can’t drive them out to the country and dump them because they know their addresses and how to get home… sometimes SANITY is a battle ground, and I feel like I’m battling them for it. AND, I’m losing.
First off, the odds aren’t in my favor. There are THREE of them and ONE of me. Then you gotta add the 3 cats and the dog to that number, because they tease each other with the pets… “Look Maggie, your cat loves me more than you” wait for it “MOOOOOOOM!!!! Maggie hit me!” Well, the math adds up to 374 of them to the half-wit ME.
Seriously, I used to have brains. I did. I once took the Mensa test and was well above the entry number. My IQ, last I checked, is 168. But see, that was before kids. Nowadays, I’d be shocked if I could beat out a bunch of Broccoli in a game of Boggle. My mom always said, “Insanity is hereditary… you get it from your kids!” And the older they get, the more I realize she’s RIGHT.
I watched a program on PBS about negative emotions the other day… okay, I just watched a segment of the show while COPS was on commercial break, but still… and they said that negative emotions like stress and fear burn memories deeply into your psyche. That’s why everyone remembers where they were on the morning of September 11, 2001, but few remember what they were doing on September 10th, the day before. It is ALSO why my mom STILL remembers EVERYTHING I EVER did as a kid, and points out that “Paybacks are a BITCH!” whenever I’m word-vomitting what dastardly deeds the girls have been up to lately.
Really, I began to understand what my actual role as a parent was when Sam and Gwen were about 7 and 8. We had went to the mall and had stopped into the store where a friend worked. Because I was engaged in adult conversation, and because I had taken longer than the generous minute and a half they allowed for such foolishness, the girls began to get antsy and started running around the store. After a few loud rounds of “THWACK! Mom! She hit me!”, I made them sit in time out and confined each of them to their own tile square on the floor. That I hadn’t set them far enough apart soon became evident when their arguing and tattling reached my ears. And what were they fighting over now? A piece of tracked in DIRT. DIRT! My darling dimpled dears were debating the ownership of a clod of DIRT!
So what role did I discover I was truly filling?
Wild animal handler. I’m just here to make sure they don’t get loose and annoy the public. I feed them, clean their cage and try to learn ’em some manners, but mostly, I’m crowd control.
OH, and I used to hear or read the statistics that some parents only spend about 3 minutes of quality time conversing with their children and I’d think “How horrible! What terrible and selfish parents can’t make time for their kids?!” THEN I got teenagers and NOW I think, “GOOD GAWD! 3 minutes?! They deserve an award! At least a medal for bravery!”
saw this over at Shelley’s, and thought it sounded like a great question for all of you:
“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”
Fifteen books that will always stick with me, right off the top of my head…. K, here goes:
The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Lisey’s Story by Stephen King
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo
Now, not all are on my top 10 list, oddly enough, and not all of them are what I’d call “great novels.” Of course, there are many others that will also stick with me, but I’ve written this post while Gwen and Maggie are fighting and tattling, my friend came over to chat and The Departed is playing on the TV, so we’re all lucky Dick and Jane wasn’t the only book title I could think of.
Arguments quelled and quieted for the moment… after meds have been given, I might add. Apparently, Sam only had about 10 minutes left in the movie when Gwen demanded her give her back the player. I can sympathize, it would piss me off, too, but it’s all working to convince me to buy those TVs for their rooms.
Part of Sam’s appeasement is that I told her she could have an hour on the computer after I write this post.
Reading Update: I’m on page 479 in Empire Falls, with 4 more pages to go.
Is this my hour 1 or hour 2 post? Do we count the hour at the beginning or the end of the hour?
Good morning, everyone 🙂 This is my first post of my first read-a-thon… YaY!
I’m starting out where I left off last night in Empire Falls, a book I really do like, but it seems like I’m never going to finish…
ever.
So Hour One: Sam, 16, and Gwen, 14, are fighting like cats and dogs. Gwen wanted her DVD player back so she can watch something and demanded Sam give it back. Now Sam is yelling “Shut up!” at her and throwing plastic eggs, while Gwen is bawling loudly. I sooOOoo want TVs for each of their rooms! *sigh* It’s going to be a fun reading day. Sam’ll be going to her friend’s house in a couple hours, and spending the night there. YaY!
K.. as to reading: I’m on page #467 in Empire Falls, 16 pages to go.
…She must state her errand and go. She must give up her position of equality as Miss LaFosse’s ally and take her correct one of humble applicant for a job, which she felt in her bones she would never get.
She knew too much about the private affairs of Miss LaFosse. Miss Pettigrew had endured many hard knocks from human nature and understood how intolerable to a mistress such a situation would be. She felt a hopeless, bitter unhappiness invade her. But there was nothing she could do. She must at last get her presence explained and end this wonderful adventure.
She couldn’t bear to do it. She had never in her life before wanted more to stay in any place. She felt she couldn’t endure to leave this happy, careless atmosphere… where some one was kind to her and thought her wonderful… She felt the tears of loneliness and exclusion sting her eyes.
… Oh, if only for once the Lord would be good and cause some miracle to happen to keep her here, to see for one day how life could be lived, so that for all the rest of her dull, uneventful days, when things grew bad, she could look back in her mind and dwell on the time when for one perfect day she, Miss Pettigrew lived.
–Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson, pages 52-53
I have not enjoyed reading a book as much as I did reading Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson since my last Stephanie Plum book! I literally laughed out loud in several spots, and wore a silly grin of delicious pleasure throughout most of the book.
There was something about Miss Pettigrew, weird as this sounds, that reminded me of Amelia Bedelia. Perhaps it’s that both characters are domestics, Amelia being a maid and Miss Pettigrew a governess, and both have a charming simplicity about them. Both characters are not very bright nor skilled in their professions, yet they are greatly cherished by both their employers and readers alike. Both are unfamiliar with the slang phraseology used (it has never left my memory when Amelia was asked to “draw the curtains” she pulled out paper and pen), and seem to be out of a different era altogether from the rest of the characters in their worlds.
Miss Pettigrew had spent all but the last ten years of her life in the northern, more provincial areas of England before moving to London. The forty-year-old spinster is the daughter of a clergyman, has lived a virtuous life, has never tasted alcohol nor worn make-up, and has never been flirted with, kissed, or otherwise known the affections of a man. When she arrives at Miss LaFosse’s door, she is there to apply for a position of governess, painfully aware that if she does not get the job, she will be homeless and will be forced to go to the workhouse.
However, it is quickly apparent that the starlet LaFosse not only doesn’t have any children, but is the antithesis of everything Miss Pettigrew has ever been or known. In the span of a few hours, she observes her would-be employer physically amorous with three different men and LaFosse tells her of even more men who have professed love for her.
LaFosse invites Pettigrew into her exciting world of glamor, flirtations, vices, night clubs and parties, and all sorts of naughtiness, as her friend and equal. Miss Pettigrew is led away from her “dowdy, spinster governess” self like a daughter of Hamlin and LaFosse the pied-piper, and decides that if she could just have this life of the other half for just one day, the memories of that day could carry her through all the bad remaining in her life.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is not only a fun little tale the adventures of a woman who finally decides to LIVE, it is also a peak into a past era. Set in the mid to late 30s, the reader is treated to a fascinating glimpse of the society of women in a time when “talkies” are a new, exciting thing and telegrams are still sent, when Vaudeville acts and stage performers were on equal ground with film stars, and where the “upstairs-downstairs” mentality still abounded along with the old families-versus-new money tiffs, though social mindsets were beginning to change.
I cannot say that this book was profound or changed me, if all books were like that I’d probably stop reading, but it was a treat and a joy to escape in. The writing isn’t hard, though some of the words are out of date and I had to look a few up (curate, “funked it,”and a Chesterfield are a few that threw me… and “cheroots?” I divined there were something between a cigar and a cigarette given the context).
For the gift of laughter and rapturous pleasure this book brings the reader, I give Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson5 out of 5 stars. It’s a classic and now one of my favorite books 😀
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has been adapted (albeit loosely from the looks of the trailer) into a movie. I’ve added it to my Netflix queue, but I’ll probably wait a bit before getting it. Like most people, I get so frustrated and angry when Hollywood ruins a book I really love. BUT… I thought I’d include the trailer for your viewing pleasure 🙂 It does look like an equally fun movie.
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!
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 