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Book a Week in 2010 - Week 44


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Sunday is the start of book week 44 and the quest to read 52 books in 52 weeks. Have you started Book # 44 yet? Mr. Linky is all set up on the 52 books blog and ready for you to link to your reviews.

 

52 Books blog - Q is for quirky, quick, quarrellous quackers. Highlighting Doreen Cronin who wrote Duck for Presidents and other amusing Farmer brown books. One of the favorites in our household.

 

Happy All Hallow's eve, all saints and all souls day or just happy day. November 1st is tomorrow and the beginning of Nanowrimo and writing craziness for some. I'm going to amuse my son and perhaps embarrass myself by dressing as Luigi to accompany his Mario tonight for Halloween. Do you think anyone will give me any candy?

 

What are you reading this week? Any spooky tales?

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I am almost done reading Rachael's Contrition by Michelle Buckman. It's actually a great read. I was a bit dubious about it. It is a Christian/Catholic novel and often think the writing is sub par in that genre, but this an interesting, well written mystery.

 

I just started Life of Johnson by Boswell. I have heard about that book for ages and ages and have never read it. It seems like I am always running into references to it and I guess the last one was enough to put me over the edge! So I got it on my kindle. I've just started that. Started Jo's Boys as a read aloud for my daughter.

 

Still working through Augustine's Confessions.

 

(Oops. Spelled Rachel wrong!)

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I haven't been good at replying, but aside from reading several more y/a novels, I'm reading Doing School (nonfiction for adults) & one of the books by Stuart McLean of Vinyl Cafe fame. If you've never heard of this man, which I hadn't until August, it's well worth a gander. http://www.cbc.ca/vinylcafe/ These are short stories, some thoughtful, many humourous, and some extremely so. Everyone in may diverse extended family likes him (all ages). My niece lent us 5 of his CDs. It's still quite good in writing, but his delivery is superb. There are a few of his podcasts on this page http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/pastpodcasts.html?44#ref44 if you scroll down. I'm excited about this, because I hadn't known this until I decided to post about it here and thought I'd post a link. I recommend the one about truffles, if it's the one I think it is. It's different than the CD because it starts with something about peas & lobster first, but if you get to the story about Sam & truffles, it's worth it.

Edited by Karin
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I read Among the Hidden yesterday. It's a YA novel and I read it in half a day. I now need to read the sequel. I'm hooked.

 

 

I believe I've read the entire Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix; I enjoyed them too.

 

I just finished reading "tyger, tyger" by Kersten Hamilton. Very interesting and we have something new - goblins (good and bad). ... Very well done.

 

 

This does look intriguing. I've put a hold on it at my library.

 

 

I read The Global Classroom: A Guide to Study Abroad which Jane in NC recommended here. It had some good points to ponder if one is considering studying abroad. On the whole though, I'd say it's geared more for academicians than students or parents, so it was a tad dry.

 

Regards,

Kareni

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Another slower week in reading; nonetheless, I finished:

 

#57 - Seventeen, by Booth Tarkington. This was my second reading, the first being a very l-o-n-g time ago. :D The first time I read it, I thought it was ridiculously funny - with "ridiculous" the operative word. This time, it was still a hilarious book, but, viewed with more *mature* eyes, was quietly funny due to the undercurrent of adolescent psychology.

 

#58 - David Brainerd: His Message for Today, by Oswald J. Smith. This book was a shorter compilation of edited journal entries of this 1700's missionary to the American Indians. While I enjoyed it and was once again amazed at the dedication and sacrifice of the gospel forefathers, I think I would more enjoy a fuller biography that included more of Brainerd's entries.

 

Am currently reading:

 

#59 - Shane, by Jack Schaefer. This is a change for me - a western. Not generally my cuppa, but having read it years ago for a college class in which it was deemed a classic, and retaining no memory of the story line, I am re-reading it. It is quick reading and I must say that the author gripped my attention from page one, paragraph one, sentence one!

 

No clue what I will read next. I have a stack of books that have been piled up for quite awhile. I am determined to plow through that stack - to the point of avoiding the library - and THAT is MOST difficult to do! I have a couple books on request from a few months back (before I determined to read that stack once-and-for-all) and I keep *secretly* hoping the library will call and say one of those books is now available!:D

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Finishing up The New Dare to Discipline by James Dobson. Most of the ideas I already knew but it did leave me with one thought to ponder. That is, am I creating a socialistic environment in my own home where my children are "given" what they need but not given incentives for doing what I want them to do? The "just do it with a happy heart because mom says so" may not be the best incentive for chores. I'm going to try some of the alternatives this week and see how it goes. Of course, the crux is, it does require more accountability on my part as well.

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I spent hardly any time reading this past week. So, I'm still working on Embers by Sándor Márai.

 

"The story of the rediscovery of Embers is as fascinating as the novel itself. A celebrated Hungarian novelist of the 1930s, Márai survived the war but was persecuted by the Communists after they came to power. His books were suppressed, even destroyed, and he was forced to flee his country in 1948. He died in San Diego in 1989, one year before the neglected Embers was finally reprinted in his native land. This reprint was discovered by the Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso, and the subsequent editions have become international bestsellers. All of Márai's novels are now slated for American publication." (amazon.com)

 

Books I've read in 2010: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; Good Omens; The Palace of Dreams; Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World; Lying Awake; The Remains of the Day; Iron & Silk; Lottery; The City of Dreaming Books; Half Broke Horses; Clutter Busting; The Power of Less; Stop Clutter from Stealing Your Life; The Bonesetter's Daughter; Life of Pi; Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express; Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide; Waiting for Snow in Havana; The Happiness Project; Ella Minnow Pea; The Dante Club; Conquering Chronic Disorganization; City of Thieves; Throw Out Fifty Things; Born to Run; Dead Until Dark; The Color of Magic; Fernande; Special Topics in Calamity Physics; Medicus; The Blind Contessa's New Machine; My Name is Red; The White Tiger; The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie; The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists; The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab; Parrot and Olivier in America; The Girl Who Played with Fire; Frankenstein; Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void; The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein; C; Aura

Edited by Stacia
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There's more than the two books? What comes after Among the Imposters? My library only has the first two then if there are more.

 

There are seven in the series. From Wikepedia, here is the list:

 

* Among the Hidden (1998)

* Among the Impostors (2001)

* Among the Betrayed (2002)

* Among the Barons (2003)

* Among the Brave (2004)

* Among the Enemy (2005)

* Among the Free (2006)

 

Regards,

Kareni

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I also finished up the collection of short stories by Iranian women. I don't know why. I don't even like short stories.

I had to :lol: at this. (I'm no fan of short stories either. But, years ago, I read & enjoyed Collected Stories by Ellen Gilchrist. There was also one short story in Spanish that I read & loved. Other than that... nada, no, zip, zilch on liking short stories, lol.)

 

I finished Embers last night. I enjoyed this spare, melancholy little novel written in such a lovely style.

 

 

"In Sándor Márai's Embers, two old men, once the best of friends, meet after a 41-year break in their relationship. They dine together, taking the same places at the table that they had assumed on the last meal they shared, then sit beside each other in front of a dying fire, one of them nearly silent, the other one, his host, slowly and deliberately tracing the course of their dead friendship. This sensitive, long-considered elaboration of one man's lifelong grievance is as gripping as any adventure story and explains why Márai's forgotten 1942 masterpiece is being compared with the work of Thomas Mann. In some ways, Márai's work is more modern than Mann's. His brevity, simplicity, and succinct, unadorned lyricism may call to mind Latin American novelists like Gabriel García Márquez, or even Italo Calvino. It is the tone of magical realism, although Márai's work is only magical in the sense that he completely engages his reader, spinning a web of words as his wounded central character describes his betrayal and abandonment at the hands of his closest friend. Even the setting, an old castle, evokes dark fairy tales."

 

I will probably start one of these two books next....

 

Little Bee

 

 

"Amazon Best of the Month, February 2009: The publishers of Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state."

 

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

 

 

"Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: David Mitchell reinvents himself with each book, and it's thrilling to watch. His novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas spill over with narrators and language, collecting storylines connected more in spirit than in fact. In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, he harnesses that plenitude into a more traditional form, a historical novel set in Japan at the turn into the 19th century, when the island nation was almost entirely cut off from the West except for a tiny, quarantined Dutch outpost. Jacob is a pious but not unappealing prig from Zeeland, whose self-driven duty to blurt the truth in a corrupt and deceitful trading culture, along with his headlong love for a local midwife, provides the early engine for the story, which is confined at first to the Dutch enclave but crosses before long to the mainland. Every page is overfull with language, events, and characters, exuberantly saturated in the details of the time and the place but told from a knowing and undeniably modern perspective. It's a story that seems to contain a thousand worlds in one."

 

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Oh I read "A Place Called Here" by Cecelia Ahern too. I very much enjoyed that one. I also finished up the collection of short stories by Iranian women. I don't know why. I don't even like short stories.

 

Rosie

 

 

I usually like short stories. I love "The Most Dangerous Game" and "The Lottery".

 

 

I'm starting book #2 in the shadow children series, Among the Impostors.

 

Reading Book 1 of Montaigne.

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I usually like short stories. I love "The Most Dangerous Game" and "The Lottery".

 

 

I'm starting book #2 in the shadow children series, Among the Impostors.

 

Reading Book 1 of Montaigne.

 

My dd had to read "The Lottery" this fall & hated it because it was so dark. It does make you think, though.

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I finished Little Bee tonight. I cried. A reviewer on amazon wrote, "It's a book which should make you think about the world and your place in it, and about what we owe to one another as human beings on this increasingly small, spinning globe. I found it profoundly moving." And, I must say I agree.

 

 

"*Starred Review* Little Bee, smart and stoic, knows two people in England, Andrew and Sarah, journalists she chanced upon on a Nigerian beach after fleeing a massacre in her village, one grisly outbreak in an off-the-radar oil war. After sneaking into England and escaping a rural “immigration removal†center, she arrives at Andrew and Sarah’s London suburb home only to find that the violence that haunts her has also poisoned them. In an unnerving blend of dread, wit, and beauty, Cleave slowly and arrestingly excavates the full extent of the horror that binds Little Bee and Sarah together. A columnist for the Guardian, Cleave earned fame and notoriety when his first book, Incendiary, a tale about a terrorist attack on London, was published on the very day London was bombed in July 2005. His second ensnaring, eviscerating novel charms the reader with ravishing descriptions, sly humor, and the poignant improvisations of Sarah’s Batman-costumed young son, then launches devastating attacks in the form of Little Bee’s elegantly phrased insights into the massive failure of compassion in the world of refugees. Cleave is a nerves-of-steel storyteller of stealthy power, and this is a novel as resplendent and menacing as life itself."

Thanks, Kareni, for recommending "Little Bee" in the first place! (Though I have a terrible headache now from crying while reading it. :tongue_smilie:)

Edited by Stacia
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