Book Challenge : May 2006 - Page 5

[*Devon*]

Alkenny - I Christopher Moore!! Bloodsucking Fiends is one of my all time favorite books.

Cathe - the Sisters Grimm sounds really cute!!

[Queen Gwen]

Originally Posted by cathe

"The Sisters Grimm - The Fairy Tale Detectives" by Michael Buckley

.

I read this a couple of months ago. My 10yo read it after me -- she loved it. There's an interview with the author at Edge of the Forest Love that online mag for info on children's books!

[Astrid]

#43 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[grumo]

20.Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel – Excellent and a joy to read.

[Bufomander]

#109 Replay by Sharon Creech

from the book flap
"He may have been given a bit part in the school play.....but Leo dreams he is the biggest star on Broadway. Sure, his big noisy family makes him feel like a sardine squashed in a tin .. . . but in his fantasy he gets all the attention he wants.
Yes, his papa seems sad and distracted, but Leo imagines him as a boy, tap-dancing and singing with delight.
That's why they call Leo "fog boy." He's always dreaming, always replaying things in his brain. He fantasizes about who he is in order to discover who he will become. As an actor in the school play, he is poised and ready for the curtain to open. But in the play that is his life, Leo is eager to discover what part will be his."

fun little story. not amazing, but fun.

[snozzberry]

#16 The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty
I loved the main character in this book, Evelyn Bucknow. The book follows Evelyn from elementary school up until the end of high school, and the author perfectly captured the emotions you feel at those stages of your life. Evelyn's very religious and very conservative grandmother has a lot of influence on her throughout most of the book. Evelyn's thoughts about that were very interesting for me to read because I sometimes have trouble understanding those viewpoints. There were a couple points when I didn't believe her character would just adopt her grandmother's opinions as her own, but I'm not sure if that's a reflection on the writing or my own difficulty in understanding the logic behind those opinions. But the book was a great read, and I gobbled it up faster than any other "adult" book I've read lately.

p.s. If this book sounds interesting to you, it's registered thru bookcrossing.com and I could send it to you if you want to read it: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1302880

[snozzberry]

Just finished a short middle-grade novel...

#17 Martin's Mice by Dick King-Smith
This would be a great book for reading aloud to kids--there's a lot of witty bits to keep adults chuckling to themselves.

Also available thru bookcrossing.com: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/4082174

[Alkenny]

#60 The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

Trixie Stone is fourteen years old and in love for the first time. She's also the light of her father's life -- a straight-A student; a freshman in high school who is pretty and popular; a girl who's always looked up to Daniel Stone as a hero. Until, that is, her world is turned upside down with a single act of violence...and suddenly everything Trixie has believed about her family -- and herself -- seems to be a lie.

For fifteen years, Daniel Stone has been an even-tempered, mild-mannered man: a stay-at-home dad to Trixie and a husband who has put his own career as a comic book artist behind that of his wife, Laura, who teaches Dante's Inferno at a local college. But years ago, he was completely different: growing up as the only white boy in an Eskimo village, he was teased mercilessly for the color of his skin. He learned to fight back: stealing, drinking, robbing, and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself, channeling his rage onto the page and burying his past completely...until now. Could the young boy who once made Trixie's face fill with light when he came to the door have been the one to end her childhood forever? She says that he is, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a man with a history he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back in order to protect his daughter.

The Tenth Circle looks at that delicate moment when a child learns that her parents don't know all of the answers and when being a good parent means letting go of your child. It asks whether you can reinvent yourself in the course of a lifetime or if your mistakes are carried forever -- if life is, as in any good comic book, a struggle to control good and evil, or if good and evil control you.

Not bad, but not her best.

[dziejen]

#17 Shelter for the Spirit: Creating Your Own Haven in a Hectic World
by Victoria Moran

Even though Americans spend thousands on furniture, appliances and interior decoration, many of our homes have become little more than drop-off zones where we collapse after work, glued to the TV while gulping down a microwave dinner.
The home can be so much more than that, says Victoria Moran. It can be a haven in which people can revitalize mind, body and soul. That's what Shelter for the Spirit is all about. Merging Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with a sensitivity to the demands of modern life, it provides people with usable directions for bringing a sense of peace and renewal to their homes. Whether addressing how to get rid of clutter, decorate in a way that respects your personality, clean house as a spiritual exercise or celebrate special days (and ordinary ones too), Shelter for the Spirit shows how the quality of attention we give to everyday acts can transform our lives. The only book of its kind, it helps all readers make their homes places in which they and their guests enjoy spending their moments

I finally got back to reading!! This is a non-fiction book I own so I picked it up again when my life got to feeling crazy. Most of it was pretty good, definitely some food for thought.

[PancakeGoddess]

Originally Posted by snozzberry

#16 The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty
I loved the main character in this book, Evelyn Bucknow. The book follows

I read this last year - very good story!

[BlueNote]

I have no idea how many books I've read so far this year, but I'll bite:

1. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. Read last Sunday/Monday.
2 Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Read last Tuesday/Wednesday

I plan to get some more reading on the whole Mary Magdalene bloodline.

[dziejen]

#18 Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella

Some light fiction -- a quick funny book that apparently is part of a series but this is the only one I've read. Good stuff for these hot lazy days.

[Bufomander]

too hot for much description...

#110 God Went to Beauty School by cynthia rylant -- amazing collection of poems
#111 The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice -- london in 1954/55 -- post-war
#112 The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory -- london in the 1520's -- interesting to read these last two together.

recommend all three.

[grumo]

21. Homeschooling our Children, Unschooling Ourselves, Alison McKee – This was only so-so.

[~ATenthMuse~]

Subbing!

Right now, I'm halfway through Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Amazon.com
An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.

Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Next on my list is A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

Amazon.com
Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive. Betty Smith's poignant, honest novel created a big stir when it was first published over 50 years ago. Her frank writing about life's squalor was alarming to some of the more genteel society, but the book's humor and pathos ensured its place in the realm of classics--and in the hearts of readers, young and old. (Ages 10 and older) --Emilie Coulter

I just finished Off Magazine Street.

This first novel is short on plot but long on atmosphere. Attempting to meld Tim Sandlin's earthy humor with Barry Gifford's lovable grotesques, Capps gives us two former fair-haired boys, Bobby Long and Byron Burns, now middle-aged and given over completely to drink. After their obese companion dies, her daughter, Hanna, shows up looking for her inheritance. The two former English teachers, sensing Hanna's need for some direction, take her education in hand. In between quoting the poetry of W. H. Auden, steadily swigging cheap vodka, and making pointed sexual comments, the two drunken literature lovers manage to procure for Hanna a scholarship to Tulane. Although the lechery here is played for laughs, it sometimes comes off as creepy, and readers are told once too often that Bobby and Byron are not your garden-variety drunks. Capps is better at evoking a seedy New Orleans, with its fleabag hotels and ramshackle houses. The novel was used as the basis for a script for the movie A Love Song for Bobby Long, starring John Travolta, which could spur interest in the title. Joanne Wilkinson

[snozzberry]

Just finished this YA novel...

#18 Godless by Pete Hautman
This was a good, quick read, but it didn't really grab me in any special way. For a book called "Godless", I was expecting much more questioning of religion in general. There was some, but it didn't feel whole-hearted. It was an interesting premise with interesting characters, but I disagree with this review from Booklist, quoted on the back of the book: "Anyone who has questioned his or her religion, especially as a teenager, will respond to [the main character's] struggles with belief." I'm sure there are books out there where the main character has a more genuine, painful struggle. But if you haven't struggled with religion, I can see how you might think this book would be good for people who have.

Originally Posted by mum2a&a

Next on my list is A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.

Ooh, that's one of my favorites. Hope you enjoy it!

[Astrid]

#44 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

[mata]

from time to time I get bored with the fiction that's being written and resort to reading cookbooks-which is actually a very satisfying experience.


For May:

#2-California Home Cooking, Michele Anna Jordan

excellent-she's a really good food writer, and the recipes are very inspirational in terms of motivating me to take advantage of that part of the CA lifestyle (Meditteranean climate, great produce, al fresco dining, wine, etc. etc.)

#3-Bobby Flay's From My Kitchen to Your Table

I'm not a big Bobby Flay fan, but he has good grilling skills, which I don't, and it's good cookbook shelf filler. Other Flay critics will find this article funny-sums it up perfectly for me:

http://flakmag.com/tv/flay.html

[snozzberry]

I love holiday weekends...second book finished today!

#19 Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
So, so good. This YA novel is told from the point of view of a girl who becomes an outcast the summer before she starts high school. She's so bitter and withdrawn that it's obvious she's in pain for some reason--and not just because she's lonely. I think any teenage girl (or boy, for that matter) would do well to read this book.

[Bufomander]

#113 Against Depression by Peter D. Kramer

picked this one up at the library and am really really enjoying it. it's not a page turner, by any means, but it's very well-written and not at all dry. my dh has depression and that's why this book caught my eye.

one of the scariest things about it for me is that he says that the longer one is depressed the more likely one is to be depressed again and that depression causes damage to parts of the brain... sigh...

from amazon:

Written as an answer to the question, "What if van Gogh had been on anti-depressants," Against Depression manages to be more of an exploration than a polemic, regardless of its title. While author Peter Kramer (Listening to Prozac) expresses a definite opinion--that disease of any sort should be treated as effectively as possible--he manages to express sympathy along with frustration about the recurring idea that soulful creativity often goes hand-in-hand with depression. Without ever being dismissive or particularly angry, his writing makes his point abundantly clear after the first chapter: The pervasive idea of depression serving a creative purpose is preposterous, as well as highly damaging.
While he draws from a number of recent studies on depression, the book is not meant to assist in the diagnosis or treatment of individuals, except in a very general sense. Instead, Kramer adds the findings of those studies into his thoughts on how patients modify medication doses for depression as they wouldn't for purely physical diseases, and looks into future possibilities of genetically modified stress hormone transmitters that could work to prevent a slide into chronic depression. In the arts, he examines the work of philosophers, painters and writers in relation to the reputation their personal lives have earned (critics and consumers alike believe that pain equals genius and lack of pain equals lack of depth). Adding Dineson, Bellow, Updike and Kierkegaard to the list headed by van Gogh, Kramer shows a variety of ways we live with the assumption that creative genius does not function without severe emotional strain.

While he does include a few stories from a patient to illustrate specific treatments, most of the book is slow and thoughtful, without ever being dry or pedantic. Useful to families or individuals who have encountered depression, this book offers excellent support for anyone--creative genius or otherwise--who struggle to define their talents as existing separately from their illness.