Thursday, April 29, 2010

Our poll for May's book is almost up! So, if you haven't voted do it now! I'm looking for two books to vote on for June's book. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!! Please leave your suggestions in the comment box!!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Let's Talk about Fool!!

What did you think of Fool? Have you read anything else by Christopher Moore?

Those of you who are familiar with King Lear did you like this retelling from a different character? or point of view?

Was there anything unique about the setting of the book and how did it enhance or take away from the story?

Do the characters seem real and believable? Can you relate to their predicaments? To what extent do they remind you of yourself or someone you know?


How do characters change or evolve throughout the course of the story? What events trigger such changes? How do the characters in Christopher Moore's Fool differ from Shakespeare's characters in King Lear?
 
Would you recommend this book to anyone?

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Free Kids Books!!

For those of you who live in the UK which I don't think is many if any - Muller Little Stars is my daughter's favorite yogurts and they give aways free books occasionally. All you have to do is collect so many tokens and type them into this website - http://www.littlestarsfreebooks.co.uk/index.htm! We had free Peppa Pig books and now they are giving away First Favorites, titles like Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs! My daughter eats a lot of yogurt and therefore we already have 2 with 2 more on the way!! And shipping is free!

In association with Reading for Life!!
Check out there web page here:

About Reading for Life (taken from there offical website)
Reading for Life promotes the benefits of reading at all stages of life, to provide opportunities, health, family happiness and overall enjoyment. It's come out of the 2008 National Year of Reading.
So we have sections of the site for kids, teenagers, families and adults, that will capture your imagination and show that reading is for you.
If you are a literacy professional, teacher or librarian, or are looking for information on literacy policy and research, try our parent site the National Literacy Trust.

Friday, April 23, 2010

World Book Day 2010



April 23rd is the official World Book Day where men give their girls roses and in return the women give their men books! :0) Although instead of a rose I think I'd prefer a book! I think we should all celebrate this day!!
To read more about it click here.
And click World Book Day to visit the official UK website. For some reason we celebrated World Book Day in March. All I can think is that it is now more for kids and therefore its in March because the kids are still in school. That's my guess.

Monday, April 19, 2010

A Closer look at Christopher Moore

After finishing our book of the month, Fool by Christopher Moore I became interested in his other work as this is the first time I had heard of him.
He has 12 novels to date including several international best sellers with his latest novel just out last month; Bite Me: A Love Story which is the third installment of a trilogy.
He grew up in Ohio and had many random jobs before he took up writing and had his first book published in 1992 titled Practical Demonkeeping.
He currently resides in Hawaii and spends his free time with many activities including photography and scuba diving.

All information was taken from his offical website and/or wikipedia the links are included below. Please visit his official website for more information!!

http://www.chrismoore.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Moore_(author)

Friday, April 16, 2010

Lisa Recommends


The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This book had me hooked from the first chapter and I read it within a couple of days. I would have probably finished it sooner if it hadn't been for the fact I have kids to take care of! I've been on amazon since then and read the reviews on there. There are lots of five star but there is also a healthy amount of 1 stars. Those were the ones I was most interested in. And what they had to say I also agreed with. There were some problems with the translation and I also felt that there was a lot of extra stuff that had nothing to do with nothing. Such as what the main character ate for lunch. Is it not enough that he just had lunch? Do we need to know exactly what it was? Today I had a breaded ham sandwhich with cheese mayo and mustard on white bread. Do you care? My point exactly. But over looking that I haven't felt this way about a book in a long time. I just was captivated. I had to know whodunit. I had to know how everything was linked together. Some of the other negitive reviewers said the characters were unbelieveable. What I have to say to that is are most fictional characters believeable? Isn't that part of the fun of reading fictional stories? To have fictional characters that we can admire? Think Harry Potter, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Elizabeth Bennett I could go on and on and on. I think Larssons characters are believeable enough to hold their own in a fictional story. If you want believeable characters then read biographies not fictional stories.
The big negitive for me is that it's been made into a movie due to hit screens this year. Why can't the movie people leave good books alone. I think us book lovers should start boycotting movies that have been based on a book!! I just hate it you pick up a book and think 'wow that was good' and then the next day you see a preview for it. What's up with that?
So, now to end my rant I think you should read this book for what it is. A fictional crime mystery novel. Not the greatest book ever written because if you read it with that in mind you'll be disappointed. I typed all that and never really went into what the story is about and I'm going to keep it that way because if you've been living under a rock and haven't heard of this book then I think you should keep it that way until after you read it! I always like reading books with no expectations!
I give it a 10!
PS I can't seem to find spell check on here anymore and so please excuse any spelling errors and if you know where it is please tell me!

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte -- a book review/recommendation


Jane Eyre ranks as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction. Although the poor but plucky heroine is outwardly of plain appearance, she possesses an indomitable spirit, a sharp wit and great courage. She is forced to battle against the exigencies of a cruel guardian, a harsh employer and a rigid social order. All of which circumscribe her life and position when she becomes governess to the daughter of the mysterious, sardonic and attractive Mr Rochester. However, there is great kindness and warmth in this epic love story, which is set against the magnificent backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.

This story just flows perfectly. However I was annoyed because it's such a well known novel that I already knew of some of the mystery's. That was just me and if you haven't heard anything of the story then I think you'll really enjoy all the surprises!. I think that these classic novels are all basis for today's love story writers.
I always feel bad because I usually have to write in such a hurry and I always think well that didn't help determine if the book was good or bad. So, unless I have enough time to put into a proper review I'm going to just start recommending books and saying on a scale of 1-10 how good it was! So, I give this book a 9! I loved it and was entertained the whole way through.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte -- a book review

Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.

I thought I'd have a go at the Bronte sisters starting with Wuthering Heights. Even though it has an eventual happy ending I would compare it with a Shakesphere tragedy. I did enjoy this book although I found the main characters annoying and wished for more of some of the secondary ones! If you like story's of love lost or of children overcoming the mistakes of their parents have a read!!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

A recommendation: House Rules by Jodi Picoult

House Rules is about Jacob Hunt, a teenage boy with Asperger's Syndrome.  He's hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject - in his case, forensic analysis.  He's always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner in his room, and telling cops what they need to do...and he's usually right.   But then one day his tutor is found dead, and the police come to question him.  All of the hallmark behaviors of Asperger's can look a heck of a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel -- and suddenly, Jacob finds himself accused of murder

I really, really enjoyed this book.  As usual, I was sucked right into what was another amazing story by Picoult.  After reading several of her novels, I am begining to be able to pick up on her forshadowing and pretty much figure out the "mystery" of the story.  Even so, she still tells a fantastic story that questions my morals and endears me to the honesty of her characters.  Jodi Picoult is becoming a favorite author for sure!

Wordless Wednesday

Whatcha' Reading??

So not really Wordless anymore...but that's beside the point!
We just want to know what everyone is reading this week!!

Monday, April 5, 2010

A recommendation: And She Was by Cindy Dyson

From Publisher's Weekly:

Brandy "was thirty-one, the daughter of a bum and a slut, saddled with a liquor name." It's with these dubious credentials that our heroine finds herself—yet again—drifting after a man. This time she follows her latest boyfriend, Thad, a tenderhearted fisherman she keeps at emotional arm's length, to remote Dutch Harbor, Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands. Brandy finds a gig as a cocktail waitress at the local roughneck bar, the Elbow Room, where brawls are the evening's entertainment and fishermen drink with Aleut women, including Bessie, a coke whore, and Little Liz, a hostile drunk. Between drinking, drugging and deciphering mysterious graffiti on the bathroom walls, Brandy delves into the past of the native Aleuts, who were brutally decimated by the Russians in the 18th century. She stumbles upon their mythology and hidden powers—Bessie and Little Liz, for example, are more than what they seem. Dyson expertly interlaces Brandy's story, set in 1986, with the vibrant history of the Aleuts, hundreds of years earlier. While relishing the smart prose, bawdy humor and '80s references, readers will find themselves rooting for the hard-as-nails blonde as she wrestles her demons and begins to redirect her fate. Dyson delivers an original and provocative first novel.



Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 
I recommend this book even though I found it a bit different.  I am interested in Alaska and Hawaii because of their culture that is so different from the rest of the U.S.  This book explores some of the Alaskan history.  It's kind of an interesting book, though, and I read it pretty fast.  Let me know what you think!  Cindy Dyson's site is pretty cool too - check it out here!

Saturday, April 3, 2010

A recommenation: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

This book was recommended to me by Alicia and my friend Sally.  It is an excellent book!

Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover. --Brangien Davis

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Reader's Choice -May


The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Susan Meyers
Sisters Lulu and Merry share a terrible past. When Lulu was only a child, she let her drunken father into the family home and watched him kill her mother - and then turn on six-year-old Merry. Years later, clinging to the wreckage of their childhood, the sisters try to make sense of what happened. Bound by their love for each other but divided by private grief, forgiveness comes at a higher price than either could have imagined. The Murderer's Daughters is a gripping and moving story of the ramifications of one violent act and the endurance of family loyalty - even when it is stretched to the very limit.
Ford's strained debut concerns Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle who, in 1986, has just lost his wife to cancer. After Henry hears that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during WWII have been found in the basement of the Panama Hotel, the narrative shuttles between 1986 and the 1940s in a predictable story that chronicles the losses of old age and the bewilderment of youth. Henry recalls the difficulties of life in America during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American school friend, Keiko, wandered through wartime Seattle. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry, horrified by America's anti-Japanese hysteria, is further conflicted because of his Chinese father's anti-Japanese sentiment. Henry's adult life in 1986 is rather mechanically rendered, and Ford clumsily contrasts Henry's difficulty in communicating with his college-age son, Marty, with Henry's own alienation from his father, who was determined to Americanize him. 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Hey everyone! If you haven't noticed we've been updating our blog and one of the new features we've added is the amazon links and advertising. It's because we can earn up to 15% of sales or something like that.
So, if you usually shop on amazon.com please click on our links or ads before buying! Once we make $10 they will pay us in gift card form. We will then use it to buy books and give them away to our followers!!
Happy Reading!!

April's Book of the Month


Fool: A Novel 'This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity,...If that's the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!' So speaks Christopher Moore, one of America's funniest and bestselling authors, regarded as highly as classic satirists such as Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. Read Fool and discover for yourself why this book has dominated bestseller lists across the world, and why it has reduced millions of grown men and women to tears of helpless laughter...

This book was suggested by Stacy over a year ago, but since I live in the UK and publishers are different and so on it only came out here early this year! So, since Stacy's birthday is in April I've decided that this should be the book of the month!!! Be sure to check out our Poll Page for the book discriptions for May and the poll on the side!!

Cupcakes at Carrington’s by Alexandra Brown {book review}

Every month a blog I follow hosts a book club, but the books chosen all have to do with food. Particularly baking. It’s very similar to ...