Here be Dragons

Here be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

before this it was the Pillars of the Earth with Stephan and Maud, and then lots and lots of Robin Hood readings.  I am stuck in the Richard/John era of Medieval England.  Here be Dragons was a perfect book addition- about Llywelyn, Prince of Wales, and his romance with Joanna- or Joan in other places- natural daughter of King John.  Very interesting history lesson for that period of time- and for Wales, too, which I know nothing about.  Too much loyalty struggle for Joanna between her husband and her evil King dad.  That is this only problem.

funny note- the title is a lie.  there are no dragons, but Mapmakers used to draw out as much as they possible could, and then on the outskirts, or unknown territory would write, "here be dragons".  That is a funny way to think about the unknown.  I'd rather imagine unicorns.

...also,  I love that I can fact-check while I'm reading, because apparently Sharon Kay Penman is meticulous in her research.   Joanna and Llywelyn's romance is not document too much, as far as I could find, but there is a general consensus of Llywelyn's terrible grief at her death.


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The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The only problem with this book was the fact that one mystery at a time wasn't enough for this author.  It felt like Setterfield was trying to compare Margaret's present day story and struggle with the memoir she was transcribing for Vida Winter.  Vida's story had me perfectly captivated though.  Sad, and haunting.  Good read.
I also learned a lot about the author, Diane Setterfield as I was reading- some as a result of my own interest to see if her life was anything like either of the women she wrote about, but also because the friend who recommended this book, told me she had a pretty crazy past.  I'll read that memoir when it comes out. yessir.


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east of eden

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Isn't it funny when you re-read a book you were forced to read and you get so much more out of it?  Loving it because you're supposed to is not the same as loving it because you really do.  I love how Steinbeck writes.  He is maybe one of my favorite authors.  Or the favorite.  So many little books that make you feel because he develops the story properly.  And those characters.  oh man!  I admit I had to do some research on Cain and Abel's story again.  I find the concept of repeated story themes so interesting- and learned more about the Biblical story repeats than I was planing on simultaneously.  Is there a book about that?

Go back and fulfill you're 10th grade summer reading list one more time. ok?


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sci-fi for tweens

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I know this is a beloved book, so don't hate me for saying this.
There are some young adult books that I gobble up and pay no attention to the predictability and uninspiring writing.   I got through Twilights 1-3 so that I could have conversations about them with my sisters-in-law and will probably read book 4 when the movie comes out.  I am a die hard Harry Potter lover, and hold all of those books close to my heart.  I have put off reading Hunger Games because I'm sure I will enjoy them, but they'll be more of them same same same.  So.  Even though Ender's Game appeals to my inner Sci-fi dork and fantasy lover, and it was a great young adult story that touches on many conspiracy theory issues-gov't, war, politics, the future of our youth, etc....I have recently been struggling through War and Peace.  My brain couldn't come down two notches to this straightforward story and I think the excitement was lost on me.  I felt like Orson Scott Card explained every situation outright without giving you a chance to draw conclusions from what you know about the nature of each character on your own.  This is frustrating and I know if I'd read this book another time, that I would not have been so hard on it.  Great story and idea.  Bad timing.  I wish i did not have the author's edition either, because in the foreword he addresses all kind of criticisms he has heard about his book.  It was difficult to overlook them while I was reading.
That is all I have to say about that.  Lo siento.


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girl.power.

Jeffrey Zaslow writes for the Wall Street Journal, and a few years ago wrote an article about women's relationships and how women are healthier and happier when they have long-term female friends.  His article generated lots of responses- from women all over the country who wanted to share their own stories.  From these responses he met a woman from Ames, Iowa and decided to write about her and her 11 friends.  This is the story I read:

It was interesting because it made me think of all of my old friends from Boston.  Most of the women of the 11 had known each other since elementary school, and the girls I've kept in touch with most from home, and sisters are like that.  It's like you can't really sneak anything by the people who've known you for that long.  It was fun to try and remember each woman by their stories, but I found myself labeling them as 'the Dr.'s daughter', 'the failed marriage', 'the one who's daughter died', 'the liberal'...etc.  I think there was a lot more to each of them than the book could possibly explain, but overall, a wonderful story showing strengths and struggles from 5- 45 years. cute.

clones

I have been getting in some good summer reading the past couple of months....
First of all, has anyone seen this preview?
It gave me chills and reminded me of Atonement, so I had to read the book.

Plus I am currently on a quick bestseller/classic-lit rotation schedule, and this quickie fit the bill...
Never Let Me Go is a bestseller, I guess: "One of the best books of the decade" says the NYT.
ok yes please.

So I read it, and everything was mysterious.  I just wanted to KNOW.  Ishiguro takes you on a flashback ride.  It was beautifully written, but didn't end how I wanted it to, and made me sadder than I wanted to be.  You'd think in the future they'd have things figured out a little better.

the help

Ms. Skeeter isn't 'the help'. She's a frustrated white woman, who narrates her story of 1960's Mississippi, and she's writing a book. Hopefully this book will blow the lid off some pretty ugly practices happening in just about every woman's home in town. Also narrated through 2 hardworking black women, who are considered help, this book gave me a glimpse, albeit a fictitious glimpse, of what embarrassing things were happening in our country when my parents were kids! so weird.

anyway, I loved it. Just like I love most of my books that transport me. There was suspense, and heartbreak, and such horrible treatment that I was feeling guilty the whole way through. Don't ignore it just because it's a bestseller. It'll getcha.

the piano teacher

3 hours.
or just about.
that's how long this book will take to read.
I have thought about it for maybe almost that long because I can't decide if I think it's great or not or I don't care?

I am also on principle against books and movies that condone affairs. I just don't understand it.
The story takes place in Hong Kong, skipping between 1941 and 1952- when Japan occupied Hong Kong and when Japan had gone, and the survivors made sense of what was left.

The Piano Teacher's New York Times Book Review says it better.

extremely loud

On September 11th, 2001 I was in my first week at a new high school in Connecticut. I was watching the tv with everyone else that morning and I was convinced my Dad had died.

We had just moved from Boston and my Dad was still there during the weekdays for work. He was flying out that day, from Boston to Las Vegas, and the planes that had crashed into the towers were from Boston so I think we just assumed. My sister came to find me in the lunchroom and was just sobbing because we couldn't reach anyone. It was my worst day. Lots of people in my town were affected by those attacks. We couldn't leave school because no one knew what was happening and while we waited in the guidance counselor's office with the other kids trying to reach their parents, I remember thinking that I didn't know anything.

It's one of those days where everyone has their 'how I found out' memory, right? I can also remember exactly where I was when I learned Princess Diana died. (not comparable, I know, but weird.)

Anyway, I could not stop remembering how scared I was that day while I was reading this book about a 12 year old boy in New York dealing with the loss of his Dad from the attacks on 9/11. The feelings came back to me. They flooded me while I was reading this story. I know it was so long ago, but really not so long ago.


Really, this book is not all about the attacks. It's about a boy making sense of things. I recommend it without reservation.


p.s.
spoiler alert
oh, and then I saw Remember Me, with Robert Pattinson, in theaters with Miranda a couple weeks ago. At the very end it shows him at a window in one of the towers and the plane is coming towards him. The entire movie is set 9 years ago in September and you don't know it until the last scene. Are they going to keep making movies like this? And books? I am not afraid to revisit this day, but it is so emotional. I probably have the most skewed memory of how long it really took to finally reach my mom on the phone, but it felt like ages. hours at least, but maybe it wasn't.

driveway moment

I sat in my garage today during lunch break while listened to this great conversation on a new book about Mark Twain.

He was so fascinating! Listen to learn how he decided on his pen (not Penn state!) name, his political activism, and how he left this world with a bang:)

Here's the link to the audio and interview re-cap.

I'll just add it to my reading list.

sad day

I am listening to NPR and I hear that JD Salinger passed away today.

he was a hermit and I fell in love with his book, just like everyone does when i read it in 9th grade. I'm glad he made up this miserable, relatable character in 1951 for all of us to love.

Also, I learned on the radio that he lived in Cornish, NH while he was hiding out! Cornish is where we go every summer to the fair becuase it coincides with our family weekend in late august and I had no idea all this time! I told my mom this and she said, 'he was so close to us and we didn't even know it! If we would have known he was living there we could have brought over a pie from the fair!'

my thoughts exactly, mom.

links to the 2 posts I wrote about cornish and Booth family fun for an insiders look into storybookland, NH:)

better links about J.D.
washington post article
UK telegraph blurb about his reclusiveness..

all i ever wanted

was for Elinor and Colonel Brandon to be the ones in love for the whole of Sense and Sensibility.

Edward was kind of a dud and those two were the only kiddos with sense in the first place.
I will say that finishing a book like this, a book that I'd always planned to read, but never had, felt as good as eating comfort food AND finally checking everything off your to-do list in one day.

what i've been dreaming about

When I try to think about a book i read a long time ago, I can remember the story by thinking back to what I was doing while I read it- or where I was or lived. This also works inversely when I think about places I've been, or things I've done and can remember the book I was reading at that time and my memory is heightened again....

moreso my dreams are also heightened because all of a sudden every night I get into the plots of my novels and am the hero or pervert, or crime detective I am reading about in the daytime. strange, i know. My dreams are very vivid.
analyze that.

We've been on many planes and trains and a few boat rides where reading is the only thing that can keep me from thinking about how hot or cold or sleepless I am presently. It seems like everything in Thailand is super, SUPER air conditioned to compensate for the sweltering heat- and then all of a sudden i am wearing the puffy down jacket to bed on a train- the one I'd stuffed at the bottom of my backpack thinking I was done with it after france. ho- hum.

So these are the books I've just finished- and managed to pick of for free or for too many Baht at supermalls and at various hotels and bungalows:

Reading Lolita in broad daylight made me feel like a creep

but I ended up liking it, and then felt guilty for the sympathy and pity I felt for the main character; a pedophile.


Bought this one in Bangkok because it reminded me of you, shea, and this post I remember reading right before Gigi came:)

Had no idea i could be brought right back to 9th grade when I read Catcher in the rye the first time. Why does Salinger speak to the to me and mke me think I am in spiritual crisis? hmmm

and then I also read

which I loved, really really loved because it made me think about Sweden and how cool it is and that i want to go there again when it is not light for only 3 hours each day- and made me guess until the very last page. this book is a thriller/novel- and miranda recommended it to me not because she read it, but because she saw everyone reading it in the airport in the late summer and I am a total crowd follower.

This is by no means any trip documentation that family and friends are interested in, but I just want to remember what i read a lot better than I have been.
i'm going to write a real blog post now.

a woman named Olive...

and all her counterparts transfixed me the last couple of weeks while we bean our big trip in Connecticut and France.
The book is a compilation of short stories involving people who occupy a small coastal town in Maine

I have never really thought from a middle aged woman's perspective except to think that that is what i'll become in a few years? I think often about the elderly when I am at work and afterwards- of the injustices they deal with, and how their bodies and minds do not work together, but middle aged woman who is angry was hard for me...

I told my mom that I hated this book in the middle of it because she had read it too, and wanted to know what I thought. Olive was unbearable at times. mean and bitter. her judgement and family woes hit too close to home sometimes, and made me feel embarrassed for her- it seemed like her life was filled with resentment and the regret of an inappropriate and unfulfilled love held for a man long dead that wasn't her husband.

Overall, it made me feel something, so I would not, not recommend it. does that make sense? There were parts that were funny, and honest inside too, just be prepared with another book right afterwards so you're not feeling so blue at the end

first of all...

I wouldn't read this book:

unless you are in the mood to read about brutal killings and innocent men being skinned alive- in detail. I know there was some japanese-chinese war history mixed in there, but for the most part I was thinking how unlike its movie the book was turning out to be.

The movie that was made after this book was one I had to watch for an anthropology class some years ago- and this movie was about love and family tradition. I will say those things were included in the writing, but some of the war images may never leave my imagination after the book made me envision guts spilling out everywhere..

I am just trying to keep to my goal about writing and recording the books I'm reading that are making an impact. Usually I'm safe with my choices because I stick to the classics, NY Times bestsellers, and Oprah's recommendations- which turn into both of those things. I'm not very adventurous- or a very good reader of nonfiction.
There. I said it.

jai ho

good thing my mom has a lenient library return policy. i 'borrowed' this book from her after she'd borrowed it from the Wilton library while I was home and had to mail it back..



The space between us is a moving novel about two Indian women: one a servant, the other an upper class widow. Their relationship is complicated, but their lives mirror each others'. I felt sympathy, real sadness, reading this book. I don't know why I choose to bring up deep down sad bianca by reading more sad literature.

So now I want to go to India. I have always wanted to go to India. I find myself having a much more severe desire to travel while I do boring things like apply to graduate school. I feel like all the decisions I'm making right now are so....FINAL. like I can never go back. and if I'm really going to be a PA then I can never create anything new. and painting and letterpress will be hobbies unrealized.... it is frustrating but going in the right direction? luckily i'm still a part-time waitress to keep my bohemian flexibility...ha

and pay the electric bill

is it weird that the slumdog millionaire soundtrack was playing in my head while i read the suspensful parts of this book?
i can't help it.

potato peel pie

I celebrated being done with summer term by reading this book asfastasicould on my jet blue red-eye last night. Seat 21A may have been the only seat with it's overhead light on at 3:30 am, but it was so worth it. so so worth it. It's been a while since I've had such a good read where you want to laugh and cry a little- so pick it up if you have vacation reading time.

The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie society is book written entirely in letters- so the perspective is interesting, with everyone describing the goings-on in different ways. It's set in London and the Channel Islands in the aftermath of WWII. lovely.

now back to war and peace..... should i just read the spark notes?

so long, and thanks for all the fish

In the Hitchiker's guide to the galaxy your earthly perceptions are tested. I loved this book eventually, once I wrapped my head around the fact that I was reading about our universe and its daft president with two heads. Trouble and adventure followed Arthur Dent, a human who left earth minutes before its destruction to make way for an interstellar bypass.

Funny, entertaining, and you can finish this first book in the time it takes you to be driven to and from Salt Lake a couple times. xox happy memorial

behind the times

I know Angels and Demons was published when I was 16, but I procrastinated and had to read it really quickly so I could sit through 2 hours of Tom Hanks playing the supposedly attractive Havard University Professor who saves the day and gets the girl.

Has anyone seen it yet? I remember reading Da Vinci Code and thinking back to humanities class where my professor told us we had to suspend disbelief looking at Picasso. That's what I feel like when I read that the Pope has been assasinated and only a symbologist can solve the puzzle while the vatican is about to explode.

Carry on, summer reading. This is my favorite season, and I am trying to keep a book journal.

american wife

Thanks to Sara for the book recommendation. I read this in a few sittings and thought way too much about George Bush.

American Wife is a novel about a small town girl who becomes the first lady. She marries an alcoholic doofus, who purchases a baseball team, finds religion, wins his elections when he's predicted not to, and then declares war. I am trying to be entirely apolitical right now while I describe what it's about- I read some reviews saying this book was the liberals' idea of how they wanted Laura Bush to be, but then I read an interview by the author saying 85% of the novel was made up- and of course it was, because it was about a schoolteacher from Wisconsin, albiet paralleling the Texas born first lady's life, but still.

Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman, also, which I did not find out until the author information at the end of the novel. This fact also relieved me because I have never heard of a woman named Curtis, and there were explicit first couple sex scenes from a woman's perspective in the book which I think could not have come from a mister. TMI? sorry.

new for me book

we're reading this book in our new bookclub at work

I know it's from a few years ago but it's great, an easy read, totally different because it's all from the perspective of a 15 year-old autistic boy.
I'm glad you're here summer reading!

on the same note but different stroke:
I wish i had ringing endorsements for the last few books I've read. Snow took me 6ish months to get through. I pressed on because the author won a nobel prize in literature after he wrote it and I am masochistic? Some of it was beautiful, but it was sooo slllloooww and i couldn't wrap my head around it if you want to know the honest truth which was totally discouraging for me..


Miranda July is a filmmaker when she's not writing, I think. Or a performing artist. He compilation of short stories was a lot of awkward moments. So intimate that I sometimes felt uncomfortable reading. But they were realistic, and emotion-filled so if you want to read about people's strange idiosyncrasies you can read about them here.


I don't know how dorky this is. Bulfinch's mythology was so interesting to me. I liked reading the stories that you think you know, but in a concise, better way. Read this if you want to brush up on your age of fable...

dear albus dumbledore,

why did you have to die?!?!

thank you for including your wisdom of the wizarding world in this book:

i'm so glad I got it for christmas
love,
bianca

gilbert blythe, my fictitious preteen love

anne of green gables turned 100 this year,
newsweek told me.
they also told me about the huge tourism surrounding this fictitious character and prince edward island...where i now want to visit along with her fanatic japanese following


my mom was always getting us to read about smart girls-true confessions of charlotte doyle, nancy drew, harriet the spy, bridge to terebithia, walk two moons-even ramona quimby- but then i started reading about holden and harry and hatchet.

the article said, "It's rare to find a best seller with a strong heroine anymore, in large part because, although girls will read books about boys, boys won't go near a girl's book, no matter how cool she is..."
kind of sad-but this is turning to a rant, so happy birthday ms. anne of avonlea

'It's still not easy being green'

alchemy

this is the science i was born for: part harry potter elixir of life, part midas touch transforming metals to gold, and part self pilgrimage- like the mecca pilgrimage, not plymouth rock-

I am behind the times finally reading 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coehlo and i'm loving it. If you want to know what to do with your life without paying for a seminar like they advertise on the I15 you should check this book out. It is a fable, but feels like a parable.

forget my genetics class. i am going on to live my life interpreting my dreams. catchya on the flipside

p.s. if you want to know about the author, who's parents subjected him to electroconvulsive 'therapy' so he would abandon his ridiculous dreams of being an author read about him on wikipedia here

a wrinkle in time

jackie gave me this book for my bday a little while ago. i finished it last week and since i like to talk about what i read, i'm going to tell you why you should read it too.

the book is about Henry and Claire who love each other. it's the most different kind of love story- and i couldn't stop reading at night. i actually became physically sick i was so tired out from reading this book since i'd stay up so late with my little reading light.
i bought one of these:

in the book Henry can travel forward and back in time. He even travels to see someone in the future after he has already died, and she is very surprised to see him. when i learn how to time travel i will NEVER do this. I will go back to when i got my braces on and tell myself not to get red every single month just because it matches my red glasses.

so the book IS about time travel, if you're wondering- but not really sci-fi if you were worried. it mad me sad and happy, and frustrated and in love. And i dreamt about it when i'd finally go to bed at four o'clock in the morning for 3.5 hours. so if you have a birthday coming up, you should ask for this.
ok bye, thanks for reading.

Love is good at any time...

but especially in the time of cholera. i am rereading this book:



and it will maybe make you feel like this*:




but i promise you'll love it. (and any other book gabriel garcia marquez has written.) incentive: the movie's coming out this or next weekend

*me reading second to last chapter of potter 7