SomeReads

Thank you so much to my Secret Santa, Bree at The Things We Read! I love late Christmas gifts! My birthday is next Monday, too, so I can also count it as an early birthday gift!

I checked my mailbox when I got home from work and found a package wedged in so tight that I literally had to brace one foot against the post and pull with all my might. Sure am glad it was books and nothing fragile!

Sit back and enjoy what Bree sent me!

Snow Falling on Cedars and Things Fall Apart - both from my wishlist

A booklight - Who wouldn't want one of these?

Pretty pens - Can't wait to see how they write!

Cute little notebook to write down all those books I aspire to read!

Tabs with which to mark passages

Thanks again, Bree! I feel thoroughly spoiled!

Got a bit of a backlog here, but I’ve been busy, busy, busy!

The Light Fantastic is the 2nd in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. This book picks up where the first (The Color of Magic) left off, with Rincewind’s and Two Flower’s adventure. I thought this one was funnier than the first, and I’ve heard they get even better. I have Sourcery (the 3rd in the series – I know you don’t have to read them in order, but I’m anal like that) sitting on my nightstand to read soon. My reading “plan” (read: obsessive list-making) has been a bit thrown off lately due to receiving 3 Library Thing Early Reviewer copies in the space of a week, plus trying to get in some work-related reading.

I received The Bad Book Affair by Ian Sansom as a Library Thing Early Reviewer. This book is part of the Mobile Library Mystery series, but as a mystery it is very disappointing. I was more than 100 pages into the (368-page) book before the mystery appeared, and even then it didn’t play a large part in the book. The book was more about the main character, Israel Armstrong’s, depression over a break-up and turning 30. That said, the book made me chuckle more than once, and I did enjoy the characters. It just wasn’t what I expected.

I received Spinning Forward by Terri DuLong as a Library Thing Early Reviewer, also. This isn’t the type of book I typically read, but I did very much enjoy it. I found the dialogue to be a bit stilted and the Southern dialect to be unrealistic. Maybe it’s regional, but I don’t know very many people who use “it sure nuff is” or call people Miss So’n'So as often as Ms. DuLong inserted those two Southernisms into conversation. However, as she lives in Florida and I don’t, I could be wrong! The plot is very predictable, but that’s ok. The relationships between the characters were very well-done. I particularly enjoyed the Blue Moon scene near the end, and, as a knitter, I enjoyed the knitting references, too. I will pass this one on to my mom, who I think will really enjoy it, and I have already recommended it as a choice for her book club.

Kelly at YAnnabe had the FABULOUS idea of showcasing YA books that not as many people have heard about. How did she approach this? So very clever! She looked at the Library Thing catalogs of several bloggers who read YA and plucked out the YA books that had 1) been given 4 or 5 stars and 2) were listed in fewer than 500 catalogs. I LOVE how she used Library Thing for this!

My list was shorter than I would have thought, but then, I haven’t been reading as much YA as I have in the past and I guess most of the ones I’ve really loved others have really loved, too!

Still, here are a few YA books that haven’t gotten as much attention as they should. I hope you will pick them up and enjoy them as much as I did!

1) Blackthorn Winter: A Murder Mystery by Kathryn Reiss

I don’t appear to have a review up of this book for some reason, so here’s a link to the Library Thing entry:

http://www.librarything.com/work/694281/book/24636279

2) Rose by Any Other Name by Maureen McCarthy

Again, no review, but in this case the Library Thing entry doesn’t say much. I started this book with no expectations, but I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. The main character is Rose, who has had a very bad year. She takes a road trip with her mother (who she has distanced herself from) to visit her grandmother one last time, as her grandmother is dying. It sounds dreary, but it isn’t. There is a lot of heart in this novel!

3) Bass Ackwards and Belly Up by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

I think I read this one before I started blogging, so, again, no review. Here’s the Library Thing page: http://www.librarything.com/work/986276

This book reminded me a lot of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.

4) Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks

What is up with all these books I didn’t review??? I must have read this one right before I started blogging… Here’s the Library Thing page: http://www.librarything.com/work/720743

This one was bleak and not at all what I normally read, but I do have to say it was a good book.

5) Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt

FINALLY! A review: http://www.somereads.com/?p=173

6) The Ragwitch by Garth Nix

This is Garth Nix’s first novel, I believe, and it is not as well-read as some of his later works. Some people don’t like it; some people really like it. It is not as good as, say, the Abhorsen trilogy, but for a first novel, it’s good. I really enjoyed it – it was creepy from the outset and never really let go.

Here’s the Library Thing page for this one:

http://www.librarything.com/work/174537

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week’s teaser is from Elizabeth Kostova’s new book, The Swan Thieves, which I received from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program (but not an ARC).

I said I wasn’t raised around the medical profession, but perhaps it isn’t so strange that I should have chosen the branch of it I did. My mother and father were not at all scientific, although their personal discipline, transmitted to me along with my oatmeal and clean socks with the intensity parents pour through an only child, stood me in good stead through the rigors of college biology and the worse rigors of med school — the rigor mortis of nights spent entirely in study and memorization, the relative relief of later sleepless night hurrying around on hospital rotations.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week’s teaser is from The Bad Book Affair by Ian Sansom, p. 56 (ARC)

At thirty there’s no way you’re going to start behaving like…whoever the hell it was, it didn’t matter, because in fact you’re just a half-decent butcher or a baker or a candle-stick maker, or even a librarian, let’s say, for the sake of argument, a mobile librarian named Israel Armstrong, on the northernmost coast of the north of the north of Ireland, and your whole life — let’s just pretend, for who could possibly imagine a life of such inanity and nullity? — is preoccupied with cataloguing, and shelving, and making sure you remember to switch off the lights before you go home to the pathetic little converted chicken coop —  imagine! — where you live on a farm — oh god — in the middle of the middle of nowhere around the back of beyond, and your idea of a good time is coming here to Zelda’s to drink ersatz coffee with elderly men and women in car coats…

Basically, his life was over.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week’s teaser is, again, from Terry Pratchett’s The Light Fantastic (I’m almost finished – really!), p. 157.

Someone who spent his life living rough under the sky knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book.

I participated in the Holiday Book Blogger Swap this year, and I’m so glad my “Santee” liked her books! It was hard to mail off The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, as that’s one I’m wanting to read myself!

I never (or haven’t yet) received a package, but this isn’t a complaint. Things happen, and for me, most of the joy is in picking something for someone else. Getting something in return is an added benefit (and I often forget I’m getting something, too, while I’m picking gifts!). My main reason for posting this is in case my Secret Santa did send something and is waiting for a response from me. So, if you’re reading this and waiting, something must have happened in the mail.

It’s been over a month since I posted any reviews, but that’s mostly because I’ve only finished one book during that time! GASP!

After Good Things I Wish You, I started Sunnyside by Glen David Gold. This one is a chunkster, and while I was interested, it just dragged and I had to move on. I haven’t completely given up on it, just put it aside for a while.

Then I grabbed The Color of Magic, my first book for the Pratchett Challenge. I had attempted to listen to this on audiobook a few years ago and it didn’t grab me. However, I have since read 2 other Pratchett books and really enjoyed them, so I decided to give it another try, this time in print. I enjoyed it much more this way! I’m really looking forward to reading more for this challenge (in fact, I am currently reading the 2nd in the discworld series).

After The Color of Magic I picked up American Rust by Philipp Meyer. I tried so hard to like this book. I made it more than halfway. But I really didn’t like it. So I gave up. It’s a “good” book, in terms of writing style, etc., but I just wasn’t enjoying reading it. Life’s too short to read a book you don’t enjoy.

Compared to a few years ago, my book count is meager. Only 45 books, where I was reading around 75/year for a while. However, this is not surprising, as I switched jobs in late 2008 and no longer spend every lunch hour immersed in a book (this is a good thing, because it means I have a social group at work), plus I knit a lot more than I did before. I also don’t have the same commute I did before, so I’m not listening to as many audiobooks. That said, here is my list for 2009, in alphabetical order, at least as accurate as my LibraryThing account, anyway!

All Other Nights by Dara Horn (LibraryThing Early Reviewers)
The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman
The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber
Border Songs by Jim Lynch
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (LibraryThing Early Reviewers)
Clara’s War: One Girl’s Story of Survival by Clara Kramer (LibraryThing Early Reviewers)
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber
The Disappeared by Gloria Whelan
The Golden Bull by Marjorie Cowley
Good Things I Wish You by A. Manette Ansay
Goose Chase by Patricia Kindl
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (re-read)
Guernica by Dave Boling (LibraryThing Early Reviewers)
Hard Gold: The California Gold Rush of 1859 by Avi
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (re-read)
Helen of Troy by Margaret George
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Giulia Melucci
Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci
Kartography by Kamila Shamsie
The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir
The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism by Georgia Byng
The Murder Notebook by Jonathan Santlofer
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
The Oracle Betrayed by Catherine Fisher
Paula Deen: It Ain’t All About the Cookin’ by Paula Deen
The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci
Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink
The Ragwitch by Garth Nix
Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial by Jen Bryant
Rose by Any Other Name by Maureen McCarthy
The Sandman Vol. 2 The Doll House by Neil Gaiman
Some Day You’ll Thank Me for This: The Official Southern Ladies’ Guide to Being a “Perfect” Mother by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays
Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner
Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo (LibraryThing Early Reviewers)
Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal by Mal Peet
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Waves by Sharon Dogar
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg
The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
Women of the Revolution: Bravery and Sacrifice on the Southern Battlefields by Robert M. Dunkerly (LibraryThing Early Reviewers)

Best books (based on my rating of 5 stars in LibraryThing):
The Plain Janes/Janes in Love
The Oracle Betrayed
The Hunger Games
Ringside, 1925
Guernica
Clara’s War
Crescent
The Graveyard Book

Least Favorite (based on my rating of fewer than 3 stars in LibraryThing)
The Disappeared
Hard Gold
Women of the Revolution

Children’s/YA
The Battle of the Labyrinth
The Disappeared
The Golden Bull
Goose Chase
The Graveyard Book (re-read)
Hard Gold: The California Gold Rush of 1859
Hatchet
The Hunger Games
The Plain Janes/Janes in Love
Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism
The Oracle Betrayed
Prophecy of the Sisters
The Ragwitch
Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial
Rose by Any Other Name
Spanking Shakespeare
Tamar: A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal
Waves
The Willoughbys

Graphic Novels
The Plain Janes/Janes in Love
The Sandman Vol. 2 The Doll House by Neil Gaiman

Audiobooks
The Graveyard Book
The Willoughbys
Their Eyes Were Watching God