New Kindle Additions!
I’m embarrassed that I’ve been away such a long time. What was I thinking!? At the least, dear bookish friends, let me tell you of my latest downloads to “Stella,” my Kindle.
I have to stop here first to say that I’m regretting that I didn’t purchase these top two in hardback because I have collected these authors’ (my favorites) books for years. But, since my children don’t seem to be the least bit interested in my first editions….I’m slowing down on that end. [I'm still thinking of buying the Joyce Carol Oates in Hdbk!]
So, here are the new Stella buys:
Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim by Anne Rice
206 Bones by Kathy Reichs
Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger
The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
Homer & Langley: A Novel by E.L. Doctorow
Last Night in Twisted River: A Novel by John Irving
Vampire Darcy’s Desire: A Pride and Prejudice Adaptation by Regina Jeffers
I’ve read, “Angel Time…,” “Vampire Darcy’s Desire….,” and “Beautiful Lies,” all of which I recommend for different reasons. Anne Rice is always a revelation, and in this new book you may take that literally! While she can get solidly preachy, at least we have the entertainment of an interesting story and her return to descriptions like interior and exterior architecture, history, books, music and arts. That’s something I’ve always loved about her. She’s not quite “there,” for her Lestat and Mayfair Witches readers, but she’s coming along. I felt she was very autobiographical in this book….we have a sheerly veiled story of her personal, early life and her new reconversion to Catholicism. I would recommend it to you with a 3 rating. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for her next book.
“Vampire Darcy’s Desire…” is just an absolutely “teatime” read. It’s fun and quick and delightful. See my face glimmering with glee in the glow of a dim light! :] Nice thought, but very bad for the eyes!
I’m a new fan of Lisa Unger. A Kindleine friend mentioned her to me at the Clubhouse Pool recently, and I bit and bought. “Beautiful Lies,” is a good book! I like the style of writing, the story and the pace of Unger’s book. Her’s is not a Patricia Cornwell or Kathy Reichs type of mystery/murder, but it is similar to the writing of Jodi Picoult. I would recommend her to anyone who just wants a good mystery that’s not light reading or dumbied out. There’s enough substance in her to keep us interested. And, I’m going to read more of her books.
I’ve just started “…Little Bird of Heaven,” so I haven’t much to say at this point, except can we ever have a bad review of Ms. Oates? When I have one of her new books in my sweaty palms, feeling the electric zing through my innards, and the quake of smile and giggles going through me….all I can do is grab a soda, snuggle down with my quilt and put up the “Do Not Disturb” sign. It would shock me beyond belief to know that there are readers/friends of mine who have never read Ms. Oates. If you’re there….don’t tell….your literary ignorance would be too humiliating. Just run to the bookstore and grab several of her books quickly and quietly. It will restore you sanity and literacy.
Books not on my Kindle but being read nevertheless, are:
”The Year of the Flood, “ by Margaret Atwood
Passionate Search: A Life of Charlotte Bronte by Margaret Crompton
Girl in a Blue Dress: A Novel Inspired By The Life and Marriage of Charles Dickens by Gaynor Arnold
My reviews are preliminary since I haven’t finished each of them, but here they are:
Margaret Atwoods, “…Flood,” is fascinating and habit-forming. Like Toni Morrison, Ms Atwood has this tendency these past few years of writing in a sort of free form- flow of conscientiousness (can’t remember the literary word) manner such as James Joyce is accredited for inventing. Though she does make more sense. And, her book does begin to make sense about 1/2 the way through! 
Her chapters skip back and forth through time which makes getting too involved with the characters nearly impossible. Is this a ploy? Hmmm Maybe she’s trying to give us the feel of disjointed, isolated, anxiety ridden, non-intimacy of the dystopian culture she’s writing about. This is a very important book for lots of reasons. I can see it being on the college (possibly HS reading list) lists. Sooner or later, you’ll have to read it.
“Girl in a Blue Dress,” is so charming and interesting. It’s hard to put down. For Dickens lovers such as I am, you’ll just be finding another way to day dream about him and his life and surroundings. And for those of us who love those time period pieces, you’ll have so much fun with this book. So what if it’s not all true. It’s a sort of “Crimson and the Rose, ” book. It’s easy to enjoy thoroughly.
“Passionate Search…Charlotte Bronte,” is one of the very best biographies I’ve ever read about her. It’s probably out-of-print. I found it in an old book store in Key West this Summer. Just a slim little volume, it’s packed with wonderful information about the Bronte children, Charlotte and her school friends. I particularly love this author’s sharing descriptions of her. I’ve always thought Charlotte was lovely, but it seems, she thought she was ugly because one of her early school companions told her so. This is a wonderful book.
Please come by again!
Your Bookish Dame, Deborah
And see my blog, too: http://lavenroseramblings.blogspot.com
Please come again. I promise to be a more faithful Bookish Dame.
Recommended Reading for Mysteries
Haven’t been blogging in such a long time! Surgeries, daughter & grandson moving away, best friend fighting cancer, and business with my stitching blog ( http://lavenroseramblings.blogspot.com/ ) has kept me away.
However, I’ve been reading, naturally!!! :] Here’s my hit list of favorite authors from murder and mystery and forensics. These authors are not to be missed, and I’ve been reading them like the “end’s coming!”
My list for you:
Karin Slaughter’s books – Slaughter is a fabulous author who really is right up there with the likes of male writers such as Michael Connelly and Robert Parker. I hesitate to say she’s as great as Patricia Cornwell since Cornwell is a bit more cerebral….but I like Slaughter’s book as much or better. Her first series of books are wonderful with very capable and sympathetic main characters that you’ll come to really care about.
Patricia Cornwell’s books: Nobody writes forensic mysteries like Cornwell. Let’s face it…she’s the real thing and she takes us to real places for autopsies, labs, secretive gov’t and police locations, etc….. Not to mention that her main characters are so wretchingly loveable in their neverending toughness! Read anything and everything by her!
Kathy Reichs books: Reichs is second only to Cornwell in writing and characterization. I have to say that she gets better with every book, and her storylines are more interesting. I found her second book less interesting than her first, but after that…she was producing really awesome stories. You may want to start with a late-middle written book….
Jeffrey Deaver’s books: Let’s just say, “He’s the Master.” Nearly every book he writes is a stunner. The characters are wonderfully fleshed out, the storylines are so interesting and awful that they grip you from the beginning. I know some of you are reallly Deaver fans!
J. R. Robb’s books: Writing from Nora Roberts….I’m just discovering “Robb.” A woman waiting for chemo when my friend and I were waiting for her’s, had one of these books. I asked her about it, “Tailspin,” and she told me she really enjoyed this series about the psychic policewoman and her man! Hmmmmm I’ve just bought two of Robb’s books and am starting them as soon as I finish Karin Slaughter’s “Fractured.” In previewing Robb’s books, that is; reading the first chapter of each, I’ve been really ropped in!
Here’s wishing you some new mystery reading for the Summer. No doubt most of you are familiar with the authors and some of the books I’ve mentioned. But, if you haven’t been reading down this road for a while, which I had not, I truly recommend another stop by!
Your Bookish Dame
Joyce Carol Oates’ “My Sister, My Love”
Joyce Carol Oates is one of my very favorite authors. Everyone knows how prolific she is…but she’s also so magnetic and magical in her writing skills that I so often feel pulled into the story and characters at a pace nearly too quickly to break away from! This new book of hers literally made my head spin!! I felt the anxiety and out-of-body slipping away that Skyler and his sister and mother were warring against. Ms. Oates is simply amazing in her characterizations.
“My Sister, My Love,” will make you feel uncomfortable, like a proverbial “fly on the wall” at the Rampike home, and deeply taken in by this dysfunctional family. Here is Oates’ loosely disguised story/take on the JonBenet Ramsey case. It’s a “fill in the blanks” sort of book that leaves us with Oates, theory of what may have happened to JonBenet. It’s a chilling and captivating book.
I cannot put it down!! I’d love to hear what you think of it.
Your Bookish Dame…..
The 19th Wife
I give you this very large picture of the book cover to show you how impressive this book is upon first observation. You just can’t tell a book by its cover… I think David Ebershoff is a fine writer, and one whose style I find lulling and seductive. I was drawn into this novel about Mormanism and the foundational doctrine of polygomy wanting to know more…and, so became just like the crowds during the mid 1800’s who were mob-like in their thirsty desires for all the “juicy” details. Perhaps this is one of Ebershoff’s underlying warnings to us. All in all, I found the book just an interesting, but not a new and wonderful twist on a theme. The historic details were the most engaging, but were somewhat flat…the current-day storyline that parralled the historic was light-weight and not very engaging. I wasn’t very attached to the contemporary characters…especially finding Johnny a boy I couldn’t warm up to at all! Would I buy this book knowing all of this??? I probably would just because of the historical details on Mormanism from a woman’s perspective. I think Mr. Eberschoff would have had a better book if he’d just enhanced that historical detail with a ficticious “fill in!” Wait ’til this one comes out in paperback!
Your, Bookish Dame
Walking on Eggshells or Trying Not to Be Motherly
I’ve been chewed up, mashed down and broken-hearted in the last year by my adult children, and what a shock it’s been! My children and I have always been close, very loving and have communicated so well. I’ve given them my heart and my best, tryed to support and love them unconditionally….and now I’m just devastated about the new responses I’m getting from the two I would never have expected it from!
Thus, my grasp for help in a book, of course. I saw, “Walking on Eggshells, Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children and Parents,” by Jane Isay at my local Borders and dove for it. Judith Viorst (of childrens’ book fame) has a quote on the front of the book, “Read it and learn!”
Having just started the book, I have not too much to share other than that adult children don’t want moms and dads to tell them the SLIGHTEST things to do, in any way at all, ever! It enrages them! Really enrages them! This is news to me…however, I have seen the purple monsters rise from my beloved adult children this year and I can testify that it’s a real issue.
Since I’ve already spent days in bed in sobbing grief over lost love and heartbreak from the new treatment and disrespect they have shown me for reasons I couldn’t figure out (I was just being the same ol’ mom….now I know that’s absolutely not allowed anymore!), I’m now ready for the boot camp of revising my relationships, I suppose. It won’t be easy…it’s really like “walking on eggshells”…even I called it that before I saw the book. And, I think the tough thing is learning how to negotiate the pitfalls and landmines without losing who we are as women and mothers.
I’m still a little heartbroken at the changes I will have to make. No longer being the mom of my younger children…now Mother of my adult children…not as playful now, but more serious and grown up. I always loved the light-heartedness and playfulness of childhood and young adulthood with them…I’m going to miss that….
If any of you are experiencing this, too. I’d love to hear from you, whether you’re a mom or a new mother, or a son trying to balance a new wife and new child and your mom. It’s a strange new world for everyone!
Your, Bookish Dame
Kindle Katches and New Books
New books downloaded from Kindle:
“Skeletons at the Feast“ by Chris Bohjalian. WWII character perspectives, with new and powerful insights that will live in my mind forever.
“The Big Girls“ by Susanna Moore. A woman psychiatrist and her female patient who are both suffering from loss and guilt…. Moore is an awesome writer.
New books from Borders trip:
“Free Food for Millionaires“ by Min Jin Lee. This one has been on every bestseller’s list across the country! An Ivy League girl with a Korean family background, who has a secret obsession for reading the Bible, loves expensive clothes and has a hunky white boyfriend…etc..? I’ve got to read this one!!!
“Open Me“ by Sunshne O’Donnell. Seems like I’ve been waiting forever to hear a story like this one. A young girls lifelong secret training in the ancient, forbidden art of being a funeral mourner…an illegal profession, but one which has been passed down mother to daughter for thousands of years.
“Human Traces“ by Sebastian Faulks. Two young boys with an interest in science and psychiatry grow up in France and England, then come together to found a clinic in Austria. A female patient whom they each want to treat in different ways comes between them.
All of these are fabulous reads! I took the time today to write reviews of each of them, but the entries got erased somehow. I can just tell you that it’s too demoralizing to write a third time!! :[ But, suffice it to say that the above books are varied, but wonderful. Please go to Amazon.com to see the covers and read reviews for yourselves.
I’m having alot of trouble putting “Skeletons,” and “Human Traces” down at the moment. I’m afraid to start “Open Me,” more than an intro. first chapter, because I know I’ll be up all night reading it! And, I can’t wait to start “Free Food…”
Please leave comments and your blog addys so I can visit you and see what you’re reading, too.
Your Bookish Dame, Deb
Amazon’s Kindle Means I’ve Been To The Bookstore…ish
I’ve been down and out this past 3 weeks, shifted from ER to hospital to home with a horrible bout of stuff worse than I want to talk about…and we don’t need to go there!
On the bright side, this left me some small space of time for foraging with STELLA my Kindle “bedfella” in the Amazon bookstore. I have to say that “Stella” was a priceless sidekick in my hospital bed. She was lightweight and easy to maneuver with one hand while the other was stuck with IVs and such! I always knew where she was and could easily reach for her or sleep with her! She took me on trips to the “bookstore,” to archives, to browsings, to samples of books I might want to read, to a couple of new mystery magazines I subscribed to for fun, and to searching the stacks for books and reviews. I never felt alone or bored! I really hadn’t thought about my Kindle as a hospital companion….but “Stella” was the best I could have hoped for! One book would have been too bulky for me with my issues, I would have had trouble with it, and it would have bored me in the amount of time I was there. I can’t say enough about my “Stella!”
Here are some of my new purchases found while book-skimming with Stella:
- The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
- North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
- The Death Dealer by Heather Graham
- Down River by John Hart
- The Big Girls by Susanna Moore
- Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
- Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine! Subscription
- Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine! Subscription
Some of the books I was able to sample (this consists of at least a chapter of each book or more…) and to archive in Stella are:
- The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe
- Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors
- The Luxe by Anna Godbersen
- The Jewel Trader of Pergu by Jeffery Hantover
- The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman
- Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
- The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout PHd
All in all…for one who was otherwise miserable with medicine and no food…I had alot of fun in the hospital with my bookstore visits and reading. I read several of the short mystery stories and just loved them. They actually reminded me of when I was a teenager and we couldn’t watch tv, and had to read…my brothers and I collected comic books or mystery-type magazines and spent hours with them…losing track of time and place just like with books. I’m delighted to now have these mystery stories on my Kindle.
All of the books I sampled are now on my wishlist. It’s amazing how you can really get into a book when you actually have time to read a chapter of it. At the book shops I find I’m overwhelmed by the flashy covers and glamour of the whole thing. And, I’m so bookish, of course, I want to buy everything without even testing it! I can’t test it! I’m bedazzled and in a trance! Whereas with my “Stella,” I have a small distance that actually gives me what I really, truly want which is the choice of books I would love if I read them.
In the old days they used to repeat relentlessly, “You can’t tell a book by it’s cover!” (With the proverbial depth of hidden meanings, naturally) But, in truth, it used to plague me as a child while I devoutly worked my way through libraries like a nun entranced. I was choosing several books based on their covers!! A heresy!! I tried to hide the fact like the heretic I was with every mumbled excuse I could muster…”Well, it has a great story…don’t look at the cover…you can just..we’ll take that cover off…it’s just…” In truth, we are all bedazzled by the artwork, the covers speak to us, the guilding on beautiful leather makes our bookish hearts beat faster, the book itself is gorgeous and we love it for its looks.
With my Stella/Kindle I’m taken back to a place where I’m able to choose because of the context. And, I’m finding my reading experience is becoming enriched by this. I’m finding that I’m reading faster with my Kindle. I can’t even believe I’m saying this because I continue to love my books and will always continue to buy them, though I know I will be able to pay a third the price if I just use my Kindle.
With all that said. Reading is wonderful. It’s a joy to have our books in whatever form. Isn’t it amazing that God chose to leave us with a special gift throughout the Ages…His Word. The Bible. A Book.
Don’t leave home without one. Hugs, The Bookish Dame
Booklist to Check Out!
I hope you’ll enjoy taking this list and reading through it for yourself. Just another way of seeing where we are in terms of somebody’s estimation of the best books written, I suppose. But I liked seeing the list and testing my reading against it.
Here’s a list of 100 books. I got this from a friend’s blog. Just bold the books you’ve already read, (movies don’t count!) italic those you want to read, and leave the ones you don’t care about in plain text. Here are my entries:
1.The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
Silk
I’ve just finished the book, “Silk,” by Alessandro Baricco, and can’t say enough about it. Don’t know why I put this read off such a long time. I’ve had it in my library since 1998!! It’s a small book, so compact. Every word is meant like a haiku piece, I guess. It’s a terribly beautiful story about love between a frenchman and a Japanese concubine. Without spoiling the story, it’s enough to say that you will never forget their love story, and it will haunt you for days after you put the little book down….which will only take you about an hour to read….
New Favorite Book 3/2008
I’m just loving this book by first-time author, Lauren Groff. It’s such a steady clip of a read…she’s really good! Please go to: http://monsters.everywomansvoice.com/book.php? to read a great interview with Lauren, and some reviews.
So far, this is my favorite new book of 2008….
Yours,
The Bookish Dame
