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.
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)
10 Notable Books of 2007 & Best 10 of 2006
It’s interesting to note these lists I found recently on The New York Times. I think I really prefer 2006 to 2007. I’m finding I can hardly pronounce the author’s names these days!
In 2008, I worry that we’re getting too warlike, political and dark in our books. I can’t seem to find much that’s reviewed or critiqued that doesn’t have something to say about Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran…subterfuge, political crisis or the like. I’m discouraged enough about the loss of America as I knew it even 25 years ago….it’s really disheartening to be told we have to read all about who we’ve become or are becoming as the World takes us over. I just want a good, old-fashioned but well-written complicated relationship story…do you?
At any rate, here are the lists promised. You decide what you like: I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read or have to be read in my stacks! :]
Top 10 Notable Books of 2007: Fiction
1) The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta. A sex-ed teacher faces off against a church bent on ridding her town of “moral decay.”
2) After Dark by Haruki Murakami…translated. A tale of two sisters, one awake all night, one asleep for months.
3) The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa…translated. This suspenseful novel transforms “Madame Bovary” into a vibrant exploration of the urban mores of the 1960’s, ’70s and ’80s.
4) Bearing The Body by Ehud Havazelet. In this daring, first novel, a man travels to CA after his brother is killed in what may have been a drug transaction.
5) The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. A first novel about an Ethiopian exile in Washington, DC, evokes loss, hope, meomory and the solace of friendship.
6) Bridge Of Sighs by Richard Russo. …a small town in NY riven by class differences and racial hatred.
7) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. A nerdy Dominican American yearns to write and fall in love.
8) Call Me By Your Name by Andre’ Aciman. …novel of love, desire, time and memory describes a passionate affair between two young men in Italy.
9) Cheating At Canasta by William Trevor. Trevor’s dark, worldly short stories linger in the mind long after they’re finished.
10) The Collected Poems, 1956-1998. by Zbigniew Herbert…translated. Herbert’s poetry echoes the quiet insubordination of his public life.
The 10 Best Books of 2006: Fiction & Non-Fiction
1) Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart. …scruffy, exuberant..equal parts Gogol and Borat…immodest on every level…it’s long, crude, manic and has cheap vodka on it’s breath. It also happens to be smart, funny and…extraordinarily rich and moving.
2) The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. ….she has demonstrated unusual discipline in assembling her urbane, pointillistic and wickedly funny short stories. Her compact fictions, populated by smart, neurotic, somewhat damaged narrators, speak grandly to the longings and insecurities in all of us, and in a voice that is bracingly direct and sneakily profound.
3) The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud. This superbly intelligent, keenly observed comedy of manners, set amid the glitter of cultural Manhattan in 2001, also looks unsparingly, though sympathetically, at a privileged class unwittingly poised in its insularity, for the catastrophe of 9/ll.
4) The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford. ..3rd installment..serial epic of Frank Bascombe-flawed husband, fuddled dad, writer turned real estate agent and voluble first-person narrator.
5) Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. The antic ghost of Nabokov hovers over this buoyantly literate first novel, a murder mystery narrated by a teenager enamored of her own precocity but also in thrall to her father, an enigmatic itinerant professor, and to the charismatic female teacher whose death is announced on the first page.
Non-Fiction:
1) Falling Through The Earth, A Memoir by Danielle Trussoni. This intense,…searing memoir revisits the author’s rough-and-tumble Wisconsin girlhood, spent on the wrong side of the tracks in the company of her father, a Vietnam vet who began his tour as “a cocksure country boy” but returned “wild and haunted,” unfit for family life and driven to extremes of philandering, alcoholis and violence.
2) The Looming Tower, Al-Queda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. In the fullest account yet of the events that led to the fateful day, Wright unmasks the secret world of Osama bin Laden and his collaborators and also chronicles the efforts of a handful of American intelligence officers alert to the approaching danger but frustrated, time and agin, in their efforts to stop it.
3) Mayflower, A Story of Courage, Community and War by Nathaniel Philbrick. This absorbing history of the Plymouth Colony..impressively recreates the the pilgrim’s dismal 1620 voyage, bringing to life passengers and crew, and the events of the settlement…
4) The Omnivore’s Dilemma, A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. “When you can eat just about anything natuare has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety,” Pollan writes in this supple and probing book.
5) The Places In Between by Rory Stewart. “You are the first tourist in Afghanistan,” Stewart, a young Scotsman, was warned by an Afghan official before commencing the journey recounted in this splendid book. “It is mid-winter-there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee.” Stewart, thankfully, did not die….
I have to tell you I particuarly loved “Special Topics In Calamity Physics.” It was priceless!! I couldn’t put it down. At least try that one for an enjoyable read…
Bye, The Bookish Dame
