Twitterature - March 2014

Linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy for Twitterature! 

Yay books!

Sometimes you get really lucky and find a string of books that keeps your attention... then sometimes you read winner after winner and the birds sing and the sun shines and... well you get the picture.  It was a good book month for me, and I can't wait to share!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy - In a near future post-apocalyptic setting, staying alive is the only goal, but the father and son main characters have a relationship that transcends that.  Equally beautiful, touching and disturbing, this book really struck me as one that will stay with me for a long, long time.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant - How have I gone all these years without reading this beautiful, wonderful book?  This is one I skipped when it was popular because, well, because I was a snob and didn't want to read what everyone else was reading, but it's been on my to-read list for years.  And it was so wonderful.  This fictional story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob, is one of the most astoundingly beautiful things I've read in a long time.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion -  This story was super cute and held my attention to the last word.  Don is a professor of genetics who is pretty set in his ways.  He decides it's time to find a wife based on a certain set of very specific criteria... then he meets Rosie, who is absolutely none of those things.  What happens next is predictably unpredictable and touching and funny and wonderful.  I picked this one based on MMD's reviews and she was spot on!

The Returned by Jason Mott - This was probably my low reading point for the month.  The tv show based on this book has been ALL OVER THE MEDIA, so I thought I would give the book a try, and it was only ok.  As a matter of fact, it was so meh that I skipped the tv show too.  

The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell - This super quick read (it's only about 150ish pages) is about Alma, who is telling the story of a long-ago explosion at a local dance hall to her grandson.  She is the only one who knows what really happened on that long ago day, and by retelling the story she pieces it together for the readers.  

 

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain - I saved the best for last!  This is a fictionalized account of Hadley Hemingway, first wife of Ernest Hemingway, and their early years together.  I've always been a huge fan of Hemingway's work, but to me Hemingway was - in my mind - a fully formed brilliant author.  This background into his early years when he was a struggling writer trying to find his voice was an amazing addition to what I already knew about him.  I can't say enough good things about this book.  After I finished it, I fell down the rabbit hole of research into his life and that of his first wife and what happened to them in later years.  I picked this title based on the recommendation of Moira at Hearth & Homefront from last month's Twitterature, and she loved it so much she started a whole new series called Book Club Bites with this title as the first feature.   It's an amazing concept so be sure to check it out!  

That's what I've been reading for the past month.  Now I'm off to read all your fabulous Twitterature posts to get some ideas of what to read next!  

Twitterature - February 2014

I'm linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy for Twitterature!

January was a pretty bad reading month for me, so I'm thrilled to say I actually found a couple winners in February!  

However, I didn't really read them.  I had eye surgery the middle of January, and it didn't go quite as expected, which means that reading - my lifeline, my one real passion, the only hobby I really care about - has been off the table for most of the past month.  

So... I discovered audio books.

And I'll be completely honest here.  I have enjoyed them.  But I don't LOVE listening the same way I LOVE reading.  However, given my current circumstances, they are serving the purpose of keeping me from quietly going insane, so I'll take it.

I can see well enough to read again, providing I crank the font size on my e-reader up to ginormous size, but I can't do it for long or I get a terrible headache (and I've been using the few good hours I get with my eyes each day to blog and read blogs and comment on blogs - well, you get the picture) so audio books will probably be my best friends until this ridiculous eye business gets straightened out.

Anyway, I did find some good stuff last month.  Here's what I read (well, sorta read).

Help for the Haunted by John Searles - I actually read this book right before my surgery, so it was the one book I read read for the month.  Sylvie's parents are in the unusual occupation of helping lost souls find peace.  Well, they are until they are murdered.  Much of the story revolves around what Sylvie did or did not see on the night her parents were murdered.  I could have probably done without the violence, but the storyline about lost souls and the fascinating and quirky characters kept me interested.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd - I loved loved loved this book, which is loosely based on the life of abolitionist and women's rights activist Sarah Grimke.  The story follows Sarah and the fictional slave Handful through their lives together in Charleston in the early nineteenth century.  They grow up together, but so separately, and the friendship that develops between them is unexpected and beautiful.

 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - I have a terrible habit of not wanting to read things that are ridiculously popular.  I think it comes from all my years working in the bookstore and having such huge runs on a certain book that I would lose interest in it before I ever read it.  Lately I've been trying to pick a book every month that I skipped on purpose over the years and this time it was the Lovely Bones.  It was beautiful in parts, sort of boring in others, and overall I think I would have enjoyed reading this one more than I enjoyed listening to it.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith - I'm trying to listen to this one now, and I'm not that far into it but so far I'm not loving it.  I'm going to keep going for a bit, but I'm afraid it might be abandoned before long.  I really think this one might be a case of a boring narrator for the audiobook, and not the book itself.  I may move this one back onto the list to read instead of listen to.

And that's my month in books.  It's not as many as I usually read, but listening to books seems to take a lot longer than reading them.

Do you listen to audio books?  If so, do you think the narrator makes a difference?

Drunk. A southern tale of loss. I mean lost.

I  had shiny new post all set to go for today, but because of circumstances - vague, yes I know - I decided to repost this gem instead. 

Write a post inspired by the word: lost.

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."

William Faulkner 

I am a book nerd.

Always have been.  Always will be.

I was reading novels by age six, had read everything in my elementary school's library by age nine, and for many years, had a career in retail bookselling.

My house looks like a library threw up all over it.

My kids know that they can always tear me away from Facebook with a request to read to them.

I. Love. Books.

They smell good.  They feel good.  Sometimes, if you're really drunk and lick them, they taste good.

So it only makes sense that when I was in college, I took a lot of upper lever, good-excuse-to-brush-off-Physics-homework-because-this-is-for-CLASS literature classes.

One of my favorites was a Hemingway/Faulkner seminar, which was led by not one, but two of my favorite professors.  I had discovered the joy of William Faulkner in high school when I read Light in August for the first time.  Joy.  Pure joy.  Faulkner was brilliant, and tortured, and alcoholic, and even though I didn't understand two-thirds of it, I thought it was wonderful.

When my Faulkner class planned a trip to Oxford, Mississippi to visit Faulkner's old haunts and stomping grounds, I was in Heaven.  I felt so... smart.  So... in touch.  Clearly, no one had ever understood Faulkner the way I did.  It was like we were soul mates, and if being soul mates with a long dead Southern author of questionable mental facilities and obvious alcoholism was your thing, then I was your girl.

We spent the first day touring the old Faulkner homestead and visiting the gravesite, and dinner was at a quaint local restaurant where the Prof procured large amounts of wine for the mostly underage students - gasp!  After dinner, we were left to our own devices and were planning to meet up again at 8am the next day for breakfast and to visit the loveliest bookstore in all the world.  Having never been a drinker and feeling the effects of the wine, several of us decided to pay Steve, the legal-alcohol-buying-aged Teacher's Assistant, to go to a nearby liquor store for us so we could continue the festivities.  

Alcohol in hand, drink on, we decided to trek across town to revisit the cemetery and maybe sit around Will's grave and be brilliant and tortured.  

As an aside, I'm pretty sure TA Steve pocketed most of our cash and bought us the cheapest large vats of alcohol available, but that's another story.

Anyway, we made it to the gravesite, and sat around saying things that were brilliant and funny only to us.  After all, we were ACADEMICS.  "Yo Momma is a fish" was one particularly amusing anecdote that made its way around the group about fifteen million times - and by the way, have you ever tried to say "Yoknapatawpha" three times fast while drunk on rotgut whisky?  I thought not...  We sat for hours, sharing our liquor with Will (read: pouring it onto his grave), quoting his work, and finally around 2am, decided to call it a night.  We were on our way back to our rooms when the story gets fairly interesting, for me anyway.

For some reason, and I'm fuzzy on the details - imagine that - I decided I needed to tell Will one final thing, and with an assurance of "Go on, I'll catch up," - famous last words if I've ever heard them - I split up from my group and backtracked to the grave.  I guess I told Will what needed to be said, and tried to catch up to my friends.

Oops.

It was 3am, I was in a cemetery in an unfamiliar city, I was drunk, and I was LOST.

Drunk + Lost = Really Bad News.

I'm not really sure what I did the next 5 hours.

I have vague memories of magnolia trees and unfamiliar street signs.

I have no memories of encountering anyone at all.

What I do remember is waking up the next morning, in my room, still drunk and running WAY late for breakfast.

I made it to breakfast, unshowered and wearing most of the previous day's outfit, drank some coffee and stumbled through the rest of the day.

No one from my group remembered seeing me after leaving me at the cemetery.

How I made it back to the room is, and always will be, a mystery.

But the good news is, I learned some really important lessons that night. 1) Never mix wine and hard liquor,  2) Never trust a TA named Steve to pick out your alcohol and 3)Never, ever wander around Oxford, Mississippi at 3am without a wingman.  

These are lessons I'll take with me to the grave.

Mine.  Not Will's.

Twitterature, January 2014

Today I'm linking up again with Modern Mrs. Darcy for Twitterature. 

Ah, January 2014.

The month that will always be remembered as the month I didn't finish anything.

Sigh...

See, here's the thing.

I have a list of hundreds of books I want to read.  I even occasionally have an hour or two here and there that I CAN read.  And I tried to read.  Really I did.  But on my list this month are quite a few books that I started, but didn't like well enough to finish.

It's sad, really.  Something or another made me pick them up.  Something about them said "READ ME!"  And I tried.  Really I did.  But if you're here for some fabulous recommendations, I don't have them this month.

Maybe you can use my list as a cautionary tale of what NOT to read.

In any event, here it is.

The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black - Sad photographer Claire comes home to Galveston to try to fix her screwed up life.  Everyone she knew as a kid is still there, still doing exactly the same things.  It doesn't work, by the way.  She's still sad. Well, at least it hadn't worked by page 70ish, which is how far I made it.

  

Identical by Scott Turow - These identical twins went really different routes - one is a senator and the other is in prison for murder.  I never made it past the first (horribly dry) courtroom scene.  Bangs gavel. 

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes - Time traveling serial killer? Sure, why not?  Except, um, not.  It was super boring and I don't think I made it past the second chapter.

Damaged by Alex Kava - Maggie O'Dell, a character I usually like for a quick mystery read, finds a torso in a cooler that has washed up somewhere and then... I totally lost interest.  Maybe it's me.  Maybe I'm the problem here.

Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon - Tortured cops and even more tortured serial killers usually perk me right up when I'm in a reading slump.  Sigh... Not this time.

Still Life by Joy Fielding - Casey's in a coma, but she can hear everything that's being said around her.  P.S. It's all a big conspiracy.  The end.  

Seriously.  I really do read good books sometimes.  Just not right now.

What recommendations do you have for me?  What is a book that I absolutely won't be able to put down? 

Best books I read in 2013.

Today I'm linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy to share the best books I read in 2013.

I read a lot of the same kind of books in 2013.  I won't lie - it was a quick, easy fiction kind of year.  I leaned heavily toward feel-good (or cry your eyes out, as the case may be) "women's fiction," stories with a little plot, a little background and a lot of character development.  I only read an occasional non-fiction title.  I only read an occasional thing that made me really THINK.  I didn't really stretch my reading muscles much, but for me 2013 was a year of reading for enjoyment and pleasure and escape, and not so much reading to learn and grow.

I know I need to do more of the whole reading to learn business - a lot more - in 2014.

I've been thinking of setting some reading goals for this year, but really I just want to keep reading books that let me escape for an hour or two at a time.  We'll see how it goes, I guess :)

Anyway, I rounded up a list of titles that I particularly enjoyed reading over the last year.  They aren't all books that were written in 2013, but they were all books I read then and would highly recommend.  

I was the last woman in America to read this book.  I'm not sure why I waited so long.  It was wonderfully done, and I felt like I knew the characters.

Cecilia lives in a picture perfect life, until she finds a note labelled "To be opened in the event of my death."  Of course, she opens it.  It sets off a chain of events that I didn't see coming.  I like that the author puts these people in really difficult circumstances then doesn't bail them out at the last minute.

I'm not usually smart enough to read Neil Gaiman, but I really loved this short novel about a boy, his extraordinary neighbors, and a battle between good and evil.

The stories of two extraordinary women - one present, one from the past - are intertwined in an unexpected way.  As Lena, a modern day lawyer, searches for a descendant of Josephine Bell, a house girl rumored to have been the actual artist of a series of stunning paintings credited to her white mistress, she peels away layers of both Josephine’s past and her own life.

I almost didn't read this book but I was so glad I did.  This is another story told in two eras - modern day and the Holocaust, and the link between Sage - the main character - and Josef, a customer at her bakery, is an extraordinary story.

Fourteen year old Lorca only wants her mother's acceptance and love, which she believes she can find through preparing a particular dish.  Her search for the perfect recipe leads her to people and places she would have never hoped to find. 

Louisa goes to work for Will, who happens to be in a wheelchair since his accident.  They fall in love.  Perfect story, happy ending, right?  Oh no.  Not at all.  Not. At. All.

The earth's rotation starts to slow.  The days get longer.  Ten year old Julia deals with this, and with growing up, with an uncanny perspective.  I really, really loved this book.

Beautiful story of the half American, half Chinese woman who makes her own way in early 20th century China. She fits nowhere, but despite being abandoned time and again manages to survive and even thrive.

John Grisham takes us back to the time and place of Jake Brigance from A Time To Kill.  We pick up three years later when Jake gets a handwritten will in the mail the week after the writer has killed himself.  Grisham's best in YEARS.

Of everything I read in 2013, this is the one I can't stop thinking about.  The book is the story of a painting and of the two women connected to it decades apart.  

So there you have it - my favorites of the past year.

What was the best book you read in 2013? 

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