Mystery Monday

Three Bedrooms, One Corpse by Charlaine Harris is the third book in the Aurora Teagarden mystery series. Book 3 finds Aurora sampling the realty business in her mother's real estate office after quitting her library job in Book 2. An alarm sounds through the real estate world when it appears there is a serial killer on the loose who just might be a real estate agent! Oh, and Aurora also seems to find love again.

I have to say, this has been my least favorite in the series so far. I just didn't find the mystery very interesting. I also wasn't convinced of Aurora's relationship with her new beau, Martin. She seemed to fall in love way too fast and he just doesn't seem like a good fit for her in my mind. However, I'll continue to read the series to see where Aurora's story goes.

I received an ARC of Linwood Barclay's Fear the Worst through Shelf Awareness. I whipped through this book in no time. I had not read anything by Linwood Barclay before. I would compare him to Harlan Coben. This book has a very similar story line and flow to many of Coben's novels.

The novel starts out with a typical exchange between a divorced father (Tim) and his teenage daughter (Sydney). They argue, she leaves the house mad, heading off to work. He, of course, feels awful about their argument and looks forward to her returning home in the evening to work things out. However, she never comes home. None of her friends have seen her. And when he goes to the hotel where she supposedly works, they tell him they do not know who she is and that she's never worked there. Huh? This starts Tim on a chase throughout the rest of the book to find out what happened to his daughter, hoping she's still alive, and saving her from whatever she's gotten herself into. As Tim delves deeper into the mystery of Sydney's disappearance, he slowly becomes a suspect with the police and not only is he chasing Sydney's kidnappers, the police are chasing him.

I enjoyed this suspenseful novel. It was a fast read and it held my interest. There was not much that bothered me about it. I think I enjoy Coben's writing just a bit more, but Barclay definitely deserves a read. I've since picked up No Time For Goodbye from Bookmooch and look forward to getting to it at some point. I'm not sure this book fully falls into the Mystery category, but it's close enough to be included here in Mystery Monday.

YA Weekend

Okay, Flawed Dogs: The Shocking Raid on Westminster by Berkeley Breathed is really a Middle-Grade book. Hmm....maybe we should change this feature to YA/Middle-Grade Weekend? No....doesn't have the same ring. ;-)

I received this book in the mail, I believe I might have requested it from Shelf Awareness, but I didn't remember and it was a fun treat to have it show up in the mailbox. I really should keep better track of which books I request from Shelf Awareness.

Now, I have a huge TBR pile (or shelf really) and I am 9 books backed up in review copies to get read and posted, but I put all of that aside when I received this awesome little book. Freshly removed from the mailing envelope, I flipped through the pages and was immediately taken in by the illustrations! And knew I just had to get to it next. I couldn't wait to finish the book I was reading to grab this one. And in fact, I was completely bored and disengaged from that book (Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore) and tossed it aside to start this one right away.

Flawed Dogs is the somewhat sad and nearly tragic story of Sam, a pure-bred dachshund who finds his way into a young girl's heart. Heidy has been kicked out of an all-girls school and ends up living with her uncle. Sam enjoys his life with her there, until Cassius--another dog resident at the house--creates a devious plot to get rid of Sam from the house so Heidy would then have room in her heart to love him. Because of Cassius' tricks, Sam is cast aside (and thought to be dead) from the house and must learn to survive on his own. He survives losing his hind leg in a hunter's trap, escapes from a university research lab, resides in the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository, and finds his way into the care of the Rough-Handed Man who tries to win money with him in a dog fight. All of this leads Sam to find a poster for the Westminster Dog Show featuring none other than Cassius! Sam begins to plot a revenge plan that requires him to utilize the canine friends he's made throughout his journey. Dog show chaos ensues.

I have to say the illustrations really make this book. There is a new image every other page or so in both color and black and white. I scanned a few from the book and wanted to post some for you to see. They are just so awesome!

Page 56--Sam and Heidy

Page 74--Cassius
Page 109--Cassius comforting Heidy after Sam's departure.
Page 153--Dogs in the National Dog Depository watching Lassie.
Page 189--Sam at the Westminster Dog Show

I was actually just a tiny bit disappointed in the story of the book. It was written quite well, it was just a bit on the dark side and kept getting darker until the very end. Sam had such a good spirit it made me sad that he had to go through all he had to go through. And here I am talking about a character that is a dog! So I guess I have to say Berkeley Breathed did write a good book that could make me feel so much about an animal character! Much of the story is written from Sam's point of view, so his character really comes alive. It actually reminded me quite a bit of Elise Broch's Masterpiece. Not similar in type of story or anything like that, but in how Broch managed to bring the character of a beetle to such life.

The images in addition to short chapters make this a great book for a reluctant reader or a reader transitioning from chapter books to full-length middle-grade novels. And it is definitely worth checking it out just for the illustrations! Berkeley Breathed has also written a picture book called Flawed Dogs: The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton Last Chance Dog Pound as well as Pete & Pickles and Mars Needs Moms among others. He is also the creator of the comic strips Bloom Country and Opus.

The book goes on sale September 17, 2009!

R.I.P. Challenge

Sooooo, I'm not doing so well with my Art History Reading Challenge. I've only read 2 of the 6 books for it. I do have until the end of the year. So you never know. But right now it's not looking good.

All that aside, I'm thinking of joining in the R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril IV Challenge. I've never done this before but have seen it in past years and it looks like fun! I plan to read creepy and/or mystery-type books before Halloween anyway, so I might as well have them count for a challenge if they are going to fit in with it anyway, right?
Here's what I was planning on reading in September and October:
--The Hanging Hill by Chris Grabenstein (Cannot wait for this! I LOVED The Crossroads last year)
--Creepers by Joanne Dahme (wanted to read this last winter and decided to wait for Halloween time)
--Coraline by Neil Gaiman (been on my TBR list for awhile, a great time to knock it off the list)
--Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain (won this through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. Enjoyed Cain's first two books in the series and looking forward to this one)

I was hoping the second Joy of Spooking book would be out this fall, but I'm not sure when it is supposed to be published (anyone know?!). That would be another fun book to read around Halloween.

If this sounds like a fun challenge to you! Head over to read Carl's post and sign up! And here's a link to the R.I.P. IV Review website as well.

Presenting Allison and Holly IN PERSON!

This past weekend Allison and I both traveled (separately) to Wisconsin to attend our husbands' high school friend's wedding. I don't think Allison and I have ever explained just how we know each other and came to live in Eden Prairie, MN and Pine Lake, GA co-writing a book blog together.

Allison husband, Matt and my husband, Andrew have known each other since third grade. They were in each other's weddings, Matt is our younger daughter's Godfather, we spent several New Year's Eves together. You get the picture. Through all of this, Allison and I have gotten to know each other and realized we have many of the same interests. When Allison quit her job and decided to stay home and then had Lilah, we began emailing all the time. Just random tidbits about our day. She helped me learn how to knit and encouraged me when I got discouraged. We had an online book club with about 8 or 9 members that pretty much ended up with mostly Allison and I talking about the books. It fizzled out and I decided to start a book blog to keep track of what I was reading and asked Allison if she wanted to join along. The rest is history and our book blog has evolved into what it is today. The very sad part of this story is that Allison and I RARELY get to see each other IN PERSON! We email almost everyday, if not everyday. And the last time I saw her was when Lilah was about four months old!

We had such a fun weekend! We got together at the Racine zoo with our families so our kids could get to know each other a bit. And then we ditched the kids and the guys (they had a playdate) and had a very girly lunch at place called The Secret Garden in Kenosha. It was the type of place you would go to have tea, very quaint and flowery. And after navigating tons of construction, we visited a great yarn shop called Fiddlesticks where I indulged in a few skeins of yarn and a pattern and Allison restrained and bought only one skein. ;-)

Allison, Lilah, Matt, Lily, Andrew, Ella and me
(I think this photo is hilarious because my Lily is pouting and Lilah is yawning or yelling--not sure which)

We attended the wedding of our friend on Saturday night and a wedding BBQ with the kids on Sunday. By the end of the weekend, I think we had sufficiently caught up and finally had a picture of us TOGETHER to put up on the blog! It will be relocated to the sidebar in a bit. Sorry to go on and on and I realize this post is not very bookish at all. I just thought it would be fun to give you a bit of the background of how our book blog came to be!

Hopefully it won't be over two years before we see each other again!

Rescuing Seneca Crane: Review and Author Interview!

Remember back in March when I went on and on and on about Susan Runholt's first book, Mystery of the Third Lucretia? Well, she's back again with a new installment of the Kari and Lucas mystery series.

In Book 2: Rescuing Seneca Crane, Kari and Lucas travel to Scotland when Kari's mom is assigned to write about a thirteen-year old concert piano prodigy, Seneca Crane. Kari and Lucas are mesmerized by Seneca's abilities and love hearing her play. Kari is both star-struck by Seneca and in awe that she's just a normal teenage girl. The three girls hang out and become fast friends. But Seneca winds up getting kidnapped after a tremendous performance with the Orchestra Pacifica during a Scottish Highland festival. The girls find themselves once again in the middle of a mysterious situation that takes them to a small village and traipsing through the Scottish mist and bramble patches on a secret mission to save Seneca hidden away in an old castle.

Kari's mom is yet again conveniently absent from the story which allows the girls to take charge and problem solve on their own. One of the best lines that sums up the book well:
Like I said, this all seemed totally random at the time. But if things hadn't happened just like they did--the changes in Mom's travel plans, the cake in the cemetery, the cell phone on the dresser, what Seneca saw through the opera glasses, even the tarot cards--the story would have happened in a very different way. (page 70)

My thoughts: Honestly, I actually was expecting to like Seneca a little less than Lucretia just because I was being a snob about it being about music instead of art. Not that I don't enjoy classical music as well. ;-) Even though I loved the art historical storyline of Lucretia, I really thought this novel was more cohesive. Instead of Kari and Lucas sort of going all over the place to figure out the mystery, it was very focused. They seemed more mature. They took charge, and even though they were cautious, they thought through all their plans and did what they thought was best for the situation. They problem-solved and were quite smart about everything. There was a bit in the book where Kari's ability to fly fish comes in very handy. I love that a female character is shown to enjoy and excel at fly-fishing, casting, boating and knot-tying; something that is typically seen as a male dominated activity.

I recommend Book 2 in the Kari and Lucas Mystery series just as much as the first! And the good news is that Susan has already written the first draft of Book 3! Make sure you rush right out to purchase a copy of Rescuing Seneca Crane which hits bookstores TODAY, August 20th! And if you haven't read Mystery of the Third Lucretia, grab a copy of that as well!

After reading Lucretia and noticing that Susan Runholt was living in St. Paul, I made the effort to contact her and tell her how much I appreciated reading Mystery of the Third Lucretia. She was so approachable! And I have fully enjoyed our exchanges. (Seriously, if you like the Kari and Lucas series, write an email to let her know!!) She so generously sent me an advanced copy of Rescuing Seneca Crane and she also agreed to answer a few interview questions!

Author Interview
Please read and enjoy her answers below. I was so delighted she agreed to do them and couldn't wait to read through them!

Have you always been a writer?
Probably one way or another. At least I’ve always written, but not always fiction.

I was an English major and took two years of creative writing with the late Minnesota writer Frederick Manfred, author of Lord Grizzly, among other regional classics. I was named Best Creative Writer of my University of South Dakota graduating class.

But really the only writing I did for many years after college took the form of letters, especially during my 18-month residence in Europe: Amsterdam followed by Paris. One of my friends saved the letters for me, and some of them are pretty good!

Most of my reading has always been in the mystery genre, and sometime along the way I decided I could write a mystery as good as much of what I was reading. But it wasn’t until I moved to the Twin Cities in 1988 that I decided to get serious about writing a mystery book. Only took me 20 years before I was able to get a book published!

Your daughter, Annalisa was the inspiration for Third Lucretia and collaborated with you on it. Is she continuing to help you with the follow-up books in the series or are you on your own now that you have the characters established?
She reviewed and made good suggestions for Rescuing Seneca Crane, but didn’t collaborate, largely because she was living out of state. Now she’s back in the Twin Cities, and I’m again looking to her for a bit more help. She’s now reviewing the manuscript of my third book. When she gets it finished she and I are going to sit down and bounce ideas off each other on ways of approaching some of the changes I want to make.

Do you hope to keep writing these books or do you see a finite line for Kari and Lucas?
Right now I’m having so much fun hanging out with Kari, Lucas, Gillian and the rest of the recurring characters that I project writing one of these books a year until I die. Of course, at some point I may tire of them and switch to something else.

I’ve told many people that the two do grow up. But I see perils in this. They have four adventures at age 14, and I think I can manage to get six into the following year. That’s a total of 10 books. I’m not sure I can sustain the voice or the same readership if they turn 16, so that may imply a 10-book limit. I guess I’ll just have to let that play out.

Choosing the Lucretia storyline was such a personal thing (please visit Susan's website to read more of the back story behind Lucretia). How will you choose topics in the future? Your next book, Rescuing Seneca Crane focuses more on music, Scotland and even architecture. How did you choose this topic? And is Rhapsody in Blue one of your favorite pieces? Or Annalisa's perhaps?

I actually began Seneca, as I call it, in the mid-1990s, right after I finished the first version of Lucretia. At the time I was writing grants for The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, so I was intimately acquainted with the orchestra biz, and I started writing a second book in the series about Seneca as guest of an orchestra on an international tour. About 80 pages in, I realized that the touring was going to have to go. They needed to remain in the same place long enough for the plot to unfold. So if it was going to take place internationally, I needed to have the orchestra resident at a major art festival. I had never been to an international art festival. This barrier arose about the time I realized my agent wasn’t going to be able to find a buyer for Lucretia, so I abandoned the manuscript there, and only picked it up again in 2006 after visiting the Edinburgh Festival.

I absolutely love Rhapsody in Blue, but the reason I used it was because in the 1990s it was the theme for United Airlines, and I thought my young readers would be able to identify it. Couldn’t think of any other piano concerto that would be immediately familiar. Obviously United abandoned the piece long ago, but I let it remain Seneca’s concert piece.

I love the strong female characters you have created in your books. Fun role models for young girls reading your stories. I also think not enough young people are exposed to culture and the arts today. Did you have a love of art growing up, or was it something you came to enjoy more when you were visiting the Minneapolis Institute of Art with your daughter?
I actually began going to museums when I lived abroad after college. They were free in Amsterdam, I was broke, and seeing the art gave me great pleasure. I had also traveled a bit before settling in Amsterdam, and had made it a point to visit a number of the great museums in London and Paris. Then I moved to Paris and was able to make repeat visits to the marvelous museums there. I’m a great traveler—go abroad every chance I get—and virtually everywhere I go, one of my first stops is a museum. One of my true goals as a writer is to introduce young people to culture and the arts in a way that demystifies it, makes it friendly and approachable and, more importantly, interesting, and aesthetically compelling.

So far you have dealt with art history and music/architecture, do you want to give anything away about the third book in the series? ;-)
Book three is set in Kenya and concerns thefts of rock art from an archaeological site.

What is your absolute favorite place you have traveled to and why?

I really can’t answer that. There are so many variations on the word “favorite.” I love London. Love just being there, and feel strangely at home. Africa, where I’m spending my mental time these days, is astonishing. Everyone should put it on their life list. There’s nothing like it. Nothing. But I’ve also loved Thailand, Istanbul, and what place on earth can top Paris? Then there are the Scottish Highlands, as beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen…

What's next on your to-do list?

Aside from issues of family health and well-being, what I want to do more than anything else in the world is to be able to quit my day job and just write books for a living! Mind you, I love my work as a grantsmaker, but I want to be able to be a full-time author. The day that is possible I’m going to throw the biggest darn party Saint Paul has ever seen!

A Year of Cats and Dogs by Margaret Hawkins

"Original" and "ambitious" can mean almost anything in a review, depending on context. Original ideas may be ill-advised, and an ambitious premise can be ineptly executed. But when I call Margaret Hawkins's debut novel, A YEAR OF CATS AND DOGS, original and ambitious, it is the highest praise I can give, because not only has Hawkins produced one of the most enjoyable and thought-provoking novels I've read, she's done so using a premise that is utterly fresh and interesting. The first-person narration chronicles Maryanne's spiritual journey concurrently with her midlife crisis (which provides ample comic relief via Maryanne's dry, incisive sense of humor). Maryanne explains how she comes to abdicate from her life once long-term boyfriend Phillip moves out, ending a relationship mainly continued out of habit. Maryanne throws the I Ching, which advises waiting and deepening the stillness within, which she fulfills at first through taking long naps. She then begins breaking long-held rules, challenging her former assumptions, and culling things from her life, including her unfulfilling job at a company that makes collectibles, a neat metaphor for everything cluttering Maryanne's spiritual life, obscuring her passions and purpose. At the same time, her pets, and animals in general, become more and more important to her, and she invests time in caring for her ailing father. Her actions through inaction open up possibilities that her mind and soul are now ready to embrace, and Maryanne finds that she can hear the thoughts of animals, leading to a friendship with a veterinarian who values her skills as a dog whisperer and asks her to plan his mother's funeral.

Each of the sixty-four chapter titles is named for one of the sixty-four possible coin throws by which the I Ching (the Chinese book of changes) is consulted. In less capable hands, this would have been an annoying gimmick, but Hawkins uses the I Ching lessons as steps in Maryanne's spiritual journey, giving her wry observations the weight of age-old wisdom. Maryanne is a likable narrator, an average person seeking meaning in her life and a bit lost in the universe. Her method for finding herself is unorthodox but believable, her reflections on her spiritual development both profound and matter-of-fact, included alongside her recipes for the comfort food she prepares to console everyone around her. Hawkins's clear, lovely prose is a perfect backdrop for the straightforward thoughts of her protagonist, who is never preachy in her spiritual musings. Maryanne is so delightful, and her voice so earnest and witty, that I found myself hoping that she would find what she was looking for.

A YEAR OF CATS AND DOGS is an engaging yet reflective story of a likable woman searching for meaning in her cluttered life, and I highly recommend it.

Available October 1 in hardcover from The Permanent Press. Pre-order from Amazon here.

Unintentional Summer Hiatus

Like Holly, I did not intend to take a summer hiatus. I did have a two-week trip to California, but I have a laptop, so I figured I would keep up with the blog from there. I completely underestimated how busy this summer would be! I thought I'd list the books I need to review so you know what exciting posts are coming up, and I have some accountability to get caught up. They're sort of in order of priority. Not every book I've read is on the list; for example, I've decided that I was annoyed enough by reading The Double Bind and there's no need to get all worked up writing a negative review. I may not review the Twilight series, either, because it's been reviewed extensively everywhere else.

A Year of Cats and Dogs by Margaret Hawkins
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
39 Clues: Beyond the Grave by Jude Watson (Holly has read this, too, and is waiting patiently for me to do my part of a joint review)
Seducing The Spirits by Louise Young*
Every Boat Turns South by J. P. White*
Back Creek by Leslie Goetsch*
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
Swan for the Money by Donna Andrews
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper*
Smart Mama's Green Guide by Jennifer Taggart*
If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay by Lara Zibners*
A Free Life by Ha Jin*
Etta by Gerald Kolpan*
The Twilight series

*Not yet read

Mystery Monday

I've been in a mystery/detective story kind of mood this summer. I read Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey back in June. I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.

This is the first in what appears to be a new series from Quartey. The promos for it suggested that if you like The Ladies #1 Detective Agency, you may enjoy this one. I had some mixed feelings on this one.

The story of Darko Dawson, a detective in Accra, Ghana's capital, is like his name, a bit dark. A young woman, Gladys is murdered in a small town outside the capital and Darko is sent to help with the investigation. While trying to solve Gladys' murder, memories come flooding back of visits to his aunt's house as a child (she lives in the region) and of his mother's disappearance 20 years earlier. His mother had gone to visit his aunt for a few days and never returned home. His mother's disappearance and Gladys' murder become entwined and in the end both end up getting solved.

The character of Darko is very well-written. We completely understand him from his troubled childhood (dealing with his mother's disappearance and his brother's accident that leaves him in a wheelchair) to his current life with a loving wife and an ailing son who needs a heart operation. Darko has a violent side that he lets loose every now and then. And he's a very smart and dedicated police detective. I can see where he will be a good series character.

I felt the other characters were not nearly as developed which is fine and may come with time as the series progresses, but my chief complaint is that there seemed to be too many of them! I was having a hard time keeping track of everyone. It wasn't until I was about 2/3rds through that I felt like I finally had everyone down.

I really enjoy reading books set in Africa. I like reading about the culture and the enviornment and this one is no exception. Though, I'm not sure I would compare it to Alexander McCall Smith's series very much, except in setting perhaps. It was interesting to read the contrasting cultures of Accra (the big city) to Bedome (the rural community).

I may pick up the next one in the series whenever it comes out, but I'm not sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for it to be published. Wife of the Gods came out July 14th so you can find it at your local bookstore now!

I won Linda Fairstein's Lethal Legacy in a contest back at the beginning of the year.

This is the newest book in the Alexander Cooper mystery series. I had not read any other books in this series, but I deviated from my general "start at the beginning of a series and work forward" rule. Part of this novel is set in the New York Public Library which is what drew me to it.

A young woman is murdered while clutching a valuable rare book. A.D.A. Cooper and her police counterpart Mike Chapman work together to uncover the crime and its connection to the rare book world.

I have to say I give this one 3 stars. There were things I really liked about it. And then things that just plain bugged me. So first the good, I love the Special Collections and rare books aspect of the book. I even found all the details about old maps to be interesting. However, the characters didn't really draw me in (maybe because this is just one book in a series and a later one at that--maybe the character has already been developed in previous books). And the pace of the book was VERY slow. It took me forever to read this book because there was not much gripping me to keep me from putting it down. I really love the cultural aspects of this series. But, it's lacking the excitement and thrill I hope to find in reading a more "serious" mystery.

I was looking for a quick cozy book to read and the second book in Charlaine Harris' Aurora Teagarden series fit the bill nicely. One of Aurora's cohorts from the Real Murders Club--Jane has passed away and inexplicably left her estate (house, jewelry, and savings) to Aurora. This both baffles and excites the librarian as she sorts through what Jane left behind.

Aurora spends time at Jane's house sorting through this and that, meeting the neighbors, pondering what to do with her windfall, all the while trying to figure out A) why the neighbors on the street have all had their houses broken into, and B) why Jane had a skull hidden in her window seat.

Even though the "mystery" of this one was not particularly deep or involved, I really enjoyed it. I like Aurora as a character and enjoyed her exasperation with having her ex-boyfriend (whose newly married and expecting a baby) living across the street from her. I think Harris does a terrific job of writing Aurora's character very real. All of her thoughts, reactions, and emotions are very genuine. I'm looking forward to continuing this series.

YA Weekend--Hunger Games

I do realize I'm about the last book blogger on the planet to review Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. :-) I have had my eye on it since it first made its debut in the blogosphere a year ago. I entered every contest I could find and tried to get it from early reviewer sites. But I did not get my hands on a copy. So I finally broke down and bought my own. Here's the thing, I know it's dystopian fiction. And I'm not sure how I feel about that subject. Sometimes I think that turns me off. But there was something very compelling to me about the storyline and reviews I read about this book. I've read MANY MANY EXCELLENT reviews that are hard to ignore.

I tend to be also be a bit leery about books that have too much hype (ie: The Book Thief and Twilight) because I tend to have high expectations and they fall short for me. I decided to finally jump into the Hunger Games last weekend and boy, I wasn't the least bit sorry!!!

For those who have completely ignored the hype of this book, Katniss and her sister and mother live in District 12 of a country called Panem (it is explained that Panem used to be America and District 12 is located where coal country or Appalachia used to exist). Every year the Capitol pulls two names (one boy, one girl) from each district to participate in The Hunger Games. They release these 24 individuals into an arena filled with whatever environment the officials choose for that year and they must fight each other to the death until one is standing at the end, the victor. The catch is that the Games are televised reality show style all across Panem. And the officials can introduce anything they want into the Arena to move the Games along. Katniss ends up representing District 12 in the Games and since we know the series continues, the ending is fairly predictable.

But however predictable the ending is, getting there is quite interesting. One thing I really liked about Hunger Games is that the main character is a very empowered young woman. She has had to work hard her whole life to survive and even though she does not have much, she makes the most of it. She's very intelligent and cunning, as well as athletic and logical. And really Collins wrote many of the female characters to be smart, athletic, interesting characters (Foxface and Rue). Some of the male characters in contrast seemed of somewhat inferior intelligence and some of them were just big oafs!

I believe Collins could have ended the Hunger Games with the winner returning home wrapping this up into one nice novel. I'll be curious to see how the next two books play out in the aftermath of what happens at the Games. And I'm wondering if they'll be able to keep up the excitement or if the story will drag along. We'll see! Early reviews of Book 2, Catching Fire are all very good and promising.

Reviews coming your way soon!

Just a quick post to say that Allison and I have not fallen off the face of the Earth. We just took a little unintentional hiatus. :-) I've been traveling every other week since May and even though I've been home the last two weeks, I can't seem to get caught up at all. And Allison was traveling as well.

I have at least five book reviews to get up here, if not more. I've lost count because I've just been reading and not paying much attention. I promise to be back soon! I know, I've been a very bad book blogger lately! ;-)

Summer Reading

As the pile of Books That Must Be Reviewed grows ever taller, I have been playing hooky! It's too hot for high literature, which doesn't seem to travel well to the beach. And with the summer comes my compulsion to re-read. This is what I've been up to:

The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde: I haven't re-read these since the fifth (and long-awaited) installment came out about two years ago. The first in the series is The Eyre Affair, which introduces Thursday Next, a Literary Detective in an alternative version of 1985. Time travel, travel within books, literary jokes, rampant punning, re-engineered dodos, characters from classic literature turning up in the real world...you can see why it's hard to summarize them. I thoroughly enjoy this series every time I read it, and I always, always cry for the last couple chapters of the fourth book, Something Rotten.

And I did it, I read Twilight. And I can barely wait to read the rest of the series, even though the end of the book was a bit lame, almost as though Meyer got almost done, then realized that something should happen in the book. Still, addictive and fun. I was sure that I would hate it, but I was enthralled. Excellent summer reading.

I'm headed out of town and packing ONLY books I need to read for review. Now, it so happens that I accidentally had Amazon send my Twilight sequels to my parents' house, which is where I'm headed...

Teaser Tuesdays - The Angel's Game

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!

Mine is from the gorgeous, intoxicating The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, page 95:

When the first breath of dawn touched the windows I opened my eyes and found the bed empty...I went through the whole house, which already smelled of her absence, and one by one blew out the candles I had lit the night before.

YA Weekend--The Postcard

The Postcard by Tony Abbott is more of a middle-grade novel than Young Adult. I learned of this book after reading a terrific review on Lesa's Critiques blog. It won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery.

Thirteen-year old Jason finds himself spending time with his father in sunny St. Petersburg, Florida cleaning out his grandmother's house after she passes away. All he wants to do is get back home (I think it's New York, or some place more north--I can't find it in the book now) to hang out with his best friend Hector. His stay in Florida takes a turn for the worse when his father falls off a ladder cleaning the gutters and ends up spending some time in the hospital. Jason finds himself alone and stumbles onto a family mystery after a strange anonymous phone call asking him if he's smart and to look in the desk. He starts investigating and finds an old postcard. The postcard is an old hotel in the area once owned by Jason's great-grandfather. He discovers a pin-hole in a window in the hotel on the postcard and feels compelled to check it out after also discovering an old magazine article featuring the hotel in a fictional story. This starts Jason's journey throughout St. Petersburg and his family history.

By the end of the story Jason learns who his real grandfather is, what his grandmother's life was like when she was younger, and what a tyrant his great-grandfather was. Along the way, Jason also befriends a girl in the neighborhood named Dia who eventually helps him solve the mystery.

I really love the premise of this book. I think family histories can be very interesting and I love looking at old archival materials like postcards and whatnot. A trail of clues on old postcards is a fun idea! I also liked the realistic nature of Jason's family. His parents are on the verge of splitting up, he feels torn between them. His father is a borderline alcoholic. There are real family issues discussed that I think many kids reading this book can identify with.

However, this book was quite long for what it was. I felt bored about halfway through. And though it overall was an interesting concept, I wonder if I was bored if a middle-schooler reading this might be bored too. I'm not sure. Funny, I think I'm realizing something about my reading habits. This particular book had a story within a story concept to it. I find that whenever I read books like that (ie: Atwood's Blind Assassin), I lose interest in the story within a story and just want to read the "real" story. I rate this book lower simply because of its length and sort of wished perhaps there was a tad bit more adventure/suspense to the story. It unfolded very methodically. Just wasn't zippy enough for me after reading The Red Blazer Girls and the 39 Clues books.

Fragment by Warren Fahy

I received an ARC of Fragment from Random House through Shelf Awareness. This book was touted as the next Jurassic Park or The Ruins. I have not read The Ruins, but I did read Jurassic Park (many years ago now) and devoured it! I LOVED the mix of adventure, science, suspense and Crichton's good writing. After that, I read all of Crichton's earlier works. So I was really looking forward to delving into a scientific thriller.

The book opens on a boat filled with scientists and a camera crew recording a reality show that takes the scientists to various islands looking for new species. When they come across an island only mentioned once in all of history and completely uninhabited, the scientists are excited to check it out. Once ashore, they discover a crazy world left to evolve without any human contact whatsoever. Darwin gone completely crazy! There are plants that are actually animals. Every species on the island seems to be a predator. The opening of the book starts with quite a bang and continues on that front throughout. It doesn't really slow down, except for the lengthy scientific descriptions throughout the book.

The overall premise of the book is fantastic. The prologue of the book provides a brief history of alien species invading islands and taking over or causing other species to go extinct. Alien as in foreign not extraterrestrial. I actually found this information just as intriguing as the novel. It set up the book quite nicely. This is Fahy's first novel and it's relatively well done. I say relatively because I think there was good and bad. Fahy has a fantastic imagination. The descriptions of the island, its animals and environment were spot-on. The back of the book contains a map of the island and sketches of some of the species found on the island. I found my vision of the animals from the text was quite close to the sketches provided. It takes a incredible amount of imagination for Fahy to create the island that he did.

The title is apt in that it not only describes the island as an isolated fragment of a supercontinent long ago, but also the writing style. Short chapters that jump around between characters and places. This eemed very disjointed and bugged me through the first 2/3rds of the book. The last 1/3rd really picked up and ended quite interestingly. I was satisfied with the ending and that made up for some of my annoyance in the beginning of the book. Some of the lengthy scientific descriptions got a little tedious, but not overwhelming.

Overall, this is a fun book for summer. A good vacation read. And I can definitely see this made into a movie. It is so visual. One of my real problems with the book actually has nothing to do with the author. It was the marketing. This book did not live up to Jurassic Park for me. I definitely can see a comparison to Crichton's work in general, the science-fiction adventure such as Congo comes to mind more than Jurassic Park. I just think that's quite a lot to live up to for a debut novel. This book is receiving nice praise though, check out other reviews at:Thoughts of Joy and The Novel Bookworm. Both glowing reviews.

Fragment became available in bookstores June 16, 2009.

YA Book Carnival - Giveaway

The very first YA Book Carnival begins today! At On My Bookshelf, we are excited to host a giveaway of two fantastic YA novels, courtesy of Penguin Young Readers!



Waiting for You by Susane Colasanti: Marisa is ready to start her sophomore year on the right foot with a positive attitude and dreams of a boyfriend who will bring her everything she's been waiting for. But when popular Derek surprisingly asks her out, she discovers that what she always wished for might not be enough. Navigating a year filled with conflict--including her parents' relationship turmoil and a fight with her best friend--makes Marisa stronger and helps her understand what's really important. Someone close to Marisa has been waiting for her all along, but will she realize that he's the one?


Peace Love & Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle: By sophomore year, Carly is so over her cushy lifestyle in the affluent Atlanta suburbs. She is tired of fancy nails, shiny cars, and empty values, and has vowed to become a non-leg-shaving-rebel hippy just to be different. The only person she isn't sick of is her little sister, Anna. But while Carly was away for the summer, her younger sister blossomed into the hottest girl at school. Carly has always relied on Anna's consistency and authenticity, but suddenly everything is different. Then beautiful Cole appears on the scene, and Carly is too busy crushing on him to notice that Anna is drifting away. During an ill-fated party at their house, Carly and Anna--and a trio of adorable baby ducks--hit rock bottom and finally start to make things right.

Who wants to win this pair of ARCs? Leave a comment here for one entry. Become a public follower for FIVE more entries. The winner (US & Canada only, please) will be selected on Friday, June 26 at noon, in time to announce the winner for the last day of the YA Book Carnival on Saturday, June 27.

Picture Book Thursday

Today's Picture Book Thursday is all about two summer releases courtesy of Penguin Young Readers.

All of Baby: Nose to Toes by Victoria Adler (Pictures by Hiroe Nakata): This was a big hit with Lilah, and a lot of fun for me to read aloud--there are no awkward or dull ryhmes here. The rhyme scheme is energetic, the rhythm extremely readable ("Baby's got a nose, a neat little nose. Sniffs at a rose nose. Honks when it blows nose. Wrinkles when it goes nose--goes kerchoo."), and the formula is pleasantly predictable (each two-page spread deals with one body part and is followed with "Who loves baby's _____? Me! I do.") It also deals with a baby's favorite topic, body parts, and the gentle, colorful illustrations are very pleasing to the eye. This is a gorgeous book that will become a favorite for babies/toddlers and the adults who read to them.

Best Baby Ever by David Milgrim: I actually looked up the age range on this book to be sure it was intended for children. Not that it's inappropriate; it's simply that I was cracking up while Lilah's attention was wandering. This book follows baby's milestones through the parents' gushing to friends, relatives, strangers who stand still long enough. Among the antics of this young family: In their haste to find the camera to capture Baby's every amazing "first," the new parents let Baby wander right out the front door. The text is written in Dick and Jane style, which enhances the humor: "See Baby laugh. Laugh, Baby, Laugh. See Daddy jump up and down on one leg and cluck like a chicken to get more laughs." The book ends with the parents crying like babies as Baby, having reached so many other milestones, heads off to school. If you know a couple expecting their first baby, your shower gift shopping is over - they will love this book.

Teaser Tuesdays - Re-Reading

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!

I'm re-reading one of my very favorite series, the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, and I'm on the second book, Lost in a Good Book. It's a tough call whether I adore Thursday or her brilliant creator more. There's so much going on in these books that it's tough to pick a couple of sentences that will make any sort of sense to someone new to the series, so this is longer than two sentences. Thursday is talking to Marianne Dashwood in Sense & Sensibility:

"Don't we have to be careful as to what we say?" I managed to utter, looking around nervously.

"Goodness me, no!" exclaimed Marianne with a delightful giggle. "The chapter is over, and besides, this book is written in the third person. We are free to do what we please until tomorrow morning, when we depart for Devon. The next two chapters are heavy with exposition--I hardly have anything to do, and I say even less! You look confused, poor thing! Have you been into a book before?"

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley: Reading does not get better than this! The story begins in 1950s rural England, where precocious eleven-year-old Flavia deLuce spends her spare time getting even with her older sisters, tinkering with poisons in her chemistry lab, and riding her bicycle from the rundown family manor to the village. When a dead bird turns up on the doorstep with a postage stamp on its beak and a barely alive stranger breathes his last, perplexing word ("Vale!") to Flavia, it is the most exciting time in her life to date. Most troubling to her: her father's shock and fright at the sight of the bird and a missing piece of the housekeeper's dreadful custard pie - who could possibly have eaten that? She digs into the investigation with relish, uncovering disturbing information about her father's school days and a postage stamp worth killing for. The police at first send Flavia off to make tea, but grow to appreciate her insights. The premise of a young aristocratic girl solving mysteries could be dreadful, but in Bradley's capable, witty hands, the material makes for an engaging mystery that manages to exude originality while evoking the Golden Age mystery. Is Flavia a realistic eleven-year-old from 1950? Really, I don't care in the least. She's so appealing, and I was so relieved that she uses her prodigious intellect for (mostly) good and not evil, that I wasn't bothered by questions of how

Fortunately, Sweetness is billed as the first in a series, and I look forward to more of Flavia's outrageous antics and penetrating deductions.

The Actor and the Housewife - Review and Giveaway!

Bloomsbury USA was kind enough to send me a review copy of Hale's second book for adults (after Austenland, a fun Jane Austen-infused bit of chick lit), The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale. Hale takes a chick-lit premise (housewife meets her celebrity crush) and turns it on its head. Becky Jack is a happily married mother of three and seven months pregnant when she meets Colin Firth, I mean Felix Callahan. She insults Callahan with such wit that he invites her to dinner. They become fast friends, calling, e-mailing, and visiting when possible, though Callahan is no fan of children and views her Mormonism with amusement. The premise is completely unrealistic, of course, and Hale even points out the unlikelihood of the two meeting (they meet when Becky flies out to Hollywood because she's sold a screenplay with no effort whatsoever and then stars opposite Callahan in the film), but the friendship and Becky's balance between Callahan and her family are the center of the story.

I found this mostly enjoyable and more thought-provoking than chick lit, if overlong (at 352 pages). An omniscient narrator pops in and out with commentary that makes the book seem like a fairy tale and the repartee between Becky and Callahan really sparkles. However, there are issues that other non-Mormons may run into. I found Becky to be naive at times, in contrast to her intelligence and wit, and her relationship with her "perfect" husband sometimes grated. Apparently, Mormon women simply aren't friends with men, so Becky's family and bishop counsel her to drop the friendship, to "avoid the very appearance of evil." Even though her friendship with Callahan enriches her life, Becky is prepared to drop it if her husband objects. I found this to be both frustrating and interesting because my inner feminist yelled, "Are you kidding me?" when Becky considers giving up this part of her life when her husband is jealous, but at the same time, it's a complicated question since marriage is all about compromise and I can see putting family first. But (I know, another 'but') Becky really ranks herself third after her husband's wishes and her children's needs, and I can't relate to that. She gushes and gushes about how perfect and wonderful her husband is, but when he finds the house a mess after work, he scolds her like an errant child, and I gritted my teeth through those parts of the book. At least Becky doesn't submit easily; she responds passive-aggressively to his criticism by asking him to clean up while she finishes her phone call with Callahan. But this doesn't seem like a marriage of equals. I'm not sure if that's typical of LDS marriages, but a little more equal partnership would have been nice. Becky seems smarter, wittier, and more fun than her husband, so his de facto tyranny was especially annoying.

Hale has done an excellent job making a chaste relationship story entertaining and offering a complicated alternative to the usual chick lit formula. This would be a good choice for book clubs, as there are plenty of issues to discuss, and different people are sure to react differently to the relationships in the book. For those mystified by Mormonism, The Actor and the Housewife sheds a bit of light on the community, and groups can discuss the questions presented by the book and how they would have answered them.

Are you intrigued? Tell me about a book you've recently read that you found thought-provoking, and you'll be entered to win my gently read hardcover copy. US and Canada only, please, and enter before Sunday, June 21 at noon.

The Writing Class by Jincy Willett

The Writing Class is almost indescribably good, but I'm going to ramble on and on about it anyway. Amy Gallup was a novelist, but she peaked early and hasn't written in years, except on her blog, where she catalogues funny-looking words and creates debate about the sexiest letter of the alphabet. She's out of print, divorced, and bitter, and she survives by teaching creative writing through the university extension. Her thirteen students this session are the best group she's had in years...except for a prankster who leaves creepy voicemails, vicious comments and pornographic drawings on workshop writing samples, and a Ted Bundy mask in a student's car. When a student dies, the remaining class members band together to determine the culprit, knowing that one of them is a killer.

Willett deftly skewers the writing life and writing classes while maintaining the suspense of a murder mystery. We read writing samples from the class members, which run the gamut from cliched to overwrought, and provides clues to the killer's identity. One student, Carla, has taken Amy's class so many times that she quotes Amy when other students ask questions. Carla could have been a shell of a character, but Willett draws her developing relationship with Amy in a rich, complicated way. The other class members begin as one-note characters (Amy's class roster is hilarious), but we see them develop into realistic people. The And Then There Were None group dynamic is intriguing and very well handled. The group manages to avoid the fact that the killer whose identity they playfully discuss is actually one of them. This is a wickedly funny, thought-provoking, page-turner of a novel, and I'll be reading more of Willett's work.