DS's 12 in 12 Challenge

Due to a complicated life and an inability to figure out how to not have too many books in one category and too few in another (really 1 history or science should book equal 3 or 4 romances!) I have totally stolen bookoholic13’s 12 in 12 idea!

I am aiming for 12 books a month (or 11 books and a chapter in a Turkish book) with at least 1 book in each of my 12 categories during the year – not in each month. So if I only get around to 1 history or science book I won’t feel the need to run out and buy some. I am thinking of possibly trying to limit buying books and reading all of my TBR or re-read some books. Any books that I read each month beyond 12 (unless it is the first book from a category) will go into my 75 book challenge (which Harry Potter ve Felsefe Taşı has made me totally blow off this year!)

My categories are basically staying the same with the addition of #12 - Diversicon/CONvergence guests or attendees.

1. January totals - # books read: _12_ # books left: _132_
2. February totals - # books read: _24_ # books left: _120_
3. March totals – # books read: 36 # books left: 108__
4. April totals - # books read: _48_ # books left: _96_
5. May totals - # books read: _60_ # books left: _84_
6. June totals – # books read: __ # books left: __
7. July totals - # books read: __ # books left: __
8. August totals - # books read: __ # books left: __
9. September totals - # books read: __ # books left: __
10. October totals - # books read: __ # books left: __
11. November totals - # books read: __ # books left: __
12. December totals - # books read: __ # books left: __

Categories:

1 – Anglosphere - We Speak English Here - #done: __5_
History and literature of English speaking countries from 1500 and forward. Most probably concentrating on Elizabethan England and Shakespeare.

Elizabeth, CEO by Alan Axelrod
The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier 452 pages
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier 302 pages
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen audio book
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall 437 pages

2 – If it Looks Good – Eat it!- #done: _4__
Anything remotely to do with food, cooking and the culture that goes with it

Everyday Food: Light: The Quickest and Easiest Recipes, All Under 500 Calories by Martha Stewart Living Magazine
Istanbul Eats: Exploring the Culinary Backstreets 173 pages
Gourmet Mustard: The How Tos of Making & Cooking with Mustard by Helen Sawyer and Cheryl Long 111 pages
Paleo Comfort Foods: Homestyle Cooking for a Gluten-Free Kitchen by Julie Sullivan Mayfield, Charles Mayfield 330 pages

3 – Read Like an English Major - #done: _1__
Books on analysis and interpretation of literature and classic English works

Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students by Robert Eaglestone

4 – Oh the Places They Go!- #done: _11__
Autobiography/biography - Stories by people about places they have gone and things they done

I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson by Osa Johnson
Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier 195 pages
It's Only the Sister by Angela du Maurier 265 pages
Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster 419 pages
Me by Ricky Martin 292 pages
Finding Oz by Evan I Schwartz 315 pages
India Becoming by Akash Kapur 294 pages
Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music by Phil Ramone 293 pages
The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca by Tahir Shah 368 pages
Behind the Dream by Clarence B Jones 189 pages
The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization by Alice Feiring 288 pages

5 – People, Places and Things That Never Were- #done: _8_
Sci-Fi/Fantasy/alternate history

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis
Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs 215 pages
Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Warlords of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull 435 pages
Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier
Mr. Darcy, Vampire by Amanda Grange audio book

6 – Englisc- #done: _2__
Anglo-Saxon and Old English history and literature

Medieval Garments Reconstructed-Norse Clothing Patterns by lilli Fransen, Anna Norgaard & Else Ostergard 142 pages
The Lyre handbook by Mary K savelli 23 pages

7 – Anything I bloody Want to Read - #done: _4__
Mixed bag – things that don’t fit into other categories

Quiet: Power if the Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Alias: Free Fall by Christa Roberts 177 pages
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood 196 pages
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak- audio book

8 – A Rose is a rhosyn is gül . . . - #done: _1__
How languages work and how we learn them.

Experiences in Translation by Umberto Eco 129 pages

9 – In the Library with a Candlestick. . . - #done: _3__
Mysteries

Songs My Mother Never Taught Me by Selçuk Altun 212 pages
Topkapi Secret by Terry Kelhawk 402 pages
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collines

10- Purple Prose - #done: _9_
Romance

To Sir Phillip, with Love by Julia Quinn
It's in his Kiss by Julia Quinn
The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn
The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet by Mary Balogh
The Ideal Wife by Mary Balogh
The Thorn and the Blossom by Theodora Goss
Forever by Jude Deveraux 359 pages
Return to Summerhouse by Jude Deveraux 425 pages
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan 400 pages

11- They Drive the Bus - #done: _1__
books by Diversicon/CONvergence guests or attendees

Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber 800 pages

12- Foreign Fables - #done: ___
books in a language other than English (Turkish of course!)

TBR # – 47
Re-reads # - 1
New books # - 47

Time investment vs. number of books read

I have decided to use time investment as my form of measurement my books this year (if/when I need to)

Over 300 pages = 2 books
Over 500 pages = 3 books
Over 700 pages = 4 books

Chomsky - every 50 pages = 1 book
Books with knowledge – every 100 pages = 1 book
Boring books I feel I should finish - every 100 pages = 1 book

I think that basically about every 3 hours counts as a book.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

1. January totals - # actual books read: 12 # books left: 0

TBR # –
Re-reads # -
New books # - 12

1- Elizabeth, CEO by Alan Axelron 251 pages
2- I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson by Osa Johnson 408 pages
3- To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Wiliis 493 pages
4- Quiet: Power if the Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain 264 pages
5- Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students by Robert Eaglestone 155 pages
6- To Sir Phillip, with Love by Julia Quinn 372 pages
7- It's in his Kiss by Julia Quinn 368 pages
8- The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn 373 pages
9- Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis 160 pages
10- Loving Frank by Nancy Horan 400 pages
11- The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet by Mary Balogh 495 pages
12- The Ideal Wife by Mary Balogh 339 pages

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

2. February totals - # books read: _12_ # books left: _0_

TBR # –
Re-reads # -
New books # - 12

1- Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier 195 pages
2 - It's Only the Sister by Angela du Maurier 265 pages
3 - Medieval Garments Reconstructed-Norse Clothing Patterns by lilli Fransen, Anna Norgaard & Else Ostergard 142 pages
4 - Alias: Free Fall by Christa Roberts 177 pages
4.5 The Lyre handbook by Mary K savelli 23 pages
5 - Everyday Food: Light: The Quickest and Easiest Recipes, All Under 500 Calories by Martha Stewart Living Magazine
6 - Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster 419 pages
7 - Experiences in Translation by Umberto Eco 129 pages - excellant book!
8 - Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs 215 pages
9 - Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
10- The Warlords of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
11- The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier 452 pages
12- Me by Ricky Martin 292 pages

DS

(Bruce's evil twin :-))

3. March totals – # books read: _12_ # books left: _0_

TBR # – 2
Re-reads # -
New books # - 11

1- The Thorn and the Blossom by Throdora Goss
2- Finding Oz by Evan I Schwartz 315 pages
3- Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull 435 pages
4- Forever by Jude Deveraux 359 pages
5- Songs My Mother Never Taught Me by Selçuk Altun 212 pages
6- India Becoming by Akash Kapur 294 pages
7- Topkapi Secret by Terry Kelhawk 402 pages
8- Return to Summerhouse by Jude Deveraux 425 pages
9- Istanbul Eats: Exploring the Culinary Backstreets 173 pages
10- The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood 196 pages
11- Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier 302 pages
12- Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music by Phil Ramone 293 pages

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

4. April totals - # books read: _12_ # books left: _0_

TBR # –
Re-reads # - 1
New books # - 11

1- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collines
2- Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier
3- The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca by Tahir Shah 368 pages
4- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen audio book
5- Mr. Darcy, Vampire by Amanda Grange audio book
6- Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber 800 pages
7- Gourmet Mustard: The How Tos of Making & Cooking with Mustard by Helen Sawyer and Cheryl Long 111 pages
8- Behind the Dream by Clarence B Jones 189 pages
9- The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak- audio book
10- Paleo Comfort Foods: Homestyle Cooking for a Gluten-Free Kitchen by Julie Sullivan Mayfield, Charles Mayfield 330 pages
11- The well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall 437 pages
12- The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization by Alice Feiring 288 pages


DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

5. May totals - # books read: _12_ # books left: _0_

TBR # –
Re-reads # -
New books # - 12

1- Depression-Free, Naturally: 7 Weeks to Eliminating Anxiety, Despair, Fatigue, and Anger from Your Life by Joan mathews Larson 334 pages
2- Running a Bed & Breakfast for Dummies by Mary White 334 pages
3- The King's Mistresses: the Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna and her sister, Hortense, Duchess Mazarin by Elizabeth C Goldsmith 226 pages
4- Wine & War by Don Kladstrup and Petie Kladstrup 248 pages
5- Rick Steve's Istanbul by Lale Surman Aran and Tankut Aran 414 pages (w/appendix)
6- Angel by Elizabeth Taylor 252 pages
7- Radclyffe Hall: A Case of Obscenity? by Vera Brittain 178 pages (w/appendix)
8- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 380 pages
9- Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld 440 pages
10- Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld 485 pages
11- The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken 176 pages (w/index)
12- Jean Anderson Cooks: Her Kitchen Reference & Recipe Collection by Jean Anderson 560 pages (w/index)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

6. June totals – # books read: _12_ # books left: _0_

TBR # –
Re-reads # - 2
New books # - 10

1 - Bliss by O Z Livaneli 276 pages
2 - By Schism Rent Asunder by David Weber 688 pages
3 - By Heresies Distressed by David Weber 475 pages
4 - Outcasts United by Warren St John 304 pages
5 - The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie 368 pages
6 - Unnatural Issue: An Elemental Masters Novel by Mercedes Lackey 384 pages
7 - The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie 162 pages
8 - Fire Dance by Delle Jacobs 302 pages
9 - Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance by Sarah Woodbury 352 pages
10 - Footsteps in Time by Sarah Woodbury 326 pages
11 - Prince of Time by Sarah Woodbury 364 pages
12 - hotel Bosphorus by Esmahan Aykol 246 pages

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

7. July totals - see http://www.librarything.com/topic/138842

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

8. August totals - see - http://www.librarything.com/topic/138842
DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

9. September - see -http://www.librarything.com/topic/138842

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

10. October totals - http://www.librarything.com/topic/138842

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

11. November totals - http://www.librarything.com/topic/138842

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

12. December totals - http://www.librarything.com/topic/138842

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Looking good!! Keeping my fingers Xed for us both! :)

If you are trying to read your own books, why not join us next year in the BOYS (Books off Your Shelf) Challenge.

We're helping each other to whittle down those TBRs!

15> I don't know I've already failed the 75 book challenge for this year.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

So the hubby actually suggested that I not do the 121212 challenge. Is that grounds for divorce? I mean what was he thinking???? Apparently he wasn’t because he changed his mind almost immediately.

In an attempt to be more creative and to make the categories more in line with what I currently want to read, I have updated and changed my categories. I got rid of Read the Book see the Movie and replaced with Englisc - Anglo-Saxon and Old English history and literature.

I am rearranging the lower shelf that goes over my desk so that I have my TBR books for the challenge in plain sight and in order of category. I love that labeler!

Is it January yet??

I had no idea CS Lewis wrote Sci-fi!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Is it January yet??

Nope, but getting pretty darn close! Too funny about your husband's comment! I tried to sneak two new book purchases into the house today only to get cornered at the bookshelves with a "do you plan on reading any of the books you already have?" comment. He was asking more out of curiosity than anything else - probably because he is the one that purchased the current bookcase to store my overflowing TBR pile and has been hinting that he should be keeping his eye out for another bookcase. I am the one that keeps saying we don't need another bookcase..... mainly because I have no idea where we would put it. Besides, two books I finished went on to other homes last week so really my book buying is more of a maintenance plan, and I am going to continue to convince myself of that! ;-)

Time investment vs. number of books read

I have decided to use time investment as my form of measurement my books this year. It doesn’t seem fair that counting a 700 page book the same as a 300 page one, or that a book that I need to invest a significant amount of time to gets the same as an easy read.

If my goal was 12 books for the year it of course wouldn’t be an issue, but I want 12 books in a month. This would be an easy thing to do if I wasn’t reading history, linguistics, in a language I barely understand and other what I call ‘non-fluff’ books or had I life. And I admit it is not an unknown occurrence for me to spend the weekend in bed reading 7-8 books but I usually feel guilty when I indulge at such a rate.

I can usually get a good romance or mystery book read in about 3 hours and it took me just over 11 hours to read the last Harry Potter (in English) so I am figuring that for an easy read 100 pages = 1 hour.

The below are guidelines not hard fast rules, if a book is an easy read and is over 350 pages I will still count it as one book. I am not automatically saying the book has 301 pages it counts as two though.

Over 300 pages = 2 books
Over 500 pages = 3 books
Over 700 pages = 4 books

Chomsky - every 50 pages = 1 book (why can’t he be more like Hawkins??)
Books with knowledge – every 100 pages = 1 book
Boring books I feel I should finish - every 100 pages = 1 book

I think that basically what I am saying is about every 3 hours of time invested counts as a book.

I also think that this will let me relax when reading say The Government of Elizabethan England, instead of thinking I have to read this and move on the make my quota for the month. I can take my time, I can think about how everything connected, I can look up stuff on the internet if there is something that I want to learn about more. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Interesting system

It does sound tempting to figure book counts based on pages in each book. I seldom read anything with fewer pages than 500 and tend to pick up tomes constantly. Part of my problem is I read with an ereader so length of a book hardly registers until I start it and see it tell me how many pages.

I'll never hit 75 books for a year unless I purposefully chose short works. Sigh.

I find that a frustrating point with the e-reader, needing to look up page counts.

I also read tomes, and was finding it frustrating that a graphic novel counts that same as a 1,000 page book. Why should I limit myself to shorter books? Why should I be basically be penalized for reading longer ones? After 2-3 years of not liking it, I figured measuring time investment was better way.

Page count is just a convenient way to measure it without needing to keep track of every minute spent reading.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Your thread. Your rules! I, myself, count a graphic novel the same as a 500 page book since I think (hope) that they will average out in the end. Last year I read 105 books which totaled almost 36,000 pages which averages out to 350 pages per book.

Another place to find page counts is your library's catalog. They don't mind if you use it for purposes other than looking for a book.

And if your local library doesn't have a given book, you can also get page counts from WorldCat (www.worldcat.org). You can search it by ISBN to make sure you get the correct edition, although if ebooks are assigned different ISBNs than hard copies, that might not be helpful. Still, most books are published in both formats.

Elizabeth, CEO by Alan Axelrod

Format: hardcover
Subject: leadership strategies
Genre: business/leadership/history
Source: B&N - used

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4

Alan Axelrod used Queen Elizabeth I’s reign as an example on how and why a leader should act and think.

It is a very interesting way of looking at the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Obviously it doesn’t go into dept (or in chronological order) of her reign, but it does cover some key points and a since it is about leadership and not history a different way of looking at it.

The premise is that England at the start of her reign was a failing business. It had no money, it was being threatened by hostile takeovers and the employees were disgruntled and by the time she died it was a business success story.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson by Osa Johnson

Format: paperback
Subject: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson
Setting: Kansas, Africa and various other uncharted places
Characters: Martin and Osa Johnson
Genre: Memoir
Source: B&N used

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.5

Martin Johnson was the son of a jeweler in Kansas who wanted his son to join the family business and be a success. But Martin wasn’t the kind of person who could settle down and do the ordinary. Fortunately his family understood this and didn’t try to coerce him to conform to their dreams of who he should be.

Two of the turning points in his life were discovering photography and a once in a lifetime trip with Jack London. By the end of his somewhat short life he and his wife of 27 years had spent most of their time photographing and filming the wild and disappearing parts of our world from cannibals to lions and elephants.

The only thing that could have made this story better to the modern reader would have been how they lived with Martins diabetes. But at the time it was something that wasn’t discussed or talked about.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Format: paperback
Subject: time travel
Setting: mostly Victorian England
Characters: Ned, Verity, Mrs Schrapnell, Terrence & Tossie
Genre: sci-fi/fantasy/mystery
Source: B&N used

Total score out of a possible 5 – 1.33

Character – 0
Plot – 2
Theme – 1
Style – 4
Setting – 1
Entertaining? 0

Wow 186 people on Amazon gave this book 5 out of 5 stars. For me one word to describe this book – tedious, 400+ pages of tedious. If it wasn’t for my rating system I wouldn’t even have given it a score of 1.33, and almost considered allowing negative scoring.

I think that this book is a case of good premise and bad execution. First the characters seem to have no life outside of the story. Except for Tossie we don’t know what motivates them, where they came from, what they want or desire. And even with Tossie we learn very little. This is not good, you need to feel something for the characters that you are reading about.

Yes, there are a few spots where it is amusing but not too many.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

>27 bruce_krafft:

Had you read her Doomsday book? Most people find a lot more readable then the Dog... - they are not directly connected but the same ideas bleed through - and some of them make some more sense (a lot more sense) if you had read the Doomsday book. The Dog is almost the reverse of what the previous one is. I personally like both but I know quite a lot of people that cannot stand the style of Doomsday, let alone the Dog.

I actually have The Doomsday Book on my TBR pile. And I am thinking that it might be on there for quite a while after this book.

The problem wasn’t that it was hard to understand, the problem was that there was nothing that made me WANT to read it other then I find it hard not to finish a book that I have started. I wasn’t given anything to make me like or care about the characters or why they were doing what they were doing. It wasn’t amusing, it didn’t make me think of something in a new or different way, it didn’t make me care if the characters succeeded or not in their endeavors.

The author should make you care about the characters in some way, and they should develop through the story even if it is just for us to learn more about them and what they think and feel. To me there was not one character that would be considered a primary character. She could have easily killed off Ned at anytime in the book and it wouldn’t have made a difference to me, except of course that he was the narrator and killing him off would have been a bit odd.

What do we know about Ned? He has been going to jumble sales and looking for the Bishop’s bird stump because of Mrs. Schrapnell, a rich American who wants to re-build Coventry Cathedral because she read a dairy of a dead relative who said that a trip to the Cathedral changed her life in a dramatic way. We actually care and know more about what motivates her, a character that we don’t actually meet until the very end of the book, then we do about the two main characters.

So Ned needs some rest and knows nothing of Victorian England but is the only person available to send so they send him there, good start. What made him become a ‘historian’? Was it the thrill of adventure? Was it the thrill of seeing the past? What does he do outside of work? What is his specialty?

Point in fact - penwipers. Really what historian sees something he doesn’t know about and doesn’t go about finding out what it is? Ok maybe the point of penwipers was so he could see Verity using one and have an a-ha! moment (which he does) but it would have been better if every time he encountered one he muttered something about must find time to find out what these blasted things are! Because if you live in a time of time travel, you most certainly have the ability to find out what a penwiper is in about 30 seconds or less. Or you look at the word and go pen-wiper – must be what it says on the tin . . . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I haven't read any of Connie Willis' works but I must say it is refreshing to see a dissenter in the world of LT reviews.

I always feel especially tentative & guilty when I give a review that is so different from the general consensus. But this is why I created a form for myself so I could rate them more analytically then emotionally. Here are the questions for character that I ask myself when reviewing a book –

• Are the characters flat or three-dimensional?
• Does character development occur?
• Is character description direct or indirect?
• Do you feel attachment to the characters?
• Are the characters characters for the plots sake or would they be interesting without the plot?

Each question gets either a 1 or a 0.

What makes Ned, Ned in the story? As far as I can tell the only thing that makes Ned, Ned is that he is the narrator and we are told that he is Ned. Ned learns things in the story, but nothing important to the character. The characters that I felt the most attachment to were Mrs. Schapnell and the maid Jane/Colleen who were secondary characters at best.

Did I feel attachment? Not at all. And to me that is perhaps the most important thing in a story.

And don’t get me started on “the incongruity” or “destination malfunction” which had so much potential but only ended up being the most tedious part. A better/different editor probably could have made this into a much better and shorter book.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Quiet: Power if the Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Wow, great book. Will write more on it later.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

>31 bruce_krafft: I have a similar list of questions to help me rate books. One question, though: What do you do with books where there isn't much character development on purpose? I've seen this in some experimental novels and in a fair amount of eighteenth-century and older novels. I feel bad rating a book lower because I'm applying modern literary standards to older works.

I will keep an eye out for Elizabeth I CEO. That sounded like a very interesting way to look at her reign.

To me character development is not only about the character developing in a story, but also about revealing the different levels of the character as a person, what makes them who they are, why they do the things they do, how they react with other people. Obviously we can’t learn everything there is to know about the character when we ‘meet’ them, so things are (or should be) revealed to us as we read the story. When first we meet they are cardboard cutouts and as we progress through the story they should gain more weight, and make us care about them (we don’t have to like them though.)

A good story is still a good story no matter what style is used to convey the story. I also consider: plot, theme, style, setting and how entertaining I find it. I am striving for consistency, if I use different standards then it is harder to compare.

Of course I also have to realize that I am a ‘modern’ reader, this is how I see the world, so this is why I use ‘modern literary standards’ for the things that I read.

I might change my mind after I have read some of the books on literary criticism that I have on my TBR pile though.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students good book for ‘dipping my toes’ into the sea of literature. The only drawback is that it is written for UK students. But I found that it still had some interesting information and insights about the field of English literature.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

WOW. I just received A Dictionary of Turkish Verbs: In Context and By Theme and am pretty much overwhelmed by it’s size. I know I should probably look at the physical description of the book when I order too, but I usually don’t.

When I get money or Amazon gift cards I usually try to buy something from my Amazon wish list that I normally wouldn’t buy for myself because I am ‘fiscally prudent’ and am waiting for the price to go down. A Dictionary of Turkish Verbs: In Context and By Theme is one of the things that I bought with this year’s gift money.

Not only is it at least twice as thick as I was expecting, it is also twice the height & width I was expecting. And so far it is fabulous! It does have an ‘odd’ amount of white space with extra wide margins (at least 1/3 of the page seems to be white space.) But this could be so you have plenty of room to write notes in the margins. I also would have preferred the ‘headings’ to be a little more visible, perhaps in a larger font and bolded.

I like the different indexes which allow you to look up the verbs in different ways like by class (there are 15 classes with subclasses), or theme. There is also a section on proverbs, which could really be expanded and have a whole book devoted to.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

It does feel like you got more for your money when a chunkster like that arrives! :)

I went a bit over board at the thrift store today. I planned ahead and brought a list of the books that we already had by the authors that we liked. Well, lets just say 32 books later – and I still didn’t manage to find the one that hubby wanted! But I did get two books by Philippa Gregory that I wasn’t looking for, a steal at 10% of the original price!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I found you! Bit confused about how your books of the shelf will mesh with your categories, but I'm assuming if I saw your bookshelves it would all become clear. Love the categories, & I wonder if our Con categories are going to overlap. I think I'll be at CONvergence this year.

& love Chomsky = 50 pages! Yes, with the full 144 book goal, you should make adjustments for the more challenging books so you don't get tempted to sneak in books like The Bridges of Madison County and Sweet Valley High. ;) & I'm looking forward to see what your lit crit reading does to your thinking/reviewing.

Sorry you didn't like To Say Nothing of the Dog. It was a few years ago, and I remember it striking me as totally improbable but amusing anyway in a poke fun at the Victorians/shaggy dog sort of way. I do remember thinking, oh sweet the protags got together, but now I didn't care about them much either. It was the convuluted plot that was the payoff for reading it.

Then I read Fforde who does even more ridiculous time travel. For me it was somewhat amusing but please don't ever make me read another of his books again. Obviously, I'm in a minority here since lots of our fellow challenge-mates love Fforde. I'm wondering if time travel plots (especially backwards at will time travel) don't have some sort of fatal flaw in them that after you've read one or two makes you want to chuck any time travel book against the wall. At some point, it just becomes too convenient. Have you read the CL Moore time travel story that's called "The Perfect Day" or something like that? I'm thinking it may be cynical enough to work, and it's short. I haven't read it yet. I've just heard it described in great detail, enough to make me think it's a touchstone for time travel lit.

I actually love Fforde! And I 'normally' love time travel books. I think that To Say Nothing of the Dog is a good concept that lacked execution - too much hamster in a wheel and not enough substance. For example why are cats extinct in Ned’s time? Is there any one alive who remembers seeing them or had one? I mean, even the whole putting the shoe that the dog took back out in the hallway could have been better, but as with the rest of the book it lacked depth. He could have stood in the hallway, back against the wall, waiting, remembering another time when he had waited, terrified to be caught doing some schoolboy transgression. And maybe we could have learned something about him, and started to care about him.

Off to find the McNamara Alumni Center for the company party. Don't want to go. Who has a company party after work???????

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Ohhhhh.... I soooo wouldn't want to go anywhere tonight. Still catching up from holiday merriment. Have a good party anyway!

Really wasn't fun driving in heels with a manual transmission in rush hour traffic. Then of course to get into the parking ramp! Three blocks of move two feet stop, move two feet stop. Of course from about a block away we could see the 'FULL' sign on the ramp, but not the 'reservations only' until we were much closer, in part because there was a bus in front of us.

I would say that of all the company parties that I have been to this pretty much a total miss. Ok, I get it; the ‘theme’ was Minnesota. And while I adore & love Cream of Wild Rice Soup as a shot it’s a total fail. Though the Tater Tot Hot Dish is a Chinese soup spoon was a good concept it lacked a bit in presentation (they filled the spoons too much.) And if I can’t wear jeans or khakis I don’t expect to be eating food that is. Yes, imagine that you are in your full length satin gown, complete with train (yes there were several, it is that kind of party), eating brats & corn dogs. And we totally missed the table with the cheese curds! And the dessert table normally something that we all oh & ah over looked more like a church bake sale. Though the strawberry short cake shots were good. And again there were not enough places to sit. There weren’t even enough tables to stand at! I saw them bring out some more after a an hour or so. Also, the one table that is a total ‘given’ every year with the lobster tails, shrimp and oysters, needs to be on a two sided buffet table so the line moves faster.

Fashion note – if you decide to wear a ‘baby doll’ evening gown (or in fact any evening type gown) and you are uncomfortable with the neckline, a plain pashmina is not the correct fashion accessory, unless you have your coat on and are either arriving or leaving.

It was fun seeing the people that I usually see only once a year. But I wish that the venue had been a bit bigger, so we weren’t so crammed together, because it was just too hard to mingle.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Glad that's over for another year, then! Office parties should be abolished.

Oh dear, you may have had a poor time at that party, but I think for the rest of us, it was a big WIN - that was a hilarious read!! :)

And another thing, why is everyone so shocked that I wear my hair down?? Really I curl it and wear it down every year (I’ve been to 10 of the parties.) I don’t wear it down everyday, but for special occasions, I plan ahead and try to get it dry enough to curl so I can wear it down. I don’t own a blow dryer, and I usually wear my hair up, in a braid so even after 12 hours it was still damp.

Best thing about the party? I went to the thrift store after work and bought the dress that I wore for less then $15.00. Ok, so I offset the savings by getting those 32 books but all in all it was a steal. And there is person at the corporate office that also drives a Mini and we parked next to each other. How many times do you get to see two Mini’s parked next to each other?

DS
(bruce's evil twin :-))

It's amazing what you can find at the thrift stores. I took my daughter shopping for a prom dress and went to the local Community Projects store. My daughter is a tough fit; 5 foot tall and well endowed. I found a dress for her that first stop that we both liked - for $5.00!! Of course, it took about $50.00 to alter it but it still was a deal.

A bit behind on writing reviews. Someone at work is taking a Frank Llyod Wright tour with her mother this year and was told to read Loving Frank by Nancy Horan and The Women: A Novel by T C Boyle.

The second book hasn’t arrived yet, but I have finished the first one. And I cried like a baby at the end. I had no idea about the tradgedy of Mamah Borthwich Cheney. I knew that he had left his wife and she wouldn’t divorce him but other then that I had no idea’s about his life. It will be interesting to read the second one which deals with the 4 women in his life and not just his time with Mamah.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Twelve books in twelve days, it is almost tempting to see how many books I can read in a month. But I need to work on writing reviews, Harry Potter and a few other books that I would like to read at my leisure (ok more for studying pleasure.)

And I have a soup recipe to perfect. ‘Rockfert soup’ although being tasty was not very pretty. Of course the hubby follows recipes exactly, and the handwritten ones seem to be a bit lax in the directions department. So while he couldn’t figure out what he did wrong, I and people at work knew what he missed – tempering the cheese and cream before you added it to the hot soup.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I tried to read The Doomsday Book, what with all the rave reviews. Got in a couple of chapters and thought it was one of the most poorly written things I'd come across in a long time so I shelved it permanently.

Along the way, though, I picked up Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, which I thought might be similar in topic. It does have some time crossover of Medieval/Modern, but so far I'm unclear whether there's actually time travel involved or just stories which connect. Much better writing, though, that's for sure. I'm only 1/4 of the way through and it's slow going because (thank goodness!) the writer doesn't assume he has to explain every little nuance to the reader, and I'm having to concentrate to make sense of the medieval mind set and even look up references to make sense of some of the action. For instance, I didn't know what a Cristaller grid was (actually, I thought it might be an invention of the author until I looked it up).

oh dear, I was holding out hope that The Doomsday Book would be better since I also have that and Lincoln's Dreams.

I am now 13 for 13 . . . 13 books in 13 days. but Lavender Morning by Jude Deveraux will have to go on my 75 book list thread. . . as soon as I set it up. She is a very good story teller. Good to distract me from fricative consonants, and Verner's law since I am also reading Old English and Its Closest Relatives by Orrin W Robinson.

enough typing without glasses!

DS
(Bruce's evil, nearsighted twin :-))

>52 auntmarge64: OTOH, you may love The Doomsday Book. Maybe I was having a bad week.....I'll be watching for a possible review.

At a third of the way through, Eifelheim is proving to be less than stellar, but we'll see. Sigh. And here I was zipping through books so nicely, although not as nicely as you!

I am a cookbookaholic!

I just bought 2 new cookbooks - but really, how could I resist - Hungry Girl 300 under 300 by Lisa Lillien and Better Homes and Gardens The Ultimate Appetizers book?? I love finger food!

OGM Lemon Berry bites look fabulous! And easy! But I think that I see a blue cheese and onion tart in my future!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

My 75 book challenge thread is here -

http://www.librarything.com/topic/131010

Quiet: Power if the Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Format: ARC
Subject: what makes us introverts or extroverts?

Total score out of a possible 5 – 5

Wow, this is a very interesting book on the differences that make us introverts or extroverts. If you only read one book this year (if that is the case – who are you and what are you doing reading this thread??) this is the book you should read.

It is full of different studies, all of them with fascinating information about the differences between introverts and extroverts.

There is truly a lot of very useful information in this book whether you are in introvert or an extrovert this book should be very useful.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I loved Doomsday Book...but then, I love reading books about plagues where people are dying left and right. Not sure why. Perhaps something's not right in my head? ;) I also read it when I was a young teen, though, so I don't know if it was poor writing.

Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students by Robert Eaglestone

Format: paperback
Subject: teaching English literature/criticism in the UK
Source: used bookstore

I learned a lot about studying English literature in this book. Of course, this isn’t really saying much since I knew nothing when I started.

But I have to point out that this book really isn’t about English literature instead it is about why they teach it the way they do in the UK at the time the book was written. So basically it was really written for someone in the UK who is taking English literature and is wondering why they teach what they teach, and what they really expect you to learn from the classes.

The first thing that surprised me (did I mention that I didn’t know anything about this subject when I started?) was that the subject of literature was the same no matter what language you spoke, the only difference being the ‘cannon’ texts that you used. But the impression that I got from this book was that is not true (at least not in the way that they teach it in the UK.)

There are two ‘critical attitudes’ that you can use when looking at English literature – intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic deals with form, language and structure. Extrinsic puts the text into the context in which is was written, how do the characters reflect the time period that the piece was written? Or as the author here explains the text is a window that you use to see the world that they lived in.

Of course the problems that I see with using only one, intrinsic or extrinsic, are that: something could be done very well from one point of view and badly done on the other and that I can only really, truly judge something from the extrinsic view if they are my contemporary.

I can appreciate and perhaps understand how people felt & thought in general for a time period that is not my own but mostly that is only conjecture on my part. You would have not only to be very knowledgeable about the texts of the time period but also an expert in the history of the time period also. With that said, I believe that people who are knowledgeable about the time period will have a greater enjoyment of a good text then those who do not. It is like listening to a really good song in a language other then your own, you can appreciate and enjoy it, but if you also understand the language you get a deeper appreciation of it then those who don’t. Contemporary examples are David Weber’s Honor Harrington series and the French revolution and Kate Elliot’s Crown of Star’s series and the middle ages. I have not yet done any reading on the French revolution but people who have had a greater enjoyment (if possible) when they read David Weber’s Honor Harrington series.

I have however read up on history of the middle ages (including The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939-1210 by C Stephen Jaeger thanks to Kate Elliot.) I can say that I truly had a greater level of enjoyment reading the Crown of Star’s series because of it.

Of course I might also know more about some historical periods then I think I do because I like historical romance novels. I am sure that you can ask any historical romance novelist about the historical accuracy of their books and will find that their readers caught any historical inaccuracies. If you think that the romance genre is all about gorgeous, half naked people on the cover and nothing but how the girl gets the boy or vice versa with some steamy scenes mixed in you might want to check out some of the better examples of the genre.

Ok, this is getting a bit long . . . one last interesting item. What is English literature? Can English literature be anything originally written in English even if the person is not from an English speaking country? Or must it be limited to works written by people from the UK, the United States, Canada and Australia? Can something written by say someone from Pakistan or India in English be considered English literature? Some say that the idea of English literature is for it to be an example of the values & mores of the English (or civilized) people and therefore if you are from places like India, your work cannot be considered to be English literature.

I find this interesting from a linguistic point of view. Language is not only how we transmit ideas, and facts but also how we transmit our culture. To truly understand English, you have to know/understand the culture that goes with it. English as a language is very interesting. English almost disappeared at one time, and now it is one of the most important languages in the world.

And yet, in some ways a person from India could be closer to some of my cultural values then someone from Detroit and vise versa.


“You ride like a cowboy toward the sun
And life ain't fun, when you're on the run
Got your gold and you got your gun
But life as an outlaw just begun
Got your shotgun by your side
Got your horse and you got your pride
You ride ‘til there ain't no place to hide
It's sad cause the bad guys always die”

If I tell you nothing about the above text, how would you examine it using the intrinsic or extrinsic methods? You couldn’t use the extrinsic method unless you recognized it, because you wouldn’t be able to know what ‘world’ the ‘window’ was looking at. If I told you the person was from India, how would you see it now? What time period would you say it was written in? What country would you say they lived in or was talking about?

And out of curiosity does anyone know who actually wrote it? :-)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Oh, I also learned that the book review form that I created for myself to use uses both intrinsic (plot, style, character) and extrinsic (theme, setting)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

To Sir Phillip, With Love (Bridgerton Series, Book 5) by Julia Quinn

Format: paperback
Subject: what you read isn’t what you get?
Setting: Gloucestershire
Characters: Sir Philip, Eloise Bridgerton
Genre: romance
Source: thrift store

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.67

Character – 5
Plot – 5
Theme – 4
Style – 4
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 5

Julia Quinn has quickly became one of those authors where her books could so very easily be considered a 5.

Why did I give theme a 4 instead of a 5? There was a subplot that could have been ‘fleshed out’ a bit more in the story, but it could easily have been given a 5. Style was because I didn’t really like the way the book started. But I admit that I am not sure whether the book would have been better or worse without the prologue.

Sir Philip is a widower with two children, twins, a boy and a girl. He wrote a note to Eloise Bridgerton thanking her for her kind note on the death of his wife and a year later they are still corresponding. Sir Philip decides that he needs a wife, his children need a mother and since Eloise Bridgerton is an aged spinster who he has enjoyed corresponding with he writes her and asks her if she will marry him.

What he doesn’t know is that she is not your typical spinster. She is not a dull, drab and quiet woman who is unmarried because no one asked her. What appears on his doorstep is a beautiful vivacious woman who won’t stop talking.

And well, Eloise finds that Sir Philip left out a few things about himself too, like the children. And the fact that his wife, although she died of natural causes, died because she had tried to drown herself in a pound. But the children have met their match in Eloise. In fact although I have not read the Eloise series or watched any of the movies, I wonder if this Eloise is sort of a grownup version the children’s book heroine.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

It’s In His Kiss by Julia Quinn

Format: paperback
Subject: family secrets
Setting: London
Characters: Gareth St Clair, Hyacinth Bridgerton & lady Danbury
Genre: romance
Source: thrift store

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.67

Character – 5
Plot – 4.5
Theme – 4.5
Style – 5
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

Its the youngest Bridgerton sister this time out. Lady Danbury Hyacinth’s friend, and Gareth St Clair’s Grandmother is trying to set Hyacinth & Gareth up and manages to get them together on several occasions. But what really gets them together is a diary left to him by his brother, written in Italian. Which is private and of course Hyacinth can manage to translate.

Why the lower scores on the plot, theme and setting? While they could easily have been fives, they are not quite up to the standard of the others. Some relationships could have been covered a bit more, and the setting isn’t really part of the setting, though in this story it should have been a bit more as we spend time in the streets and sneaking into houses.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn

Format: paperback
Subject:
Setting:
Characters: Miss Miranda Cheever, Olivia, Nigel ‘Turner’ Bevelstoke
Genre: romance
Source: thrift store

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.33

Character – 5
Plot – 4
Theme – 4
Style – 4
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

I liked this book even though I see that a lot of people didn’t. There are some *spoilers* in this review.

Miranda is Olivia’s best friend and she practically lives at Olivia’s house. And yes, it is a bit of a cliché and a convenient contrivance. But, no offence to the genre, most romance novels are. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad. Of course Miranda meets Olivia’s much older brother when she is about 10 and falls madly in love with him. Fast forward to the future where Nigel (aka Turner) is now a bitter widower and Miranda & Olivia are about to attend their first season in London.

Was the fact that Miranda was not shown to be terribly upset because she had a miscarriage out of character? To me, the answer is no. Miranda is strong willed, independent and practical. Sex before marriage was clearly taboo and proof that it had happened was not good, even if you got married. The fact that her mother told her that she experienced miscarriages before she had Miranda makes this even more in character. Though it is true that in a lot of books in this genre a miscarriage would send most ladies into fits of something it is not something that has to happen. Sorry if you disagree.

Sorry I am not looking for deep insights into the human condition when I read a romance (but I still do with some – and I have no problem with that.) I want entertainment, just that. I don’t expect any of the Transformers movies to have much of a plot, I expect just a lot of excuses to see a lot of running around and explosions. I know enough about life to know that sometimes it is absurd and things that you don’t expect happen.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Wow good luck! That's a lot of reading!

Out of the Silent Planet by C S Lewis

Format: paperback
Subject: good vs. evil
Setting: English countryside, a spaceship and an alien planet
Characters: Dr Ransom, Dr. Weston, Dr. Devine and alien beings
Genre: sci-fi
Source: used bookstore

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.83

Character – 5
Plot – 5
Theme – 5
Style – 5
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 4

This is not my favorite type of sci-fi/fantasy genre. The spaceships and aliens, humans doing stupid things. But since I read this after reading To Say Nothing of the Dog the contrast was amazing. This is how a story should be told. We learned more about the secondary characters in this book (which is 1/3 the length) then we did the primary characters in To Say Nothing of the Dog.

The main character, Ransom starts out basically the Fool at the beginning of his journey, he is carefree and without responsibilities, walking the countryside at his whim. A chance encounter with an old schoolmate and he finds himself a captive on a spaceship headed to a strange planet to be given as a human sacrifice. His adventures and discoveries change him and his outlook on life and human beings in general.

This book is an amazing piece of work, especially when you realize that it was written well before space travel, before man walked on the moon (1938). The ship and alien planet are well thought out, details are included that many authors would not have bothered with. A lot happens in the 160 pages of this book, and yet it is not a feeling of frenzied action or truncated descriptions. You do not find yourself stopping to wonder how you got to where you are. It progresses quite smoothly. Yes, the book is dated, if has the flavor or texture of a sci-fi book written in the early half of the 20th century.

DS
(bruce's evil twin :-))

My hubby found a stash of books not yet on our books here. one is an ARC, complete with the ARC note - from my birthday in 1955 (although I wasn't around yet in 1955!) It is Banned Books: Informal notes on Some Books Banned for Various Reasons at Various Times and in Various Places by Anne Lyon Haight.

Some examples:

1918
Ulysses by James Joyce early installments appearing in the Little Review were burned by the (US) Post Office Department.

1923 – Many Marriages by Sherwood Anderson “aroused legal action (in England) and America laughed”

1927 –Russia banned Henry Ford’s book My Life and Work

1929 -
The US Customs refused admittance to George Moore's A Story Teller's Holiday
Russia banned The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because of occultism and spiritualism.

1944 - Concorde Books received a notice from the Post Office Department saying that their cataloge violated the section relating to the mailing of obscene literature and that the title (Voltaire's Candide) must be blocked out before it could be mailed.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

Format: paperback
Subject: Frank Lloyd Wright’s life with Mamah Borthwick Cheney
Setting: Chicago, Europe and Wisconsin
Characters: Mamah Borthwick Cheney & Frank Lloyd Wright
Genre: fictionalized memoir
Source: borrowed from co=worker

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.58

Character – 5
Plot – 4
Theme – 4
Style – 5
Setting – 4.5
Entertaining? 5

My co-worker is going on a trip with her mother this year visiting some of the houses that Frank Lloyd Wright built and her mother told her to read this book and The Women.

I knew practically nothing about FLW before I started this book. I knew that he had been married and left his wife, but nothing about Mamah Borthwick Cheney and her family.

This book is written from Mamah Borthwick Cheney’s point of view, who from all accounts of the book was an amazing woman. And I wonder (if this book tells the story accurately) how different FLW would have been if she had lived.

They didn’t just run off from their families. They were apart for long periods of time trying to work things out, figure out what to do. It wasn’t all love and flowers.

I have to say I cried like a baby at the end of the book. It is not a book to finish the last thing before going to bed. Because it is totally unfair, and if it was a novel about made up people the author would be getting truckloads of mail complaining about the end and how could you do that to your characters. But its supposed to be telling a true story and sometimes life just sucks big time.

You need to finish this book and then start say a book by Terry Pratchet or watch a good Robin Williams movie.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet by Mary Balogh

Format: paperback
Subject: sweet heroines and uber honorable heros
Setting: England
Characters: Cora Downes & Lord Francis Kneller/ Stephanie Gray & Alistair Munro, the Duke of Bridgwater
Genre: romance
Source: thrift store

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.67

Character – 5
Plot – 3
Theme – 5
Style – 5
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 5

I almost gave this a 5 out of 5, but then I have been pretty hard on the other romance novels, so I thought again. I decided that the plots were pretty fantastic (as in unbelievable) for the time periods, especially once you get to know the Duchess of Brudgewater. Of course as a modern reader I have no trouble believing the plots, but from a historical point of view they would be pretty hard to believe.

Two previously published books re-released together. In the first story impetuous Cora Downes, daughter of a very wealthy merchant saves the life of the heir of the heir of Duke of Bridgwater. The Dukes mother, Duchess of Bridgwater decides to repay her by introducing her to society and helping her find a suitable gentleman for a husband. The Duke of Bridgwater asks his friend Lord Francis Kneller to help him out and make sure that Cora’s season is a success. Due to his preference for brightly colored clothing (turquoise, pink and yellow to name a few) Cora believes that Francis is gay and therefore safe.

In the second story we have Stephanie Gray, the grand-daughter to a very wealthy man, who had disowned her mother because she fell in love with and ran away to marry a vicar. After both parents died she got a job as a governess and was very poorly treated. Her grandfather died in left everything to Stephanie as long as she was married. If she was not married when she inherited then she was given 6 months to find a suitable husband. He even provided a candidate.

Instead of waiting for the carriage that was being sent to pick her up she packed her bags and started off on her own. She is of course robbed blind and is saved by a troupe of actors who give her a old plumed bonnet and cloak that make everyone think that she is a woman of ill repute, including the Duke of Bridgwater who was bored and picked her up from the side of the road and decides to play along with her story. When he discovers the truth he does the right thing and asks her to marry him.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Ideal Wife by Mary Balogh

Format: paperback
Subject: look before you leap?
Setting: London, England
Characters: Miles Ripley, the Earl of Severn & Abigail Gardiner
Genre: romance
Source: thrift store

Total score out of a possible 5 –

Character – 5
Plot – 3
Theme – 4
Style – 5
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 5

Another unbelievable plot. Miles Ripley, the Earl of Severn is convinced (and time shows that he was correct) that his mother and sisters are coming to town to get him engaged. He tells his friend that he will marry the first plain, quiet, undemanding woman that is presented to him. Enter Abby. She has been dismissed from her job without references and decides to ask her very distantly related relative, the Earl of Severn, for a reference so she can get another job. What she doesn’t know is that the old Earl died some 15 months previously and a very eligible bachelor is now the Earl. On an impulse he asks her to marry him instead, since she appeared to be exactly what he was looking for. She weighs her options and says yes. The snag, he wants to be married and settled before his family arrive in, oh 3 or 4 days. Oh, yeah his family is not happy when they show up and find him married. Oh there is also a step-mother who tries to get lots of money from Abby, some young half sibs, a very independent brother and other complications.

It’s terribly entertaining, you won’t be able to but it down.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

>65 bruce_krafft: - I have Loving Frank on my list for this year. How lucky for your co-worker to get to see some of his houses.

Oops. . . the thrift store had eveything 50% off today. . . I even splurged and got a few hard covers! Over 20 books for less then $19. I probably still didn't get the one my hubby is looking for!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

It looks like February will be Daphne de Maurier month! (And maybe March too judging the size of my shopping cart . . . )

I have just ordered a bunch of books about and by Daphne de Maurier. Hopefully she won’t be a disappointment. There seems to be a wealth of books written about her, including one by her daughter, which should be interesting. I already have the book written by her sister It’s Only the Sister, so I ordered Daphne du Maurier: A Daughter's Memoir, Myself When Young, The Daphne du Maurier Companion, Daphne du Maurier, Haunted Heiress, and Daphne du Maurier; The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller.

I have decided to round out the month with books about & by other people of the same time period – J M Barrie, Lady Randolph Churchill, George Orwell, Grace Hopper, Cicely Hamilton.

It is also nice that Steam Punk fits into this time period quite nicely. What luck! I guess I will be learning a lot about the first half of the 20th century soon.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

That's quite a haul, look forward to reading what you think of them

I am thinking that I might have to start the next 'month's' reading early. I have already made quite a dent in my 75 book challenge. And a Steam Punk Jedi outfit with lots of appliqué work is dancing through my head in nice peacock-like colors. . . I am thinking that May is going to arrive way too soon!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

That's it! Book 25 is going to count towards February! I am starting It’s Only the Sister by Angela du Maurier now. Ok, right after I take a bunch of pain killers! Slipped & fell at work and boy the head and knee is starting to hurt with a vengeance now.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Ouch! Be careful and take care of yourself.

The Susan Cain book, Quiet, has caught my eye before. Your review is another nudge to acquire it sometime.

75> Just run out and get it . . . Really. It's that interesting & good. You'll be wanting everyone you know to read it too.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I have been reading lots, just not books. I have been reading up on the Trossingen Lyre on the internet. Why? Because I have decided to make my hubby a Hagar the Horrible costume (this also gets the hubby involved in the costume since he has time to do the woodwork.) Since I am not up to making a helmet, I have decided that he will be relaxing with his lyre. Does Hagar have a lyre? I have no idea. . .

At first I was thinking Sutton Hoo lyre, but I think that we both like the Trossingen Lyre better. Not that it matters since I am the one drawing out the pattern :-)

(Information on the Trossingen Lyre here -

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trossinger_Leier

- it’s in Swedish but you can translate it to English)

Of course the next question is - what exactly is Hagar wearing? My theory is really bad scale armor, because: 1-it’s usually green, 2-fur would be drawn differently. But I think that for my documentation I should get something to verify this. Good thing I am acquainted with someone who is a ‘penciler & inker’ for DC comics. . . My theory on the off the shoulder piece of garb is that Hagar is lazy and cheap (a well documented fact) and at some point his armor was damaged and he never fixed it. This also ties in with the fact that I am not going to go out and buy 3 cow hides to make the armor. Let’s face it it takes a lot of leather to make scale armor for someone who is well over six feet tall, and not thin. I plan on getting scraps and dying them before they are boiled. This will give the armor a well used & much repaired look.

Shockingly I have ordered a bunch of books on re-constructing clothing from the appropriate time period so this will also come in handy for documentation and figuring out the design. I knew that I had to get Medieval Tailor's Assistant: Making Common Garments 1200-1500 (even though it isn’t the correct time period) when I saw that Drea Leed gave it a 5 star rating on Amazon. If you are into Elizabethan costuming she is a familiar name as she has a wonderful site called Elizabethan Costuming Page.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

So where will this costume make it's debut? It sounds great - & also a good thing it's damaged scale armor. I'm sure you could get away with aluminum scale now (not that aluminum would provide much real ye old protection for a pillaging Viking) but enough scale to cover Bruce would weigh quite a bit! The lyres are beautiful, but not at all dainty! A suitable instrument for Hagar indeed. ;)

I am planning on getting it ready for Costume-Con 30 in AZ. That gives me until May to finish it. . . and my Steam Punk Jedi. . . what really surprised me was how thin the lyre is. Our first attempt will probably not be tappered. We bought a nice peice of red oak for the base of red oak and some purple heart and curly maple for the thin top layer.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Oh, I want to see that costume - sounds great!!!! I've thought of going as his wife, Helga, for Halloween, but the costume always ends out looking more like something out of Wagner than a Viking comic. :)

PS! The link to the Trossingen Lyre is in German, not Swedish... :)

red oak, purple heart and curly maple! It's going to be absolutely gorgeous! Is it going to be playable too?

Yes, playable! I am already designing one made out of spalted maple and wenge in my head.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

A Hagar the Horrible costume! That sounds awesome! Can't wait to see a photo.

Another thing that has kept me (slightly busy) is Tarkan’s latest video. The problem is, they don’t label the videos so unless you recognize the song you are kind of lost.

Kara Toprak, literally - Black Soil. Tarkan’s website says - Benim sadık yârim kara topraktır (My Faithful, My Beloved Black Soil) or per the English version “My Faithful Beloved is Mother Earth”. Of course you have to figure out that this song is the same as the “new” video

The video can be found here -
http://www.tarkan.com/home/

It says that it is “Another Aşık Veysel folksong by Tarkan . . .” Aşık Veysel was a famous poet & minstrel (aşık means mystic troubadour or traveling bard), who lost his sight at a young age due mostly to smallpox. According to Wikipedia his songs are often sad, and talk often of the inevitability of death. It looks like the poem maybe longer then the song, or perhaps he only did part of the song. But it looks like a rough translation of the first part is –

Many have I called friend and much have I wandered,
My faithful beloved is Mother Earth.
Many beauties have I loved to no avail,
Everything I wanted the earth gave me,
My faithful beloved is Mother Earth.

I love the video, it is simple and I really like the way that they used the lighting, it almost looks like he is sitting in a lotus of light for most of it. One thing I do wonder is did they re-use some footage from Metamorfoz? The grey sky and wheat field looks awfully familiar. Thankfully the suit doesn’t make a re-appearance; sexy pop stars should not dress like accountants.

I am also reading It’s Only the Sister by Angela du Maurier and Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier. Wow, Daphne is clearly the better writer when it comes to autobiographies; it grabs you right from the start. Angela’s is rather jumbled, and filled with people who I am sure we would know if we were her contemporaries but there are only a few names that I recognize. It is starting to get better now that I am up to the point after she played Wendy in Peter Pan. Before this point there was no real detail, only vague references to things that happened. No well remembered incidents filled with details. Daphne fills hers with ‘moments in time’ from the very beginning, it is like you are there remembering it with her. It is interesting reading about the two different lives, two very different personalities growing up in the same house. It will be even more interesting once I get to the one written by Daphne’s daughter.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

First book done for February! And enjoyable but short autobiography by Daphne du Maurier. Will have to write a review later!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

How bizarre on the biographies! You don't see biographies on what it was like to be the shadow very often. It's got to be an interesting experiment to read a set of autobiographies from the same family. I'll wait for your reviews.

Took a bit of time off from Daphne du Maurier and read Medieval Garments Reconstructed- Norse Clothing Patterns. It’s very detailed and if you want to know various ways you can make a t-tunic this is the book for you. I however am also looking for pants or full hose. There are also some patterns for hoods, stockings and some caps.

It has very nice photos of the existing garments (800+ years old from a cemetery in Greenland) and examples of reconstructions. It would have been nice to have some ‘human’ information on the pieces (because I am all about ‘more’.) Of course they might not have any other information on them. But whether it was found on a man or woman, and approximate age would have been helpful. Or even give the garment a name instead they just have museum numbers (example D5674.) I don’t know about you but I have trouble remembering a name like D5674 or D10585.1. . .

But it is a very well done book. It explains about the different types of materials that they had to work with, how the cloth was probably made (even some nice pictures of looms – oh if I only had more time!) and many of the different ways of construction. If you were looking for information on how to re-create one of these tunics exactly like they were originally made this book is the one that you should start with.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Alias: Free Fall by Christa Roberts

Format: paperback
Subject: life as a CIA operative
Setting: LA and the Canadian side of Niagara Falls
Characters: Sydney
Genre: spy/thriller/TV show
Source: ??

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.33

Character – 5
Plot – 5
Theme – 4
Style – 4
Setting – 3
Entertaining? 5

Sydney is on summer break from UCLA, finally done with her freshman year and is sent on a mission to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls while also on a training mission. Not everything is as it seems. Ok, she’s young, but she’s supposed to be smart and an operative-in-training for the CIA, how naïve can she be?

But the characters were well fleshed out, even the minor ones. The themes (feeling conflicted because she has to lie to people about her job, about dating another agent, and is this really what she should be doing, etc) are all done well. And it was very entertaining, even for someone who has never seen an entire episode of the TV series.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

FYI –
I have decided to wait and review all of the biographies & autobiographies of Angela & Daphne du Maurier until I have read them all. I am reading Margaret Forster's Daphne Du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller at the moment.

I had no idea (not that I know much about this period to begin with) that it was Daphne & Angela's cousins that were the boys that inspired J M Barrie to write Peter Pan! Interesting to note that Daphne doesn't even seem to mention him, and yet in Daphne Du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller it is said that he inspired her greatly.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

OK, I couldn’t resist, I tried and only bought Everyday Food: Light: The Quickest and Easiest Recipes, All Under 500 Calories when we went to Sam’s Club on Thursday, but I broke down and bought Everyday Food: Fresh Flavors Fast and Everyday Food: Great Food Fast when I went again on Saturday. I have already picked out about 10 recipes to try from Everyday Food: Light, and have bought most of the ingredients for about 5 of them. Beef and Mango Lettuce Wraps are on the top of my list. . . (we will see where they are on the hubbies, since he is currently the house husband and cooking is his job.)

So yes, count 5 new cookbooks for the week (the hubby bought 2 pressure cooker cookbooks to go with the new electric pressure cooker that he bought with some of his birthday money.)

What I really like about this book (or in fact the series) is one page is the recipe and the facing page is a nice photograph. Also on the top of every recipe is a food fact or tip. For example the tip with Caramelized Pineapple (from Great Food Fast – I have already loaned the Light cookbook out to someone at work) says – “The easiest way to core a pineapple is to quarter it and then slice off the top of each wedge. . .”

We are going to try a recipe with rice noodles, but since we didn’t have any in the house the hubby found a recipe to make them and is trying it as I type. It should prove interesting. I will let you know how it works out.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Random facts on Daphne du Maurier:

1 - Her grandfather wrote Trilby, Peter Ibbetson and The Martian
2 - Her 1st cousins were the inspiration for Peter Pan
3 - Her first book The Loving Spirit inspired her husband to go and meet her
4 - Her husband was the Comptroller & Treasurer of HRH Princess Elizabeth
5 - She believed that she was really a boy in a girls body.
6 - Rebecca was written while her husband was posted in Alexandria, Egypt.
7 - She was sued by the author of Blind Window for plagiarism alleging that she copied her book for Rebecca.
8 - She thought that Rebecca was a grim & unpleasant study in jealousy and did not see it as a “exquisite love story.”

It should be interesting to read her books once I get done with the books about her.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I forgot to mention that I think that I have to read The Hunger Games becuase -

The GPS 2012 Team Trivia Contest Reading List is -

•The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

•Dune by Frank Herbert

•Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

•God Loves, Man Kills written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Brent Anderson

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

>90 bruce_krafft: - Wow! Your hubby is really ambitious. I'm curious how much trouble it is to make rice noodles. I suppose similiar to pasta but I remember rice noodles as being almost transparent.

I would not call my hubby ambitious . . .

Actually he found a recipe where you make a thin batter from rice & water in a blender and then steam it batches and then cut.

I beleive he found the recipe here:

http://www.celiac.com/gluten-free/topic/33804-asian-rice-pasta-homemade/

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Interesting technique.

3 books on the Du Mauriers done. Wow, really dark and twisted things grow in some people minds. But as someone at work said, those kind of people make the best authors. Now it's time to read some of the books and others that are piling up. Interestingly enough I found some titles (for books available in English) on some textbook lists at Fatih Sultan Mehmet University. I am always curious as to what books certain classes have you read. So I have a book on translation by Umberto Eco and some books by Terry Eagleton, who is an author new to me, to name just a few.

And as I have ordered some 36+ books this year already it is really time to ‘get a move on’! Really, I must read them all before I buy more books. Yes. Really must. OK, because I need to use the money on costuming. . .

Books gotten at the thrift store don’t count! Ok, really I have read almost all of the ones that I got for myself there already.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Experiences in Translation by Umberto Eco, excellant book, I think anyone interested in literature (or Foucault's Pendulum) would enjoy this book. Will write an in-depth review later. Of course I have yet to read Foucault's Pendulum but I have it on *my kindle*. Yes I got one for my b-day . . . those word games are blackholes that suck time up!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

ok, this is long. . . sorry

Experiences in Translation by Umberto Eco

This book is based on the Goggio Public lectures that Eco gave at the University of Toronto in 1998.

Eco maintains that “text is a machine conceived for eliciting interpretations.”

People experience life differently and therefore they each interpret things accordingly, even if they speak the same language they do not necessarily interpret things the same way. Translating from one language to another requires you to understand how a person of each language experiences life, due to cultural and language differences. Good translation is more about connotation then denotation. To illustrate this Eco uses translations of his own novels as examples. People who have an interest in his book Foucault’s Pendulum will find a good part of this book interesting as he uses it for many of his examples.

According to Eco ‘good translation must generate the same effect aimed at by the original’ the difficulty is in determining what is the most important ‘effect’. You have to make many decisions depending on what you are translating. Do you modernize it? Do you keep as literal a translation as possible? Or do you ‘rewrite’ it and retain the essence? What about rhythm and style? Don’t forget that it isn’t just an ‘idea’ that you are translating from one language into another, but culture as well, because unless you are translating a very technical paper, language is all about culture, we just don’t think about it that way.

I found this interesting because the first Turkish song that I downloaded when I first started trying to teach myself Turkish was Öp (lyrics by Tarkan and Sezen Aksu, from Tarkan’s album Adımı Kalbine Yaz.) I have never been happy with any of the translations that I have found. They all seem to lack, soul. The translations are so inadequate, and they seem to lack clarity, they aren’t translating the culture, but seem to be trying to remain true to the words themselves, which doesn’t make sense in English.

Before I read Experiences in Translation when I read Öp in Turkish I was confused. Now something inside my head sort of clicked (and it certainly isn’t because I am better at Turkish since I have been extremely lax at it since the hubby got ill). It was like an ‘ah’ moment, it’s not just translate words, but culture as well. So obvious and yet I think that we get so caught up in the words we can forget. Before I was making the same mistake as everyone else - trying to translate the words and not thinking about cultural differences. I think that I now get the basic idea of the song, now it is all a matter of translating that idea into something that not only translates the words, and cultural aspects but the form too.

So here two stanzas in the original (the easiest part of the song to understand) and an English translation from a music lyrics website:

Ben o şelale saçlara
O ay, o hilal kaşlara
O süzme bal dudaklara
Öp öp öp öp doyamadım

Sütten ak o gerdana
Bir çıkar ki meydana
Gel de uyma şeytana
Bak bak bak bak duramadım

I kissed a lot but haven’t had enough
Of that cascade hair
Of those narrow and arched, moon eyebrows
Of those extracted-honey lips

At that whiter-than-milk neck,
She appears in such a way that
You can’t help yielding to temptation
I looked a lot and couldn’t stop

The translation is adequate; you get the basic idea of what is going on (and I really do thank them for the effort.) But the translator not only ignored the rhythm and rhyme but also rearranged some lines, changed some words, and left out others but not really with any added benefit.

For example in the first stanza the last line has been moved to the beginning, and the third line instead of using the obvious ‘crescent’ they used ‘narrow and arched, moon’ which not only changes it from general to specific but adds more words and more syllables, and dropped the ‘ben’ (I) and ‘o ay’ (her mouth).

As you can see there is a definite rhythm in the original, especially for the last line of each stanza (this is also emphasized by the music itself). The final words are also very similar to each other. And ok, in Turkish if you repeat something it means you did it a lot, but I think that if you repeat something four times you are trying to achieve something different.

The translation could have been better by using crescent for hilal, reversing the order of extracted-honey, leaving the 4th line in its original place, changing the translation only slightly and then use it as a template for the last line in the second stanza. I kept out the ‘I’ & ‘her mouth’ because this left it more like the original in form, without really seeming to lose anything, so the updated translation would be –

Of that cascade hair
Of those crescent eyebrows
Of those honey extracted lips
I kissed kissed kissed kissed but haven’t kissed enough

At that whiter-than-milk neck,
She appears in such a way that
You can’t help yielding to temptation
I looked looked looked looked but haven’t looked enough

So understanding both cultures clearly is very important when translating. You have to decide for every line what is important; not only for that sentence but for each segment and for the work as a whole.

How much of the original can you keep before it is no longer a translation but a new work?

if you are even a bit interested in the subject of translation this is a nice book to read. REally I have yet to read something from Umberto Eco that was not good.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that since English word order is SVO and Turkish is SOV you could also (as it was in the original) put the last line at the ‘top’. The reasoning would be that you treat the stanza as a sentence, then the 1st three lines can be considered O (the object) and the last line V (the verb) then when you translate it to English the last line should be moved. So it would be:

I kissed kissed kissed kissed but haven’t kissed enough
Of that cascade hair
Of those crescent eyebrows
Of those honey extracted lips

I looked looked looked looked but haven’t looked enough
At that whiter-than-milk neck,
She appears in such a way that
You can’t help yielding to temptation

Which probably is better sounding in English. Is it changing the form too much, or is it staying more true to the two languages? But remember this is not just a poem, but a song which means that it is set to music, and the music would have to be re-written then too.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Great review! I don't mind that it was long because I think it needed to be to get your point across and that's important. I definitely understand where you're coming from and now I think I need to read this book. Hmmmm...first to find a copy...

Thanks! :)

I've got Is that a fish in your ear on my WL which covers the same sort of subject matter and having recently read a history of reading which has a chapter on translation it is something that I'm now more aware of when reading translated books. I'm thinking the translator's role is very difficult to do well and wonder if some of the translated books I've not enjoyed are down to the translation being poor. Very good review of Eco's book and am putting it straight on the WL

I also have After Babel by George Steiner on my soon to be read pile. I find that translating something helps me learn the language. Not only are you getting a bigger vocabulary because you are reading more, but it helps you really think about what you are reading. We did this in college when I was learning Hindi. We had a cheesy detective novel that we were reading. I found that it was way better then a text book, because for one thing the language is natural.

I am thinking that I need to take a picture of my TBR mass so every time I think about buying a new book I look at it and have to think whether I want to add to the pile. . . . so many books so little time!

Is That A fish In Your Ear has been on my wish list. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Dropped the hubby off at the dentist, and I couldn’t resist the Barnes & Noble that was practically across the street! I had to get some Edgar Rice Burroughs since I have never read any and the John Carter movie comes out next month.

Wow, The Princess of Mars is an amazing read, especially when you consider when it was written. Will try to do a ‘real’ review later.

I did show great restraint though and I only bought the first 3 John Carter stories, the first two in the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull and a book on American phrases. I saw Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World which was very tempting, it was in the science section. . . and quite a few others that looked good. But I resisted.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Just catching up! I've been sick and brainless lately. Interesting review on Experiences in Translation. It's making me think of the introduction to a rare book of Latino short stories in translation called Prospero's Mirror. They talk about the Malinche who was Cortez's Aztec translator - the idea was the translator as traitor. So much culture is lost in the translation, and like you showed, something beautiful because of it's simplicity can become something quite other by the time someone finishes struggling with it. It becomes D5674 instead of that beautiful dress...

I love the Du Maurier comments. Yes, I'm not surprised to see your comment Wow, really dark and twisted things grow in some people minds. & as for the woman who claims DM plagiarized, she wishes! I remember Rebecca as an incredibly romantic tale that goes bad in a slew of jealousy.

OK, another long review - but it is about 3 books. . . .

Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars and The Warriors of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Format: paperback
Subject: adventure, honor & loyalty
Setting: Mars
Characters: John Carter, Deja Thoris, Tars Tarkas
Genre: sci-fi/fantasy/adventure
Source: B&N

Total score out of a possible 5 – 3.83

Character – 4
Plot – 2
Theme – 4
Style – 4
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

Edgar Rice Burroughs was a very prolific writer, but his best known character is Tarzan, most probably do to the many movies that were made. John Carter first appeared in print a hundred years ago (that’s 1912 for us math phobics) as a magazine serial.

Disney is releasing a movie next month (March 2012) based on the John Carter books, which means that John Carter may soon become a household name too. I think that this is a great way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of a piece of classic literature at its best. Make way Treasure Island we don’t need no stinking boat or treasure map to go on adventure anymore!

The John Carter series is an old fashioned sci-fi/fantasy work; there are none of the intricate plots or deep philosophical theories that are the mainstay of the modern sci-fi/fantasy. Instead it relies on adventure, and a fantastic new and different world. John Carter could be an everyman, at loose ends after the American Civil War, but for two details, he seems to be immortal, he says that he remembers no childhood and he remains to around 35 years old. And well, he travels to Mars without a spaceship, via some sort of astral projection – no map, no ship, oh yeah, no clothes either apparently. No problem, they don't wear them there anyway.

***minor spoiler alert***

If you don’t want to know what happens before John Carter goes to Mars – skip this.

********************

John Carter is a warrior with no occupation at the end of the Civil War. He joins with another former soldier, James Powell and they go to Arizona to prospect for gold. After some struggle they strike it rich, and decide that they need to invest in better equipment. That is when their luck runs out.

Powell leaves to get the better equipment, but Carter sees something that gives him reason to go after Powell. Unfortunately for Powell he waited too long. Powell is already dead by the time Carter finds the Indians that had followed Powell. This is where we see who John Carter is, deep on the inside, the unchangeable, the core of what makes up John Carter through the series. Without thought Carter runs in to rescue his partner, even though he is greatly outnumbered and Powell is most likely already dead. What ensues is a mad dash through country unknown to him that leads him up a path that dead ends at the mouth of a cave. Here is tries to revive his partner, and concedes that there is no use, Powell is dead and he is trapped in a cave and will be grossly outnumbered when the Indians find him.

He explores most of the cave before he feels overwhelmed by fatigue, but try as he might, because he knows that if he rested now he may never wake, he cannot stop his body from collapsing at the cave mouth. He is about to drowse when he hears the Indians approaching, and immediately becomes fully awake. But he cannot move. Paralyzed and helpless he sees the first Indian peer at him, and then more, and yet he still cannot move. But the Indians do not advance on him, even though he knows that he is not in shadow, that the morning sun is shinning on him. They stand and stare openmouthed at the cave. A moan issues from the cave, and the Indians run in terror.

Carter knows that he must move, but for hours he cannot. It isn’t until around midnight that the moan comes again with the sound of movement. With every ounce of his will he tries to move his body, and then something snaps and he is free. He stands with his back to the cave wall facing the unknown terror. And yet, there on the floor of the cave, bathed in moonlight, is his clothed body. Has he died? Is this death? He gazes at the night sky, drawn to the planet Mars –

“As I gazed on it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as a lodestone attracts a particle of iron.”

And soon the reader and John Carter are transported to the dying and fantastical world of Mars.

***End of spoiler***

One of the common things in science fiction writing is its use of things that don’t exist yet, or are on the ‘cutting edge’ of technology. The John Carter series does not lack these items. In 1873 James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that sunlight exerts a small force that can be used to move objects, but I still found it amazing that technology similar to this is described as a means of transportation on Mars (remember this book is 100 years old.) Another interesting item used on Mars is drip irrigation. According to Wiki, drip irrigation began its development in Afghanistan in 1866, so it was definitely around, but I am not sure how well known it was in the early 1900’s, it was certainly not widespread before publication of the John Carter series.

Plot got a low score because there really is not a plot. This work is a very good piece of literature that is not a vehicle for a plot, but for character and adventure. The main purpose is purely to entertain.

John Carter is not about good and evil, it is about humanity, and what life could be like without it. The green men of Mars act the way that they do but because that is how they are brought up. In fact early on John Carter clearly states – “I believe this horrible system which has been carried on for ages is the direct cause of the loss of all the finer feelings and higher humanitarian instincts among these poor creatures.”

It is written in the style that people wrote their adventures in. I am sure that when it first came out it was hardly less believable then the real life adventures of Osa and Martin Johnson who went among tribes of cannibals and herds of elephants (I know after JC but it's the only one I can think of). You cannot help but feel that you are reading something out of Flash Gordon’s world (even though this story pre-dated Flash.) I find that the way that it is written makes the story more believable, more real, even though we know it is not.

The setting is pretty darn good. It is a vast dying world with islands of civilization. There are nomads, and scientists, and warlords with strange ferocious beasts, there are gods and spies. There is love, friendship, hate and jealousy.

Looking at the previews of the Disney film, you cannot but help compare it to Star Wars. And I see that many people are asking - could there be a Star Wars without John Carter? Of course there could be. But to me there are some very big differences between the two.

Star Wars is modern science fiction; to me that is about character development, and examining a philosophy that is different from mainstream philosophy. Star Wars has made an immense change in the world, not just for special effects, but on the way that we see the world. Unlike John Carter, Anakin and Luke do not know ‘who they are’. Star Wars is really about their journey to figure out who they are. The philosophies that are woven through the Star Wars saga are not Christian philosophies. Anakin and Luke are also part of a larger story that encompasses many cultures, many people working against the accepted philosophies. And it is also clearly about good vs. evil.

John Carter is not about good vs. evil; he doesn’t really want to change the world or even want to save the world. He just wants to enjoy life, with the woman that he loves and remain true to himself. The antagonists that he encounters are not trying to change the world; they want to keep it like it is, with them higher on the totem pole. And while there is certainly a history of things that happened before it doesn’t really impact the story, it is about now.

So, glad I read them, hope to read more of his stuff.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

There's a woman on Mars? I still haven't read any Edgar Rice Borroughs. Think I better.

Every time I see the user name Dejah_Thoris I think of John Carter.

I have reviewed my categories and see that I have nothing for the mystery or Diversicon/CONvergence guests (I did read a Mercedes Lackey book but it was after I read my 12 for January, so it got put on the 75 book challenge.)

Does anyone have any suggestions for a great mystery read? I did get some Edgar Allen Poe for my kindle, and I already have the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a few random books like Sweet Ginger Poison, The Man Who Was Thursday.

Or what is your favorite book by any of the below authors?

Tananarive Due
Andre (Alice Mary) Norton
Tate Hallaway
Joan Slonzcewski
William F Wu
Kay Kenyon
Anne Frasier
Suzy McKee Charnas
AC Crispin
Eleanor Arnason
Lyda Morehouse
Tamora Pierce
Brian Keene
Peg Kerr
Neil Gaiman

Thanks for your imput/help!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin:-))

Sadly, I haven't red books by any of the authors you have listed above so I will lurk to see what suggestions you receive!

I got one of Kay Kenyon's books Bright of the Sky last year. And it was good, and free on kindle. I just haven't gotten around to getting anymore. Tananarive Due's books look very interesting.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I just finished rereading the first two of Ariana Franklin's short series featuring a medically educated woman at the time of Henry II. Starting with The Mistress of the Art of Death these books are equally good as historical fiction. I highly recommend them.

Same authors are on my challenge. Joan S hasn't written many books. She's famous for a biochemistry textbook so I'd say read whatever you can find of hers. She had a book that was supposed to come out this year, but I think Tor may have shelved it because of lack of pre-orders. Wu has a great short story in The Dragon & the Stars. He ghost writes a lot, so it's hard to find him. I'm at the library and about to be kicked off the computer, but I'll write more later!

The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier

Format: paperback
Subject: love and family
Setting: Plyn, a Cornish harbor town
Characters: Janet Coombe & her descendants
Genre: fictional-biography
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 3.5

Character – 4
Plot – 3
Theme – 2
Style – 5
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 3

“There was a freedom here belonging not to Plyn, a freedom that was part of the air and the sea; like the glad tossing of the leaves in autum, and the shy fluttering wings of a bird. In Plyn it was needful to run at another’s bidding and from morn till night there were the cares and necessities of household work – helping here, helping there, encouraging those around you with a kindly word, and sinful it was to expect one in return.”

It is a ‘family saga’ that is dark, disturbing and sad but very well written. The inspiration for the story was the ship Jane Slade. Daphne du Maurier saw the beached and rotting ship when her family acquired Ferryside and inquired about it. She learned about a box of family letters & records that belonged to the Slade family. These documents and other research are the basis for this story. It was her first novel and was written when she was 22 years old.

How much of the story is based on the letters and how much is from her imagination I am not sure. It would certainly be interesting to read the letters, and other historical documents on the Slade family and compare them with the book. How much of Janet is based on the real Jane, or is she based mainly on the author and her views? Much of Jennifer’s life in London is certainly based on Daphne du Maurier’s life. The incident at school about where babies come from, the sounds of bugles, the air raids during the war were chronicled and known to have happened.

The tale follows the Coombe family for about 100 years, starting with Janet and Thomas. Janet who wanted to be a man so she could go to sea, and Thomas who built ships. Janet & Thomas have 6 children, only 4 of which get married. However the story mostly follows the life and descendents of her 3rd child, Joseph.

It is a tale filled with unhappiness, and madness but with a happy ending. Some relationships are what you would expect for the time period, others are not. In fact the relationship that Janet had with her 3rd child, Joseph, seemed not quite right, and made me quite uncomfortable. You knew nothing good could become of it. But with the final descendant, Jennifer, we come full circle and things are put right in the end.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Me by Ricky Martin

Format: hard cover
Subject: life’s spiritual journey
Genre: memior
Source: used bookstore

Total score out of a possible 5 – 5

If I had to describe this book in one word it would be – inspirational.

First let me say that this book isn’t about what I wanted it to be about. I was hoping that it would be more about the business part of his career, mixed with the effects that it had on his life. He doesn’t really go into much detail on the business part of his life, what it is like to record an album, get a tour organized and go on tour, etc. But it is very much about the toll that his career had on his personal life and the things that he taught him.

It’s not a kiss and tell book; he doesn’t mention names, or give too many details of his relationships, which is fine by me, because I feel that it really isn’t my business. I don’t understand this belief that celebrities must give up their personal lives and make every detail available. I totally agree when he says in his book “it infuriated me to think that people thought that they could walk into my house and see who was in my bed. Regardless of what my sexual orientation may be, I should still have a right to my privacy.”

This book is about a journey, a journey that everyone must go on, to find oneself and become comfortable with who they are. This is the type of journey where you don’t get a map, no two journeys are the same, everyone has to find their own path, we all find different doors to open. Admittedly some people have less searching to do then others. I wonder if the human race will ever evolve enough where sexuality is not such an issue. Straight, gay, whatever, we all bleed when we are cut, sexual preference is something that shouldn’t really matter, just like religion.

Even if you are wondering who Ricky Martin is you should read this book. And you should go and quickly buy some of his music! If you know who he is and like his music after reading this book I think that you will have an even deeper respect for him and perhaps other similar artists. People think that it’s all money and swimming pools, 'money for nothin' and your chicks for free' but it really is a lot of hard work.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I read the Mars books when I was about 16 but was contemplating re-reading the princess of mars for my 1912 category, glad to see you enjoyed it :-)

@108 the only author I've read on that list is Gaiman and I'd recommend Neverwhere or if graphic novels re your thing the Sandman series

Oh man- it's been eons since I read Edgar Rice Burroughs. Now I'm all nostalgic and melancholic wondering where all the years went.

This dates me, but I first ran into Ricky Martin when I was in Chicago and everyone was wild about Menudo and their lead singer who was about to become too old for the group. He was a cutie! Interesting review. I usually wouldn't touch a book like a bio on a current pop star.

I think I might have found a temporary cure for my book addiction. I am planning a trip to Istanbul next year for my . . .um. . .39th. . .yeah that’s right, my 39th birthday next year!

I asked a friend & my husband if they would be interested in going and the general response was – Oh God yes! Hubby said that it would motivate him to lose weight and get into shape.

So I am in the planning stages. Looking for a nice, cheap apartment in the Sultanahmet area, so we can walk most places that we want to see. Ok, the places I want to see, but it’s all about me isn’t it??

Hopefully our conservative sides won’t take over and say no you can’t go, you need furniture, new kitchen cabinets. . . I was even crazy enough to tell my mother that they were welcome to join us! And my older brother, the one you should never travel any where with because things happen. Like being punched by nuns, or getting stoned (they used really big rocks according to the tale. . .)

So, now every penny I don’t spend on books can be spent on my dream vacation. Damlaya damlaya gol olur (Drop by drop, it will make a pond.)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Sound like so much fun!! And, when you come back, you can print photos and just cover up those kitchen cabinet doors with them - problem solved! :)

Who needs furniture!!! You'll be able to bring home a real Turkish rug, and a bunch of Turkish music. Way better than furniture.

@118 - so you'll need to buy lots of books about Turkey then? ;-)

<121 I've been found out! Yes I bought 2 today. I do actually have a couple already.

Two places on my list to see besides to obivious - a used book store and a kitchen/cooking store. Otherwise I want a Turkish lamp, a Turkish tea set, Turkish tea, spices and some scarves. Pashmina's are a fashion must! I can never have enough.

DS
Bruce's evil twin :-))

OK??? I don't know what happened but my last message said that I deleted it!

here it is anyway!

-121 I've been found out! Yes I bought 2 today. I do actually have a couple already.

Two places on my list to see besides to obivious - a used book store and a kitchen/cooking store. Otherwise I want a Turkish lamp, a Turkish tea set, Turkish tea, spices and some scarves. Pashmina's are a fashion must! I can never have enough.

DS
Bruce's evil twin :-))

Ah yes, when you go to Turkey, bring clothes you can leave behind so you can pack your return trip suitcase full of scarves!

108: I loved The Graveyard Book by Gaiman.

Your trip to Turkey sounds wonderful!

>124 cammykitty: - Ha that is exactly what my Grandparents used to do when they went to Europe!

My packing idea - bring an old pillow. Becuase I have trouble sleeping without my own pillow, and then throw it out when we leave. You are supposed to replace your pillows on a regular basis anyway.

BTW, finished Fablehaven it will be on my 75 book challenge . . .

DS
Bruce's evil twin :-))

The pillow idea is perfect! I usually take me pillow with me when I'm travelling but I don't throw them out until the dog makes it mandatory. The pillow usually makes the trip back. When it's Duluth though, all you need is enough room in the car for a new sweatshirt and a pound of chocolate.

Bought a bunch of audio books yesterday as research for a money making idea for the hubby - doing voice work and recording audio books. So if anyone has a public domain title that they would like to have on audio and can't find yet, let me know! Or is an author looking for someone to record their book. . . .

I must say that so far the best narrator has been David Tennant. I got some read by Dick Hill, Gerard Doyle, and Katherine Kellgren who are supposed to be some of the best.

Interestingly enough, even though the guy we took the class from (Making money making audio books) said that authors should never read their own books, I see the Neil Gaiman was nominated for an Audie (an audio book award) this year and has won some in the past.

Also Bronson Pinchot (who has a new show on the DIY Network) is has also been nominated (and I think won) some Audies.

Oh, and the hubby is writting for the below website . . . and they get paid by the 'click'. So check it out and if you like it remember to go back often and read their stuff. . .

http://www.freelibertywriters.com/writers/

DS
(bruce's evil twin :-))

I found a very interesting website - http://publicdomainreview.org/ - while doing some on-line research.

According to their website -

"The Public Domain Review aspires to become a bounteous gateway into this whopping plenitude that is the public domain, helping our readers to explore this rich terrain by surfacing unusual and obscure works, and offering fresh reflections and unfamiliar angles on material which is more well known."

It has some very interesting articles. And another way to find new and interesting things to read.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I have decided that I hate Brilliance Audio books.

Good god, 99 tracks on each disk? They vary in length from 21 seconds to 2 minutes and 45 seconds, but the majority are about 45-50 seconds long. That’s fine if you are listening to it on the CD’s, but I like mine on my iPod. And I’m kind of a data nut, I want consistency and accuracy so yeah, I have to update almost everything on each track, on each disk because practically none of the information was transferred (like what book, what disk, etc) or was correct when it did. That is a lot of cut & paste!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin ;-))

always take a pillow travelling is a new take on the hitchikers "always know where your towel is"?

So I have been thinking about Daphne du Maurier since reading those books about & by her. None of them came out and said she was gay, but it seems obvious to me that she was. I mean it seems that the most intense & most meaningful relationships that she had were with woman. Was the problem that that was the way society was? Was it her family? What? Of course we will never know.

I was surfing Hamline University’s book lists for spring 2012 and found Fashioning Sapphism and Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928. So not ‘normally’ a topic that I would pick to read, but if I really want to understand Daphne du Maurier and her writing I need to understand the time period better and how society would have reacted if she had chosen or been able to reach a point where she could choose to be gay. (Remember, I’m the girl who always wants “more”.) I am not saying that sexuality is a choice, but that being open about it or not is, but you have to be ready to accept who you are, and some people never reach that point. And it certainly doesn’t sound like she ever came to the point where she admitted to herself that she was gay. But of course I could just be putting my extremely heterosexual outlook on the whole thing. Really that’s who I am and while you can try to ‘put yourself in someone else’s shoes’ you are still looking at it through the filter of who you are.

Then I found out about Radclyffe Hall. Who incidentally was a friend of Noël Coward who was a close friend of the Du Maurier’s so it is likely that Daphne knew her. Hall’s The Well of Loneliness’ has overt lesbian themes and a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women”. And is also supposed to be a mighty fine piece of literature. It of course went on my wish list, along with quite a few books on Radclyffe Hall. And if I didn’t already have a HUGE TBR pile, and wasn’t planning on going to Istanbul next year, they would so coming to my house now!

And I just bought 2 books about Frances Hodgson Burnett, I have no control. Her book The Lost Prince is one of my favorite books, ever since I found a copy of it in one of my grandpa’s barns. Good thing that I read fast!

Currently I am reading Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story and The Wizard of Oz. Very good, very interesting.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

PS - I always take my pillow because I can't sleep without it! I am a terrible insomniac! And now with a Kindle I shouldn't have to worry about running out of books.

The thing that I have realized is that labels for sexuality are entirely social and constructed, and a product entirely of their time and culture. It is very fascinating to see the divers ways in which sexuality has been conceived across human history.... The vast majority have no relation to our current dichotomy of "same sex or opposite sex attraction with those attracted to both being categorized as 'the other' by both groups". Sexuality and attraction are very nebulous and are often assigned by others rather than self -- I suspect under another social situation du Maurier and a lot of other writers would be categorized completely differently than they (or we) would have boxed them into originally. (Alexander the Great is another one who comes to mind like this -- at least, I think it was him -- our modern conception of homosexuality has really no bearing on his relations w men and women, and who knows how we would have characterized him if he were alive today....)

Maybe eventually we will evolve enough sometime, where it is accepted that souls have no age, and no gender.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

@134 Yes, well said! & of course, The Well of Loneliness is giong on my ridiculously long WL.

I just remembered that we have an ARC copy of Banned Books: Informal Notes on Some Books Banned for Various Reasons at Various Times and in Various Places, so I have looked up Radclyffe Hall. (On a side note, if you are writing a book, a short title would be nice.)

It says –
“The Well of Loneliness, 1928

1928 England-London: Withdrawn from sale by the publisher at the request of the Secretary of the Home Office, followed by contradictory decisions of several courts and much controversy. Among those who protested the suppression of the novel were George Bernard Shaw, Laurence Housman, Rose Macaulay, John Buchan, Lytton Strachey, Laurence Binyon and others.

1929 United States-New York: Charles Sumner, Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, acting under a warrant issued by Chief Magistrate McAdoo raided the office of the publisher and removed 865 copies remaining from the sixth edition, then raided Macy’s book department.

1939 New York: Book finally cleared; defended by Morris L Ernst. The casse was significant because the judge sought to inject a new element into the obscenity law in declaring the subject matter “offensive to decency,” rather than words of phrases.

1944 . . . Miss Hall had received the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize and the James Tait Black Prize for her novel Adam’s Breed.

The New York Herald-Tribune wrote: “The Well of Loneliness is much more of a sermon than a story, a passionate plea for the world’s understanding and sympathy, as much a novel of problem and purpose as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as sentimental and moralistic as the deepest-dyed of the Victorians.””

Wow, if I didn’t want to read The Well of Loneliness before, how could I not want to read this book now??

Anyone interested in reading it in say April and comparing thoughts?

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I'm up for a group read unless the sky falls on my head again. & your ARC on Banned Books sounds like just the sort of book the average bookaholic needs as a reference book.

>137 cammykitty: I know, it was so convenient that I married a man whose grandparents were editors of the Ladies Home Journal and got such books!

I just bought a copy of The Well of Loneliness on Amazon.

Must read, must sew . . . must stop surfing! I now have zippers though!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Yes, get sewing! & I must get cleaning... not... more likely I should try to sleep. Yes, I noticed that Banned Books book is far from current, but it was an ARC sent to Ladies Home Journal??? I'll check and see if the library has The Well of Loneliness. I should be able to track it down.

Looks like there are a few copies through interlibrary loan, one from 1920. One is up in Duluth. It might be a bit hard to get that way, but if I request in mid March, it should work out. & my search at the regular library brought up "The Well of Horniness" which was linked to this book: Out front : contemporary gay and lesbian plays / edited and with an introduction by Don Shewey. Interesting.

Stop! So I looked up Out Front: Contemporary Gay and Lesbian Plays and decided that it was too, well, contemporary. But I did find Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater which is really on the edge of the time period that I am looking at, but looks good anyway. So it went on my wish list.

Since I am, as my husband once said the most heterosexual person that he has ever met (as in a really like men, not as in heterosexual is the only way to go), I am interested in being homosexual in a historical context because that is what shaped the authors as artists. But since the subject is not something that I have looked at before I am not very savvy on all of the search words that one could use, or artists that are known to be gay, I rely on whatever search engine I am using (say Amazon) to help me out, which leads me to an interesting observation.

When I search for books on the history of England on Amazon and add a book to my wish list it shows me lot’s of other books on the history of England. When I searched for books on Radclyffe Hall and added them to my wish list they showed me lot’s of other books on the history of England or whatever it was that I was searching for previously. I had to arrow back or start the search again for books on or by Radclyffe Hall in order to get another list of available books.

Thankfully it isn’t all bad. On searching for Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself I was also lead to Going to Heaven: The Life and Election of Bishop Gene Robinson and Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers. Neither of which made it to my wish list because they don’t have anything to do with my current topics, or interests. I’m not gay, or Catholic and no longer have a teenager, let alone a transgender one.

But still it makes me wonder. . . but it's probably good for keeping my wish list down below 2000 items.

DS
Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Thorn and the Blossom by Theodora Goss

Format: two sided accordion book
Subject: love story
Setting: Cornwall mostly
Characters: Evelyn and Brendan
Genre: short story/romance/myth?
Source: fellow LT’er

Total score out of a possible 5 – 3.83

Character – 4
Plot – 3
Theme – 2
Style – 5
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

So this is an odd book, which is both good and bad. Good because it’s kind of cool, basically two stories in one, kind of like the two sides of a coin. Bad in that it is kind of annoying to read because there is really nothing but your hands or reading surface to keep it from flopping into an unruly pile.

Love the characters, but it’s like you only get the first chapter or two of a story and then it ends. It is completely unsatisfying, like you were given a nice piece of cake and after only a few bites it is taken away from you.

Not worth the $16.95 listed on the box. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Finding Oz by Evan I Schwartz

Format: hardcover
Subject: the life of L Frank Baum
Setting: Syracuse, Aberdeen and Chicago
Genre: biography
Source: used bookstore

Total score out of a possible 5 – 3.5

Many times I read a biography and it is so dry I can hardly read it, there is nothing that makes it personal, that evokes a connection to the subject. It seems obvious, after reading this, that there is much that we do not know about L Frank Baum the author deals with this issue quite well.

What I liked about this book, is that there are parts where the author says something along the lines of there really is no record or whether he did x, but it is known that many people where he lived did x, so it is more then likely that he did it too. I feel that this puts us more firmly into the times, because let’s face it unless you are very interested in this time period and have done a lot of reading or research on it we are very much removed from what was like back then. None of us live in a vacuum and I think that the issue with many biographies is that they don’t include enough of the world that the subject lived in (like Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch which I haven’t decided if I am going to bother finishing yet. . .probably not.)

I know that a lot of people will complain that there is too much written about his mother-in-law Matilda Joslyn Gage or other ‘filler’ items. But I think that without it we would not have a good picture of L Frank Baum. Also, I am sure that she was a very important figure in his life. It also doesn’t hurt to remind us that women couldn’t vote then, about Wounded Knee and other things from the past.

I guess if you are looking for a really in depth book that is completely focused on L Frank Baum this is not the book for you. But you will certainly know more about him and the world that he lived in after you have read this book. It will certainly make you think.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Both good reviews. Totally agree that Thorn is like cake. Goss is usually a short story writer & poet, and what I've read of hers before this has been much tighter. She's worth keeping an eye on though. She'll publish something really beautiful someday.

>144 cammykitty: like the rest of this book? Really, why add a plot twist and not do anything with it? And. . .!

This of course caused me to buy more books. Needed something light, something MODERN, as in written in THIS century, so I broke down and ordered Forever by Jude Deveraux, becuase I have the rest of the trilogy and I have decided to giveup on finding the 1st one at the thrift store.

Ok, I ordered a few other books too. You know some light reading, Turkish: An Essential Grammar, Turkish for Foreigners, A HANDBOOK OF CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE, Penelopiad (Canongate Myths) and some others.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull

Format: paperback
Subject: trust, responsibility, faith
Setting: Fablehaven mostly
Characters: Kendra & Seth
Genre: YA Fantasy
Source: B&N

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.83

Character – 5
Plot – 5
Theme – 5
Style – 5
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

Very well done. It starts out at the end of the school year, so most of the story is spent at Fablehaven. Kendra and Seth are in trouble, the evil Society of the Evening Star is out to get them and use them for their own means. They make a daring escape to the safety of Fablehaven. But all is not well, there seems to be a traitor, one who they think is a friend is not what they seem. Can they unmask the traitor in time to save Fablehaven, their family and each other?

The sibling rivalry works well, Seth is a bit jealous of Kendra and her new powers that she seems to have gotten from her encounter with the fairies in the last book. People are still a little leery of putting all of their trust in him, has he learned his lesson? Who can they trust?

Again there are some very good questions at the end of the book to make you think about what happened in the story and why you think the characters did what they did. Great if you are reading it with your child, you will have some interesting conversations when you talk about the answers. What is the difference between boldness and recklessness?

I liked the plot twist at the end. Since a good part of the book was about trust and trying to decide who you can trust, I wasn’t too surprised by it. And it was nicely done, a good lead in to the next book I am sure.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Forever by Jude Deveraux

Format: paperback
Subject: family
Setting: mostly Camwell, CT
Characters: Darci & Adam
Genre: Romance
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.17

Character – 4
Plot – 4
Theme – 3
Style – 5
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

As usual I am a bit harder on the scoring then I would be from another author. This is still a very good book, but not as good as most of her others.

First, Adam is a bit blank, closed off, nothing given to really like him right away. And I get it, that is part of the story, he has issues. Then Darci, she is a big vague too, what is true and what is a lie? Again, I get it, part of the story. So nothing that I can put my finger on, but I think that somehow it could have been better. But since this is the first in a trilogy, maybe it there is a purpose for it.

Is Darci a cliché? Poor, stubborn girl who doesn’t want to spend her money on clothes, always keeping the change, and saving as much of the money as she can get her hands on. Almost, maybe. . .she doesn’t feel like one, but I think that most of the elements are there.

Adam, well he is a Montgomery and they pretty much act the same. It would be strange if he didn’t, because they are brought up that way. As he says in the book – “You researched my family. Did you find any history of dishonor anywhere in my family?” So, he has money, and is used to getting his own way.

And the town? With witches, missing children and murdered women? Ok there were a few weak spots (don’t want to give away anything), but it was entertaining enough, that they don’t matter. Because what these books are about are the relationship between the two main characters. How they react to each other, giving, taking, learning about each other.

I was very entertained and really that is the whole purpose right?

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

You're review sounds lower than a 4. Are they a bit Beatrice & Benedict?

I didn’t mean it to sound less then a 4 . . . I could easily read it again right now and still really enjoy it.

Darci is spuncky and feisty, and practical. And Adam got kidnapped when he was 3 and bad things happened. Really it is a great read, just could have been a tad bit better considering the author. For entertainmant value it is really good, there are just a few bits where, well lets put it this way, the characters should have been more parinoid. . . and should have had better plans. But then again I hang out with people who have actual plans for the Zombie Apocolypse.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I LOVED the Fablehaven books!

Songs My Mother Never Taught Me by Selçuk Altun

Format: paperback
Subject: family, finding yourself?
Setting: Istanbul
Characters: Arda and Bedirhan
Genre: thriller?
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 2.33

Character – 1
Plot – 1
Theme – 1
Style – 4
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 2

I think that I am not a big fan of ‘literature’. The books considered to be literature leave me unsatisfied. Some people refer to this book as a thriller, how can it be a thriller? We know who the assassin is, there is no mystery. Thriller? It wasn’t remotely thrilling, I guess mostly because you don’t care enough about the characters.

This book has two features that I am not sure that I like. First it switches between two narrators, Arda and the man who assassinated Arda’s father, Bedirhan. The problem with this is that you are reading along, and get to the next section and then it’s like huh? Oh, right, this is the other guy talking now. The second feature that I am not sure that I like is that the author made himself a character in his own story. Are we supposed to be impressed? Is the fact that he calls himself bad names supposed to amuse us?

As for character both main characters are stunted, flat, there is no real growth, except for maybe at the very end. And there are really no secondary characters in the story either. Good stories are about people and their relationships.

What was well done was the setting, if the setting can be a character then that is the only character that really shines in this book.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Never trust an author who is a character or a character who is an author... except possibly in Misery. Wait... Why would I trust Steven King?

Wait, the name of the author in Misery is Steven King? Or is he just a minor character in it?

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

>151 bruce_krafft: - I've read a couple of books that use that technique, but I think each chapter was titled with the name of the character who was "speaking" so at least you were aware.

Nah - he names the author something else, so it isn't quite as bad as author-as-character, but he was also channeling a few personal experiences for Misery. I'm sure he's still uncomfortable when some people tell him that they are his "number one fan."

Steven King does appear as a character in one of his own books though - but it would be a spoiler to name which one...

OK, I tried to Google the answer to what book Stephen King put himself as a character and only found one where he used his pseudonym as a character, which to me doesn’t count, because it wasn’t written under the pseudonym. Oh, well.

Today is crappy. I am sick and the microwave died, spectacularly apparently. While the hubby can now almost walk in a straight line and carry beverages without spilling driving is still on the no can do list. Otherwise I so would have sent him off for Chipotle and a new microwave.

So a good review of India Becoming will need to wait. It was not quite what I expected. This is not a story about Akash Kapur and his life in India, this is a story about other people and how that changes in India are changing how they live. He interviews several people over an extended period of time, and that is the basis of this book.

I could only wonder if what India is going through is similar to what the Western world went through after WWII and later when the roles of women changed forever. Family or career? Only in India it has the added complication of caste, and arranged marriages.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

He is definitely in one of them

The Topkapi Secret by Terry Kelhawk

Format: hardcover
Subject: Koran authenticity
Setting: Istanbul, and several other locations
Characters: Angela & Mohammed
Genre: mystery
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.25

Character – 4.5
Plot – 5
Theme – 3
Style – 4
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 4

Holy shades of Dan Brown! Angela, a California English Professor in the middle of a divorce and on a study trip in Istanbul, decides to take a break and reconnect with her Palestinian relatives. In the process she gets caught up in a plot to kill a group of researchers studying old Korans. Someone doesn’t want their research to come out and is willing to kill to keep it that way.

For the genre the characterization is good. It could have been beefed up just a titch to have made it great. I don’t want to give anything away, and I can understand from the plot standpoint there are reasons why we didn’t learn as much about Mohammed until later, but it wouldn’t have taken much to have made it a great book.

The theme was I felt the weakest point. Not that the themes are weak but not all have as much support from the story that they could have. Mainly the opposing view should have gotten more attention. While it is very understandable that Angela and Mohammed don’t want to be killed, we really don’t get the impetus of the opposing side, besides blind religious fanaticism.

I see that another reviewer said that the ‘language, grammar and sentence structure could be better . . . I felt as if I was reading a writing by a 13-year old . . . ’ Well, the only place where grammar and sentence structure matter is in an English class. In the real world what matters is whether or not you are communicating what you want. Sometimes it is more about rhythm, not grammar. Reading the writing of a 13-year old? It would have to be a pretty articulate 13-year old. To me this sort of argument is very weak unless the writing is so bad you cannot understand what is happening; this is clearly not the case with this book. I think that reading up on translation has really clarified this point with me. You need to think, why was it written this way? Is it just bad writing? Or was it done with purpose or intent?

All in all it is a great romp through a bit of history of the Koran and I really did enjoy it.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Really feeling under the weather. So I read some Jude Deveraux who is like candy. Really good candy. Hopefully I will be up to Turkish for Foreigners and Turkish: An Essential Grammar soon becuase I really like what I have seen so far. Turkish: An Essential Grammar is my favorite so far even though it is not a 'text book' with lessons.

And BTW the 4-door loaner Mini has some impressive get up and go. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Istanbul Eats: Exploring the Culinary Backstreets

Ok, I was going to say I should have remembered to check the dimensions before I ordered this, but I see that they are not listed on Amazon. I paid a bit more then I normally would have paid for a book because: one - the 2 reviews that are on Amazon, two – we are total foodies, and three – because we are going there next year.

So first it is SMALLER then expected – 4 ½ x 6 ¼ and just a bit thicker then ½ inch. It has lovely photographs and nice maps. All of which make it perfect to carry with you while you are walking around Istanbul.

The book is organized by location – example Old City, Galata and the docks, Bosphorus. Each section starts with a list of the restaurants and a map. Note that the number on the map is the page number that the information is on – no need to try to figure out that restaurant A is on page x.

It has a two page glossary, which will be very handy if you are not familiar with Turkish food terms. But it does not explain the Turkish alphabet, so make sure that you are familiar with that. It also has a nice index (you know me, a good index is very important) where it has the restaurants listed: alphabetically, by food type and separate indexes for vegetarian friendly and alcohol served. Yes, that is right, in case you didn’t know Turkey is an Islamic country where they drink alcohol and do many other things that would probably get you stoned, thrown into prison or killed in other Islamic countries. (Of course there are also very conservative Muslims living there too, so try to be conservative if you go.)

The format it follows is basic almost every place is given a page of text, which includes address, phone number and hours open and a small map showing where it is. There is also a page for photography, mostly 1 photo of either the food or the restaurant.

Do not read this book while you are hungry. Unless of course you are getting in the mood to cook a fabulous Turkish meal.

One picture makes me say - Ladies please remember never hang your purse on the back of your chair in a public place. Unless of course you want it to be stolen.

Would I have bought it for about $25 if I had seen it in a store? Not sure. Maybe, probably . . . maybe not. . . I don’t know.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I must say that I would never have thought that I would say that I book that I had read by Margaret Atwood was delightful, but that is exactly what The Penelopiad is. Review later. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

India Becoming by Akash Kapur

Format: paperback
Subject: modernization of India
Setting: India
Source: ARC

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.5

What price progress? India Becoming is not one mans story about life in India; it is stories from some of the people that the author has met in search of what is happening in India. How life is changing and what that means to some of the people who live there.

Progress tears down the old rules, and brings chaos. What are the new rules? Who defines them? Who has power? Is it the family? Is it the individual? The village or town? What part does the family play in this new life? What parts of the old life should you keep? What should be left behind? These are just some of the questions that people living in India face.

Akash Kapur does a good job giving the reader insight into what is going on in India and some of the problems that people face there. There are people who live in unspeakable poverty who live in hope, there are village girls who have moved to the city and are trying to stay true to the values that they grew up with. There are others who are blazing new trails and wonder if they are on the right path.

Anyone interested in India or in the process of a country becoming more modern should find this book an interesting read.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

My adult daughter was very ill one afternoon as I was reading The Penelopiad so I read it out loud to her. It actually helped distract her.

Ah, waiting for you review on The Penelopiad. I too rarely call Atwood delightful.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

Format: paperback
Subject: twist on myth of Odysseus
Setting: Sparta and Ithaca
Characters: Penelope & her 12 maids
Genre: ?
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.33

Character – 3
Plot – 4
Theme – 3
Style – 5
Setting – 3
Entertaining? 5

First let me say I don’t normally like Margaret Atwood. I loved this book, it’s short, sweet and to the point, which is why it got lower marks since there wasn’t enough time to develop the characters etc. The basic idea is to re-tell the tale from the view of Penelope & her twelve maids who meet an untimely end when Odysseus finally does make it home.

The main narrator is Penelope, princess of Sparta, cousin to Helen, daughter of a Naiad, wife of Odysseus, with her twelve maids acting as a Greek chorus. She tells it like it is, a couple thousand years of Hades can put everythin in persective.

Married at 15 and taken to a far off land where she knew no one, she was totally unprepared for her new life and Odysseus’s family made no effort to help her fit in. Not long after Penelope’s son was born, Helen runs off with Paris and Odysseus must go to war, leaving his wife to deal with Ithaca & the raising of their son on her own for 20 years.

The first ten years that he is gone runs pretty smoothly, because everyone knows that he is alive and coming back. After the war though, all bets are off when he doesn’t return home. Suitors come and start eating them out of house & home; in a society where the strongest wins she needs to be careful.

The most amusing part of this tale is the maids themselves, acting the part of the Greek chorus. In each appearance they use a different style to express themselves, and they are pretty much tongue in cheek in their attitude.

I agree with Atwood when she says that it isn’t feminist writing. It is just writing from a woman’s point of view. Penelope & the maids did what they needed to do, with the tools that they had to survive in a man’s world. Still in the end it was a man who decided their fate.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

First quarter done –

Recap:

1 – Anglosphere - We Speak English Here - 3
2 – If it Looks Good – Eat it!- 2
3 – Read Like an English Major - 1
4 – Oh the Places They Go!- 8
5 – People, Places and Things That Never Were- 6
6 – Englisc- 2
7 – Anything I bloody Want to Read - 3
8 – A Rose is a rhosyn is gül . . . - 1
9 – In the Library with a Candlestick. . . - 2
10- Purple Prose - 8
11- They Drive the Bus - 0
12- Foreign Fables - 0

Best books of the year so far (from both the 1212 & the 75 book challenges):

Quiet: Power if the Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Me by Ricky Martin
anything by Jude Deveaux

The worst books so far:

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
The Women: A novel by T C Boyle – didn’t bother to finish

53 books so far completed for 2012, and 4 currently in progress. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Okay - WL for The Penelopiad so long as it's short. ;)

>168 cammykitty: Short and very quick.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

You know how there are people with closets full of clothes and they still have nothing to wear? Well, we have almost 400 cookbooks and nothing looks good! So of course I had to buy more!

Today I got Best of Turkish Cooking: Selections from Contemporary Turkish Cuisine by Ali Budak, A Taste of Turkish Cuisine by Nur Ilkin and Sheilah Kaufman (I love free 2 day shipping.) So far I am not completely in love with either book (but I am not done with either yet.)

The Taste of Turkish Cuisine doesn't have many pictures, but has many other things going for it, like the recipe names are both in English and Turkish. It has quite a few recipes too, which is nice. But no Manti recipes :-(. (Manti are tiny Turkish dumplings, sort of like ravioli.) It does have a nice index, which is always a plus.

Best of Turkish Cooking does have pictures, lots of pretty pictures, but some of the directions are not clear, perhaps it should have had a section with diagrams for the more unusual items. If most people are going to be totally unfamiliar with the foods & how they are formed, you need to be extra careful & descriptive with your directions. Also this book seems to be confused on whether the recipe names should be in English or Turkish, sadly English usually wins. Some recipes call for packaged items like a chocolate cake mix. There is one Manti recipe. The index is more like an expanded table of contents and not an actual index.

So now I have about 5 Turkish cookbooks (and a couple more on the way) and only 2 Manti recipes. Of course most of those cookbooks are small, less then 200 pages and one isn't really Turkish, but more of a chef’s interpretation of Turkish food. Neither of my new books had a recipe for Pide. Pide (pronounced pee-dE) is often described as Turkish pizza. There are similar recipes, but no actual Pide.

I am trying to get back into the habit of bringing lunch to work and doing bentos, which is why I bought new cookbooks – for inspiration. So far I have a rough version of two new recipes (one a Thai inspired rice & shrimp salad and a Greek inspired cucumber salad.) If you know nothing about bentos you should check them out on the web. I feel that food should be fun and pretty. Of course some people go way beyond pretty. I saw one recently where they did cubes of rice in the colors of the rainbow and then had matching colored food on each side. Beautiful and inspired. This weekend I am determined to make some shaped hard cooked eggs. I have I think 4 egg molds – fish, car, bunny & bear.

I am also trying to think of things (cookies, small cakes) that can be made in silicone ice cube trays. Darth Vader cookie sandwiches anyone? Have you seen the different shapes these come in?? Titanic, Easter Island statues, legos, you name it! I am thinking that handgun shaped mini cakes will be a hit at the pre-NRA convention BBQ in St Louis next month.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

My mistake, A Taste of Turkish Cuisine does have a Manti recipe. It is under Turkish Manti, not Manti or pasta, so the index could use a bit of work . . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I love cookbooks too, although I don't think I have close to 400. I do have a lot of the small pamphlet type you can buy at the checkout line though, so who knows. I don't think I'll count. I found some gorgeous Mexican mangos at the market yesterday and am going to try to make mango gelato later today. And if I can find some good stuff at the farmer's market, maybe a risotto. Those manti things sound interesting. I looked up a couple of recipes online and they do sound like raviolis. Yummy.

ETA: I also rip out recipes from newspapers and magazines and the Internet and have a huge box of them I should go through.

->172 dudes22: I have a box slightly larger then 1 foot square full of notebooks with clippings from newspapers and magazines that were my grandmothers. One of my projects is to go through and make a digital copy to share with family and friends. It is totally fascinating to go through. For example there are clippings from the “Household Forum”, and ones with the heading “Conducted by Betty Service”.

I usually try to do some research on the recipes. I have learned a lot of interesting facts since I started looking at them, for example Minute Rice was invented by an Afghani who had immigrated to the US. Some I can’t seem to find anything on, I have one for Vulcan’s Fire King Sauce (which is a BBQ sauce) that I would have thought that would at least be mentioned on-line, but I found nothing. The Vulcan’s the recipe is referring to are the MN Vulcan’s who play a big part in the St Paul Winter Carnival; they are the ones that ensure the end of winter in Minnesota. The clipping looks like it pre-dates Star Trek so I am pretty sure that it is not referring to anyone related to Spock. Not to mention it doesn’t seem like a recipe that a person would be requesting in a MN newspaper back then, most of the requests seem to be from little old ladies. (Yes I know there are lots of little old ladies interested in Star Trek NOW.)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Spocks special soup didn't look like anything anyone would seek out a recipe for. Hows the cooking project going this weekend??? There won't be much cooking in my house because foster dog #2 is coming in tonight. It's the lab mix I was supposed to get the first time, but I think they mixed her up with her sister. Heaven knows a lab mix will want to help cook/consume anything I attempt foodwise.

Speaking of Manti and Afghans, have you ever eaten at D'Afghan in Richfield? Yummmm, and they had a cookbook of their own out about 7 years ago. One of my friends bought it. He lives in Missouri and the clincher of the sale was when they promised to send him any hard-to-find spices.

I got I got most of my shopping done and cleaned the fridge and then totally collapsed. I hate being sick. I do feel a lot better, but the week pretty much tired me out. So mostly after that I just read cookbooks.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I have started soaking some glutinous rice & bananas from Martin Yan’s Asian Favorites. I have decided that I am too tired to get banana leaves so I am substituting parchment paper or maybe corn husks. I wish United Noodle was on my side of town, though maybe Holy Land has some, but haven’t decided if I am up to going there & the regular grocery store, since I really should rest up so I am not dragging butt all week.

Are banana’s a steal or what? I bought 3lbs for $1.36 yesterday. Why can’t mangos be that cheap? They are more then $1 a pound, which of course didn’t stop me from buying 10 pounds worth. Oh dear, just found an error in Mangoes & Curry Leaves, shouldn’t a recipe that is called ‘Mango Ice Cream with Cardamom’ have cardamom in it?

Also, am going to try to implement a new rule. Fridge has to be emptied out and cleaned before we go grocery shopping. I prefer my fridge to be like my counters – spotless. Also the hubby has too many unlabeled jars of random things in there.

What I read yesterday (but not cover to cover completely so I am not adding them to my list, and they are re-reads):

Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Seductions of Rice by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Turquoise: A Chef's Travels in Turkey by Greg and Lucy Malouf
Martin Yan’s Asian Favorites by Martin Yan

All are great eye candy and recipes. Seductions of Rice should come with a warning label that you should have at least 5 different kinds of rice on hand before you read it. OK, maybe more, I do have Thai Glutinous, Chinese Black, Arborio, basmati, and regular (white & brown) on hand. I would say that you should also have black sticky and some kind of red before you start reading this book. Or go to a buffet and eat lots first.

The problem that I have with Turquoise: A Chef's Travels in Turkey, Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent , Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia, and Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China is their unusual size – 10 x 11.3. That is just over 3 inches wider then most cookbooks, which makes them kind of hard to put on a shelf. I have to wonder how many people looked at them and didn’t get them because of that. They would make a nice stacked on the coffee table though. If you are a serious foodie these are a must. Not only are the pictures and recipes great but the human connection with stories behind them are great too. I love it when cookbooks have a story with a recipe and in these books there is a little something about the recipe before the ingredient list. Seductions of Rice is written in a similar fashion, but the format is more like a 'normal' cookbook and most of the pictures are black & white.

So even though we have a zillion cookbooks, they do not just sit on the shelf looking pretty. I might not cook any recipes from them very often but I do read them and use them for reference a lot. Probably explains why I can’t sleep at night because I am creating recipes in my head. Last night I was thinking of creating a shrimp Bloody Mary bundle, basically a cooked shrimp wrapped in squares made from spring roll wrappers with ingredients that you would find in a Bloody Mary sans alcohol. The tails would be sticking out like little handles. The inspiration came from a Thai cookbook (?) and Salt: Cooking With the World's Favorite Seasoning. BTW that cookbook is totally too small. I never would have bought it if I had seen it before. Again, I must remember to read the size, really 64 pages, that’s a quarter a page, so basically over $ .50/recipe. Pictures are great, recipes look good, but still only 64 pages - total.

So if you are a serious foodie and don’t have any of the cookbooks on the list above you should at least check them out. To me they all have what a cookbook should have, not only recipes but stories about the food, and years from now when the world has changed we will still have these chronicles with their stories and people will understand the recipes better.

And for those of you familiar with the “Jucy Lucy” I just have to say – Peynirli Sultan Köftesi from the 15th & 16th centuries of the Ottoman Empire (from Taste of Turkish Cuisine) might just pre-date both Matt’s Bar & the 5-8 Club. For those of you not familiar with the “Jucy Lucy” it is a cheeseburger with the cheese inside. Peynirli means (a food) which contains cheese, and köfte is minced meat, usually lamb or beef, made into various forms and grilled. I love cookbooks!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

A local market had Mexican mangoes on sale last week so I bought some and made some mango gelato this weekend. Maybe next time I'll try putting a little cardamon in it. Or maybe some ginger. My husband smoked a couple of pork hocks we got from my brother's farm and I have lentil soup simmering for supper tonight. I too love to read cookbooks and some of those sound really interesting; especially the rice one. I have Salt: A World History on my nook to read sometime this year which I'm looking forward too.

Wow 498 pages - you must tell me how you like Salt: A World history

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Your reviews are making me hungry! The talk of banana leaves and rice reminds me of my Mom's sticky rice packets. My parents owned a restaurant and were fantastic Cantonese cooks and I wished I'd learned more of their techniques when I was living at home. Now that I'm relatively far away, I have to rely on cookbooks more. I'll have to check out some of the ones you've listed.

>178 bruce_krafft: Really - I hadn't opened it yet (it's on my nook) to see how many pages. maybe I'll put it off till later this year. BTW - My mango gelato was yummy! But hubby suggested next time I add some ginger or cardamom.

I like mango sans seasoning myself. When you get to Salt, let me know. It is on my wish list. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I just got Asian Dumplings by Andrea Nguyen. The preliminary results are – it’s a must for anyone interested in Asian dumplings!

It could have more pictures, and the few pictures that it has could be labeled, but the recipes!

There is a very nice introduction, which includes a handy “Asian Dumpling Pantry” list of the essential ingredients needed to keep on hand for impromptu dumpling making, some basic tips, techniques and descriptions of some items you may or may not be familiar with.

The rest of the book is divided into 9 different sections:

filled pastas
thin skins
stuffed buns
rich pastries
translucent wheat and tapioca starches
transformations of rice
legumes and tubers
sweet treasures
sauces, seasonings, stocks and other basics.

Yes you will need to stretch your idea of what a dumpling is to accept that all the recipes in this book are dumplings, but I can’t wait to try Spiced Pineapple-filled Pastries, or Curry Puffs. The book even gives a recipe to make rice sheets from scratch (which I knew wouldn’t be hard since my husband recently tried making rice noodles from scratch and they are basically the same you just cut them differently.) In one of these recipes you sprinkle the ‘dough’ with dried shrimp & finally chopped scallions after they have cooked slightly.

What looks most intriguing? The Thai Tapioca Pearl Dumplings. The dough is made using tapioca pearls. I am also very happy to see that there is a Shanghai Soup Dumpling. There is a restaurant not far from 3M Center that serves soup dumplings, they are wonderful. If you are not familiar with these, the soup is INSIDE the dumpling. Wondering what to do with that extra stinky kimchi that was an impulse buy? The recipes for Kimchi Dumplings says that – “. . . especially older (stinkier) kimchi, works extra well.”

Another plus for the book is that each recipe starts with at least a paragraph or two talking about the recipe. To me cookbooks are not just about being able to cook the food, but also to learn something about it, to chronicle the history of it so I really like that ones that do this. It also has some nice diagrams on how to shape the various dumpling shapes so you don’t have to rely on the few photos or what memory you have on what the dumpling should look like.

Sorry if I made you hungry. . .

DS
(Bruce’s evil twin :-))

Asian Dumplings sounds like a fantastic book! I've added it to my wishlist.

Soup Dumplings??? Yes, you've made me super hungry and I'm too tired to head off to Woodbury. I've got Hot Sour Salty Sweet too. It's absolutely beautiful. I think I have the rice one too, but alas, I don't really know which cookbooks I own. Hope you start feeling better! Try something out of A Spoonful of Ginger by Nina Simonds. It should knock your cold out of your system.

OMG - I don't have A Spoonful of Gonger - yet! I just went and ordered it.

I am working on a blank cookbook review form. And then I plan on doing reviews for every cookbook that we have. How do you rate a cookbook? Figure price per recipe & decide you would pay that much for the recipes in the book?? Like the Hungry Girl cookbooks, they are obviously written for people with very little cooking skills & who need to be educated, normally not a cookbook I would use, but I still like them. So yes, they are not low in sodium etc, but they are certainly healthyier then what I think the target audience is usually eating.

So I have some thinking to do there. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Ok, I think that I have the basic format for my cookbook reviews.

_____________________________________________________________________
Cookbook Review Form

ISBN-13:
ISBN-10:
Original publication date:
Edition publication date:
Format:
Pages:
Dimensions:

Dietary scope: (Atkins, fat-free etc):
Intended audience:
Photos:
Index:
Arrangement:
Other information (i.e. - tips, history, etc):
Lists Nutritional information:
Lists Servings:
Utilizes packaged foods:
Low fat:
Low sodium:
Low sugar:
Low carb:
Recommended skill level:
Apprentice – I can’t make dinner without a box, or the telephone
Journeyman – I’m done with boxes – what’s next?
Master – Give me an ingredient, any ingredient – I dare you!

Points – (each question can have up to 5 points)
Hits the intended audience?
Picture to recipe ratio?
Good format?
Good table of contents?
Good index?
Cost per recipe (listed cover price/#recipes)
Anthropology rating:
I like?

_____________________________________________________________________

I need a catchy phrase to replace the "Anthropology rating", which is basically how much information is there that relates to the history of the recipes and the ingredients, etc.

For example my absolute favorite cookbook is The Gold Cook Book by Louis P De Gouy. Not only does it contain almost every classic recipe that you can think of (each recipe is numbered, number of the last one is 2462, so if you paid $25 for it that would come to about a penny per recipe), every section has some history. It has sections on choosing knives, it has a pressure cooker chart (which ok, I probably wouldn’t use given the age of the book. . .). And if you are looking for information on eggs there is a very through section on eggs. It is basically a history book on food with recipes. Do you want to know the history of Newburg sauce? It’s in there. What would the great chef Escoffier tell an apprentice on making a sauce? It’s in there. Do you want a recipe for pot pies that is at least 150 years old? Check out Granny Lee’s Little Chicken Pies. And it even has poems and rhymes.

“. . . this is every cook’s opinion,
no savory dish without an onion,
but lest your kissing should be spoil’d,
your onions must be thoroughly boiled. . . “

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

LOL! Love the rhyme - the thing I remember from epicurious.com's cookbook reviews was % of recipes you would actually use. That was always very useful info for me, and I only saw one cookbook that said 100%. It was written by one of the editors of Cooks Illustrated - How to Cook without a Book. It had basic recipes and then suggestions on improvising.

Can't think of a catchier phrase than "Anthropology Rating" but I knew what you meant, but that's perhaps because I'm on your wavelength. You'll love A Spoonful of Ginger.

Just thought I'd pop in to say that Kitchen Window on NPR.org today has a recipes for Turkish borek.

I love Kitchen Window! NPR not so much (love the idea, and what they do though) . . . too much talk. I'm an iPod addict.

Adding % recipes that I would actually use to the form.

Oh and GPS (Geek Partnership Society) is planning a cookbook. I have volunteered for it - duh!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Turkish Cookery by Inci Kut

ISBN-10: 975-479-100-7
Original publication date: 1992
Edition publication date: 1993
Format: paperback
Publisher: Net Turistik Yayinlar
Pages: 141
Dimensions: 7.5 X 8.5 x 3/8
# of recipes: 175-200

Dietary scope: (Atkins, fat-free etc): Turkish Cuisine
Intended audience: people who want to cook authentic Turkish food
Photos: 1 or more photos every 2 pages
Index: no
Arrangement: by course
Other information (i.e. - tips, history, etc): there is a minimal historical or cultural notes
Lists Nutritional information: no
Lists Servings: yes
Utilizes packaged foods: only in a couple of recipes
Low fat: not really
Low sodium: not really
Low sugar: not really
Low carb: not really
Cost per recipe (listed cover price/#recipes) 722 TL
Recommended skill level: Journeyman (I’m done with boxes – what’s next?)

Points – (each question can have up to 5 points) – 3.14
Hits the intended audience? 5
Picture to recipe ratio? 4
Good format? 3
Good table of contents? 5
Good index? 0
Anthropology rating: 1
% of recipes I would make (1 point per 20%): 75% = 3.75

I like? yes

The only way this cookbook could have been more Turkish is if it was written in Turkish, my copy even has a price sticker in Turkish Lira. It could have possibly benefited from being proofread by a native English speaker, but that does give it a bit of charm. I can’t help but smile every time I look at a recipe with Egg-Plant in it even though this is one food that I can truly not eat, which is also why the % of recipes that I would make is smaller then it could be. If you take out the recipes with eggplant I would probably make over 90% of the remaining at least once. I am not a huge fan of liver or tripe, and there are a few other recipes that the ingredients would be a bit hard to come by in Minnesota, fresh anchovies for example. It is not written with American measurements, and at first you might look at a recipe and see that it calls for a ‘glass’ of something. There is a nice table at the front of the book that lets you know that a ‘glass’ equals 1 American cup, or 5/6th of a British breakfast cup.

It has a lot of pictures, not quite a picture for every recipe but pretty close. One of the things that I liked about the pictures is that if you are unfamiliar with the food most are photographed in such a way as to show you what the finished product looks like, for example baked Borek. Now I understand what I didn’t from a previous book. Yes, you place the filling on the dough and roll it up like a cigar, and then you shape it into a big, flat snail shape.

The format, while not totally bad is, busy. The pages are separated into columns, two wider columns with a narrower one separating them which wouldn’t be bad. But then those two wider columns have a line on either side, and each ingredient listed has a line underneath it, all this just adds visual noise. Also the page numbers are a bit unusual; each individual number is in a black box, so page 26 has two black boxes each with a number in it. You will know what section of the book you are in because each page has top boarder in black with the section name in it. I don’t think that this was needed since it is pretty obvious what section you are in once you look at the recipe. So visually there is a lot going on on each page.

The table of content is almost as good as an index, which is good since there is no attempt at an index. You could argue that with a cookbook this small it doesn’t need an index, but really with a book this small how hard could it be to add one?

This cookbook could easily get a 4-5 rating except for the lack of index, historical or cultural information and the busy formatting.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

urgh. Hard drive failure.
Netbook, tiny keyboard, no ten key :-(
reviews waiting until regukar comouter up and running.
I have started The Well of Loneliness. Good writing, but sort of tedious at the moment.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Bad news. Sorry.

Ugh. Bad luck on the hard drive. I'm reading Dracula and Julia Alvarez's time of the butterflies, so as soon as I'm done with Dracula, I can start The Well of Loneliness. A friend of mine has warned me that it's a slow, depressing book. Uh oh!

Sorry to learn about the hard drive failure. Hope you are back up and running again soon.

I'm just a few chapters into The Well of Loneliness. First response is that it's a bit self-pitying. Woe is me, daddy and mommy wanted a boy and mommy never loved me so... I will say, I loved Stephen's prayers to Jesus and thought that alone was enough to get the censors interested in Radclyffe.

100 pages in now, and am liking it much better. I especially like the father, and that unspoken implication that he feels Stephen was really meant to be a boy and he will treat him as such.

http://www.librarything.com/pic/280041

>195 cammykitty: I have also started The Well of Loneliness and was feeling the same ‘pain’. I had to ask myself, was all this necessary? My answer? Yes, as tedious as it all is/was I think that we, that is the majority of people who have no experience with feeling like this, being what society considers wrong for the most part, need to understand how Stephen thinks, feels, etc. Most of us have no way to base how Stephen feels, because how our culture is totally geared toward the man & woman pairing.
However I got ‘sucked’ into Armageddon Reef. Really good series.
Still working on getting the computer up and running. Need to find the product Id code for Microsoft Office, get iTunes figured out, and recover the files.
GPS died. Bruce is having a great time (you can check out his posts at – www.thetruthaboutguns.com ). I got to meet Dick Heller (as in District of Columbia vs. Heller) and his very lovely wife. Wow, if half the people in America had even a bit of the passion that he has the world would be a totally different place.
It’s raining BUCKETS today. Went to take pictures of the arch. They have a great park to take pictures from, Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park, but the weather! Created because of one man’s passion to provide a spot where people can go and take pictures of the arch.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin AKA 'the chauffeur' :-))

oh, I visited a very nice used book store - Patten's. And shockingly enough bought some books!

DS
(Bruces' evil twin :-))

Glad you found Armageddon Reef!! Yes, I'm still plugging along on Well of Loneliness but am finding it worthwhile, but ohh shinys like Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie keep showing up. I've got less than 200 pages left, so soon. This book is semi-autobiographic, and I'm wondering how rejected "Stephen" must have felt when her story was deemed obscene. Makes me understand why even today, there's a higher suicide rate among GLBT teens than hetero teens. Very sad book, and from what I've heard from friends, it doesn't get happier.

>199 cammykitty: we didn't find it, Bruce bought another copy . . . :-)

What to Read by Mickey Pearlman

Do you have a book club and can’t decide what to read? Trying to find something interesting to read? Broaden your horizons? Check this book out, it does “exactly what is says on the tin”.

It has lists and not just the name of the book and author; it also gives a very short synopsis of the book, the number or pages, and the year that it was published. For example one list – Don’t Miss Nineteenth-Century Novels – has The New Grub Street by George Gissing. It says “Autobiographical work about the effects of poverty on the freedom of the writer. Gissing rebelled against Victorian society and had a wretched life but left us this very fine novel. 543 pp: 1891”. And lucky me, Amazon has it for free for the Kindle!

There are 33 full lists along with 3 ‘Dream’ lists which are lists from 3 different authors which only list the title and author. It also includes a chapter called “How to Organize” which is about creating a book group or club. Some interesting lists are:

Let’s talk about me – biography, memoir and autobiography (separate lists for books by women & men)
The Butler Did It? Unlikely – mysteries (separate lists for books by women & men)
One to Beam Up, Mr. Scott (separate lists for books by women & men)
In the Hammock

Unfortunately there is not an explanation on what the criteria are for each list, although most are pretty self explanatory, not all are. For example In the Hammock seems to be an eclectic list, it has books by Julia Childs, John Grisham, Michael Crichton and Molly Katzen to name just a few. Really, The Moosewood Cookbook and Jurassic Park on the same list how did that happen?

Kind of makes me want to create my own lists. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Really, The Moosewood Cookbook and Jurassic Park on the same list how did that happen?
Really? I didn't know the T Rex was a vegetarian! 8>

Well... Moosewood has fish in it for the T Rex on Fridays. ;) What an odd list, but it sounds like a fun book. Maybe your 13 13 categories shall have to have a category for books from this book.

As for Well of Loneliness, it just turned into a 5 star read for me, whether it deserves it or not. Have you met David yet? I

no review for Pride and Prejudice I am sure that all that can be said about it has already been said.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange
Audio book
Stealing a quote from an Amazon review – “So . . . that’s it??? Really?!”

If you are hoping that the author went all out with the vampyre theme you will be terriblly disapointed. The only reason that you know that Darcy is a vampyre for at least the first 2/3’s of the book is because it says so in the title. Of course there are hints, but the ‘v’ word is absent.

The story starts out on the day of Jane and Elizabeth’s double wedding. Except for a moment before the ceremony the day goes well until the beginning of their wedding tour when Elizabeth sees Darcy’s image in the window and worries that he might be regretting that he married her. Darcy makes a sudden change in plans, Elizabeth won’t be going to the Lake District in this story either. Instead they go to the Continent.

Fans of Austin may be happy to know that the misconceptions that played a big role in the orginal continues to be the ‘theme’ in this story.

To me the first 2/3’s of the book could have been skipped. It should start after Elizabeth finds out that Darcy is a vampyre. The events previous to that can be covered in a letter to Jane. Really it needs to get into the whole Darcy is a vampyre and what that really means. How does that make his life different from anyone else? What does this mean to their relationship? What has Darcy done in the past? There ian’t even an explination on what a vampyre is in this book. They are abviously not your ‘normal’ vampyre, since he is out during the day, but no sparklies (thank goodness!)

Other then that it is well written.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I love that quote. As a matter of fact, I believe I've actually said it once or twice.

Well, Darcy could've sparkled if he'd wanted too, I'm sure. That just wasn't his personality. ;)

OK, finishing The Well of Loneliness might have to wait a bit. I now have 3 ARC's that I need to read. It is not fair that 2 of them came on the same day! And while I was gone I got another. I have to admit I am a bit saturated with what I will call the 'older' style of writting. So once I finish Off Armageddon Reef I will read a bit more of it, and then read one of the ARC's, read more, read another ARC. . . repeat. I told the hubby that it was kind of funny that I was reading books about women who wished that they could be men, and couldn't and am now reading a book where a woman didn't ever want to be a man and now was. And of course I will have to read the other books of the armageddon reef series since that is why I am re-reading it now!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I've got about 40 pages left of WoL and then will be on to my 2 arcs that unfairly arrived on the same day, both heavy duty civil rights books. I'll let you know if WoL is worth finishing. If you loved it, you would probably be close to finished with it by now. Alas, the Irish Water Spaniel doesn't have a big role. You know my priorities. Dogs rule!

...and cats drool?

Well, I'd say of course cats drool, but I've seen far more drooling dogs than drooling cats. One Newfie creates more drool in an hour than a dozen cats in a year... but dogs still rule!

I finished The Well of Loneliness and made some comments (no spoilers) on my thread here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/134762 If you want spoilers, read the book jacket. On second thought, don't. On my book jacket it's a spoiler, and it's misleading. The novel isn't about any one main thread of Steven's life but the blurber would make you think WoL is a romance. It's closer kin to the horror novel!

Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber

Still working on getting all the computer files transfered. . .

This is a re-read. Have a box of tissues handy at the end. Can David weber disapoint? Can I spell without spellcheck? No and no :-)

How long can humans go without technelogical progress when the reasons for avoiding it have been withheld? Some people may feel mnemonically challenged by the names, but I feel that it adds to the otherworldliness.

Basically the human race has been destryed except for this pocket of humanity that escaped in a daring plan. To avoid being wiped out they need to avoid the technology that led the aliens to them in the first place. The people in charge of the escape, changed plans while everyone else was 'sleeping' so no one knows the reasons why technology is banned, instead it is one of the basic tennents of their religion. Now some 800 years later things are starting to unravel, we have the corrupt church against a secular state, Charis. And the only thing that can give Charis any hope of a chance is a newly awakend android with the memories of a long dead officer.

If you like naval battles, you should like this.

Love it. now need to read other books before I can go on to the next book in the series so I can then read the new one that came out. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Happy reading!!! If I weren't afraid of long series, I'd have to read it too.

Received Gourtmet Mustards on Friday. A disapointment, one 'basic' recipe only, and that was for Dijon, which while used a base in many of the recipes, isnt really a basic recipe. You can see my full review here -

http://trufflestriflesandtribbles.blogspot.com/2012/04/cookbook-review-gourmet-m...

DS
Bruce's evil twin :-))

I read your review. Sounds like a definite thumbs down book. Kraft yellow mustard + stuff does not equal gourmet mustard.

Hopefully The Incredible Secrets of Mustard: The Quintessential Guide to the History, Lore, Varieties, and Benefits will be more of what I am looking for. It was the only non-wine related book I ordered this week.

I have 4 'test' samples of simple mustard started, 3 with black mustard and one with yellow. I should find my jillions of shot glasses and just start about as many as I can think of and have a party! maybe that is what I will do when the weather is better and the yard has had it's spring cleaning. A mustard and paella party. I have been toying with the idea of a permanent fire 'pit'. . . one that would be bog enough for my large paella pan would be nice.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Ooohhhh sounds like a plan!

Paleo Comfort Foods by Julie Mayfield and Charles Mayfield

complete review here -

http://trufflestriflesandtribbles.blogspot.com/2012/04/cookbook-reivew-paleo-com...

In one word - yum. I gave it a 3.89 out of 5, mostly because the index wasn’t very good and while there was a lot of information about the authors and why they choose the Paleo lifestyle there really isn’t much for each recipe. Although you could argue that there doesn’t need to be any because they are all based on pretty well known dishes.

Lemon Bars and fried chicken, could it get any better then that??

I have now realized that I need to come up with a table for scoring the cost per recipe. I gave this a 3 for that because it was $.22/recipe. But is that really bad? I guess I will have to look at more books and see.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I just sweaked by this month with 12 books.

The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization is a lovely book . . . I will do reviews later. Right now I am taking drugs and crawling into bed, so I can pretend to be well and go to work tomorrow. Since my boss is of the idea that unless you are bleeding and/or in a coma you are well enough to work . . . and it's month end.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

Format: paperback
Subject: love
Setting: England & Paris
Characters: Stephen, and Mary
Genre: literature
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.17

Character – 3
Plot – 3
Theme – 5
Style – 5
Setting – 3
Entertaining? 3

“The house itself is of Georgian red brick, with charming circular windows near the roof. It has dignity and pride without ostentation, self-assurance without arrogance, repose without inertia; and a gentle aloofness that, to those who know its spirit, but adds to its value as a home. It is indeed like certain lovely women who in youth were passionate but seemly; difficult to win but when won, all-fulfilling. They are passing away, but their homesteads remain, and such a homestead is Morton.”

This is an extremely well written book. The characterization is done very well but does not go very deeply. It is like a window into the lives of people that most of us still are mostly ignorant and a little nervous of, and like a window there are parts of those lives that are not revealed to us.

The book originally banned when it came out in 1928 in both the UK & the US is mostly well known for being about a “timeless portrayal of lesbian love” and was quite shocking when it was published. Modern readers will find nothing to shock them; almost everything is alluded to and never spelled out. Banned Books book it says that it wasn't cleared until 1939.

The Well of Loneliness is a timeless story, to me the story is less about being gay then about love and the sacrifices that we choose to make for it, and for the choices that we make to live our lives. Are the choices right? Who can say. It is a book that achieves what most literature strives for. While the characters are not in depth, you don’t really fall in love with them, their story leaves you wrung out in the end, without all those plot twist and turns that so many books seem to need to get you to feel that way.

The beginning is a bit tedious but necessary, being about childhood and the trials and tribulations of someone who is not quite the same as the other children. Her parents wanted a boy and instead had a daughter who they named Stephen, whether this helped or hindered her plight I don’t know. She always wants to be a boy/man, and has difficulty fitting in. Her mother is distant and her father dotes on her.

Stephen is a woman who lives her life as she chooses it. She makes very little allowances for what society expects of her. I think that the biggest difference in this story is that is it about women in a time where they were very much at the mercy of men, and without a man’s protection even money could only get you so far. Luckily Stephen is from a wealthy family so she has options that many gay people of her time did not have and she could pretty much live her life as she wanted.

I can’t say that I enjoyed it tremendously while I read it, not really my favorite type to read, but I still feel that it was very much worth reading. If you enjoy literature from this time period, and have not read this yet you better run out and get it.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

You put my thoughts into words very well. Good review. I had the same response - not terribly enjoyable, but still a 5 or 4 star read - even without David, the Irish Water Spaniel.

Depression-Free, Naturally: 7 Weeks to Eliminating Anxiety, Despair, Fatigue, and Anger from Your Life by Joan Mathews Larson

I am trying to help a friend who is depressed, so I got two books about depression and dealing with it. This is the first one that I have read.

It is very interesting. It talks about using nutrition & nutritional supplements to deal with depression. The author runs a clinic here in Minneapolis.

If what the author is saying is true, and works it is amazing. I know that some of the things that she talks about is true (food allergies) because I can totally tell the difference when I eat something that I react to. She also talks about how different blood types re-act to different diets etc. And again, although I am not totally buying the who ‘eat right for your blood type’ I can say that the things that are listed for the O blood type to avoid are things that I should definitely avoid.

So what I say about this book, if is you are depressed or know someone who is you should read it, discuss its ideas with your doctor and then make up your mind.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Running a Bed & Breakfast for Dummies by Mary White

One of the options that we are looking at when we ‘retire’ is a small hotel or B & B. Ok, we do have our eyes set on a small hotel in France that has been closed for about 20-30 years and needs major renovation, I can’t explain why this old hotel, or this town has got us hooked, but it does. It even has at least two Turkish kebab shops, so it must be kismet!

Anyway the hubby is always thinking up ideas but never getting into the practical parts, so I must be the practical one. The hotel is located in Limousin, which is pretty far down the list of places people want to visit in France. So this particular idea needs a lot of research. We both used part of our tax refund to buy books, we should really communicate better. Anyway between the two of us we ordered 7 books on either running a B & B or small hotel or on hospitality. This is the first book that I finished.

It is very comprehensive. It covers pretty much all the bases for a B & B in the US, much of which can be applied to a small hotel anywhere. It is clearly intended to have you look at the world of running a B & B without any rose colored glasses.

It is very well written and anyone looking for a basic first book on running a B & B should not be disappointed. I liked the fact that there are real-life examples, including such items as daily housekeeping schedules. There is a very good section on breakfast, including sample menus and recipes.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

What a cool dream! A B&B in France? Best of luck if you decide to go for it! (I hope maybe to drop in and stay some day.)

At the moment it's either a B & B in France, traveling an Airstream in the US, or a ESL teacher anywhere but here. We really want to be somewhere where its not too cold, with a different language and culture.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Kings' Mistresses: The Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin by Elizabeth C Goldsmith

Format: hardcover
Subject: the lives of Marie & Hortense Mancini
Setting: 17th century Europe
Source: Early reviewers

Marie & Hortense Mancini were sisters who were born in Rome and brought to live in France because of their powerful Uncle, Cardinal Mazarin. Marie fell in love with the wrong man, Louis XIV, which caused problems, since really she was only the daughter of a wealthy merchant & not fit to marry him. After Louis’s marriage she told her Uncle to find her a husband as quickly as possible, in her words “I beseech you to grant me two requests: the first to keep people from mocking me, and the second, to save me from their cruel laughter by arranging a marriage for me quickly.”

Marie was lucky, in the beginning her marriage went well, unlike her sister Hortense’s marriage. Her husbands obsession with her before they were married, did not lesson after the wedding. She did give him 4 children before she made a daring escape in 1668 to her sister in Rome. In 1672 the sisters fled Rome together. Marie was convinced that her husband wanted her dead and she feared for her life. Neither would reconcile with their husbands before their deaths.

This book covers the lives of these two women in their travels and trials to become separated from their husbands so they could live life in peace. Their lives were covered in the tabloids of the time, and both wrote and published memoirs to tell their side of the story. It does not go into tremendous detail, but it covers a lot of ground starting in 1653 and concluding in 1715 with the death of Marie.

It is fast paced and very interesting. It gives you a taste of what the different royal courts were like; France was the enlightened leader with Spain on the other end of the spectrum being very conservative. It is one of those history books that catch your imagination and make you want to learn more.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Battle For Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization by Alice Feiring

Format: paperback
Subject: wine
Setting: the world
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4

I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this book. We do make our own wine, sometimes it becomes vinegar. Thankfully vinegar makes great gifts, which is good because we made 5 gallons of mango. . . It is an enjoyable hobby that I think at least one person in each generation of my family has done. I even have a recipe from my great-grandfather for making wine. It basically says - take 18 pounds of grapes, pick off stems, crush, add 5 pounds sugar put in wood keg and leave for 3 months. If you think that modern wine making is still done that way you are in for a shock.

Alice Feiring fell in love with wine, real wine with character, and then made a career out of it. Then she discovered that it was becoming a vanishing breed thanks to Robert M Parker Jr, consultant, wine critic. Why? Not by any crusade done by Mr. Parker Jr., but because everyone wanted to get a good rating from him so they worked to modify their wines into something that he would like. You may be shocked at the things that are done to the wine that you buy. You will travel with Alice as she travels the world searching for wines made the old fashioned way, and search for the reasons why wine has changed so much. You will learn about the families that have been making it, sometimes for centuries. You will learn about terroir and yeast and many other things.

You will be inspired to actually taste the wine you are drinking, smell it, feel it on your tongue, and think about how it tastes. I think that anyone interested in wine will enjoy this book.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation by Clarence B Jones and Stuart Connelly

Format: paperback
Subject: MLK’s I have a Dream Speech
Source: Early Reviewers

I give this book 4 out of 5.

This book really makes the events seem real, it is as if you are watching them happen. You will hear about wiretapping, political maneuvering, ego bolstering and all kinds of things that went on before this historical march. How many people think of the actual march and why it happened? I don’t think most people give the march any thought, now it is all about that historic speech.

To many it will come as a surprise the maneuvering & the sacrifices that had to take place to get this march accomplished. The logistics of getting people to Washington, DC, or getting sound systems so the speeches could be heard, of getting the word out so people knew about it and could go.

The book falls apart a bit at the end where he starts talking about Obama and whether he is the ‘next MLK’. Obama is a Politian, MLK was not, he was a man who wanted to right a wrong, an injustice. A man like MLK very rarely comes more than once in a lifetime.

If you have never listened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech I urge you to find it on the internet and listen to it. (www.americanrhetoric.com is a good place to find it; they also have full text to go with it so you can read along.)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Alas, The Incredible Secrets of Mustard does not seem to have a recipe for making mustard from seeds, well except for the = "The seede of Mustard pounded with vinegar is an excellant sauce. . . ". I pounded, it did nothing. I put it in my small food processor for what seemed like forever! Almost something. So maybe spice grinder and then add vinegar . . .?

Maybe I will find more clues when I actually read the whole book. . . hope springs eternal.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I killed two birds with one stone with this book – Wine & War. I learned more about the wine of France and about WWII in France. When we think of the war I sure that all of us think about the fighting, the soldiers, to us in the US it is all so distant. But life goes on, food must be produced, children need to go to school and learn. I will write a longer review later, but this was a great book, anyone interested in the history of wine, France or WWII would find it very interesting. Possibly the 3rd best book of the year (Quiet and Ricky Martin’s book are still the first two.)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Well the first quarter of 2012 is done and I have read 71 books so far this year with my 2 challenges. Not bad. I've learned some interesting stuff, been entertained. now if I could only win the lottery so I didn't have to spend time working!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Wow! You've read lots of books lately. Good review of The Making of a Dream. I received that one as an ER too, and gave it a 4 too. & it does sound like you're going to have to get a B&B - Maybe you can look for one on your trip to Turkey. :) After all, Minneapolis just isn't the place you think of for a B&B.

We passed a Turkish resturant on the way home today (from University & Snelling). We decided that we much check it out soon.

The Used bookstore had cookbooks for $2. . . Including two "Best of" for the year my daughter was born. If we haven't passed the 400 cook book mark by now we are really close!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

71 books so far is an achievement!

He he he! Now you know where to find the menu for her next birthday party.

Rick Steves' Istanbul 2012 arrived on our doorstep this week. Bruce thought that I got it, I was thinking that he got it, it turns out that one of his sisters sent it to us! She went to Istanbul last year and said that this was the best book that they had read & used.

It is a great book, I read it in one sitting! It has some nice maps of the streets, lets you know how much time to plan for each of the walks and walks you through it. It has nice maps of the places you want to see and where everything is located too. I am guessing that since many of the places to visit are so large that these maps come in very handy. I am one of those people who like to learn where everything is before I go, so then I can relax once I get there. It is a lot easier to relax & enjoy changes of plan when you don’t have to scramble trying to figure out where you are and how to get to where you want to be.

I wish it had a bigger sections on the airport, and ground transportation, hotels (there are 28 listed for Old Town and 11 for the New District) and places to eat (there are 22 listed for Old Town and 17 for the New District). I know that sounds like a lot, but if you consider that Amazon says that this book is the #3 bestselling book for Istanbul you can imagine how many other people are reading it and planning on going there. It would have been nice to have some restaurants listed that were ‘off the beaten path’ for instance since all of the ones listed are right next to all of the places people want to see.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I wonder if there is no unbeaten path there with restaurants? Istanbul has got to be pretty big though. Not like you're going to Montenegro where no restaurant serves more than around 20. What a great surprise gift!

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor

Format: paperback
Subject: story of Angel's life
Setting: England
Characters: Angel
Source: used bookstore

Total score out of a possible 5 – 3.5

Character – 3
Plot – 3
Theme – 3
Style – 4
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 3

While I enjoyed the book it is not the type of book that I would read more than once, so that is why I gave it a 3 on the entertainment scale. There is no real plot; it is mainly just the story of Angel’s life. We never know what motivates her, or what makes her the way she is. She remains true to the person that she was when we first meet her as a girl of fifteen without a trace of modesty or self-doubt.

I would have wished for a different ending, a more changeable main character, one who learned from her experiences. But you do meet some interesting characters and see how they react to Angel and her world view. Angel is the type of character that I do not like to read about, the odd person who goes through life with people either laughing at her behind her back, or pitying her.

Strangely enough there are many parallels with this story and The Well of Loneliness. While Angel is not gay, there is only one man in her life, she is a writer that has few friends and lives life on her own terms. Angel also lacks the love and the sacrifices that Stephen makes for it in The Well of Loneliness, but she does have a companion who loves her and make sacrifices to be with her and takes care of her.

I would say that it was well written even if it is not quite my taste I did enjoy most of the book. I look forward to reading more books by Elizabeth Taylor.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Radclyffe Hall: A Case of Obscenity? by Vera Brittain

Radclyffe Hall’s book The Well of Loneliness was banned and England and the US because it was said to be obscene. The premise of this book is to document the history of The Well of Loneliness and the obscenity trials which ruled in favor of it being obscene and then ultimately the appeal which allowed it to be freely published and sold.

While the topic is worthwhile I found the execution to be lacking. The structure seemed too random and repetitive. For example the scene where Radclyffe Hall protests in court about a comment the the magistrate made comments about the women in the book who worked on the front in the war appears several times. The author also seems to avoid writing the information in her own words as much as possible and instead we are given to read if not the full article/editorial then at least a very large portion of it. While I am a firm supporter of not needed to have to refer to an appendix for items that the author is referring to even I found this book too have too many quotes in the text.

I expected something that was published 40 years later to have “more teeth”, to rely less on quotes and be less superficial. Unless you are very interested in this topic I would not recommend reading this book.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Format: paperback
Subject: dark psychological tale of secrets and betrayal
Setting: England mostly
Characters: Mrs. De Winter, Maxim de Winter
Genre: mystery/drama
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.83

Character – 4
Plot – 5
Theme – 5
Style – 5
Setting – 5
Entertaining? 5

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.”

Wow. Brilliant, powerful, this is what good literature is all about, a powerful story without all those unbelievable twists and turns that so many seem to need. If you have not read this I encourage you to do so. Absolutely not a romance, even though many people call it that, in fact the copy I have is inscribed – all romantics MUST read this!

The story is written in the first person by the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter, which admittedly makes character development a bit difficult to do (which is why it didn’t get a perfect score.) Interestingly enough we never learn the first name of the second Mrs. De Winter, but we are given a few clues. She does not have a common or plain name – “you have a very lovely and unusual name.” Another time she receives a letter and remarks that her name was correctly spelled, which is "an unusual thing". Rebecca is the name of the first Mrs. Maxim De Winter, the perfect, the beautiful, the talented, tragic first wife.

Manderly is clearly based on Menabilly, the house that Daphne du Maurier loved and lived in for about 25 years in Cornwall, although Manderly is a much bigger and grander affair.

As with all Daphne du Maurier books that I have read this one is quite dark and menacing. It won’t give you nightmares but you can understand why Hitchcock chose to make it into a movie and why that movie won the Oscar in 1941 for the Best Picture.

It was written while du Maurier was living in Alexandria Egypt where her husband was posted and was published in 1938. The descriptions are so vivid you would think that she would have had to have been someplace like Manderley when she wrote it instead of the hot & dry land of Egypt.

“The air was full of their scent, sweet and heady, and it seemed to me as though their very essence had mingled with the running waters of the stream, and become one with the falling rain and the dank rich moss beneath our feet. There was no sound here but the tumbling of the little stream, and the quiet rain.”

Read it, I can’t believe that anyone could be disappointed by it.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Format: trade paperback
Subject: WWI alternate history
Setting: Europe
Characters: Deryn & Alek
Genre: Sci-fi YA
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.67

Character – 5
Plot – 5
Theme – 5
Style – 4
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

This was the perfect book to read after the dark plots of Rebecca. It’s the “Darwinist”s against the “Clankers”.

Deryn is a girl who wants to be in the British Air Service so she pretends that she is a boy. Alek is the son of Archduke Franz & Princess Sophie who are murdered by the Germans which starts the war. Loyal retainers spirit Alek away to a secret retreat. The living leviathan that Deryn is on crash lands nearby and Alek cannot but help them, putting himself into danger. They must join forces to escape certain death.

It is a light and fun read, I couldn’t put it down! I can’t wait to read the next one.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

hooray for more love of rebecca :-) great book

Have your last two reads on my tbr shelves. Glad you enjoyed them both so much. Now all I have to do is find the time to actually read them myself.

Rebecca is yet another book I need to read and haven't yet. Loved Leviathan, it was my favorite of the three books in Westerfeld's trilogy.... but the other two books were also good!

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

Format: trade paperback
Subject: WWI alternate history
Setting: Europe
Characters: Deryn & Alek
Genre: Sci-fi YA
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.67

Character – 5
Plot – 5
Theme – 5
Style – 4
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

Really, I was going to be early tonight. Watch a movie, maybe a little TV and go to bed. Instead I watched a movie and then read book 2 of the Leviathan trilogy. Good thing I don’t have the 3rd one – yet!

It’s the “Darwinist”s against the “Clankers” in Istanbul.

Alek has escaped with two of his men and is living in Istanbul, trying to figure out what to do next and stay out of the hands of the Germans who seem to be everywhere.

Deryn is having lots of exploits without him, but manages to catch up with him and later they both save the day once again. I liked this even better than the 1st one, but then I am partial to anything remotely connected to Istanbul!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken

You can see my full review here - http://trufflestriflesandtribbles.blogspot.com/2012/05/cookbook-review-i-hate-to...

An adorable cookbook, it is very easy to understand why it is still being published 50 years later. I wish that I could eat most of the stuff, but alas they contain things like wheat, dairy, corn and potatoes. For example Pizza Sandwiches - basically you take 2 pieces of bread, spread them with pizza sauce, add pizza meat, cheese, put the 2 pieces together and grill. Or if you like coffee, how about Coffee Pudding? It is basically marshmallows, coffee and whipping cream mixed together and frozen.

While it has no photos, it does have some very cute artwork.

DS
(Bruce’s evil twin :-))

@ 246 -- Oh man, a cookbook with the words "I hate to cook" on it seems ideal for me! But the recipes you mentioned... Does the book have any healthier recipes, or are they all pretty much like that?

Skinnyburgers? Basically you take 2 thin burger paties and put a thin slice of onion & cheese in between and inch together and cook as usual.

I guess it depends on what you consider healthier. If I didn't have these foods allergies/intolerances I would be madly cooking most of them in the kitchen now.

Otherwise it is from the 1960's . . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Jean Anderson Cooks: Her Kitchen Reference & Recipe Collection by Jean Anderson

Score – 4 out of 5 (due to lack of pictures)

Full review can be found here –

http://trufflestriflesandtribbles.blogspot.com/2012/05/jean-anderson-cooks-her-k...

I bought this because we have someone named jean Anderson where I work. I was very pleasantly surprised by what I found when I did look at the recipes that it contained. I look forward to making many of the recipes that I have found.

Five cookbook reviews down only 409 left to go. . .

DS
(Bruce’s evil twin :-))

Bliss by O Z Livaneli

Format: trade paperbapaperback
Subject: secrets, lies, finding out who you are what you want?
Setting: Turkey
Characters: Meryem, Cemal and Irfan
Genre: literature
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 4.83

Character – 5
Plot – 5
Theme – 5
Style – 5
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

“On the day on which it seemed Meryem’s mother had become pregnant, she had dreamed of the Virgin Mary. Candle in hand, the Virgin approached her and said that she would give birth to a girl but would then pass away, leaving her daughter behind.”

I have decided that good literature is a story about people who never were, but could be, that have lives that we do not wish them to have.

Meryem is fifteen when her Uncle rapes her and then condemns her to death for her sin. His son, Cemal, just returned from his 2 year military duty spent fighting Kurdish rebels, is chosen to do the deed or as they call it “take her to Istanbul”.

Meryem is young, innocent and really an outsider in her own family & village because of the circumstances of her birth. She believes that Istanbul is just over the hill and that she is really being taken to the city of her dreams.

Irfan is a professor with a perfect life, who is having a crisis. One day he decides he either has to kill himself or walk away from it all.

Their lives collide and each are changed and go in new directions.

First you want Cemal & Meryem to rekindle the friendship that they had when they were children and at least become allies. Forget it, this isn’t a romance. They are chafing each other the whole story. At first Cemal is the one in charge, confident, he knows his place in life and what he should do. Meryem is guileless, believing in everything she is told and while she does not know that Cemal has been given the responsibility of killing her she is uneasy with him. Gradually as the story progresses they change, Meryem understands more of the world and Cemal less. She is more flexible, and he is having trouble adjusting to civilian life.

The plot and the themes are pretty straight forward: old traditions against the new, conservative vs. liberal, etc.

While there is not the vivid descriptions that you find in other books the conflicts, the story is captivating. The authors ability to show the difference in traditions, groups and people in Turkey is quite good. You get a real sense of who they are even though you only ‘meet’ them for a short amount of time.

I would say that this is probably one of the top books that I have read this year, and if you get a chance I recommend reading it.

BTW – the movie version is totally not at all like the book. Ok, they do have the same characters, but not any of the things that make them who they are. I think that I would have enjoyed the movie more if I had seen it before I read the book. And considering about 75% or more of what is in the book isn’t in the movie, including the actual plot it would not have given anything away. They added stuff too. Why make a movie if you are going to change the basic story????

And yes, I know it’s not June yet, but June is our busiest month so I figured I might need the extra time. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

all romantics MUST read this! Why? To remind them that some tall, dark & handsomes are psychopaths? And Heathcliff is the most wonderful man on the planet too, I suppose.

Bliss sounds like one for the wishlist.

I wouldn't call Maxim a psychopath. . . his 1st wife and housekeeper however are another story. That would be a story, why was Rebecca the way she was. Maybe done in the form of a diary, ending with her plan to make her husband kill her? What made her that way? Was it one thing or a long list?

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Ah, that's an interesting idea for a book. I'd read Rebecca's diary.

Note to self -

Do not read books like The Oldest Code of Laws in the World The code of laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon B.C. 2285-2242 before going to bed. . . weird dreams.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Yes, like Alan Rickman running around with a spoon while threatening to remove your eyeballs.

>255 cammykitty: I thought is was his heart. . .

I just read a book on public baths for my 75 book challenge. I feel so dirty now, nothing gets you as clean as a nice steamy sweat. . . sigh. In a perfect world we would all have saunas or Turkish baths close by or in our homes. I wish I had a sauna in my house. Or a steam shower!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Because it's duller, you twit! It'll hurt more!

...That is pretty much all I had to contribute. :)

Curse those Moors and Saracens. If it wasn't for their ungodly ways, master Robin would never have left. What manner of name is Azeem? Scottish, Cornish?

Moorish.

:-)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Yeah! I am getting a copy of The Divorce of Henry VIII: The Untold Story from Inside the Vatican as an ER!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

By Schism Rent Asunder by David Weber is a re-read. It's a 5.

This is book 2 in the Safehold series.

As Weber puts it, "The lead character, Nimue, is a brilliant tactical officer, only about 27 years old at the time of her biological death, and has never known a time when humanity wasn’t fighting a losing battle for its very existence."

It a conflict between technology and religion 800 years after Nimue has died. Or has she? She awakens in the body of an android, a PICA (Personality Integrated Cybernetic Avatar) 800 years after her death into a world different from the original plan, a world created in the image of the megalomaniac’s that were left in power, all opposition had brutally annihilated. And it is up to Numue to bring the world back to reverse the plans of the radicals and help prepare mankind for the inevitable re-encounter with the Gbaba on more favorable terms.

Lots of naval battles in this series.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Lucky you! I didn't get anything from this month's ER. Henry's divorce sounds interesting!

I’m busy, busy, busy and not reading much at the moment. Too much yard work (ripping out and starting from scratch the garden in the front to start & then moving on to the back). I bought an Empress Wu hosta which is supposed to grow 4 feet high and 5-6 feet across! That should make a statement.

And still trying to finally just get the whole computer and new hard drive back up to where I want it. :-(

I have been working on Turkish and translating a couple of songs, which takes a lot of time, but really makes me think about structure etc. Since they are short I can do that. For longer stuff I just do a basic these are the words & I think it means this and move on. I still suck at it but am most probably better then I think. Which is why I have to get the computer back to what it was since my language software got messed up too. So jealous of people who got to learn more then one language when they were younger. . .

And don’t get me started on iTunes! Literally worked hours on that this weekend and it is still messed up (but at least I think everything has transferred . . . it’s just not pretty)

Anyway I some books that I ordered came in and I took a peek at A Double Life: Newly Discovered Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott. Wow. It really looks good, just the few pages that I read. I wouldn’t even have known about it if I hadn’t read the book by the editor & I can’t wait to read it now. I don’t think that I have actually read any of her stuff (yet). Has anyone read it?

I need to finish David Weber’s series and the ER that I just got! So far it is very good too. What I like is that the author includes all kinds of everyday information like so & so gave him a set of silver and silk tablecloths etc.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I read Behind a Mask which included 4 of her short stories she wrote for the newspapers for one of my May TIOLI. I enjoyed them quite a bit. Check out message #148 on my thread.

Thrillers? Louisa May Alcott? Were they unpublished or under pen names? I did read one short story of hers that was clearly based on her father and his time at Brook Farm, a communal utopia experiment that failed. It was fantastic, but to be honest, I could never get through Little Women. The short story seemed more genuine than Little Women. LW has that sense of we're strong women, so we face hardships without complaint and if we can't say anything nice, we don't say it at all. The short story was clear-sighted and critical.

264> They were published anonymously in “gasp” tabloids! :-)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

There were also a couple of "pen names" that she wrote under (although I can't think of them right now)

Male pen names, I'll bet. Definitely sounds interesting.

Only initials and a last name, as I recall. Enough to imply she was a man.

of course - only men are important, a woman could never write anything interesting, silly to even think so! :-)

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I've got one of Alcott's thrillers on my shelves. It's called A Long Fatal Love Chase, which just makes me giggle. Haven't read it yet, but I imagine it will be rather different from Little Women or Eight Cousins!

A Long Fatal Love Chase is a fantastic title. LOL!!! And as for men being important, I'm friends with SF writer Kelly McCullough - he couldn't get published until he started sending out short stories with his middle name, Kelly David McCullough. Sexism lives.

I just finished Outcasts United it is a pretty good book, but it's just too hot to write about it at the moment. That and all the shoveling I did today & yesterday working on the garden.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

At least it wasn't snow shoveling. :) I'm thinking ice cream your way.

brr! Did I say that I was too hot?? Well, now it's cold out! Thankfully we are back to "normal" and it is now only 65.

>273 cammykitty: at least snow is usually lighter. . .

Lovely weather today!!! Went for dog walk with a friend. Got Dairy Queen. Read some of Wolf Hall. Hope you had a good day too!

Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference

This book is about some of the different people who have made up the ‘Fugees” soccer teams. The teams were created by a woman from Jordan in Clarkson GA for refugee children. Although the book does not go into any great detail about any one person it does give a good insight into what many of the people coming into the US have gone through.

While the story itself can be inspiring, the book isn’t. Not to say that it is poorly written, because it isn’t, it just lacks that little something that would make it one of those books you tell everyone that they need to read. Perhaps because it was written by someone who wasn’t part of it, but by someone who heard the story & decided to write about it.

That being said, if you live in the US and are unfamiliar with the stories of the countries where some of our new immigrants/refugees are coming from this book will give you a basic understanding about what is going on. Not just before some of these people came here, but some of the challenges that they face once they get here. Perhaps it will make you think of getting involved in some way in your own community.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

The Secret Adversary and The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Thanks to Project Gutenberg I was able to read these two books for free.

They are very entertaining mysteries from a time when the world was a simpler place. The first one is about two friends, Tommy & Tuppence who meet up after the war and decide to become adventurers for lack of any other employment. They stumble onto an international mystery and are soon working undercover for British intelligence.

The second one is about a murder at a country estate, Styles, and includes one of Agatha Christie’s famous characters, Poirot. It is about a wealthy widow who supports several people (two sons, a daughter-in-law, a niece and one other) who had married a much younger man and is poisoned. Of course everyone suspects the husband, but that is just too obvious, isn’t it? Or is it?

Both are very good reads.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Daughter of Time, Footsteps in Time and Prince of Time by Sarah Woodbury

Format: e-book
Subject: time travel (sort of) & being who you are
Setting: Wales in the time of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last Prince of Wales
Characters: Meg, Llywelyn, Anna, David
Genre: romance/fantasy
Source: kindle

Total score out of a possible 5 – 2.83

Character – 2
Plot – 3
Theme – 3
Style – 3
Setting – 2
Entertaining? 4

While I did feel attachment to the characters, they weren’t very deeply done. They didn’t really develop that much, nor did you get to really know what motivated them except for on a very shallow level.

The plot is very simple, with no real surprises, traveling back in time to Wales. Although Daughter of Time pretty much stopped at a very unsatisfactory point and you have to get next book to find out what happens next.

The setting plays very little part too. With an author who is an anthropologist and the child of historian parents (at least according to the bio on Amazon) I would think that we could have expected a bit more on the nitty gritty details of life in the 1200’s.

They are good if you want a little light reading and aren’t expecting too much depth.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Fire Dance by Delle Jacobs

Format: e-book
Subject: sorcery, plots, Saxon vs. Norman
Setting: England, 1092
Characters: Melisande & Alain
Genre: romance
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 3.83

Character – 4
Plot – 4
Theme – 3
Style – 3
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

Alain De Crency goes to Cumbria to seize the castle of the sorcerer Fyren, kill him, and take Fyren's daughter as his bride - no questions asked by the order of his king. But he arrives and the castle is merely handed over to him. Inside he finds his intended bride is missing and Fyren dead, his body shrouded in the most magnificent purple cloak. Melisande has no family or friends that she can turn to so she ‘hides in plain sight’ as a servant in her own castle.

Of course Alain has no idea what Melisande looks like, or where to look for her. He also needs to consolidate his rule and secure the borders for his king. So he goes about his business and eventually figures out who Melisande is and marries her. Then he starts to find some real mysteries.

This isn’t your basic he’s a Norman and must we avoided at all costs plot. There are other reasons for her avoidance of him which adds to the story. All in all it was very entertaining and pretty G-rated.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

@ 278 -- Have you read Sharon Kay Penman's Welsh trilogy? I think it takes place during the same time period as the books you mentioned, and in my opinion it's an excellent series! Book #1 is Here Be Dragons.

>280 christina_reads: I haven't read Sharon Kay Penman's books, but I have read The Brothers of Gwynedd by Edith Pargeter quite awhile ago. I understand those are the two authors to read if you are interested in this topic.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Hotel Bosphorus by Esmahan Aykol
(original title – Kitapçı Dükkani )

Format: paperback
Subject: murder
Setting: mostly Istanbul
Characters: Kati Hirschel
Genre: mystery
Source: Amazon

Total score out of a possible 5 – 3.83

Character – 3 – no character description
Plot – 4 – the plot is the thing
Theme – 4
Style – 3
Setting – 4
Entertaining? 5

This book is all about the plot, the story and very little about character. Not that the characters seem flat, but the thing that struck me the most about this book is the almost total lack of character description. For example when Inspector Batuhan önal is introduced the description is – “. . . the god in the police uniform who had stepped through the door. . .” Of course this allows the reader total free reign on imagining what the character looks like. But it was a bit strange to realize that apart from the fact that the main character is German, and therefore you think blonde, you have no idea what she looks like. It was only later in the book that it was mentioned that she was a brunette and you realize that you were wrong. It is written in the first person so I guess that this is to be expected somewhat.

Kati is a German, who was born in Turkey and lived there until she was seven and has now lived in Istanbul for 13 years as an adult. She owns a mystery/crime bookstore in Istanbul. She gets a phone call from a famous former classmate who is coming to Istanbul to do a movie and who wants to get together when she is in town.

It isn’t long before her friend is the main suspect in the murder of the director of the movie. Of course she couldn’t have done it. But who else has the motive? What was the motive? Why was he chosen to direct this movie?

I found this very entertaining. I especially liked the comments about Germans & stereotypes. Kati is not your usual amateur sleuth and there are a couple places where the book gets pretty steamy. So if you only read G-rated books avoid this, as there are at least 2 parts that are definitely not G-rated.

It would have gotten a better score if - there was a relationship between the plot & character description or more character description. I was laughing out loud at some of her comments.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

started a new thread, find me now at -

http://www.librarything.com/topic/138842

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I now have a reason to dig out my copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo and actually read it as per July's newsletter from the Geek_Partnership_Society -

***
RTBSTMC (Read the Book, See the Movie club)

Date: July 20, 2012
Time: 7:00 PM (Movie starts at 7:30)
Location: Event Horizon room 136 (Waterbury building, 1121 Jackson st NE, Minneapolis MN 55413)

For our regular meeting, we will be reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson and watching the 2011 American version starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara and Christopher Plummer. Bring your own beverage or use the GPS ABDS (Automatic Beverage Dispensal System) and a snacky something theme related to share (NO LUTEFISK!!) A discussion will follow. Possibly in Sweedish... with English translation.

***

I have no idea what a theme related snack would be. Does any one who read the book and have ideas?

Also, anyone in the area and interested in checking it out feel free to come!

DS

(Bruce's evil twin :-))

They eat mostly frozen pizza and drink coffee, I'm afraid - no culinary highlights. :) They do eat bagels too, so maybe bagel-bites...

Too bad they aren't doing A Game of Thrones I have been drooling over the cookbooks for that. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

All I can remember from the series is that on almost every page someone was buying coffee, making coffee, or drinking coffee. I was sitting on the couch next to my daughter almost making a joke of it by uttering, "Coffee" every time the drink appeared in the story. Maybe...coffee cake?