Take It or Leave It Challenge - February 2010 - Page 2

For those new to this challenge: More info and monthly index can be found in post #1 of this thread.

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This thread is continued from here.

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My inspiration for the February, 2010, TIOLI Challenge comes from the picture on LibraryThing's new Welcome to LibraryThing group. I was so excited that we finally have a group to welcome new members. I'd been begging for this feature for a long time.

Okay. So it took me a while to figure out, but then I realized that the books on the picture of that group were assorted in the shape of a heart. Just perfect for Valentine's Day, isn't it?

So here's the challenge. Pick a book with a bright red spine. It doesn't matter what color the rest of the book is. Your book should look good if inserted into that picture!

The idea for this challenge is fun, but be forewarned that the pickin's are very slim. The idea for this challenge is not simply to choose a book with a bright red spine, but to broaden and s-t-r-e-t-c-h your reading experience. I want you to read authors and genres that are new to you, books that challenge you in some way, or books that are kind of obscure. Perhaps your book will introduce you to a new setting, a new culture, or a new way of looking at something.

Therefore: When you choose your book, do not choose it simply because it has a red spine. Choose a book that you *know* will be of great interest to you, not a drag to read. If you exhaust all fiction options, consider nonfiction. You need not only choose from your own books. Borrow a book from the library. Alternatively, take the opportunity to visit a Friends of the Library bookstore in your home town or attend a library book sale. Find a book that no one else has heard of. If it seems interesting, get it, read it, and review it for others to discover (...although I doubt if the color of the book's spine will be of much interest to anyone else).

Here are some ideas...

Books I've read and would recommend:

1. My Latest Grievance - Elinor Lipmann
2. No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
3. The Elephant Vanishes (the edition with the red spine, of course) - Haruki Murakami
4. Frida - Barbara Mujica
5. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie
6. Exit Ghost - Philip Roth
7. Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl (the audio version has a red spine)
8. Marley & Me - John Grogan

Books that look interesting to me but that I have not read yet:

1. You Don't Love Me Yet - Jonathan Lethem
2. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
3. Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh (brenzi gave it 4.5 stars)
4. The Leisure Seeker - Michael Zadoorian
5. Nobody Move - Denis Johnson
6. The Shameless Carnivore - Scott Gold

If you find a good suggestion, PLEASE tell us about it!

Are you ready? Set? Well, then GO!!!

Have fun with February's Take It or Leave It Challenge...and have a Happy Valentine's Day!

Madeline

hahahah i guess it works

:)

so what u p

yawns im getiing sleepy but still 3 more hours left till i can go home

I have a number of bright red spines, mostly that I haven't read yet.

Wolf Hall
On Beauty
The White Tiger
Mistress of the Art of Death

These are just the ones I can see from where I'm sitting with my ice pack on my knee. Will get up later and spot some more!

ice pack on your knee? What happened?

Oh jeez, I fell last night. Nothing unusual. I have some balance issues. This one was in public though, a bit embarrassing, but my faith in humanity is restored with all the people who came to my rescue!

More red spines here:

The Vagrants
Cutting for Stone
Birdsong
The Street of A Thousand Blossoms
War and Peace (hardcover, Pevear-Volonkhosky translation)

ouch. I hope you heal quickly. And, thanks for the red spine suggestions.

Thanks Linda. It's not a serious injury. I actually observed myself falling and then rolling, so at least I'm getting better at falling! LOL!

Today I'm working on taxes. :(

My tax documents are in red folder. Does that count as a red-spined book? :D

>12 SqueakyChu: Just hope you're not in the red!

It's my weekly trip to the library tomorrow, so I'll be looking out for those red spines! I've never really been into horror books (put of by Stephen King in my teens), but though I might see if I can find one I fancy and give the genre another go. Any suggestions anyone?

I did not know what the whole red spine deal was and thought that I have so many books at home that I have to read, it would be a fluke if one of the ones in my rubbermaid tub had a red spine. Now I know and today an ARC showed up with a red spine! It is called Heresy by S.J. Parris and promises to be great. The spine says "Choose a side. Know your enemies. Stay alive." The premise is that "someone is killing Oxford U. fellows in 1583 one by one. It is up to renegade monk and excommunicate Giordano Bruno to discover a pattern in the killings. That is if he can outwit the murderer!" Yeah! Now I have to fit it in with my other two books I am reading.

#15: That one sounds good! I will be looking for your review of that one, Deirdra.

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Steph, I'm not much of a horror buff, but I do love Stephen King books. That aside, I went to search for some red-spined horror books. I have no idea if they'll be good or just awful, but you can thumb through them if you find a copy of any of the following books at the library. They have red covers, so you'll have to look at the spines also! :)

1. Intensity by Dean Koontz - rated 3.74 stars

2. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris - rated 3.79 stars

3. The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker - rated 3.82 stars here at LT

4. Horns - a new book by Joe Hill who happens to be one of Stephen King's sons - rated 4.3 stars - I'd like to read this book myself!

Does anyone here know if any of my recommendations are any good at all?

Never read any of the ones you listed Madeline but Terri has some really great red spines: Wolf Hall, Cutting for Stone, The White Tiger. Any of those would be great.

Here are some books on my shelf that have red spines:

The Tower Menagerie by Daniel Hahn
In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant
The Path Between The Seas by David McCullough
The Red Queen's Daughter by Jacqueline Kolosov
A Rose for the Crown by Anne Easter Smith

Madeline...I didn't know that Joe Hill was the son of Stephen King!

He is (!) and so is Owen King. They are both writers. Joe Hill is even an LT author! I have one or two of his books, but just haven't gotten to them yet. He's not writing under his dad's name because he wants to make his own name. His works have gotten pretty good reviews. Read more about Joe Hill here on wikipedia.

Thanks!

Sacred Games, my TIOLI challenge book, bids fair to overwhelm me with pages. It's a wrist-sprainer. It actually *hurts* to pick up (arthritic fingers), but it's just so darn *good* I hate to put it down.

Success!! I finished Maniac Magee, my TIOLI challenge. I don't know what my problem is, but the minute I pick a book to read and let other people know about it, I find my interest waning. But yesterday at home with a sick child I MADE myself pick up the book and actually open it. And surprisingly, I finished it in short time (not a long book, but it's more the fact that I actually 'finished' it). I have my review posted on my 1010 challenge page.

the minute I pick a book to read and let other people know about it, I find my interest waning

Easy to remedy. Don't tell anyone what you're reading until you finish the book! :)

ETA: By the way, the TIOLI challenge doesn't require that you finish a book that you've chosen, only that you remove it from the list at the end of the month if you haven't finished it by then. It also allows you to change your mind at any time. So feel free to delete the name of one book and add another. If you wish, you may move an unfinished book to the following month's challenge. Keep the TIOLI light and entertaining!

Deedledee (msg 282 of the prior thread)
I found The Handmaid's Tale an interesting book. I had a little difficulty separating it from my memories of the movie. I was different and the movie was different. I also spent much of the book arguing with one of the blurbs at the front that said something about how easily we could end up with a society like that. Since I felt she was showing the extremes of both left and right, I don't see it very likely at all that we'll end up with a society like the book showed.

As far as the book goes, though - it's a bit of a psychological adventure to see how people react to oppression, the things they tell themselves, and how quickly a free society can be cowed into submission.

I just finished up Biblioholism, which only confirmed to me that I am a biblioholic of the worst stripe - and proud of it! I really enjoyed the book.

I finished my TIOLI book nudge challenge read of Things fall apart which I've reviewed on my thread.

I've decided to follow Madeline's good advice and remove Inkheart from my planned reading list. It's been sitting unfinished on my shelf for two years now, so I thought the red spine challenge would be a good excuse to get back to it. But I picked it up and looked at it, and... I still have no desire to read it. So I'll spend my time on something I actually want to read instead. Luckily I already have another red spine book planned anyway.

#26, Stasia, I'm almost finished with Biblioholism, too. I should finish it this afternoon, during an Olympics lull.

I've got some other things I'd rather read first and so will remove In the Bleak Mid-Winter from the TIOLI list. Maybe next month or April.

Hmm.....I thought there was a lack of posts added to the thread, and then I discovered the new one.

I'm currently reading The Thorn Birds as my copy has a red spine and it's been sitting on my shelf for about 3 years.

Just finished The Graveyard Book which won the Newbery Medal in 2009 and added to the Newbery Medal Winners challenge (started by Zoe).

I am swapping out books for the 'Elements' challenge because I do not think I will get done with Parting the Waters by the end of the month. As a substitute, I am reading Waterlog instead.

I finished my second red spine book, Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd, a real page turner. My review is here.

I read Light in August, which has a bright red spine, but I didn't think of TIOLI until after I read it. Does it count? lol

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Did you finish reading it this month? If so, it counts!

I've just added Return to Hawk's Hill by Allan Eckert to the red-spined challenge. It's a sequel to Incident at Hawk Hill, Newbery-honor book of 1972, about a family living on the frontier in Manitoba in the 1870s, focused on their youngest son, who is a sort of Freckles of the Far North, taken in by a badger in the first book.

Just finished The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory for the red-spined challenge. Still not sure how I feel about it.

Message #31...Where is the Newbery Challenge thread started by Zoe? I am very interested.

I've finished and reviewed Black Hole. This is a book that I had kept picking up and putting down, because of the (to me) offputting style of the graphics. It was this challenge that got me reading it, and I am very glad I did - it's a very interesting book and I might have taken a very long time to get to it otherwise. Thanks Squeaky...

All of the February challenges are listed here, Linda. This link is also in post #1 at the top of the thread.

#31 I finally decided to read it. I put a hold on The Graveyard Book at the library and it came in yesterday. I have noticed some books take 3 or 4 mentions by people before I finally decide to add it to the TBR pile.

My husband had a committee meeting here at the house last night so I escaped to the library and read most of it sitting in a comfy chair. Looking forward to finishing it later today. I really like it so far.

I have noticed some books take 3 or 4 mentions by people before I finally decide to add it to the TBR pile.

I've found the same thing. It seems like I hardly ever add books to my must-read list on the strength of one recommendation alone.

>39 Whisper1:, 41 Yes, I think the idea is that any discussion of the specific books takes place in people's threads, with some more general discussion here (though this raises the question--should our user names in the wiki list actually be links to our threads? ;))

should our user names in the wiki list actually be links to our threads

Good idea! Go for it!!

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I think the idea is that any discussion of the specific books takes place in people's threads

That was the original idea, but, thinking this through a bit further, talking about those books here as well would be a big push for more people to read the same books (esepcially the better ones).

By the way, the two I've read so far (The Leisure Seeker and Tomcat in Love) for this month were both terrific. Hint! Hint!

ETA: Now I have to take a break from TIOLI reads (which I'm really enjoying...they're so random!) to finish my Early Reviewer. I'm going to try to read that one as quickly as I can or, before I know it, February will be drawing to a close.

I have finished the second of my two February TIOLI books! Look for my review of the red spined Wolf Hall on my thread by sometime tomorrow.

I finished my February TIOLI - Maus. What an amazing story. I have not previously read any graphic novels. I was impressed by this one. My review is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/80449 if anyone is interested.

I finished my third red spine book American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell and reviewed it here.

This was an absolutely wonderful short story collection that I highly recommend.

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Linda, I've heard nothing but good things about Wolf Hall. That book is attracting quite a few readers here on LT (and elsewhere).

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Jenn, Maus is truly an amazing book. Be sure to follow it soon with its sequel, Maus II. The story is incomplete without the second book.

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Bonnie, that book looks good. I'm sort of a short story junkie (no pun intended). It's already been added to my wishlist. I was just thinking that I have a book of short stories by Michael Zadoorian somewhere here at home. I think those stories are about his home town of Detroit, Michigan. I should probably try to read both books kind of close together, don't you think?

yawn gm party people

Here's my review of Wolf Hall as promised http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=Carmenere

Oh man, I was going to mention Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress what a beautiful red spine indeed!
I think I'm going to go with No Country for Old Men for myself, I've never had the chance to read it.

Great thread!

Hi Jordie,

Both books you mentioned are worthwhile reads. If this is your introduction to Cormac McCarthy, don't miss The Road, my favorite book of his. It blew me away (not literally). Maybe sometime in the future that book will fit into another TIOLI challenge? :)

#45, I'm overdue on an ER review. Everyone is raving about this book but I can't get into it at all. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

I'm probably done with my TIOLI books for the month with just that one. This hasn't been a good reading month, unlike January, with illness and Olympic watching.

Red spined books I've read this month -

I've read Chris Crutcher's new book Angry Management (spelled correctly) which was very good. Three novellas are linked by an anger management class and bring back characters from Crutcher's earlier books unaged. Very edgy YA author.

Wringer by Jerry Spinelli was gut wrenching. If that was his goal then it was achieved. Bullies, pigeons, and kids who love killing animals are not my favorite things to read about. It almost made the award challenge too, since it was nominated for a Newberry.

Rainbow Boys covers many of the problems, joys, fears, etc. experienced by gay boys in high school. Each chapter highlights one of three boys - one openly gay, one closeted gay, one closeted bisexual. At the end of the book are some resources that exist to help gays and their parents. It is a very popular book in my library so I read it to know who might benefit from it.

I read my second red-spined book (in fact, it was red all over -- any extra points for this?) and, like Madeline in Post #53, I was figuratively blown away by Light In August. After struggling through Sound and Fury, I had given up on Faulkner, but was gently encouraged by the Salon du Faulkner group into trying again. I highly recommend this as an introductory read as it is fairly straightforward and easy to understand. My review is here.

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Linda, your experience just goes to show how books loved by some readers are not liked by others. After reading and loving Tomcat in Love, I was so disheartened to see rather disinterested reviews of that book. Oh, well. Different strokes, I guess.

I'm probably done with my TIOLI books for the month

Well, everyone needs a break! Seriously, though, I hope you're feeling better. In addition, I hope many of us are taking some time to watch the Olympics (...and wasn't Shaun White awesome?!).

Today I've been working on March's TIOLI challenge which I'll most likely reveal the last weekend of February. It's just about all set to go. Hope everyone here is thinking up good challenges of their own to offer for March as well.

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Mamzel and Donna, glad to see your TIOLI books for this month were so noteworthy. What both of you have written about those four books are certainly an incentive to make others want to read them.

*watches Donna fly by...*

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in fact, it was red all over -- any extra points for this?

Nope! :D

Interesting stats for January's TIOLI challenge:

Of 80 books read for January's challenge (includes all challenges presented), 34 books (or 43%) were shared* books. The point count for January was 18. Good job!

ETA: That means that almost half of us were reading a book of our own choice that someone else was reading at the same time so we had someone else with whom to discuss it. Pretty cool, eh?

Can someone tell me if Shaun won any medals this Olympics so far? I just think he is a cutie patootie.

Yeah. He won the gold for the men's snowboarding half-pipes (which he also won four years ago). This was his first run. He scored even higher on his second run, but he'd already won the gold by then anyhow.

ETA: U-Tube video of TV broadcast

ETA 2: This post is not off-topic because Challenge #5 is "In honor of the Winter Olympics: A book with the word WINTER in the title". :)

Yeah! Doesn't that just totally rock? Way to go! He totally deserves it.

>49 SqueakyChu: Yes Madeline, sounds like a plan. I have never been enamoured with short stories. For me, it always seemed like they never had enough time to fully develop the characters, and I really like character driven novels. But the last few short story collections I've read have been excellent so I've got a couple more on the horizon including an Alice Munro book and Other Rooms, Other Wonders that I've heard a lot of good things about.

I hadn't heard of the Michael Zadoorian stories you mentioned but I'll be looking for that too.

I just finished my second red spine TIOLI challenge. The Time of New Weather by Sean Murphy.

See the review here

I also inadvertantly started a third red spine book - it was the only book I found sitting in my Maryland office when I finished my other book (lesson - be prepared when traveling), and it happens to have a red spine. Postcards from a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber. It's short, so I may finish it this month, so I put it on the wiki just in case.

I just finished my second red-spined book, Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, which rebeccanyc and cameling also read this month. I'll write a review of it within the next week.

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Patrick, that book sounds absolutely wild!

I grabbed hold of that "winter" challenge and started If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. Now that's one strange book. Let's see if I make it through that book/challenge...

I'm going to start on my second red spined book for this month's challenge later this week... or maybe this weekend seeing as I have no access to the internet at home now that my router is on the blink.

49 and 64 - have you read The Best of Roald Dahl? That is one of the best collections of short stories I have ever read. I am not a huge fan of short stories either, but occasionally I do run across some I like.

If I can finish The Jungle this weekend, I am going to do another red spine book - Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress which also fits nicely into 1010 as it's gathering dust on my bedside table.

>71 brenzi: Thanks for the Dahl suggestion. I've added it to my pile.

#68, I adore the opening lines of If on a winter's night, although last time I re-read it I kind of got distracted halfway through.

I've been enjoying my reads for this month's mini-challenges. Of them, I would highly recommend Evening Is The Whole Day and my current book, Remind Me Who I Am, Again. Iron Earth, Copper Sky and Howard's End Is On The Landing were also good reads.

I adore the opening lines of If on a winter's night

Yeah. They were obvious ("You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler"), but I really had a laugh when I was told that I'd check to see how many pages were in the book first (which, of course, I had just done!). I love postmodern literature so reading this book should be fun. Did you ever finish the book?

You've done quite a few mini-challenges already!

No, I think I put it away when I moved house and forgot to go back to it, but I would like to dig it out again.

I'm using the mini-challenges as a way to pick things out of my huge number of TBR books... sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed looking at a whole shelf-ful, so it's nice to see if I can find something I feel like reading which fits into one of the categories - and even better if one of the categories can prod me into reading one of the books which doesn't normally appeal!

I finished up Howards End is on the Landing tonight, another book for wandering_star's TIOLI challenge for the month - a book whose title is a complete sentence.

Finished my second red-spined book for this month's challenge - Return to Hawk's Hill by Allan W. Eckert, the loooooong-awaited sequel to Incident at Hawk's Hill, Newbery Honor book of 1972.

The Hawk's Hill books are younger-than-young-adult (the younger side of middle school would be my guess) books about a family living near Lake Winnipeg in frontier Manitoba in the 1870s. The books both have a strong natural history/environmental focus, as well as an emphasis on the importance of cross-cultural understanding and acceptance. They are very quick reading - you could read the sequel on its own, but I think you'd get a lot more out of it by reading them in order.

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so it's nice to see if I can find something I feel like reading which fits into one of the categories - and even better if one of the categories can prod me into reading one of the books which doesn't normally appeal!

My feelings exactly...so nicely expressed!

I reviewed The Aluminum Christmas Tree: A Novel over in my Homeless Reviews thread...post #72.

It's for the red-spine challenge. It's got a really pretty red jacket!

I have totally totally failed to complete the TIOLI this month :( Or read many books at all to be honest. I blame life - it really gets in the way of my reading.

For once my report card reads 'Must try harder'. Sigh.

#79, it is tough this month. I'll be lucky if I get to half the number of books I read in January.

Too many illnesses and too much Olympic watching for me this month.

Take heart BekkaJo and linda, February was a short month.

Also, it's not done yet! And there's always the option of continuing a challenge into the next month. I have a feeling I'll be doing that....

*potters off to the Wiki to see if anything she has read/may finish this month fits in with anyones TIOLI...

I have managed to sneak in a couple of unplanned reads for the challenge this month. A Wrinkle in Time for the Newbery Award challenge and The Handmaid's Tale for the Canada Reads challenge. Phew!

I finished (twice!) and reviewed the February TIOLI challenge book Sacred Games that Mark aka msf59 recommended to me long, long ago. It's in my Homeless Reviews thread...post #78.

It would've been as good or better at ~650pp, but it's a very, very good book and I'm glad I finally read it all the way through.

February is drawing to a close so I went ahead and posted the March 2010 TIOLI Challenge.

That should give you a few days to see if you can get your February books in under the wire. If not, just put them onto March's page as a new challenge.

This should also give you some lead time (I caved, everyone!) in choosing some books that would be fun reads for March.

I'm leaving this thread open until 2/28/10. After that date, PLEASE (with sugar on top?) only post to March's thread. Thanks! :D

Is anyone else planning to carry over any incomplete challenges from this month? I'm definitely not going to finish my book with a sentence title on time, so I'd like to bring that one over, but my red spine book is also looking doubtful, especially since I'm supposed to be starting The Anubis Gates for the group read....

So, I guess I'm hoping someone else will carry over one of the challenges I need ;)

#85 *sticks tongue out at Richard and huffs something about people who've finished twice...* :)

I have 90 pages left in my red-spine book, Inside the Apple, so I was planning to squeeze it in in the last few days of the month... but then I realized I'm really not that excited about it. So instead, I crossed it off the list! I love the freedom to do that.

It looks like I'll end the month with only one TIOLI book completed (When You Reach Me), but that's okay.

So instead, I crossed it off the list! I love the freedom to do that.

Yeah. I believe in the freedom to "leave it".

I'm about to cross off If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. I had no idea that book would be so complicated to read!! I need time to enjoy it. Stasia, on the next thread, I think is going to post a season's challenge. If she does, it's going on there. :)

#90: Stasia did already. Glad to have you aboard, Madeline!

Yay!

*runs off to the March wiki*

*comes back disappointed*

It's not there. I know it's on the thread, but you have to post it to the March wiki.

Stasia, you *can* do this!! Do not fear...

I could do this for you, but I want you to do it (more wiki practice). :D

Just in case you didn't know, I'm using the wiki format so I don't have to do all the work. :)

I ended up swamped with work and didn't get to even start my 2nd red spined book for this month's challenge. I still want to read it and it's in my TBR tower, but I'll have to save it for later ... and I'm going to have to end this month's challenge by only completing one of my planned reads. :-(

I feel like such a failure ..... *slinking off to grab a red velvet cupcake filled with ice cream for solace*

>88 BekkaJo: Now, now, now! Mustn't abuse our threadies because who knows how the payback will come Madeline doesn't like meanies it's not very nice.

Besides, don't I deserve a little medal or certificate for making it through the whole dratted thing, all 928pp!, two complete times?! Came darn close to killing me, this book did, when I fell asleep with it propped on my chest...came thudding down onto my nose...now there's a paper cut you don't want twice....

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Well, Caroline, the good news is that all you have to do is either find a March challenge to fit that book into or create one to suit it!

..and I'm eating homemade chocolate chip cookies for your solace as well. We're in this together - through thick or thin... :)

I love all this great support I'm finding among my LT friends ! ;-)

I squeezed in my third Red Spine TIOLI title - Postcards From a Dead Girl by Kirk Farber. I'll try to get up a formal review soon, but here's the short version: don't bother.

Reminder: Tomorrow is the last day for the February TIOLI. Finish up your book this weekend or move it to a challenge (you may create a new one) in the March TIOLI.

This thread will remain open only through 2/28/09. Then we all will move together, hand in hand, to the March thread... :)

I just finished up my last February TIOLI Challenge book, Waterlog by Roger Deakin.

Ooh, that's on my wishlist, was it good?

#102: Very good! I gave it 4.5 stars. There is a quote from Jane Gardam on the cover of mine: "A delicious, cleansing, funny, wise and joyful book." That sums it up nicely.

I discovered the book I just finished, Someone Knows My Name, qualifies for the Canada Reads challenge in February, so I have recorded it on the wiki for the month.

# 87: I'm about 300 pages into my red-spined book but it's 700+, so I'll also need to carry it over into March.

I've been on vacation for the past couple of weeks but we did a lot of diving, which always makes me dog-tired (must be the nitrogen), so I was either underwater or asleep for most of the time, and the only book I managed to read was Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan which I loved (and which is 500+ pages, so I guess I didn't do too badly after all).

Finished Return to Hawk's Hill, my second contribution to the red-spined book challenge. I didn't enjoy it quite so much as I recall enjoying the first in the set, Incident at Hawk's Hill, but they're written for a younger audience (probably middle school-ish) and I'm somewhat older now than I was in 1970 ;o)

The book provides an interesting look at family life on the Manitoba frontier in the 1870s, but even more, it provides a considered look at some of the issues of lifestyle and cultural differences between the frontier settlers, largely of white European extraction, and the local Metis population, who were descended from local indigenous peoples mixed with much earlier French fur-trapper influence. The biggest difference lay in the attitudes toward nature...whether to respect and honor the natural world, taking only what we need and fully utilizing what we take or whether to take whatever we want with a view to subjugating the natural world to our whim of the moment. An issue we're still grappling with today, and a worthwhile read for any young person interested in environmental issues. I'd definitely recommend reading the two books in order, though.

>106 muddy21: Those actually sound really interesting. It's too bad that they're written for a young audience, but I'll probably pick them up anyway.

It's been a crazy month at work, and I've barely had time to read or post, but I did finish When You Reach Me earlier this month and was absolutely charmed by it.

I just squeaked in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress today. Talk about cutting it close!!

This thread is now CLOSED!
Let's continue our TIOLI conversations here. Thanks!