Friday Finds 02-27-09

I found SO many books this week that I just had to put on the TBR list! If last week was skimpy, this week more than makes up for it! If you are interested in a book, don't hesitate to click on the link and read all about it. Be sure to tell me which book you might put on your TBR list! Now, here are my finds:
Starting with...

What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt

Found @ Fluttering Butterflies

The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Found @ A Novel Menagerie

Irreplaceable by Stephen Lovely
Found @ Books and Needlepoint

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
Found @ Book Addiction

While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinsky
Found @ Marta's Meanderings

Midori by Moonlight by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga
Found @ A Reader's Journal

Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper by Peter Hill
Found @ Between the Covers

Uglies by Scott Westerfield
Found @ Books and Needlepoint

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Found @ Books on the Brain

The Sonnets by Warwick Collins
Found @ Devourer of Books

Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata
Found @ The Book Drop

Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Found @ Look at That Book

That Went Well by Terrell Harris Dougan
Found @ Bermudaonion and @ Find Your Next Book Here

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Found @ The Book Book

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

Found: Recommended to me by Mike on SU

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Found @ All Things Considered on NPR

The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash
Found @ Amazon.com

What did you find this week?
Are any of these books going on your TBR list?
Does your TBR list, like mine, have more books on it
than you can read in a year?

Friday Fill-In

1. I'm curious, I'm intelligent, I read.

2. Why do I have bills in the mailbox and not fun mail?

3. How does this getting a paying job in a recession thing work, anyway?

4. Every morning, I put clothes on my body.

5. I consider myself lucky because I don't live in a place where there is a war in my backyard.

6. One day we’ll see fibromyalgia and cancer be cured.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to relaxing after a long day of packing for my move, tomorrow my plans include watching Changeling with Angelina Jolie and Sunday, I want to, as always, read and read some more!

Bookish Links for Thursday, Feb. 26

1. Agatha Christie's vacation home in England is opening its doors to the public for the first time this Saturday.

2. Moms of fallen U.S. soldiers discuss the media ban on their arrival back home. Some are opposed to the ban, while others are opposed to lifting the ban because of "a negative experience" she had with the media.

3. I just saw that a few weeks ago Penguin Books in the UK blogged about How to Sell Books in a Recession, citing how they got their start during the Great Depression of the 1930s. I say they qualify to give advice, don't you?

4. Seventy-one of Danielle Steel's novels have now been made available digitally.

5. On this day in 1956 Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal about her first meeting with Ted Hughes.

6. To humor you, here is a list I found on Amazon.co.uk of "Unfortunately named authors". I tend to agree. Do you know any others?

7. A post about Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses. Interesting!

The Sunday Salon: February Round-Up

I finally realized I could use my dad's laptop as a fill-in until I can (hopefully!) get my own laptop fixed. My sister and I figured out today that it was not the screen- it's the hard drive! The light for the hard drive is not coming on. I thought that when I hit the power button all I heard come on was the fan, but I was not sure. *Sigh* I hope this is under the warranty...

Here is the round-up for February books!

Books I finished reading this month:

1. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
2. On the Couch by Alisa Kwitney
3. Imagist Poetry: An Anthology
4. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
5. Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

Books I couldn't finish:

1. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert


And the always lengthy list of books put on my TBR list:

1. Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale by Donna Jo Napoli
Found @ Library Queue

2. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Found @ Bart's Bookshelf

3. Swallows of Kabul by Yasmine Khadra
Found @ Reading Room

4. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One by Lathan
Found @ Savvy Verse & Wit

5. Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen
Found @ Maw Books Blog

6. Artichoke's Heart by Suzanne Supplee
Found @ Look at That Book

7. The Pre-nup by Beth Kendrick
Found @ A Novel Menagerie

8. All Other Nights by Dana Horn
Found @ Fresh Ink Books

9. May and Amy: A True Story of Family, Forbidden Love, and the Secret Lives of May Gaskell and her Daughter Amy, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones by ?
Found @ A Work in Progress

10. Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson
Found @ Lesley's Book Nook

11. Signed, Mata Hari by Yannick Murphy
Found @ Literary Menagerie

12. A Father's Affair by Karel Van Loon
Found @ Fresh Ink Books

13. The Mistress' Daughter by A.M. Holmes
Found @ Aspiring Writer

14. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Found @ Pudgy Penguin Perusals

15. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
Found @ Reading Room

16. What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
Found @ Fluttering Butterflies

17. The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Found @ A Novel Menagerie

18. Irreplaceable by Stephen Lovely
Found @ Books and Needlepoint

19. The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
Found @ Book Addiction

20. While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinsky
Found @ Marta's Meanderings

21. Midori by Moonlight by Wendy Nelson Tokunaga
Found @ A Reader's Journal

22. Stargazing: Memoirs of a Young Lighthouse Keeper by Peter Hill
Found @ Between the Covers

23. Uglies by Scott Westerfield
Found @ Books and Needlepoint

24. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Found @ Books on the Brain

25. The Sonnets by Warwick Collins
Found @ Devourer of Books

26. Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata
Found @ The Book Drop

27. Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz
Found @ Look at That Book

28. That Went Well by Terrell Harris Dougan
Found @ Bermudaonion and @ Find Your Next Book Here

29. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Found @ The Book Book

30. The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
Found @ Recommendation by Mike on SU

31. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Found @ All Things Considered on NPR

32.The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash
Found @ Amazon.com

33. Sugar of the Crop: My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves by Sana Butler
Found @ Amazon.com Recommendations

Bookish Links for Wednesday, Feb. 25

1. Haruki Murakami discusses his decision to accept a literary prize in Jerusalem and the reason he made the controversial decision.

2. Librarians are on the front lines of the future of reading by being multimedia specialists.

3. Here's one for Beth and the other recipe-loving bloggers who stop by: The Economist shares an article on what cookbooks can teach us. The author has an, um, interesting take on it.

4. This spring, the ABA is launching a new awards program- the Indies Choice Book Awards!

5. This commentator on NPR says that the biggest loss from the dwindling newspaper business is the disappearance of professional book reviewers.

Essay #3

ESSAY #3-The Courage to Kill: Meeting the Panthers by Eldridge Cleaver
FOUND IN- The Outlaw Bible of American Essays edited by Alan Kaufman
DATE READ- February 25
RATING- Amazing! (4 stars)
QUOTE- "I fell in love with the Black Panther party immediately upon my first encounter with it; it was literally love at first sight."

This essay is about Cleaver's first experiences with the Black Panther party, including meeting Malcolm X's widow Sister Betty Shabazz and another leader, Huey P. Newton. Their meeting would be enlightening for the author. I thought this was a moving and thoughtful essay. In just a few short pages, Cleaver was able to take me inside the minds of some of the party members of the Black Panthers and show what they were made of.

Wondrous Words Wednesday #2

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Bermudaonion "where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading." Join in on the fun and expand your vocabulary! Here are the new words that I discovered this week, all from Stuffed: An Insider's Look at Who's Really Making America Fat by Hank Cardello-

1. ubiquitous- being or seeming to be everywhere at once; omnipresent
2. proclivity- natural or habitual inclination or tendency
3. extrapolate- to estimate (the value of a variable) outside the known or observed range

What new words did you learn this week?

100 Shots of Short- Stories 14-16

STORY #14- God Sees the Truth, But Waits by Leo Tolstoy
DATE- February 24
RATING- Mmm...That's Good
QUOTE- "They entered the house. The soldiers and the police-officer unstrapped Aksionov's luggage and searched it. Suddenly the officer drew a knife out of a bag, crying, "Whose knife is this?" Aksionov looked, and seeing a blood-stained knife taken from his bag, he was frightened. "How is it there is blood on this knife?" Aksionov tried to answer, but could hardly utter a word, and only stammered: "I--don't know--not mine."

STORY #15- The Five Boons of Life by Mark Twain
DATE- February 24
RATING- Mmm...That's Good
QUOTE-"In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said: "Here are gifts. Take one, leave the others. And be wary, chose wisely; oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable." The gifts were five: Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death."

STORY #16- Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker
DATE- February 24
RATING- So-So (The writing was good but I was a little confused by the ending. Can someone clear it up for me?)
QUOTE- "Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale, and said, 'It sounds like a wolf—but yet there are no wolves here now.'"

Teaser Tuesday #2

Check out Teaser Tuesdays from Should Be Reading.

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.Let the book fall open to a random page.

Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

My teasers this week come from the book Midwives by Chris Bohjalian:

"My mother said very little in the hours between when I returned home from school and when the state troopers arrived. Twice my mother asked me how school had been that day, but I knew neither time she heard my response."

Read more about Midwives here.

Bookish Links for Monday, Feb. 23

1. Condoleezza Rice Scores 3-Book Deal with Crown Publishers.
2. Arabic Novelist Tayeb Salih died in London at age 80. Salih's works are said to have re-defined East and West relationships.
3. You will never be able to guess how much this book from Amazon, available on Kindle, costs. Never. Go ahead. Try. Then go to this page and see the real cost.
4. The Library of Congress has now digitized 25,000 books that are online for anyone to read and download. I hope they are keeping hard copies of the oldest, rarest books.
5. Ang Lee is said to be negotiating to direct Life of Pi. Previous directors linked to the project include M. Night Shyamalan and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

The Quotes Game- Books

Welcome to another Quote Game!

This is how the game works: Each week I will select a topic, sometimes easy and sometimes more challenging. Once you know the topic, it is then your turn to find quotes from books, short stories, essays, and poems that pertain to the topic. They can contain the actual word or they can be a reference to the word, but your quote has to make sense out of context.

Once you have found a quote, come back and post it here in the comments section, along with the work you found it in, the work's author and the genre of the work. There is no limit to the number of quotes you can submit, but try not to submit more than 5-6 in one comment (and only 1 quote is also acceptable). So, what if you find a quote about this week's topic in 2 weeks? You can come back and add another quote in a comment at any time.

To get you started, I will always post the first quote in my post. From there, let your books be your guides and, above all else, have fun! :)

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: BOOKS
(As in, the topic of books is mentioned in the text of an actual book, not the author quotes about books outside of a book.)

"And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries." -A Man without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut (Genre: Anthology of Essays)


You can also still participate in past Quotes Games:
Dreams
Heart

Book Giveaway Carnival- Marking My First Giveaway!

I am participating in the carnival making this my first ever giveaway! I had been debating on whether I had any books that I wanted to give away that most of you had not already read, but I think I have it. Come back next Monday in order to see what book I am giving away and to enter to win! I am so excited for this to be my first giveaway!!

Marvelous Mondays

It is time again for the weekly round-up. There were so many great posts this week it is hard to narrow it down!

Three Great Reviews:
~This essay review on Tales from the Reading Room is so intelligent and beautifully written that you would be mistaken not to read it.
~I loved Charley's personal review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky on her blog Bending Bookshelf.
~Matthew's review of The Illiad on his blog Falling Stacks will make you want to run out and read it. But he makes sure you are getting the right version.
~Okay, okay, I know I promised myself only to list the 3 best reviews every week, but there were 4 I liked this week. So, I like to break the rules. You know you love me for it. ;) The final review I would like to mention is Rebecca's incredibly thoughtful review of Voluntary Madness by by Norah Vincent on her blog, The Book Lady's Blog. See? It was hard to narrow it down!

Passionate Postings:
~Hair Mats for Oil Spills by Life's Sweet Passions. Penelope from My Passion for Books shares how we can donate little locks of hair to help create mats that soak up oil spills.
~Susan of The Book Chook has another wonderful post about children and books. This one is about giving children the magical gift of reading. As a former pre-k teacher, I completely understand Susan's passion for this subject and I think she does a terrific job of setting it ablaze for her readers.

Interview of the Week:
~I enjoyed reading Trish's interview with Diana Spechler the most this week, I think. Interviews that I am willing to read are tricky to pull off, so when they capture me and I read the whole thing, it is very worthy of being the interview of the week. Read the interview on Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin?

**Different this Week- I love reading book reviews, just like we all do. But sometimes, like several of us have been talking about the past couple of weeks, the same books have a tendency to be reviewed within the same week or two of each other. And I love, love getting different perspectives on the same book. It is one thing I like about the blogging review world. However, I also relish it when a blogger reviews a book no one else is talking about. Ah, the un doing of the monotony! Anyone who knows me knows I get bored easily, so these reviews help me to keep on my toes and break it all up for me. These are 3 that did this for me this week. So, thanks guys. :)

~The Thin Red Line's review on Pot Culture. And Alan found this in the library of all places! I tried, but my library did not have it. Bummer.
~A Bookworm's World had a review on Apologize, Apologize by Elizabeth Kelly. To be fair, this is a new book and may be everywhere soon, but I had not seen or heard about it yet and so therefore it still qualifies as fresh to me.
~I also liked the review of The Arrival by Shaun Tan on The Book Drop's blog. I don't really go for the graphic novels but this one sounded unique to me.

That is all for this week! Keep writing, keep reviewing, keep interviewing, and most of all, keep reading those great books! I love reading all about them. Next week, I would love to feature a stand-out post for a weekly, so keep that in mind! I would love to feature you next Monday! :)

Bookish Links for Sunday, Feb. 22

1. In case you did not know about it, there is a site called World Cat that you can use to find specific items in libraries near you.

2. If you or your son or daughter are in 11th or 12th grade in the U.S., the 13th Annual Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest is running until April 22, 2009. Five students will win a check in the amount of one thousand dollars to be used toward tuition and/or expenses related to their higher education. They will also receive a Signets Classic Library for their school library, or public library if they are home-schooled. I did not know they did this or I would have been all over this ten years ago.

3. Want to know more about what President Barack Obama reads? This blogger from Old Musty Books has gathered some articles pertaining to the chief's library.

4. This week's Booking Through Thursday was about how you organize your bookshelves. This design blog has a post on organizing your shelves by color with some very interesting photographs.

TSS: A Week of A.D.D.-Infused Reading

It has been a bad week for my A.D.D. In addition to talking about three things at the same time and being distracted by everything from someone on the phone to the wind blowing outside, my reading has been all...over...the...place. I am reading six books at once, plus keeping up with blogs. Like I said, all over the place.

First, I have been continuing to read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I am through the first narrative and have started the second narrative. I was thinking how I should slow down for the classics challenge so I can finish it after April 1st, but at this rate it will take me until April to finish it anyhow. I keep reading other books in addition! And it is not that I don't like the books I am reading, either. Nothing to do with it. I just have had a powerful need to skip around and read randomly.

I am also continuing to read Stuffed by Hank Cardello. I am learning so much from this book! It is a fascinating read so far. I am about halfway through it. I can't tell you how many times I have stopped to take notes on it so I remember things I want to say in my review.

Online I am reading Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. This is a deep philosophical read so I don't read more than a chapter at a time. There is a lot of absorbing of the material.

I have also started the book Surviving Grief...and Learning to Live Again by Dr. Catherine M. Sanders. As you know if you have been reading my blog for a while, my father passed away in January. Actually, it will be a month ago on Wednesday, the day after my sister's birthday (thankfully, not on it). This same sister and I went to Barnes & Noble last week and picked up 4 different books on grieving (we couldn't decide between them). She is reading one and I am reading one. My other sister and mother have not shown interest in reading about it. I am learning a lot. Sanders has a different idea about the stages of grief than you typically hear about. I like that she has been there, done that, too. You won't believe how many people she has lost in her life and how close the deaths were to each other. Her experience definitely adds credit to the book. I did not get to go to my father's grave today (I still have not been). But I will go tomorrow. I have to go before that month mark hits or I will never forgive myself.

So, that is four books if you are keeping track. The other book I picked up is Midwives by Chris Bohjalian. I had not intended to begin reading it. I was going through old books that I had put aside to give away that I had not looked at in a while. When I came across Midwives, I remembered that when I had tried to read it I just couldn't get into it. I read the first few pages, thinking it may have just been the timing of when I was trying to read it. It was. I have already read the first three chapters. It was two years ago that I tried to read it the first time. So far it is much better than I remember it being. Have any of you read this book?

The sixth book I have been looking through is the book I just reviewed called Imagist Poetry: An Anthology. It had some beautiful poems in it.

I don't know what the next week will bring. Maybe I will read more of one book than another, maybe it will be another week of randomness and ping-pong between books. We'll just have to see next Sunday.

To read other blogs participating in Sunday Salon, or to participate yourself, visit here.

Imagist Poetry: An Anthology Edited by Bob Blaisdell

BOOK #: 12
CHALLENGES: 9 in 2009 (my selection for no overlaps)
RATING: Mmm...That's Good (3 stars)

This wonderful collection of poetry from the early 20th century's Imagism movement blew me away. And it only cost me $1.00 at a used book store.

Imagism was a pretty radical poetic movement characterized by the use of common speech, a minimal use of adjectives, and the presentation of the subject matter in a clear and precise image. This anthology contains both well-known poets and their masterpieces, as well as lesser-known poets.

While there were some poems that did not capture my heart (as is probably the case for anyone with any anthology of poetry) there were so many, many more that did. William Carlos Williams was probably my favorite of the more famous poets featured in the book, while Richard Aldington and F.S. Flint were my favorites among the lesser-known poets.

Here is one of my favorite poems featured in the book:
"The sky has given over
its bitterness.
Out of the dark change
all day long
rain falls and falls
as if it would never end.
Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground.
But water, water is seething
from a thousand runnels.
It collects swiftly,
dappled with black
cuts a way for itself
through green ice in the gutters.
Drop after drop it falls
from the withered grass stems
of the overhanging embankment."
-Spring Storm by William Carlos Williams


And, I wanted to share this poem with you as well. It is Cherry Robbers by D.H. Lawrence:
"Under the long, dark boughs, like jewels red
In the hair of an Eastern girl
Shine strings of crimson cherries, as if had bled
Blood-drops beneath each curl.

Under the glistening cherries, with folded wings
Three dead birds lie:
Pale-breasted throstles and a blackbird, robberlings
Stained with red dye.

Under the haystack a girl stands laughing at me,
With cherries hung round her ears-
Offering me her scarlet fruit: I will see
If she has any tears."

If you have an interest in Imagist Poetry, I recommend this collection, which has some of the best works of the movement in it.

2009 Classics Challenge

Because I am apparently a masochist, I have signed up for Trish's 2009 Classics Challenge. Oy vey.

BUT, in all fairness, I have wanted to do a classics challenge since I began this blog. The contest runs from April 1-October 31.

I choose the Classics Feast of 6 because I am already reading this many for other challenges I am in (overlaps are allowed, thank goodness). Then I am going to go for the Bonus Book of a "New Classic", too, I am sure.

So, here I am in another challenge. At this point, what's one more, right?

My Choices:
1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (August 2009)

3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

4. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

5. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

6. Mansfield Park or Emma by Jane Austen

7. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Surfing Saturdays

Hi, friends and fellow book lovers! I hope you are having a great Saturday! I have had a lazy one, myself, filled with reading and watching movies! I do have some links I would like to share with you this Saturday that you may be interested in. I hope to show you a different side of me that does not always have to do with books. You will see this side appear sometimes in these Surfing Saturday posts. By the way, please check out the blog Literary Menagerie. She came up with Surfing Saturdays and is also a wonderful person and blogger.

SURF'S UP:

~Welcome to Elsewhere, U.S.A. Salon asks are we more productive in the age of Facebook, blogging, and texting, or are we just more anxious?

~And on that note, CNN reports that now even surgeons are sending tweets for updates from the operating room?

~Also in the medical field, an article about the realities of fibromyalgia and if drug companies are profiting from the syndrome. I have fibromyalgia so this is important information to me. If you don't know what fibromyalgia is, feel free to ask questions. I am happy to discuss it.

~Wilson Quarterly asks the question: are we stuck in our own "McCulture" and have we lost our taste for the truly foreign? The article argues that while we think we are more cultured, we may be less.

~Were Thoreau, Emerson, and the other 19th century idealists not only living in the woods, but also vegetarians? And how radical was this idea in this period of industrialization?

~Supermarkets are swapping price tags for LCD monitors, but this does not necessarily mean the swap is an environmentally friendly one.

~I am reading Stuffed by Hank Cardello right now and it has me focused on the food industry. Here is an article from the Freaknonomics blog about the infamous Trader Joe's. Do you know who owns Trader Joe's? Aldi.

~What do Ben Franklin and C.S. Lewis have in common? Their libraries are now both cateloged on Library Thing.

~And, finally, just because I think it's fun, I have included a link to a quiz about one of my favorite movies, Love Actually. Can you beat my score? I missed 2, but they were questions that did not pertain to the plot or characters.

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday! =)

Bookish Links of the Day

I find so many interesting links while perusing the web that I have to seriously weed through them for Surfing Saturdays and I end up not sharing many gems with you. So, instead, I am going to use Surfing Saturdays to bring you non-bookish links of interest (for instance, last week's Art of the Sing Along article) and I am going to begin posting Bookish Links of the Day. Just a few links daily so I can share my bookish and literary finds with you in a more timely manner and still contained for the most part in one post (as oppose to a different post every time I find something I think you will want to read). If this idea is annoying, let me know. If this is amazing, let me know. If you feel absolutely indifferent, let me know that, too. :) Oh, and this is still separate from Marvelous Mondays. I will still post the stand-out blog posts from you all at that time.

BOOKISH LINKS FOR FRIDAY, FEB. 20

1. Check out the art of handmade bookbinding. Everything from endleaves to onlays, 19th century French binding with silver and gold tooling to 15th century Venetian bindings.
2. In case you did not know it, it was author Toni Morrison's birthday Wednesday. I have always loved this quote of hers that this site recognizing her shares, "During her Nobel lecture, Morrison addressed the power and importance of language: “Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction.”
3. British author Geraldine Bedell says she has been banned from the first International Festival of Literature in Dubai, which runs from Feb. 26 to March 1. She says that festival director Isobel Abulhoul contacted Penguin toward the end of last year and said her book, The Gulf Between Us, was unacceptable because one of the characters is gay.
4. The Southworth Library in Dryden, New York, has just sold its most valuable asset, a four-page speech penned by Abraham Lincoln himself.
5. Shelf Awareness gets in on the e-book versus hard copy book discussions that have permeated the literary world as of late.
6. And last for today, the Marion County Library in Indianapolis, Indiana has raised its efforts to collect overdue fines. One man owes almost $8000 in overdue book fines. No, you read that right.

Friday Finds 02-20-09

This week I found seven books for the TBR list. That's right, 7! You guys are killing me! ;) In the nicest way, possible, of course. Here are my finds:

Book- Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson
Found@ Lesley's Book Nook

Book- Signed, Mata Hari
Found @ Literary Menagerie

Book- A Father's Affair by Karel Van Loon
Found @ Fresh Ink Books
(Note: Not what you think it's about looking at the title.)

Book- The Mistress' Daughter by A.M. Holmes
Found @ Aspiring Writer
(Note: I have always been fascinated with adoption and a big advocate for it. Furthermore, I am always interested to know the viewpoints and experiences of those who have been there. This memoir certainly qualifies.)

Book- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Found @ Pudgy Penguin Perusals

Book- Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks
Found @ Reading Room

Book- Sugar of the Crop: My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves by Sana Butler
Found @ Amazon.com Recommendations

(Note: To be fair, this one will probably sit on my TBR list for a while because the back story is Butler dealing with her father, who is dying of cancer. Hits a little too close to home right now. But I am still interested in this book and will read it at some point.)

Friday Fill-In 02-20-09

1. Give me a job at a bookstore and I'll be ecstatic.

2. Whenever Grey's Anatomy comes on, all talking must cease.

3. I wish I could read faster. How many more lovely books I could digest!

4. Arroz con Pollo was the last thing I ate that was utterly delicious. Chicken with Rice, but it also had mushrooms, green peppers, red peppers, and onions and spiced just right. Delicioso!

5. To live in this world requires a lot of skills, most of which I am still acquiring. :)

6. Other than this one, ______ is the last blog I commented on. To be honest, that was hours ago and I have no idea.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to watching The Talented Mr. Ripley because I haven't seen it before, tomorrow my plans include lots of reading, writing, drawing, and blogging and Sunday, I want to visit my dad's grave because I have yet to do so since the funeral. I am having trouble working up the courage because I know how much it will take out of me.

BTT Post- Organizing Your Books

You can participate in Booking Through Thursday here.

This week's question is:
I recently got new bookshelves for my room, and I’m just loving them. Spent the afternoon putting up my books and sharing it on my blog . One of my friends asked a question and I thought it would be a great BTT question. So from Tina & myself, we’d like to know “How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?”

I don't really have any organization to my books, to be honest. While I do have the largest books on the bottom of the bookshelf and the smallest on the top shelf, this is mostly because the top shelf is very short and the bottom shelf is tall. :-)

The books on the other shelves are simply random. I can't go by color. If I put all the red books together, I will see them as one giant clump of red, instead of seeing individual titles. I don't have enough books by the same authors to file it by author. And I would never alphabetize them. I hate that at bookstores. I prefer it by subject, broken down.

When I go into a bookstore to simply browse, I very rarely have an author in mind. More than likely I have a genre in mind, something light or something educational or something classic, for example. If I go in to the store looking for a book on say fibromyalgia, but all of the health books are simply lumped together and then alphabetized by author, I have to look through every single health book in that store just to find books about fibromyalgia. Annoying!

So if I were to eventually have enough books to warrant good organization (right now I only have a couple hundred and can find any book I am looking for in less than 2 minutes), I would probably go by subject, or genre. It just makes the most sense to me.

How do you organize your books? Share in the comments, or if you did this BTT, leave your link in your comment so I can be sure to read about it.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

BOOK: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
RATING: 1 Star, DNF

I can't do it. I give up.

I really, really wanted to like this book. I really, really wanted to read it and become enlightened and gain understanding into how my mind works. I gave myself weeks to see if I could come back to it and find it any easier to read. It just did not happen.

Stumbling on Happiness has received oodles of praise and was on the New York Times Bestseller List. Fans have raved over the way Gilbert explains happiness from a scientific standpoint and how educated they feel about themselves after reading this book.

I, on the other hand, found the book to be informative, yes, educational, yes, but far from "fascinating", as author Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, Tipping Point) describes it. It was very tedious. The most minute detail was scrutinized. Even though it is promoted as a book for the "layman", I found it to be better suited for the psychology major.

Gilbert goes into detail about blind spots to prove his point about realistic representations by the mind. He discusses linguistics for a dozen pages to prove his point about corrigibility. I think that the book was far too scientific for me to get excited about it. A more talented writer could have taken the information Gilbert wanted the reader to understand and put it into a more succinct explanation.

There were positive points to it. There are always positives to a book. Sometimes they are hard to find, but they are there. I think the topic of this book is interesting and I think Gilbert has enough expertise in the area. I also think that the book had a good layout- in that it had nice sized chapters, the paragraphs were not too long (a pet peeve of mine) and there were graphs and images to break it up as well as to help illustrate points.

Overall, I felt Gilbert's book was like reading a paper in a scholarly journal. I am sure people who enjoy this type of reading find Gilbert's book lively and insightful. For those who want to understand the process of determining what happiness is and is not without feeling they are in a neuroscience course, will find the book tedious and hard to focus on.

I did not finish this book, or even come close to it, so I am not adding it to my books read list or using it in any challenges. Maybe I am not at a point right now where I can digest the plethora of scientific specificity that Stumbling provides. Gilbert will have to Stumble without this reader.

IE Issue

Kelly from The Chic Geek just brought to my attention that my blog cannot be accessed via Internet Explorer. I checked it out and it is giving an error message for no apparent reason. I posted to Blogger Support and hopefully the issue will be resolved soon. Firefox does not seem to be having this issue if you can use that browser. I don't know about other browsers. Thanks, Kelly, for letting me know!

UPDATE 02-20-09: I have been told that IE has a bug in it that becomes a problem when you include script in HTML/JavaScript gadget that may not work well in the gadget. This is a problem for not only my blog, but many others. It is a known problem and I think they are working on finding a solution. I have also read that making sure you are using the most recent version of IE can help. However, I use IE 7 and I still received the error.

A Childhood Memory

I really enjoy writing from time to time. A great blog I have found is the One-Minute Writer, which challenges you to take 60 seconds of every day just to write. Every day it also gives you a prompt to help you get going. Today's prompt I thought was perfect to share with you: Write about a childhood memory related to reading.

I would like to share my own one-minute memory with you:
I have an early memory of sitting in my father's lap while he read the newspaper to me. Of course, it was always a story about a neighborhood hero or a parade in town or how to grow a good vegetable garden or the comics section. But it was great. I always saw my parents reading growing up. The only time in life I did not like to read was between about 7th and 12th grades because the amount of reading in school made me want to do anything but read when I wasn't studying. However, I got back into it in college, and especially since college. One of my favorite books was Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever where I would spend hours creating stories from the pages.

Do you have a favorite childhood memory about reading to share? Take a few seconds and share it with me! I would love to hear about it! Wait, let me get my tea...okay...ready! Share away, bibliophiles! :)

Wondrous Words Wednesday #1

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Bermudaonion "where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading." Join in on the fun and expand your vocabulary! Here are the new words that I discovered this week, separated by work:

Stumbling into Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (This book is unsurprisingly chock full of vocab, but the jargon is always defined.)
1. blindsight- (n.) the ability of a blind person to sense accurately a light source or other visual stimulus even though unable to see it consciously.
2. alexithymia- the absence of words to describe emotional states.
3. corrugator supercillia- the muscle in a face which furrows our brow when we experience something unpleasant
5. zygomaticus major- the muscle in a face which pulls our mouths up toward our ears when we smile
6. physiography- the study of the earth's surface; includes people's responses to topography, climate, soil, vegetation. Gilbert states in the book, "Physiography allows us to measure the electrodermal, respiratory, and cardiac activity of the autonomic nervous system, all of which change when we experience strong emotions."


Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
1. propound- to put forward or offer for consideration, acceptance, or adoption.
2. imperious- domineering in a haughty manner; dictatorial; overbearing; urgent; imperative
3. atomism- psychology. A method or theory that reduces all psychological phenomena to simple elements

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
1. limpid- clear, translucent, as water, crystal or air
2. caprice- a sudden, unpredictable change; a tendency to change ones mind whimsically

Teaser Tuesday #1

Check out Teaser Tuesdays from Should Be Reading. TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:


Grab your current read.Let the book fall open to a random page.

Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

I just have one teaser I want to share. My teaser comes from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins:

"Think of her, as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir. Let the kind, candid blue eyes meet yours, as they met mine, with the one matchless look which we both remember so well. Let her voice speak the music that you once loved best, attuned as sweetly to your ear as to mine. Let her footstep, as she comes and goes, in these pages, be like that other footstep to whose airy fall your own heart once beat time. Take her as the visionary nursling of your own fancy; and she will grow upon you, all the more clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine."

100 Shots of Short- Stories 11-13

STORY #11: The Child's Story by Charles Dickens
DATE: February 17
RATING: A Keeper- 5 stars
QUOTE: "Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures, the traveller lost the boy as he had lost the child, and, after calling to him in vain, went on upon his journey. So he went on for a little while without seeing anything, until at last he came to a young man. So, he said to the young man, "What do you do here?" And the young man said, "I am always in love. Come and love with me."

STORY #12: The Christmas Tree and the Wedding by Fyodor Dostoevsky
DATE: February 17
RATING: Mmm....That's Good
QUOTE: "There was another guest who interested me. But he was of quite a different order. He was a personage. They called him Julian Mastakovich. At first glance one could tell he was an honoured guest and stood in the same relation to the host as the host to the gentleman of the whiskers. The host and hostess said no end of amiable things to him, were most attentive, wining him, hovering over him, bringing guests up to be introduced, but never leading him to any one else. I noticed tears glisten in our host's eyes when Julian Mastakovich remarked that he had rarely spent such a pleasant evening. Somehow I began to feel uncomfortable in this personage's presence..."

STORY #13: Alexandre by Guy de Maupassant
DATE: February 17
RATING: Mmm...That's Good
QUOTE: "For thirty-five years he had been in the service of this couple, first as officer's orderly, then as simple valet who did not wish to leave his masters; and for the last six years, every afternoon, he had been wheeling his mistress about through the narrow streets of the town. From this long and devoted service, and then from this daily tete-a-tete, a kind of familiarity arose between the old lady and the devoted servant, affectionate on her part, deferential on his. They talked over the affairs of the house exactly as if they were equals."

The Quote Game- Dreams

It is time for the next edition of The Quote Game! :)
This is how the game works: Each week I will select a topic, sometimes easy and sometimes more challenging. Once you know the topic, it is then your turn to find quotes from books, short stories, essays, and poems that pertain to the topic. They can contain the actual word or they can be a reference to the word, but your quote has to make sense out of context.

Once you have found a quote, come back and post it here in the comments section, along with the work you found it in, the work's author and the genre of the work. There is no limit to the number of quotes you can submit, but try not to submit more than 5-6 in one comment (and only 1 quote is also acceptable). So, what if you find a quote about this week's topic in 2 weeks? You can come back and add another quote in a comment at any time.

To get you started, I will always post the first quote in my post. From there, let your books be your guides and, above all else, have fun! :)

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: DREAMS

"Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul." -The Awakening by Kate Chopin

How Sweet! An Award!

Jenners from Find Your Next Book Here bestowed upon me a most fabulous award: The Friends Award. How sweet is that?

I display it with pride. And if you haven't checked out Find Your Next Book Here, you absolutely should! You will fast become a fan.