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Summer’s End…

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I feel like my reading has slacked off in the last month!  Since Ferragosto I have spent a little more time watching movies and reading magazines and worshiping the sun, so the list has gotten smaller.

I finished “Beatrice and Virgil” on 8/19 and found myself sobbing at the end.  It was an odd little book and I ended up feeling manipulated and mad at the author for making me “go there.”  It was really horrifying at the end and I can’t recommend it to anyone because I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else feeling that way.  Ugh.  It definitely wasn’t as long-lasting in my mind as the Life of Pi (same author) but he is an incredible author.

I’ve also read a fluffy Jennifer Crusie book, which was fun.  Very fun.  Light and quick and smart.  I brought a lot of books home from the library and ended up bringing four out of five of  them back unread!  Goodness.

Now I’m reading an Elin Hildebrand book – I generally like her books – The Love Season.   Very summery, east coasty.  Fun.  And I’m also reading “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller.  It’s for an online bookclub with Nicole Baart and it’s about thinking about the story you want your life to tell about you.  It’s going three chapters at a time – and they’re short chapters that fly by so only reading three a week is kind of painful!  Last week I even re-read the entire nine chapters that had been read thus far.  But Nicole posts on Mondays and I haven’t read the “assigned” chapters for tonight.  It’ll be a quick thing to do before bed.

Sarah and I made a WalkieTalkie book plan – wonder if I can remember it!  I think we wanted to discuss the “Girl Who” books we’d read with Nina, and then read “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safron Foer for October.  I also plan to read the Harry Potter series, as well.  I’d like to get it done by the time the last movie comes out in late November.  Is that right, Sarah?

Well, off to read!

Summer Reads

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I’ve been bad at this blogging this summer!  But I guess from what I read on the blogs I follow, it isn’t too unusual to take a blog vacation.  I just haven’t been blogging that long to take a vacation from it!  Oops.  Oh well.  Here we go!

I had to check out my goodreads list to see which books I’ve read since I last blogged.  It’s been quite a few:  “Firefly Lane” (Kristin Hannah), “The Beach House” (Jane Green), “Love Walked In” and “Belong to Me” (Marissa de los Santos), “The Other Woman” (Jane Green), “The Girl Who Played with Fire” (Stieg Larsson), “Best Friends Forever” (Jennifer Weiner), and “The Stormchasers” (Jenna Blum).  I just started “Other People’s Weddings” yesterday.

So.  I liked “Firefly Lane” better than “Best Friends Forever,” and for some reason they felt similar to me.  Best friends.  Different family backgrounds.  Estrangement.  Kids to grown-ups.  I also thought that the “mystery” feel in “BFF” was very hokey, especially after reading Millennium #2.

I liked “Love Walked In” better than “Belong To Me,” although I loved them both.  I loved the character and the writing style.  I was glad that there was another book about the main character in “Love Walked In” because I wanted to keep getting to know her.  They were great reads.

I liked “The Beach House” better than “The Other Woman.”  They were very different books by Jane Green – one about an eccentric woman who takes in boarders to help maintain her life on Cape Cod and the other about the contentious relationship a woman has with her mother-in-law.  I thought the daughter-in-law was pretty uptight and ridiculous a lot of the time, although I did have some empathy for her.  I wouldn’t want to deal with a MIL like that, but it was a little crazy.

I really liked “The Stormchasers,” and can’t wait to discuss it in book club with others who have read it!  I don’t want to give any spoilers so am not going to talk about it much here.  Read on!

After I read “Other People’s Weddings” I hope I can pick up that Pat Conroy book I got in the mail – “South of Broad.”  Seems like a summer read, so I’ll hopefully dive into that.  Still  have quite a pile TBR by the bed!  I bought “Eats Shoots and Leaves” at a used book sale and can’t wait to pick that up, either.

So what about you???  What have you been reading and what are your thoughts about the books you’ve been reading this summer?

Can’t wait to hear!

And now, off to read before company comes!

Book ramblings…

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Well  I ran out and saw the movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” last Tuesday, and it was good – well-made – but terribly simplified from the book.  The book is complicated, as I might have said before, and this movie focuses in on parts of it.  I’m glad that I read the book and I can’t wait to read the second.  I heard that there is another movie in the works already – maybe coming out this summer?  I talked with two people today who saw the movie last night and hadn’t read the book.  I’m not sure if they will read it after seeing the movie, and I wonder if it would enhance it either way?  The book is a lot less graphic than the movie was – a lot more “matter of fact” about what was happening.  I saw the preview of the movie and didn’t know if I’d even like to read the book – and there was a point in the book when I wanted to put it down and stop reading because I thought it was going to get too scary, but it didn’t.  It just kept going and kept me in there, wanting to know what was going to happen.

So, that’s that.  Can’t wait for more people to finish the book to have the discussion! **Hint Hint**

In the meantime I’ve been reading ‘Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah.  I’ve read a book or two by her and they are nice easy reads with unique stories.  This one is ok but I am a little frustrated with the characters.  Hmmm.

I found the Rochester Public Library Book store Blog and they are having online contests each month for “bluestockings.”  Evidently, Bluestockings are intelligent, educated women – so it’s the name they’re giving to women in book clubs.  July’s contest is to take a picture depicting beach books. I’m not sure I really get it, but I’ll keep following it and see if it’s something we can do.

I also emailed Jenna Blum last week about her book signing at Borders in Ridgeview or wherever.  I wasn’t able to go, even though it’s been on my calendar for months.  😦  I asked if she was going to come to Rochester and she asked that I contact B&N and recommend that they contact her publicist, so I did!  I hope they do!  She said she’d be around MN the month of August so hopefully we can get something to work out.  I ordered her new book, “The Stormchasers” and look forward to reading it.  She’s such a hoot.

Well, I’m going to finish “Firefly Lane” tonight or in the morning so that I’m ready when my package from B&N arrives!
Off to read!

Book Blogs

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Are there any book blogs that you subscribe to and read regularly?  Besides this one, I mean? 🙂

I read www.bookwormwithaview.com (she just reviewed the Girls from Ames this week!).  It’s amazing how many books she gets through… crazy.

Just found tlcbooktours.com so I’ll explore that a bit more.  They have giveaways every month and this month’s is “the Girls from Ames”!  Would be fun to win and give away copies of the book to friends!

I read author’s websites and publishers websites, listed on the blogroll on the side of this blog, I believe.

How about you?  Any favorites?

The Ides of March

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I’m blogging on a Monday!  And it’s a “holiday”!  (From Wikipedia:  The Ides of March (Latin: Idus Martiae) is the name of March 15 in the Roman calendar. The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months.[1] The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was killed in 709 AUC or 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus and 60 other co-conspirators.)

No military parades or stabbings here, but a slow return to “life after vacation.”  Luckily it was a nice day, weather-wise, so there wasn’t too much of a shock to my system.  We arrived in Rochester at 2AM and I slept til 8, read til 9 and then worked half a day.  A good, gradual re-entry to the real world.  I’m afraid I’m still on vacation time, so I hope I get to sleep at a decent hour tonight or tomorrow morning will be rough!

I didn’t do as much reading as I had hoped on vacation, because sun-worshiping is so much easier with your eyes closed!  But I finished the “Friday Night Knitting Club” before I left, so I was one book lighter.  I can’t wait to discuss it, as I ended up not liking it as much as I did initially.  Wondering what everyone else thinks about it?

I did start and finish Ann Bancroft’s and Liv Arneson’s book, “No Horizon is So Far,” and I loved it more than I expected to!  As I said, memoir/nonfiction is not my typical choice, but the determination and passion that these women had from a young age was really remarkable.  I can’t wait to meet Ann on Wednesday and hear her story.  The book was about their 2001 trek across Antarctica and since that time she and Liv have been to the north pole.  Again, more interesting than I thought!

I also picked up the book “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  I bought it at the Shell Museum on Sanibel Island.  Anne wrote the book in 1955 while staying on Captiva Island, just north of Sanibel.  It is a jewel of a book and will probably be a gift to many of my women friends!

And on the plane ride home, I started “Peony In Love” by Lisa See.  I don’t know what it is about Asian historical fiction that I love, but I do love it.  I’m just breezing right through it.  It was a book I received free from Random House as a book club promotion.  Lisa has a few other books out that I’d like to read eventually. I hope that it puts me to sleep tonight, though.

Off to read!

Book Blogs and Newsletters

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As I opened up my email tonight (and entered a contest for another free book!) I started wondering what book blogs or newsletters do you follow/subscribe to?  I’ve listed a few links on the side and I’ll post more! Let me know your “goodies” and I’ll list them!

Off to read!