Guess What??!! Big News!!!

I have a reason to buy these books again!
I am going to be a Grandma!!!

Sandra Boynton books were some of my favorite board books to read to my babes and now I get to read them all over again!! My "baby girl" is going to be a mommy come November and I must say that I am a bit over the moon about it!

I had forgotten just how many of Boynton's books we enjoyed here at our house--many, many moons ago.

take a peek

It's Tuesday. Teaser time and time for Tuesdays' peek into what I am currently reading. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted each week by MizB and is oh-so easy. Let your book fall open, and share with us 2 sentences somewhere between line 7 and 12.


From: Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes
Page: 139

"And although she would order what she always ordered--deep fried shrimp on a roll with coleslaw and fries and lots of ketchup on the side--the grip of unhappiness over the kiss would be too strong for her to enjoy the meal."

record keeping

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about recording your reading…
Do you keep track of what and/or how many books you read? How long have you been doing this? What's your favorite tracking method, and why?If you don't keep track, why not?

Well, I haven't read any other responses, except Rebecca our hostess, and based on her record keeping tactics I am a total slacker!!!! Excell spreadsheet?! OH my! :)

I first started keeping a paper boook journal back in 2002, and from that moment on I wondered why I hadn't been keeping a journal all my life! So this is my 6th year of keeping my book list, and last year I added an online list. The button to see my 2008 list is at the bottom of my sidebar, or you can click here. I have a similar button at the top of my sidebar listing my current book list for 2009. I am also still keeping a real life paper journal because there is just something comforting about a hard copy to hold! I mostly just list the title and author, especially since I do reviews of most of my books online now. But, in the past I would usually write a little synopsis and then whether or not I liked the book.

So, there you have it, pretty plain and pretty simple.

How about you? To play along or visit other musing monday participants, visit Rebecca over at Just One More Page.

What are you reading Mondays

J-Kaye is hosting this weekly event.
The point is to lay out your reading plan for the week-so here it is.
The plan:

I am hoping to polish off a couple of books this week that are smaller and happen to be of the young adult genre. The first is Olive's Ocean and the second is Stargirl. Who knows, I may even get to a third book this week. My reading speed and time available has slowed down some and timewise other things are crowding in--like being a mommy, (even if the final 2 at home are teenagers, they still need me!) and my newly learned hobby of knitting!

Last week I finished Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy and as usual, reading one of her books was like coming home--I just love how she weaves her characters lives into one big plot. I plan to write up a little review of it later this week.

Mailbox discoveries

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page.

I had kind of a sad week where book receiving is concerned. I only had one book show up in that mailbox all week! Actually, this is probably a good thing and my bookshelves which, are groaning under all the weight of to-be-read books, are undoubtedly celebrating.

The Sunday Salon

I had a great week of bookish stuff this past week. I finished up Maeve Binchy's latest book, Heart and Soul. I loved it and will hopefully get my review up for it this week. I did write a review of another book I finished, World of Pies by Karen Stolz. I enjoyed it so much that I went and ordered her other book, Fanny and Sue. The other review I got up is for Elizabeth and Her German Garden.


I participated in Mailbox Monday, Monday Musings, the new Cover Attraction event on Wednesday, and What Are You Reading Monday.

I am planning on reading Olive's Ocean next and I will probably get to Stargirl too. They are both young adult books which I am reading for various challenges.

Have a great week everyone!

World of Pies

Book: World of Pies by Karen Stolz
Finished: March, 2009
Pages: 149
Challenges:
** Spring Reading Thing'
** Read and Review
** 20 in 2009
** TBR 2009
** 9 for 2009
** A-Z Challenge
** New Author

First sentence: "The summer of 1962, the year of the pie fair, I was wild for baseball."

Last sentence: "Okay, let me tell you about the pie fair..."

This book was sweet. A wonderful coming of age story following Roxanne from age 12 through adulthood--(including her own motherhood). Small town life and fairly healthy family relationships are portrayed in such a positive manner. After reading it I wanted to move to Annette, Texas! Throughout the delightfulness heavy topics are touched upon too----death, homosexuality, racism, post traumatic stress syndrome, suicide, and drug/alcohol addiction.



From Publishers Weekly
Comparisons to Fried Green Tomatoes have become so commonplace that readers begin to suspect publishers of hyperbole until they come across something as front-porch charming as this episodic debut novel, covering nearly 30 years in the life of Roxanne Milner. Beginning in 1961, when Roxanne is 12, the 10 stand-alone chapters, most ending in dessert recipes and each serving up a witty, quirky slice of a single life, take as their primary setting Annette, Tex., a postage-stamp-sized town where even the advent of the first female mail carrier is big news.

Book: Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Finished: March, 2009
Pages: 250
Challenges:
** 18th & 19th Century Women Authors Challenge
** New Author Challenge
** Read and Review Challenge
** Read Your Name Challenge
** Themed Reading Challenge
** 20 in 2009
** Victorian Challenge
** Winter Reading Challenge

First Sentence: "May 7th--I love my garden."

Last Sentence: " I do sincerely trust that the benediction that is always awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and patience and cheerfulness, just like the happy flowers I so much love."

Synopsis (from Barnes and Noble)

Elizabeth and Her German Garden was the first book published by author Elizabeth Von Arnim. Originally published in 1898, the semi-autobiographical novel written about a rural idyll became a highly successful book which was subsequently reprinted twenty-one times within its first year. This witty and sacrcastic novel has kept the attention of readers for over a century, and once you read this title for the first time, you will be unable to stop rereading it for many years to come.

This was delightful. The author offers up doses of wit and sarcasm as she exposes her observations of human nature as well as sharing her love of her beautiful garden with the reader.

Quotes:

(written on September 15th): "There is a feeling about this month that reminds me of March and the early days of April, when spring is still hesitating on the threshold and the garden holds its breath in expectation."

(frustration at as a woman being prohibited from actually doing the physical labor of gardening and being forced to hire a gardener) : " It is not graceful, and it makes one hot; but it is a blessed sort of work, and if Eve had had a spade in Paradise and known what to do with it, we should not have had all that sad business of the apple."

Cover Attraction

Cover Attraction is hosted each week by Marcia at The Printed Page

The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain
528 pages

From Amazon:

"An unsolved murder.

A missing child.

A lifetime of deception.

In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child. CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make. Tell the truth, and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies…"


What caught my eye was the little girl's red hair and the shot of them walking taken from behind-it really caused me to pick this book up off the shelf at Target and explore it further. I actually think I will read this one someday.

best laid plains

J-Kaye is hosting this weekly event and, yes I know it is a Monday event and that today is Tuesday, I am always a day late and a dollar short!
The point is to lay out your reading plan for the week-so here it is.
The plan:

I am planning on finishing up Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy. Then the dilemma sets in. I did not finish all the books I wanted to finish for the Winter Challenge-and they are books that need to get read sometime this year. So, do I finish some of them or start in on the Spring Challenge books which are books I am really starting to look forward to?

If I do a Winter book it will be: The Zookeepers Wife or If You Lived Here. If I pick a Spring book it will be Doreen or World of Pies. How is that for indecision?

My blog also needs a little attention and updating--I hope to get to that sometime this week also.

Heart and Soul

It's Tuesday. Teaser time and time for Tuesdays' peek into what I am currently reading. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted each week by MizB and is oh-so easy. Let your book fall open, and share with us 2 sentences somewhere between line 7 and 12.


I am still reading Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy. I am loving this book-a cozy read about characters I come to care about from the get go. My sentences today are a bit more than 2 as I wanted the full emotion between these two characters to shine through.

Page 293:
Clara laughed aloud. "Oh yes you did. You vowed you would make life as difficult, as penny -pinching, nitpicking and bureaucratic as it could possibly be. You promised yourself that the spirit of a hospital should never be considered when the real thing, the letter of the law, can be brought into play But you picked the wrong one in me, Frank. I'm not going to lie down and roll over."

"I didn't pick you at all. I was landed with with you!"

Musing Mondays: bookstores

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about bookstores…
How many bookstores do you frequent? Do you have a favourite? If so, which one and what makes it so?

Sadly, I don't have a very creative answer for this question. Out here in the suburbs of Seattle I don't have a great choice of bookstores. I can go to a Borders Books, or a Barnes and Noble, both of them being big chain stores. There just aren't any independent book shops around. There is a small used bookstore in town called Browsers Books but I don't really like going in there. It is in a very old building that kind of smells and it is always cold inside. The guy who owns it is a nice guy, and I do buy books once in a while from there, but it isn't cozy and welcoming.

I used to love going to my Borders store-it was large and spacious with lots of seating and a coffee shop inside. Then they moved their location into a big mall, but they have less space so everything is crunched together, there is terrible lighting and worst of all, there are hardly any chairs or benches.

So, as a matter of protest, I usually now go to the Barnes and Nobel up the street from the mall and buy my books even though it doesn't have many places to sit either!

How about you? To play along or visit other musing monday participants, visit Rebecca over at One More Page.

Treasures in the mail

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page. All of the books that I received via the postal service are from paperbackswap.com transactions. I am also going to show you a few books which I found at the library last week. I know there is a weekly meme called Library Loot but I frankly can't keep up with the weekly events I do manage to participate in, let alone start another one!



1. The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky by Ken Dornstein












2. Drifting by Stephani Gertler












3. To Dance With the White Dog by Terry Kay












4. Christmas on Jane Street: a true story by Billy Romp (I read this years ago, and plan to add it to my Christmas pile next Christmas)











From the Library:

The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson











Lost Childhood: my life in a Japanese Prison Camp During World War II by Annlex Hofstra Layson













Cozy Knits for Cuddly Babies by Elanor Lynn










Fleece Pets by Fiona Goble














How about you? What interesting things did you find in your mailbox this past week?

Tuesday peek

It is Tuesday. Teaser time! Time for Tuesdays' peek into what I am currently reading. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted each week by MizB and is oh-so easy. Let your book fall open, and share with us 2 sentences somewhere between line 7 and 12.


From: Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy, page141

"How do you know about that machine? he asked suspiciously.
"Oh, me? I can see into people's souls. I see you have interest in having a pancake machine."

mailbox goodies

Mailbox time. It is evening but I figure when it comes to books, better late than never! Most of these I received from paperbackswap, but one is brand new from Amazon. Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page.


1. Sweet Dreams at the Goodnight Motel by Curtiss Ann Matlock














2. Rattled by Debra Galant















3. Fraud by Anita Brookner














4. The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright














From Amazon:

1. The Cranford Chronicles by Elizabeth Gaskell














And......Ta Da.......my very own copy (first one) of my favorite magazine. My subscription has finally gone through!! Previous posts about copies of this magazine were about library copies.

good book, bad movie

The weekly assignment for Weekly Geeks:

Worst movie adaptations: The recent release of Watchmen based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore got me thinking about what I thought were the worst movie adaptations of books. What book or books did a director or directors completely ruin in the adaptation(s) that you wish you could "un-see," and why in your opinion, what made it or them so bad in contrast to the book or books?


I really couldn't come up with a whole long list of movie adaptations I felt really strongly were bad, but there was one that came to mind and that was the new release of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnnie Depp. I normally like Johnnie Depp as an actor, but I did NOT appreciate his portrayal of Willie Wonka and I did not like the back story they added to his childhood and his abusive father. While the book does portray Wonka as a bit eccentric, Depp's portrayal was just plain creepy and un-natural. This changed the whole feel of the story. Roald Dahl's stories were not sugar sweet, they were wicked in an innocent sort of way--make sense? His bad characters got what they deserved and the good characters won! His creepy was different than our modern day version of creepy.

The ending was changed a bit, but some of the new ending (in my memory--it has been a while since I viewed it) was ok and didn't detract from the original ending in the book--in fact it might have given it a bit more closure. (As a note: the first movie made of the book, released in 1971 was much truer to the book)


I still own my copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that I was given back in 1971 for my birthday- a hardback which I clearly have memories of reading while curled up on my bed. I LOVED it! I sure wish I still had the dust jacket for that book!

From Barnes and Nobel:
Kids and adults alike love Roald Dahl’s deliciously wicked books. Loved for their gleefully evil villains and their often mischievous sensibility, Dahl’s books introduce us to fantastic creatures and bizarre places -- and encourage our imaginations to run wild.

quote of the day

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.(1994)
~ Emilie Buchwald ~

new review site

Beth Fish, from Beth Fish Reads just announced that she is now a reviewer on this site. Go check it out. It looks like a really great review site--lots to look at.

Congrats Beth!

quote of the day

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one
at the end of a long day makes the day happier.
~ Kathleen Norris ~

book gems

Well, even though it is technically only Thursday night, I am calling it Friday. I am off work tomorrow so my weekend is starting a little early--but I wish it was going to be a more enjoyable day. I am wearing a 24 hour heart monitor trying to get a baseline of my pvc's (totally benign, but annoying episodes of a premature contractions) because I have a new cardiologist who is maybe going to suggest electrophysiology surgery---yuck! And to make matters even better, I have a sick kid--Sam is home with sore throat and 101+ temperatures--poor kid. He spent most of last night with the chills--or shivers as he calls them--and didn't wake me up for some advil!

But--I plan on spending tomorrow reading and knitting (and a little laundry too--maybe some vacuuming thrown in--the list could go on!)

Here are the books I have to share this week:

1. Playing With the Grown Ups by Sophie Dahl-(this author is Roald Dahl's granddaughter)
















2. The Brontes Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson (I found this one on Joy's Blog!)















3. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
















4. The Great Western Beach: a memoir of a Cornish childhood between the wars by Emma Smith (found on Beth Fish Reads blog)













To see other Friday Finds or to share some of your own, visit MizB, our Friday hostess!

quote of the day

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
~ Austin Phelps ~

quote of the day

I would be most content if my children grew up to be
the kind of people who think decorating
consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. (1993)
~ Anna Quindlen ~

Wednesday: Cover attraction

Marcia from The Printed Page loves cover art and in a weekly event she has started we are encouraged to share a cover that appeals to us. A cover that convinces us to come over, pick the book up and see what it is all about.

The cover I am sharing is A pale View of Hills. I like the muted colors and the haunting feeling it conveys.



From the Inside Flap
The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II.

quote of the day

The humble little school library ... was a ramp to everything
in the world and beyond, everything that could be dreamed and
imagined, everything that could be known, everything that could be hoped.
~Lee Sherman~

sneak a peek

It is time for Tuesdays' peek into what I am currently reading. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted each week by MizB and is oh-so easy. Let your book fall open, and share with us 2 sentences somewhere between line 7 and 12.



"Minora let her nose very carefully out of its wrappings, took a mouthful, and covered it up quickly again. She was nervous lest it should be frost-nipped, and truth compels me to add that her nose is not a bad nose, and might even be pretty on anybody else; but she does not know how to carry it, and there is an art in the angle at which one's nose is held just as in everything else, and really noses were intended for something besides mere blowing."

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Page 223

quote of the day

No matter how busy you may think you are,
you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~ Atwood H. Townsend ~

Mailbox discoveries (on Monday)

Monday is Mailbox time! This event is hosted by Marcia over at The Printed Page. I must admit, I surely love coming home from work, checking the mail and finding a book in my mailbox!




Here is what I found in my mailbox this past week:


1. Catherine Wheels by Leif Peterson













2. The Godmother by Carrie Adams













3. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto












4. Doreen by Barbara Noble









(these are the endpapers in the Persephone Books edition)

I could not find this book for sale in the states so I had to order it from Amazon UK and am so glad I did as it looks very intersting.,
I found this one originally reviewed at Janes over at Fleur Fisher Reads.