"There are the things that have been and the things that haven't happened yet."

My second book this year for Jenners' Take Another Chance Challenge is Nothing But Ghosts by Beth Kephart.  I chose it for Challenge Number 2: Blogroll Challenge.

Find a blogroll at either your book blog or a book blog you like that has at least 15 book blogs on it. Go to Random.org and, using the True Random Number Generator, enter the number 1 for the min. and 15 for the max. and then hit generate. Then find the blog that is that number on the blogroll you selected. (For example, if you get 10 at Random.org, then count down the list of blogs until you get to the tenth one). Go to that blog and pick a book to read from the books that they have reviewed on their blog. Read it and write a post about it.

I chose Lenore's blog, Presenting Lenore, because she specializes in YA fiction and so I knew I would get something that would be more of a "chance" for me.  I ended up with the author Beth Kephart's blog so I decided to choose one of her own books to read.  I am glad to have ended up with this as my choice and I really liked her book.

Nothing but Ghosts is the story of Katie, living alone with her dad after the death of her mother a few months earlier.  She is a high school student who is working for the summer as a groundskeeper at a local mansion.  It's a unique place with extensive gardens and a reclusive owner who hasn't been seen in forty years.  In Katie's mind, she links the missing Miss Martine with her mother, whom she also feels has gone missing.  She begins to research Miss Martine at the local library and also to search their own house to find any remaining traces of her own mother.

This is a touching story about life and what we do with those things that will inevitably happen.  This novel was inspired by the loss of Beth's own mother so it really seemed honest and believable.  Lenore was able to interview the author and it's definitely worth reading.  I feel lucky to have chosen this book and I hope my luck holds up with the rest of this challenge!

Thinking about those who are gone but will never be lost,
K


Support our site and buy Nothing but Ghosts on Amazon or find it at your local library. We borrowed a copy from the library.

Perking Up With Picture Books

There's nothing that brings life to a grey day like a good picture book.  Z and I have been lucky with our library choices lately.

First we read The Incredible Book Eating Boy, written and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers.  The plot of the book is pretty obvious -- a boy takes a nibble of a page one day and continues on to whole books.  He finds that he absorbs the information as he eats the books but, eventually, his habit becomes so excessive that all of the information gets jumbled in his head and he gets sick.  Luckily, he figures out that there's another way to get information from a book -- to read it.

We thought this book was cute and there are a lot of little details in the illustrations that can keep you occupied for a while.  Z also loved that the back cover of the book has a chunk "bitten" out of it.  So silly!

The next book we tackled was Crazy Hair from the wonderfully strange Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.  A girl approaches a man with truly crazy hair and is a bit rude about it.  The man then starts to tell her all of the the things that are unique about his abundance of hair -- the nesting birds, the jungle fauna, explorers, dancers and even a carousel.  The girl insists on trying to comb the hair and suffers a questionable fate -- she is pulled into the hair, to stay there happily forever after.

This book should really be called "creepy hair" as the hair-centric artwork is a bit strange.  McKean's unique style is definitely showcased in the book and gives children something a bit out of the ordinary to look at.  Gaiman's rhymes are a bit forced at times but are also very imaginative and the hair truly becomes its own world.

Finally, we checked out Pirate Girl, written by Cornelia Funke and illustrated by Kerstin Meyer.  A young girl is out in her boat when she is set upon by pirates.  She refuses to reveal where she lives or who her parents are--information wanted for ransom-demand purposes--and so she is put to work on the pirate ship.  She secretly drops messages in bottles overboard, hoping to be rescued.  Eventually the messages are found and the pirates come to regret their decision when Molly's mother shows up -- the terrible piratess Barbarous Bertha. Molly is rescued and the pirates are put to work by the terrifying women of Bertha's ship.

This book has melodic text and fantastic flow.  The pirates have fabulous names and they all look sufficiently evil to have kidnapped a young girl.  Molly is smart and her mother is truly terrifying except when she takes her young daughter in her arms.  This is a very fun book and is impressive as it is translated from German.

Taking advantage of variety,
K and Z


Support our site and buy The Incredible Book-Eating Boy, Crazy Hair and Pirate Girl on Amazon or find them at your local library. We borrowed our copies from the library.

New Release: They Found Him Dead

If you ever want to go into a mystery knowing exactly what the initial crime will be, look no further than Georgette Heyer and her awesome mystery titles!  With names like Behold, Here's Poison, Death in the Stocks and the newly re-released They Found Him Dead, you aren't too surprised at what you encounter.  What is surprising is the variety of characters, the plethora of false leads and the other crimes that happen throughout the rest of the novel.  These mysteries usually turn out to be anything but straight-forward.

In this book, we visit one of Heyer's favorite settings -- the English country home -- where a hodge-podge of relatives are gathered.  Inevitably, we find one of them dead -- this time the patriarch of the family, Silas Kane.  Though he seems to have died of natural causes, not everyone is satisfied that Silas was not maliciously cut down before his time.  When other events happen, it becomes obvious that someone has it out for Kane and his heirs.

I thought this was a good mystery but there was one character that I loved which really made the book for me.  Mr. Harte is a fourteen year old boy who is obsessed with American gangster films and regularly attempts to use the vernacular and tones of these films.  He is spunky and bright and, at the same time, whiny and petulant.  In short, he's fourteen!  His character was a breath of fresh air and I wish there was a follow-up novel of his character.  Beyond Harte, this is a typical Heyer mystery with a fairly obvious suspect that you still can't be sure of until the very end.

Finding a good mystery between the pages,
K


Support our site and buy They Found Him Dead on Amazon or find it at your local library. We received our copy from the publisher.

Love in Literature

(photo by K)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I thought I would just throw a question out to you all today ...

What is one of your favorite romances in a non-romance book?

I'm going to pick Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten -- the second, third and fourth books in the Thursday Next series.  The main character, Thursday Next, is pregnant but has a husband who has been "eradicated"--wiped from history--by unscrupulous government time guardians.  She wants to have him restored but in order to do that she has to do something infinitely more difficult -- not forget him.  It's a very romantic part of these fantastic literary adventure novels.

Spending the day with my two true loves,

K

Starred Saturdays: week of February 7

Happy Winter Olympics, Happy Valentine's Day and Happy Presidents' Day!  What a wonderful holiday weekend.  Z's school district gives a week off in February so we are starting that right now and this will either mean a lot more time to read or it might be a lot less since we will be watching so many amazing athletes competing just to the north of us here.  Go U.S.A.!

Bookish television nerds rejoice -- Neil Gaiman has finally confessed to penning an upcoming episode of Doctor Who. (via io9)

The American Literary Blog has a couple of posts highlighting African-American literary contributors -- appropriate posts for Black History Month.

Author Peter Straub has a new novel coming out but he is also releasing a pre-edited version of the book which is supposedly quite different.  He thinks it will be of interest to those who enjoy viewing the creative process.  (via io9)

Author R.N. Morris reveals that E.T.A. Hoffmann predicted the Kindle in the early nineteenth century.  Take that, Nostradamus.

International NBA players are some of the heaviest readers in the sport.  Unfortunately, some of their U.S. colleagues are jerks and make fun of their reading in the locker room.  (via The Millions)

Project (RED) and Penguin have teamed up to create some awesome covers for classic novels.  I may be replacing a few favorites.  (via Nonsuch Book)

These beautiful pictures of a iced-over home have a purpose -- to highlight the housing crisis in Detroit. (via Apartment Therapy)

And as a special treat, another set of piccies (thanks for the great word, Al!).  These are unusual formations in caves. (via io9)

Going for gold,
K

LOTR Read-Along: The Fellowship of the Ring Intro Post

I'm getting caught up enough this month to start thinking about reading The Fellowship of the Ring for the read-along so I thought I would answer Clare's intro questions to get in the mood.  I think I will get to start reading it in a week or two and I'm excited!

When did you first hear of The Lord of the Rings?
I heard about the stories when I was a kid through the animated movies but didn't read them until years later.

Have you read The Fellowship of the Ring before?
Yes, I believe I've read it twice -- once in college and one right before the films came out.

What’s your plan of attack, now that we’re dealing with more “mature” literature?
I still plan to read this straight through.  I have a hard time metering out books and just reading a chapter here or there.  But I also plan on savoring it because it has been quite a while since my last reading.

Have you ever seen the movies? If so, do you think they’ll influence your reading? If not, well, why haven’t you seen them?
Yes, I have seen the movies MANY times.  The third film was actually the last movie I saw in the theatre while I was pregnant with Z and then I didn't get to go to another movie for a couple of years.  I own the beautiful box set of DVDs and they are films that I love to put on somewhat regularly.  I don't think that they will affect my reading very much except for maybe fleshing out some of the settings.  I tend to have my own mental pictures of characters even if I have seen a film version of the story.  However, it's impossible not to be influenced, isn't it?

Getting ready to head out of the Shire again,
K

"I suppose that if I were going to blame our involvement on anyone ..., I would be compelled to say that it was all Aunt Charlotte's fault."

I'm sure you remember me gushing about Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia a couple of weeks ago.  Well, I happened to see The Grand Tour the last time I was at the library and grabbed it so that I could continue on the journey with Kate and Cecelia.  I was warned in comments that this was not as good as the first so I went into it with lowered expectations.

This book was written in the same way as the last-- as a letter game --but this time as journal-type entries.  Kate is actually writing in a journal during her honeymoon and Cecelia's account is a report written after the fact but is interspersed throughout Kate's narrative.  The two young married women set off to the continent with their husbands and Kate's mother-in-law.  Almost as soon as they arrive, trouble comes to their doorstep and they soon find themselves waist-deep in some sort of magical villainy.  They are charged by the Duke of Wellington to discreetly investigate the situation and their task takes them from Paris to Venice and more.

My biggest problem with this book was that the journal entries and report excerpts are written under married names "Lady S" and "Mrs. T" (abbreviated to be less spoilery of the first book!) and they are unevenly divided so that I was constantly confused as to whom was writing.  This book took longer to read than it should have because I was constantly going back and forth to the section beginnings.  It would have been much easier if Victorian women were able to use their own names!  Also, I found Kate a bit more annoying than in the last book.  She was much stronger a month or so earlier.  Of course, she was newly married in this book so she might be excused a bit for deferring to her husband more than usual.  I hope she regains her confidence in the third book!

The story of this one was interesting and if it had just had a better flow, I think I would have really liked it.  One thing I enjoyed was that they took their close servants into their confidence and asked for their assistance in some cases -- especially when they proved more knowledgeable about some subjects than their employers.  It reminded me of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books.  So, there was enough to interest me in this book that I will be reading the third one.  I have high hopes but realistic expectations for it, just as I did with this one.

Contemplating a grand European tour of my own,
K


Support our site and buy The Grand Tour on Amazon or find it at your local library. We borrowed our copy from the library.

A We Be Reading Milestone: 500 Posts!

(photo by K)

Well folks, I don't even know what to say but, according to Blogger, this is our five hundredth post!  I'm not sure how this happened but I'm happy that we have already been able to share so much of our reading lives with all of you.  Blogging is sometimes hard work but it's worth the comments that we get and the friends that we've made.  I hope that we've been entertaining and informative and I hope that we can keep it up for at least a while more!

Opening another book,
K and Z