The Sunday Salon

Welcome friends! Let me break down my week for you.

Reading
I am halfway through The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I actually think I like the movie better. The details of Henry's and Clare's lives together are starting to bother me. I'm also slowly going through a nonfic ARC called Pay Attention, Say Thank You: Seven Rules and Practices for Joyful Living. Couldn't we all use more joyful living? And I got my reviews up for The Weight of Silence (dud) and Homer & Langley (enthralling). Check them out down below.

Reading plans for the coming week: finish the Time Traveler's Wife and read Things Worth Remembering.

Non-Bookish News
Our first day of school is tomorrow. We homeschool so it means less time for goofing off with Facebook and blogs but a more steady schedule. We have spent a very lazy summer and I am ready to get back into the swing of things. You can expect to hear about our weekly learning adventures at the end of each week. I'm excited.

My daughter bought herself a Star Wars Cookbook last week so she has been busy trying out the recipes. Last night we tried the Wookie Cookies which are chocolate chip cookies using semisweet and milk chocolate chips plus a little Cinnamon. They were wonderful. I am so happy that she found this book because it is getting her in the kitchen. I have been trying to get her cooking for a year or two with little success. Now that it's her idea and her choice of recipes she is taking off. Yay!

FLYLady
A couple months ago I mentioned that I was going to start FLYing. I managed through the baby steps with little trouble and was soon living in a cleaner, less cluttered home. I tell you, Swish and Swipe has revolutionized my bathrooms. I no longer gag at the thought of cleaning my toilets because they get a quick wipe down everyday. They have never been so clean and smelled so nice. Ever. This coming week we are working on the Front Porch/Dining room. Since my dining room is used for 3 meals a day plus it is the center of our homeschool there is usually very little to do there. I'll take the time to work on my living room instead.

Something Extra
There was a reference to a poem in Homer & Langley by Fernando Pessoa. I chased it down and found these couple of lines that I had a nice laugh about. I can relate. You can read the rest of the poem here.

"I'm me, and what the hell can I do about it!"

"If I could only put up with myself and the selves inside me."

Review: Homer & Langley

Homer & Langley
by E.L. Doctorow

In the words of Wikipedia:
"Homer and Langley Collyer were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding." Today we know it as disposophobia or 'Collyer brothers syndrome,' which is a fear of throwing anything away. This novel is a fictionalized story of what we know about the Collyer brothers.

The story is chronicled from Homer's point of view as he is writing his memoirs to a Jacqueline. It starts when Homer is a teenager, when he goes blind over the span of a month. Homer is filled with the hope and optimism of youth. He doesn't feel resentful about losing his sight; he sees it as a challenge and an adventure. But with time and maturity comes acceptance of the harsher realities of life. Vitality turns to discontent, then to depression as he feels more and more isolated and useless.

I liked everything about this book. The two brothers were so real they could easily be sitting right here in my livingroom. While the above makes it sound depressing it really had a lot of very funny scenes in it, like when the men opened a higher class speak-easy in their home to make some extra money, or when they met a gangster who later became the head of the most feared mafia in New York. While the real Collyer brothers died in 1947, these fictional brothers live from the 1920s until the 70s or 80s. Historical events take place that affect the two men and carry the story in the same way that they do in Forest Gump.

The most memorable part of the book for me was Homer's very last entry but I dare not say anything about it for fear of affecting your experience of it. Homer & Langley is so well written that I now will be seeking out Doctorow's other works for which he has won many awards and honors, including the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a nomination for the Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement. How have I not heard of him before now?

So I think you should all run out and buy this book and enjoy as I did; then you should look up the Collyer brothers on Wikipedia to learn all about the real brothers and the 100 tons worth of junk that was hauled out of their home. But read the book first. It is so well worth it.

One Word Review:
Enthralling

It's R.I.P. Time!

Welcome friends. We are about to embark on a dark journey. R.I.P. IV has begun so grab a candle and your spookiest book. Let us begin. *cue wicked laugh*

Carl V. is hosting his fourth year of the Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge. I haven't missed one yet and I don't plan to miss it this year either. Go to Stainless Steel Droppings to learn how you can join(you know you want to). This year I chose Peril the Second.


Peril the Second is a commitment to read at least 2 books that fit into the category of mystery, suspense, thriller, dark fantasy, gothic, horror or supernatural. Basically anything creepy will do. And, because Carl V. is a cool guy who understands that his challenge buddies can also be commitment challenged, he is letting us choose from a pool of books instead of listing the two books I like now only to change my mind later. So here is my pool:

The House of Dies Drear
The Woman in White
The Turn of the Screw
Frankenstein
The Murder of Helen Jewitt
House of Sand and Fog
The Ghost Writer

Not only do we get to freak ourselves out with these lengthy books(some of these are extremely thick) but we also may participate in the Short Story Peril. For this section I have the following options:

Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen
The Complete Stories of Poe
The Stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann (a contemporary of Poe)

I have enjoyed the R.I.P. Challenge every year and expect the same this year.

*cue freaky organ music* "Hurry baaaack. Hurry baaaack. Be sure to bring you death certificate if you decide to join us."

An Honor Just to be Nominated

It would appear that I have been nominated for a BBAW award in the category of Best Community Builder. I send out a warm thank you to whomever it was that nominated me. I'm not sure what I've done to deserve such a nomination but I will continue to write honest reviews of the books that I'm reading and pass along any interesting bookish news that I come across.

Review: The Weight of Silence

The Weight of Silence
by Heather Gudenkauf

Two girls go missing in the night. One is a selective mute; the other is her friend and her "voice". Can the team of investigators, parents and neighbors get to the truth before time runs out?

I can't think of what else to write for the summary. The premise is just that simple. But the chapters are not. The chapters chronicle the search for the girls over the course of one day but from many different people's points of view. Six in fact. And that's not all of the characters that people this novel either. It was confusing until I kept a running list so I would know who was who. In writing the chapters from different perspectives the author was able to show the reader the truth and the ways that the truth can be distorted. But in doing this she takes most of the suspense out of the story. We know from the beginning what happened to one of the girls and we know in part what happened to the other. The only suspense was in whether or not Calli, who hasn't spoken in 4 years and who is the only one who knows everything that's happened, will actually tell what happened. But even this was not hard to guess.

So the book was predictable and unsuspenseful. It also had lousy characterization. I found none of the characters to be original or believable. They lacked wisdom and depth. The whole book lacked wisdom and depth.

I didn't realise I felt so disappointed in The Weight of Silence until I wrote this review. There just was not anything about it to make it stand out and nothing to recommend it over other books. Move along. There's nothing to see here.

One Word Review:
Dud

It's Tuesday...Where are you?

Every Tuesday I'll post about where my reading is taking me. You can join the fun too. Visit An Adventure in Reading to find out more.

This week I am in the bizarre 5th Avenue home of a couple of brothers, one blind and one genius/eccentric. We are moving from about the 1920s to close to modern day. There are wars, gangsters, hippies and more newspapers than can fit into one house.

Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow

5th Avenue in the 1930.

Review: Prayers for Sale

Prayer for Sale
by Sandra Dallas

Hennie Comfort has lived in Middle Swan, a small gold mining town nestled high up in the Colorado Rockies, for about 70 years when she meets the newcomer Nit Spindle. Nit is young, only 17, but she already experienced loss. She struggles to recover after leaving her stillborn baby buried far away in order to find work for her husband in Middle Swan. Nit finds much comfort in Hennie with her exciting stories and her encouragements and their shared love of quilting. And Hennie has so many stories, all of them true. She shares a new one with each chapter that slowly reveal her secrets, like why she changed her name and where her adopted child came from. But there is one story that is not yet ready to be told for it does not yet have an ending. It contains Hennie's biggest secret, one she is not yet ready to face.

I listened to this audio book on my long drive(16 hours!) from Texas to California. If you remember in my review of the audio book of Home, I found the reader's voice annoying. Well it was the same reader for Prayers for Sale, Maggi-Meg Reed. There was no drawn out speech that grated on my nerves. What there was was the distinguishing individual voices and the accurate accents. The feeling in the reading matched the spirit of the book. It was pitch perfect.

I loved Hennie and I understood her desire to help Nit and instruct her in the ways of mountain life. She was a good soul and a deep one. Their love or quilting bonded them. It also bonded me to them. I have been quilting for 12 years though I rarely have time for it anymore. One thing we quilters have in common is an ability to befriend any other quilters despite their differences and irritations. We all know the patience it takes to make a quilt and the pleasure that it brings to the creative soul. It blinds us to everything else. Even if we have nothing else to talk about, we can talk endlessly about fabrics, sewing machines, techniques, batting, designs and so much more. It's a beautiful connection. And so Sandra Dallis has a ready made audience for her books as they all contain quilting in one form or another. But she also has an audience that admires a good story and sensational characters. I am a new fan.

One word review:
Fantastic

Review: Sacred Hearts

Sacred Hearts
by Sarah Dunant

"By the second half of the sixteenth century, the price of wedding dowries had risen so sharply within Catholic Europe that most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were dispatched - for a much lesser price - to convents. Historians estimate that in the great towns and city-states of Italy, up to half of all noblewomen became nuns. Not all of them went willingly...
...This story tales place in the northern Italian city of Ferrara in 1570. in the convent of Santa Caterina."

I, like many of you, decided recently that I was tired of reading the same ARCs as everyone else and vowed to stop requesting more. This one was an exception. I loved the graceful beauty of the cover but I didn't know, or possibly forgot, what it was about. When I read the above paragraph on the first page my interest was piqued.

When we are in school we are taught about vocabulary. Our teachers, at least the good ones, explained to us that there are many words to describe the same thing but that some are more precise while others are overused and boring. There is a difference between saying something is good and saying something pleasing, splendid or valuable. Durant's words are precise and expressive. They are never difficult to understand; on the contrary, they bring an exact understanding of what she wants to say. And the language suits each character. It is not hard to believe that a nun that works in a dispensary, reading books about various herbs and remedies, would have a vast vocabulary but speak in an understated manner.

It is the characters that are the key to this book. They are so thoroughly well drawn, along with the setting and historical period, that one could not help but to want to spend time with them and know how they will handle an unexpected dilemma within the walls of the nunnery. With the character of Serafina there is a lot of conflict and all around havoc. She effects the different nuns in different ways. It felt authentic. The more I read the more I wondered what was to happen next as the chances of a satisfying ending seemed more and more out of reach. The stage was set superbly in those first 300 pages.

But then...
but then something changed. The characters natures altered. Some became unrecognizable. The story took a turn that I never would have guessed because it went against the characters initial morals. Murder and blackmail? In a nunnery? It became far fetched. I was disappointed. I had taken such a fancy to this book.

I still think it was a thoroughly researched books with much in it to entertain. Just expect the unexpected in that last part. By the way, it did have a satisfying ending; I just felt that it lost some of it's integrity to get there.

One word review:
Inconsistent

BTT: Recent Best

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

The two books that I would say I've enjoyed the most were both audio books so I couldn't strictly say I read them but I will share them with you just the same. One was Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas. I have not yet written a review for it but I really liked it a lot. The characters were great, the stories within the main story were fun (unless they weren't meant to be), and the place and setting were expertly drawn. Plus she includes quilting in all her writing. As a quilter I usually connect better when the characters share my fondness for the hobby.

The second book was The First Part Last. The genuineness of the characters and my emotional reaction to them by the end of the story made it a standout for me. Highly highly recommended.

Before I go I will share that I am also thoroughly enjoying my current book, which I am actually reading, Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant. So well researched and wonderfully written. I'm almost finished and I can't wait to see what happens next.

To participate in this or future Booking Through Thursdays simply follow the link and check in every Thursday.

It's Tuesday...Where are you?

It's Tuesday...Where are you?


Every Tuesday I'll post about where my reading is taking me. You can join the fun too. Visit An Adventure in Reading to find out more.

This week I am enjoying a view of life in the nunnery in Ferrara, Italy in 1570 where daughters were sold, often against there wills, to convents because the expenses of a wedding dowry were too high. The politics inside the confining walls are as fascinating as the characters who live within.

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

Review: Tethered

Tethered
by Amy MacKinnon

Clara is a reclusive undertaker who knows the pain the world has to offer. She rarely speaks and she never lets anyone touch her. She is deeply scarred but working in the mortuary brings her peace. But then she finds Trecie, the young girl that wanders the funeral home grounds. Trecie is a girl who understands as much about pain and survival as Clara does, and she has some kind of connection to Precious Doe, a little girl found dead in the woods, a mystery never solved.

Isn't that cover just stunning? I love the colors and the grace of the woman floating in the water. I had to know about Clara and Trecie. But the book was not what I expected. I thought it would be a quiet, contemplative story. That's how it starts but it soon becomes anxious and then menacing. When the action kicks in it doesn't stop. It becomes a crescendo of danger and fear. This was definitely not contemplative. It was suspenseful. And I enjoyed every minute of it.

There were several mysteries to discover throughout. MacKinnon gave several possibilities for each one to keep the reader guessing. You're never sure who can be trusted and what will happen next. It was a little predictable but it wasn't always the storyline that kept me reading. I really liked Clara and I had to know what happened to her that made her so withdrawn and what she would do with the circumstances she found herself in. I also wanted to follow along as the mystery surrounding Trecie was brought to light. A book with great characters and a gripping story always make for a great book.

By way of warning: there are many gross issues laid out in the book. Clara is an undertaker so there is some little details about what that entails. There is also a connection with kiddie p*rn so if you are sensitive to that you may want to avoid reading this one. It's not detailed but enough information to give the reader some discomfort. I felt it was not out of line for the character of the book.

One word review:
Worthy

I chose this book as my Judge a Book By Its Cover choice for the Take a Chance Challenge. I have been led astray by cover art in the past but I am so glad that this one was not in that category. If you want to get in on this fun challenge go to Find Your Next Book Here for all the details.

Review: The Embers

The Embers
by Hyatt Bass

"For the first time, the actual destruction of the house didn't have the feeling of something that had happened to her personally. It felt instead like an epic or a myth. And it was mythic, really, the way her father had destroyed everything: his house, his family, and of course most tragically, his son."

That's a good hook huh? Makes you want to read it to find out how her father could have destroyed so much. I was certainly interested when I read the blurb about it at Library Thing's Early Reviewer program.

The embers are what is left over when the tragedy has passed. This family of 4 minus 1 are left to put the pieces of their lives back together. Problem is that I didn't like the characters except for the one that's dead. The book is about how these living relatives blame each other and the things they tell themselves to avoid responsibility and/or grief. The selfishness and hatred are overwhelming, which may be the point, but the people don't change much at the end. I didn't really care if forgiveness and rebuilding of relationship happened by the end. There was too much self-indulgence and complaining. It got tiresome.

So my one word review:
Self-indulgent

Review: Book: the Sequel

Book: the Sequel; First Lines From the Classics of the Future by Inventive Imposters
Edited by Clive Priddle

There was a big stir at BEA this year about a scheme to publish a book within just hours. People around the world submitted first lines of imagined sequels to already existing books. Editing, printing, jacket design, binding, and sale of the book took place right at the Perseus Books booth at BEA. ARCs in all different forms, print, audio book and e-book, were distributed. So it seems fitting that this book of firsts (and seconds, hardi-har-har) should be my first excursion into the world of e-books.

"Ishmael? Shmishmael! I was big, I was white, and the ocean was mine."
—From Moby Dick II: The Reckoning
(sequel to Moby Dick by Herman Melville)
Peter Knutson

There are 12 different parts according to a theme with such titles as Plunging Into Politics, As I Lay Undead and Dying, and A Truth Universally Acknowledged. There are a dozen or so quotes within each section, some references that I've not heard of but most from well-known classics and modern titles.

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing the government," he told me, "just remember that all the taxpayers in this land
haven't had the bailouts that you've had.'"
—From The Great Bailout
(sequel to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Anonymous

For this type of book the e-book format was fine but I don't think I'd want to read an entire novel like that. But I liked the concept and I enjoyed the diversity of the quotes and subject matters. There was something for every taste.

One word Review:
Fun

Review: The Two Princess of Bamarre

The Two Princesses of Bamarre
by Gail Carson Levine

Princess Meryl is wild and desperate for an adventure. Princess Addie is timid and enjoys nothing more than to sew her tapestries. These two sisters are as different as two can be. When one becomes sick the other must find a way to cure her based on a legendary prophecy.

I listened to this audio book with my kids while driving back from my vacation. It was a sweet story, much like Levine's classic Ella Enchanted. I recognized elements from fairy tales, such as a tablecloth that sets itself and boots that travel far distances in a single step. Both princesses are likable and so are the rest of the cast of characters. It was a good book for girls, encouraging bravery and ingenuity.

The book was read by Lynn Redgrave, an actress that I like and who does a superb job with voices and timing, but it was odd for a book about young princesses to be read by such a, shall we say, mature voice. It took a while for the story to get going and the moments of suspense were a bit drawn out for me. But the momentum gained and didn't let up until the last chapter. My daughter thought the ending was bittersweet.

While searching for a cover image I learned there is to be a movie but that is all I could find out. No projected release date, no actors. My daughter hopes that they don't butcher this one the way they did Ella Enchanted. (They may as well have changed the name since it was so different from the book.) We'll just wait and see.

Review: Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting
by Natalie Babbitt

Winnie Foster is a young girl wanting to burst out into the world and have an adventure doing something her mother and grandmother would consider dangerous. It is this urge that puts her in a place to meet the Tucks. The Tuck family has been successfully hiding the secret of it's family curse and the curse's source for many decades now. Until Winnie. Now they have someone they can talk to about all the heartache that comes with living forever. But there is a dark figure who wants to know the secret to their eternal youth for the sake of profit.

This was a cute children's book that makes one think of what it might really be like to live forever knowing that nothing you do would ever age you or kill you; how this could be more of a curse than a blessing. It's simple and playful. Not much to chew on for adults but then it wasn't written for adults. It was entertaining for an hour or so.

I read this for the Take a Chance Challenge as my Birth Year Book. To find out more about this challenge (it's never too late to start) you can visit Find Your Next Book Here or you can peek at my personal challenge books here.

BTT: Let's Get Serious

What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently?

It depends on what you mean by serious. If what you mean is the absence of humor then I'd have to say The Walking People but I thought it just plain boring. If what you mean is the one that should be taken the most seriously then I'd have to say The Blue Notebook but only if you can stomach the subject matter. But if you mean the most serious book that I enjoyed then the answer would be The Well and the Mine.

To participate in this or future Booking Through Thursdays simply follow the link and check in every Thursday.

Another Great "100 Essential Books" List

OnlineCourses.org recently posted an article called "The 100 Essential Books You Should Have Read in College". Go to the site if you want to see the division and a brief explanation of why each book is on the list. Or, for your convenience, I have made a copy of the titles just for you. (Ain't I thoughtful?)

1.Beowulf, Anonymous
2.The Iliad, Homer
3.The Odyssey, Homer
4.The Republic, Plato
5.Oresteia, Aeschylus
6.Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
7.The Aeneid, Virgil
8.1984, George Orwell
9.Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
10.Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
11.Candide, Voltaire
12.Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
13.Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
14.The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
15.Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
16.Catch 22, Joseph Heller
17.Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
18.Bartleby, the Scrivener, Herman Melville
19.The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
20.In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka
21.The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
22.A Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
23.One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24.Lolita, Vladamir Nobokov
25.The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
26.Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
27.The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
28.A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
29.Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
30.The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
31.All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
32.A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
33.The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
34.The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
35.Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
36.Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
37.Watership Down, Richard Adams
38.Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury
39.I Served the King of England, Bohumil Hrabal
40.Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein
41.The Road, Cormac McCarthy
42.The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
43.On Beauty, Zadie Smith
44.A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
45.The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
46.Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
47.Beloved, Toni Morrison
48.Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
49.The Color Purple, Alice Walker
50.Native Son, Richard Wright
51.My Antonia, Willa Cather
52.Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
53.Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
54.Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
55.The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
56.The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
57.The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
58.The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine
59.The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
60.Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington
61.The Stranger, Albert Camus
62.The Bible
63.Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, Edith Hamilton
64.Confessions, Saint Augustine
65.Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
66.Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
67.Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for None and All, Friedrich Nietzsche
68.Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
69.Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
70.The Art of Happiness, The Dalai Lama
71.The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
72.The Golden Bough, James George Frazer
73.Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
74.The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekov
75.The Divine Comedy, Dante
76.The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
77.Hamlet, William Shakespeare
78.Paradise Lost, John Milton
79.The Misanthrope, Moliere
80.Faust, Johann von Goethe
81.A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen
82.Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht
83.Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
84.A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
85.Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond
86.Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
87.The Double Helix, James D. Watson
88.A River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins
89.The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
90.Principia Mathematica, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
91.Illuminations, Walter Benjamin
92.The Lives of the Artists, Vasari
93.On Painting, Alberti
94.Poetics, Aristotle
95.Art and Illusion, Ernest H. Gombrich
96.Walden, Henry David Thoreau
97.The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
98.The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
99.The Art of War, Sun Tzu
100.Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud

My one complaint about these lists is that the authors remain the same but the particular work changes. So even though I have read half a dozen Shakespeare I haven't read Hamlet so I can't count it in my list of "number of books read". So my total is low, a measly 17. I've got a lot of reading in my future.