Sunday Salon: Reading events

It’s amazing that May is almost over with. It’s been a forgettable month. I can barely remember what I’ve accomplished. Book-wise I didn’t accomplish much, reading only three adult, four young adult, and fourteen children’s books.

I couldn’t give you just one book as my favorite this month, so I’m going to give you my top two. Sarah Stewart’s The Friend, a children’s book about unconditional love and the short story collection/graphic novel Tales of Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. Both books are amazing and highly recommended.

Shauna at Reading and Ruminations has been in a reading funk and came up with a great personal challenge. called the Summer Reading Blitz. She wants to read 30 books in 30 days for the month of June. I think it’s such a great idea that I’m joining her. I have a stack of books lined up, ready and waiting.

Also joining the challenge are fellow bloggers

Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews

Brittanie at A Book Lover

Ruth at BookishRuth

Shauna and Brittanie will be hosting giveaways throughout June. Make sure you’re subscribed to their blogs so you don’t miss out.

June is also the start of

a young adult reading tournament that is the brainchild of the bold Renay. From June 1st through August 2nd, twenty bloggers will be judging sixteen young adult novels, published in 2008, that should’ve received more attention. If you click on the above icon, you can see the books that are being judged.

The judges are:

Valentina, Valentina’s Room
Jodie, Book Gazing
Natasha, Maw Books Blog
Ali, Worducopia and Lenore, Presenting Lenore
Mary Ann, Libr*fiti
Trish, Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’ and Vasilly, 1330v
Kelly, YAnnabe
Becky, Becky’s Book Reviews, and Kailana, The Written World
Heather, A High and Hidden Place
Amy, My Friend Amy
Laza, Gimme More Books!
Stephanie, Stephanie’s Confessions of a Book-a-Holic
Nicole, Linus’s Blanket
Renay, YA Fabulous and Susan, She’s Too Fond Of Books And It’s Turned Her Brain
Chris, Stuff As Dreams Are Made On and Nymeth, Things Mean A Lot

Look out for reviews and updates on the tournament from the judges. Nerdsheartya is also on Twitter. I’m so excited, I’m hoping to read all the shortlisted books.

If you didn’t know already, next weekend is the start of Mother Reader‘s 48 Hour Challenge. For 48 hours bloggers all over the blogisphere will be reading as much as they can. You don’t have to read for 48 hours straight, but within a 48 hour period of time. Of course I’m in.

Posts from this week:

500 Great Books by Women
10 Fiction Books for Summer

What are you reading this week? Have you signed up for the 48 hour challenge?

Books Stuff

I was too late to join the BEA Twitter party but I still wanted to host a giveaway. Two lucky winners will each win a box of books. Here’s what’s included in the first box:

The Bookaholics’ Guide to Book Blogs compiled by Rebecca Gilleron and Catheryn Kilgarriff

Any Place I Lay My Hat by Susan Issacs

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

In box 2:

The Best American Mystery Stories 2008 edited by George Pelecanos. Included in the collection are stories by Elizabeth Strout, Michael Connelly, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, and more.

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running by Haruki Murakami.

Book #3: a surprise

To enter, leave a comment. I’ll select a winner using random.org

Good luck.

Contest is over. The Winners are Jennifer and Jill! Congratulations!

10 fiction books for the summer

When summer hits the only thing about my reading that changes is the amount of books I actually read. Like most readers I read more during the summer. This summer I signed up for Molly’s Summer Vacation Reading Challenge, joined Andi for her personal challenge, Reading In Order, and also joined Shauna for her June challenge, 30 books in 30 days. Callapidder Days challenge, Spring Reading Thing, ends June 20th and I want to complete the books I signed up for. Between reading and keeping the kids busy, my summer is packed.

Here are ten books of fiction I’m looking forward to reading this summer:

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun. Mun’s debut novel takes place in 1980′s New York. The main character, Joon-Mee, is twelve years old when she runs away from home and lives the life of a runaway teen. The book gives the reader six years in Joon-Mee’s life.

Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff. Andi at Estella’s Revenge recommended that I read Lucky Chow Fun, the first story in this collection of short stories. I read it and loved it.

The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. Last year when I read Ann Hood’s memoir, Comfort, about the death of her young daughter, I feel in love with author’s voice. The Knitting Circle is a book about grief and trying to live after tragedy.

In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefield. I found out about this book while on Twitter from fellow blogger, Wendy at Caribousmom.

The Angel of Forgetfulness by Steve Stern. This book has been sitting on my shelf for much too long. A fallen angel, his half-human son, a young woman named Keni, and a long-forgotten manuscript make up this story about love and memory.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Chris would probably seriously harm me if I don’t read one of his all-time favorite books soon. (Just kidding, Chris!)

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. You can never go wrong with a Pulitzer winner.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. Meghan at Medieval Bookworm told me about this debut novel. A talented 12 year old hitchhikes across America. It’s more complicated than that, but still. . .

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors of all time and I figured summer is the best time to Steinbeck.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

500 Great Books by Women

500 Great Books by Women (1994)
edited by Erica Bauermeister, Jesse Larsen, and Holly Smith
426 pages

I don’t review reference books here on 1330v, but I love this book and wanted fellow bookworms to know about. If you liked Book Lust by Nancy Pearl, you will love 500 Great Books by Women.

Edited by Erica Bauermeister, Jesse Larsen, and Holly Smith and compiled with the help of thirty contributors, 500 Great Books gives the reader a collection of short reviews of lesser-known books of all genres written by women writers from different races, ages, sexual orientations, and countries. Many of the featured books were first published in a language other than English.

The reviews are divided by theme such as Growing Old, Choices, Families, Ethics, Observations, and many more. I used post-its to mark all the books I wanted to read and I ran out of post-its! My book now looks like a rainbow.

Many of the books featured here I have not heard of and less than twenty of them I’ve read. The editors included many well-known writers like Angela Carter, Louise Erdrich, Alice Walker, and Barbara Kingsolver but you are not going to find every book they wrote in this collection. Instead every writer only gets one book featured to leave room for other writers. I thought the idea was thoughtful and fair.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book is that there’s no table of contents though you can find out what books is featured by going to a theme’s page. Included in the back of the book are many indexes such as by title, subject, country, and others.

I loved the beginning of the book’s preface,

We read to learn, to feel, to stretch beyond our own lives, to escape, and to understand. A book has the power to reach back toward us and let us know we are not alone. Up from a flat page of type comes joy or anger or sadness, a sentence that soars, or an image that surprised like a photograph long forgotten. For a few hundred pages we can feel new rhythms, see new images, learn about ourselves, and become someone else.

The contributors and editors did an amazing job with this book. With so many books published every year in the United States let alone other countries, 500 Great Books is not meant to be comprehensive but to recommend to the reader some of great books the editors have read. Highly recommended.

Reading Journal: Currently Reading

Yesterday I started reading Marilynne Robinson’s debut novel, Housekeeping. The novel is the story of Ruth and her sister, Lucille, as they’re raised first by their grandmother, then her sister-in-laws, then by Sylvie, their eccentric aunt. According to the back cover,

Ruth and Lucille’s struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

While reading Housekeeping I’ve learned that this is a book to read slowly. This book is lyrical, so well-written. I’ve been keeping a pencil with me every time I continue the story because of the beautiful passages I want to go back to later on. Like this passage,

If heaven was to be this world plunged of disaster and nuisance, if immortality was to be this life held in poise and arrest, and if this world purged and this life unconsuming could be thought of as world and life restored to their proper natures, it is no wonder that five serene, eventless years lulled my grandmother into forgetting what she should never have forgotten.

Originally published in 1980, Housekeeping was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1982. It didn’t win though Robinson later won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for her second novel, Gilead.

Library Loot

My library loot has been piling up lately. I have less than 36 hours until the end of the semester and I’ve started placing large amounts of books on hold. If I’m lucky I can cut the stack in half in a month. If I’m lucky.

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta. I’ve seen great reviews for this book all over the blogisphere so I had to pick it up. It’s this year’s Printz award winner. I can’t wait to sit down with this book.

The Knife of Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Renay has been pumping this book up, so I had to check it out.

Che: A biography by Spain Rodriguez. I picked this one up because I love the cover.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova.

Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson. It’s a thriller and from what I’ve read a great book. If it’s it as good as bloggers have been saying, I won’t have to wait long for the release of the seqeul, The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney.I’ve read the first two in the series and couldn’t pass this one up. This is one of the hottest series to hit my library’s system since Harry Potter.

What’s waiting for me to pick up:

Follow Me by Joanna Scott. I’m blaming this on every blogger that read this book and wrote a review.

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Bard Gooch. I’m reading as much as I can right now, so I can start on this book next week.

The rest of my library loot was featured in this week’s Sunday Salon post: Book Coveting.

What did you check out this week from the library?

Wild Magic by Cat Weatherill

Wild Magic (2007)
Cat Weatherill
280 pages
Middle School Fiction

What led you to pick up this book?

When I heard this was a re-telling of the Pied Piper fairy tale, I wanted to read it badly. I’ve been on a fairy tale kick for a while now. It took about six months for me to get this book from the library so when it finally arrived I was surprised.

From the jacket flap

The Pied Piper had his reasons for enchanting the children of Hamelin and stealing them away—ones rooted in a deep history of wild magic. Mari and her brother Jakob are among the children who followed the piper’s song, and they are now trapped in a beautiful but cruel world inhabited by a horrid Beast.

What I liked most

Everything. Mari and Jakob are great characters to follow. The book’s summary is actually wrong. Mari followed the Pied Piper but Jakob couldn’t because he had a bad leg. Jakob was so determined to get to his sister that he sat at the magical door of a mountain every night for days, waiting for it to open. The effects of Elvendale, the magical city inside the mountain on Jakob almost had me in tears, it was so touching.

In Wild Magic readers find out what happened to the children of Hamelin Hill and also get the background story on the Pied Piper.

Though this book stayed on my shelf for weeks once I opened it, I read it in a matter of hours. I was drawn into this story of three great characters, a beast, and a deadly forest. Even the minor characters were interesting. I definitely recommend this book.

Here’s a description of the children leaving Hamelin Town with the Pied Piper,

He dared to be different. Into a sad, drab world of gray and black he had come, burning bright in turquoise and jade. Dazzling as a dragonfly. He had played a pipe and the rats had followed, dancing till they drowned in the quick brown water of the river. They had to follow him. They couldn’t resist his music. And Marianna couldn’t resist it now. It was glorious. She wanted to dance. She wanted to dream. She wanted to follow the Piper.

And Marianna wasn’t alone. The streets were packed with children. Every boy, every girl in Hamelin Town seemed to be there, and they were all dancing.

Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

Bones of Faerie (2009)
Janni Lee Simner
247 pages
Young adult/Dystopian fiction
Well-Read Ladies pick for May

Summary

A devastating war between human and Faerie leaves both sides changed forever. Liza, a young girl, has only heard of the Before which is so different from the aftermath. Humans live in small villages instead of cities. Modern technology is a thing of the past. Even nature is now an enemy where trees can attack at will and plants are not to be trusted. The one lesson that Liza has learned from her cruel father is to never let anything magical in. Your life depends on it.

But when Liza’s mother gives birth one night, the child is different. Born with hair as clear as glass, Liza’s father knows the baby is part Faerie and abandons it on a hillside to die. Soon after Liza’s mother disappears and Liza is left alone with her father to fend for herself. When Liza realizes that she has the power to see into the past and future, she too flees in search of her mother and a safe place to live.

My thoughts

I think Bones of Faerie is a pretty good book. The aftermath of the war between the two races was believable. Teh author constantly illustrated the effects of the war: people had to pump their water and grow plants that could possibly kill them if they wanted to live. Liza’s display of strength and her relationship with Matthew, a boy from her neighborhood, was also entertaining.

What I didn’t like was that readers were never given a reason for the war, just a quick explanation that the two sides didn’t get along. I wanted to know the details behind the war and what lead up to it. I wanted a feel for both sides like you do with Hunger Games.

I still think it’s a good read. The story captures your attention and doesn’t let you go until the end.

Other reviews:
Becky

Emily’s Piano by Charlotte Gingras

Emily’s Piano (2005)
By Charlotte Gingras
Translated from the French by Susan Ouriou
Illustrations by Stephane Jorisch
60 pages

Middle school fiction

Grown-ups think I don’t understand anything. They’re wrong. I watch soap operas just like everyone else. What’s more, I have hypersensitive ears and piercing eyes. Even my sense of smell is much better than most people’s. I’d make a great bloodhound.

Summary

Emily’s family life is not the best. Her father rarely comes home at night and her mother spends her days crying. One day the family has to move from their grand house to a much smaller apartment. Most of their things are sold including the family’s old black piano.

Emily thinks that if she can just get her mother’s piano back, it would make her mother feel so much better. She goes  on walks all around the city, looking for the piano. Will she find it and bring her mother happiness?

Thoughts

I enjoyed reading this book. The author never tells you Emily’s age but I imagine her to be a  tween, ten or eleven years old. Everyone from her parents to her much older sisters are too busy with their own lives to pay her any attention.

As an adult and a parent it was sad to see that no one in that family was focused on Emily. Though Emily herself is a little sad about her parents’ divorce, she’s still going on with her life, taking care of herself while understanding her mother’s grief.

Here’s two more great quotes from the book,

There’s no hope of a truce in this family now. We criticize each other, we tell each other’s secrets. Sometimes we scream insults.

Emily’s conversation with her father,

He says children can’t know how complicated and strange grown-ups’ lives are, even to them. How sometimes life is like a canoe trip down a dangerous river when the canoe tips down and sinks. How sometimes a person has to run away, or how . . .

What about me? Do grown-ups know what they’re doing to me?

Though this  is a short book, readers travel with Emily on a journey through sadness and emotional maturing that has a beautiful ending.

Congratulations to Sarah for winning the Karma Wilson giveaway!

Sunday Salon:Book Coveting

This week has been a great week for books though horrible for reading. I was assigned Moby Dick to read this week and it nearly did me in. It’s a great book to read aloud from but with only a little bit more than a week to read it, I had to set aside other books to read it. Thankfully this week’s required reading is only a few poems by Emily Dickinson.

For this week’s Book Coveting post, I’m going to show you the books I’m most excited about, got my hands on, and in most cases was unable to start reading. I’m so excited to read them this week.

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. I’ve been wanting to read this for so long and Maggie’s Southern Reading Challenge gave me the perfect excuse to pick it up.

The Music Teacher by Barbara Hall. Hall is the creator of Joan of Arcadia, one of my favorite series. When I found out she was publishing a novel, I had to put it on hold at the library. Here’s the first paragraph:

I am the mean music teacher. I am that cranky woman you remember from your youth, the one whose face you dreaded seeing, whose breath you dreaded smelling as I leaned over you, tugging at your fingers. You made jokes about me, drew caricatures of me in your notebooks, made puns out of my name, swore never to be me.

Well, listen. I swore never to be me, too.

Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni. Earlier this month Frances at Nonsuchbook wrote a great post about a reading she attended for Giovanni’s newest book, Bicycles: Love Poems. It’s such a great post for a few days afterwards, I kept going back to read it.

The fantastic Renay, from YA Fabulous, asked for volunteer judges for her upcoming young adult book tournament, Nerds Heart YA. I signed up and Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers is one of two books I need to read and judge within the next couple of weeks. I’m so excited!

The Song is You by Arthur Phillips. I first heard about this book from Michele at Read and Breathe. Michele recommended Kate Christensen’s The Epicure’s Lament, which I had a chance to read a little of and enjoyed before having to return it to the library. Christensen wrote a review for The Song is You. The first sentences of the review:

If novelists were labeled zoologically, Arthur Phillips would fall naturally into the dolphin family: his writing is playful, cerebral, likable, wide-ranging and inventive.

Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer. This book combines two of my favorite reading subjects: children’s literature and books about reading. Lerer won the 2008 National Book Critics Award for Criticism for this book, so it’s the perfect book for the end of the Book Awards Challenge 2.

Tales of Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. I have been waiting months for this book from my local library. Tales of Outer Suburbia is a collection of short stories that as Heather said a few days ago, is the “perfect marriage between words and illustrations.” I have to agree with her. At 94 pages, this is a short read but one that will have you rereading it to catch everything you might have missed the first time you read it.

Last but not least is Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory. While I’ve waited months for Tan’s book, I’ve waited years for Gregory’s from paperbackswap. Everyday Matters is a illustrated memoir about Gregory and his family’s life after his wife is paralyzed from the waist down. Another short read that I cannot wait to dig into.

So that’s this week’s list. What books are you coveting?