BW47: Big U, little U, what begins with U

In my quest to complete the A to Z challenge by author and title, I am up to U. I managed to squeak past Q with a two-fer when I read Quicksilver by Amanda Quick. How lucky was that! So, U. Big U, Little u, what begins with U.

I came across this interesting little book the other day about mathematical obsession and thought I'd give it a go: Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession by Apostolos Doxiadis. In the process get to read an new author as well.  Plus there is always my fall back gal when it comes to the alphabet, Sue Grafton and her Alphabet Series with p.i. Kinsey Milhone set in the 1980's pre cell phones and computers.  

So now the search is one for an author whose first name or last name ends with U.  AND, their books sound interesting and hopefully aren't chunksters that will take forever to read. I have Leon Uris's QB VII on the shelves and read it several years ago. It's on standby in case can't find anything else. Not ready to delve into any of his other stories. Will save him for next year.  So did a bit of searching and found a few people I've never heard of before. 

Thrity Umrigar

Lisa Unger

Errol Lincoln Uys

Luis Alberto Urrea

Then you have the known - Upton Sinclair and  John Updike.  Plus a list of freebies on Project Gutenberg that you can check out at your own risk.

After a bit of Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble browsing,  decided I'll go with Lisa Unger's Beautiful Lies.  Sounds quite interesting and thankfully so easy to download on my nook. 

Synopsis:  What if your family was a lie?  What if your name was a lie? What if your whole life was just a pack of Beautiful Lies?

If Ridley Jones had slept ten minutes later or had taken the subway instead of waiting for a cab, she would still be living the lie she used to call her perfect life. Instead, she's in the wrong place at the right time to unleash a chain of events that begins with a mysterious package on her doorstep. A package that informs her that her entire world is just an illusion. Forced to question everything she knows about herself, Ridley wanders into dark territory, where everyone is hiding something.

Anyone else doing the A to Z quest?  If you are, which letter are you on?  

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BW46: A poetic moment

Courtesy of Zedam Nabil

I'm in the midst of typing up all my crazy writings for NaNoWriMo so leaving you with a poetical moment that rings so true. 

Drop a Pebble in the Water

by

- James W. Foley -

Drop a pebble in the water:
Just a splash, and it is gone;
But there's half-a-hundred ripples
Circling on and on and on,
Spreading, spreading from the center,
Flowing on out to the sea.
And there is no way of telling
Where the end is going to be.

Drop a pebble in the water:
In a minute you forget,
But there's little waves a-flowing,
And there's ripples circling yet,
And those little waves a-flowing

To a great big wave have grown;
You've disturbed a mighty river
Just by dropping in a stone.

Drop an unkind word, or careless:
In a minute it is gone;
But there's half-a-hundred ripples
Circling on and on and on.
They keep spreading, spreading, spreading
From the center as they go,
And there is no way to stop them,
Once you've started them to flow.

Drop an unkind word, or careless:
In a minute you forget;
But there's little waves a-flowing,
And there's ripples circling yet,
And perhaps in some sad heart
A mighty wave of tears you've stirred,
And disturbed a life was happy
Ere you dropped that unkind word.

Drop a word of cheer and kindness:
Just a flash and it is gone;
But there's half-a-hundred ripples
Circling on and on and on,
Bearing hope and joy and comfort
On each splashing, dashing wave
Till you wouldn't believe the volume
Of the one kind word you gave.

Drop a word of cheer and kindness:
In a minute you forget;
But there's gladness still a-swelling,
And there's joy a-circling yet,
And you've rolled a wave of comfort
Whose sweet music can be heard
Over miles and miles of water
Just by dropping one kind word.
 

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BW45: Haunted Bookshop Mysteries

Mix together a book shop, haunt it with a disembodied spirit of a private eye, and you have the makings of an interesting mystery series.   Alice Kimberly aka Cleo Coyle of the Coffee House Mysteries has come up with a wonderful cozy mystery series that is quite entertaining.  I read the first book in the series and will be going back for more and reading the rest of the books in the series. I'm a series junkie. 

The Haunted Bookshop Mysteries

The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

The Ghost and the Dead Deb

The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library 

The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion

The Characters:

Penelope

After her husband’s suicide, young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure moves herself and her young son from New York City back to her little seaside New England hometown of Quindicott, Rhode Island. When she arrives, however, she finds her aunt Sadie Thornton in financial trouble and about to lose the family's old bookshop. 

Unwilling to allow the business to fail, Pen cashes her late husband’s life insurance money and uses every penny to overhaul the inventory and remodel the place. As fate would have it, the construction rouses the spirit of a dead man, a private investigator from New York who’d been gunned down on the premises in 1949 while investigating a murder. 

     Waking from a half-century of slumber, the hard-boiled ghost is less than thrilled to find himself cosmically imprisoned within the fieldstone walls of Pen’s bookstore...

Jack
Shepard, PI

 

In life, Jack's pulse pounded to the rhythm of the city streets: the smoky dice joints and swingin’ suds clubs. Why couldn’t he have been gunned down in a joint like that? Instead, he got lead poisoning in the god-forsaken sticks, eternity in cornpone alley. There's only one thing that makes this backwater existence tolerable. Her name is Penelope...

     Okay, so the broad is one of those annoying do-right, fair-play Jane types, but she has a nice face, a sweet voice, and Jack always had been a sucker for redheads. If he hears her thoughts right, Penelope doesn't even believe in ghosts. Well, he never believed in them, either. But, brother, had he been wrong.

     Now he's a disembodied spirit, sentenced for his sins to exist in a world he hardly knows. Lucky for him his purgatory comes with an auburn haired angel, a doll named Penelope he can't stop watching or watching over...   

 

Coming January 3rd, 2012

 The Ghost and The Bogus Bestseller

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BW 44: Parasol Protectorate

#1

How about dipping your toes into Steampunk.  I picked up Gail Carriger's Soulless, the first novel in her Parasol Protectorate series.   It's Victorian English society meets vampires, werewolves, ghosts type of story, with some romance and comedy thrown.  Sound interesting.  There are five books in the series including: 

#2

#3

#4

#5

Look up Steampunk on Amazon and you'll come across a wide variety of very interesting and what look like, entertaining non fiction and fiction books.    Including The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature  by Jeff Vandermeer, another interesting writer well worth checking out.   

Steampunk Bible

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BW 43: National Novel Writing Month

Modern Water Clock by Bernard Gitton

The clock is ticking down to National Novel Writing Month and writing 50,000 words in 30 days.  Crazy idea that I discovered back in 2007 and have participated in ever since.  It's stressful, time consuming and wild, but fun as you create a story while ignoring your inner editor as well as household duties and other activities for 30 days.  It helps if you have understanding family members who are aware all your energy is going to be taken up with writing.   I had thought of bypassing the whole challenge this year but between my husband encouraging to join in again and a wonderful idea that's been growing by leaps and bounds, I decided to do it once again.  Guess it is turning into an annual thing.  

The goal is to simply write and hopefully by the end of the month, you have the makings of an interesting story.  Of course it will need loads of editing, but that's all part of the writing process.   Plus the process of sitting down and writing at least 1667 words a day forms a habit so by the end of the month, if you aren't already in the habit of writing everyday, it will have become a habit.  So, just to let you know if November's Sunday posts are a bit short or perhaps wacky, you'll know the reason why. 

There are lots of writers who are pantsters who basically just write, fly the seat of their pants and make things up as they go, without any planning.  Then there are the plotters - those who outline, create character sketches, and map out their stories.  I lean more toward plotting, than pantster.  This year I found a great  book to help me out -  K.M. Weiland's Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success which is available in both book and ebook format.   It is chock full of useful information and highly recommend it. There are several authors out there in the blogosphere who are very encouraging when it comes to NaNoWriMo and  have been posting tips on their websites.   

Larry Brooks who wrote Story Engineering:  Mastering The Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing as well as several fiction novels has come up with 31 Empowering Posts in 31 Days.

Alexandra Sokoloff, who writes spooky, scary mystery thrillers which I really enjoy as well as Screenwriting Tricks for Authors has come up with a series of great articles which are immensely helpful.

And if you are wondering if anything good comes out of this craziness, here is a link to a list of authors who have had books published which they started during nano.  Maybe I'll be on that list in a few years.  *grin*

Anyone else joining in on Nanowrimo this year? 

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BW42 - Old New York

Chrysler Building courtesy of joiseyshowaa's

We did a bit of futuristic armchair traveling with J.D. Robb aka Nora Roberts who introduced us to a futuristic new york in her In Death series.  Let's do a bit of historical fiction traveling in old New York.  I found a series of mystery books and authors that  haven't read yet thanks to Bookmarks Magazine.

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

B&N Synopsis:  "The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence."

Time and Again by Jack Finney

B&N Synopsis:  "Sleep. And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There are no such things as automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no dictionary. You have never heard the name Richard Nixon." 

Did illustrator Si Morley really step out of his twentieth-century apartment one night -- right into the winter of 1882? The U.S. Government believed it, especially when Si returned with a portfolio of brand-new sketches and tintype photos of a world that no longer existed -- or did it"

Murphy's Law by Rhys Bowen

Book one in the Molly Murphy Series set in the early 1900's.    Author Synopsis:  Molly Murphy has to flee from Ireland and finds herself in deep trouble on Ellis Island in Murphy's Law.

Murder on Astor Place by Victoria Thompson

Victoria Thompson's Gaslight series starting with Murder on Astor Place set in the late 1800's.   

B&N Synopsis:  "After a routine delivery, midwife Sarah Brandt visits her patient in a rooming house-and discovers that another boarder, a young girl, has been killed. At the request of Sergeant Frank Malloy, she searches the girl's room, and discovers that the victim is from one of the most prominent families in New York- and the sister of an old friend. The powerful family, fearful of scandal, refuses to permit an investigation. But with Malloy's help, Sarah begins a dangerous quest to bring the killer to justice-before death claims another victim."

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BW41: Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts - October 10, 2011

Happy birthday to my favorite author - the diva of romance and romantic suspense Nora Roberts.   I discovered her books back in 2007 and fell in lurve.  She has written almost 200 novels (complete booklist) including a number of stand alone books as well as series which are all unique and interesting.  She writes the type of stories that make you fall in the love with the characters and makes you want to turn right around and read the book over again, when you are done.  She also write a futuristic crime novel series called the In Death series under  the pseudonym J.D. Robb.  There are 33 books (chronological list)  in the series (which I've read most of them twice) and I just finished the latest New York to Dallas.  And I recently started listening to audio books in the car and am currently listening to Naked In Death which is the very first book in the series. I can sense that listening to the series will keep me busy for quite a while.    Besides being a prolific writer, she and her husband own a bookstore in Maine called Turn the Page and also a historic inn called Inn Boosboro with rooms named after literary characters including Eve and Roark from the In Death series.  She has a new trilogy named after the Inn Boonsboro and the first book is The Next Always being released on November 1st.

Tidbits from her website:

• Every Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb title released in 2010 hit the New York Times bestseller list.  That’s keeping up a streak started in 1999.
  
  
• With Treachery in Death (February 2011) Nora will have published 195 full-length novels.
  
  
• Nora has written 173 New York Times bestsellers including 27 written as J.D. Robb and one written together with J.D. Robb
  
  
• Since her first bestseller in 1991, Nora’s books have spent a total of 879 weeks on the New York Times list…that’s equivalent to more than 16.5 consecutive years of weekly bestsellers.
  
  
• Nora’s books have spent a combined 178 weeks at the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list – that’s more than 3 years.
  

Once you read one of her books, you'll understand why.

Happy Birthday Nora!

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BW40: Spooktacular October

I've seem to have gotten into a vampire, werewolf, ghosts, angels and demons reading kick lately.   Last year for the month of October I read Frankenstein and was surprised because the story wasn't even close to what the movie had been like.  Maybe I had watched Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein one too many times *grin*    Then I read Dracula: The Undead by Dacre Stoker, Bram's great grandnephew, inventive sequel to Dracula. 

Barnes and Noble: At last—the sequel to Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, written by his direct descendant and a Dracula historian  Bram Stoker's Dracula is the prototypical horror novel, an inspiration for the world's seemingly limitless fascination with vampires. Though many have tried to replicate Stoker's horror classic- in books, television shows, and movies-only the 1931 Bela Lugosi film bore the Stoker family's support. Until now.

Dracula The Un-Dead is a bone-chilling sequel based on Bram Stoker's own handwritten notes for characters and plot threads excised from the original edition. Dracula The Un-Dead begins in 1912, twenty-five years after Dracula "crumbled into dust." Van Helsing's protégé, Dr. Jack Seward, is now a disgraced morphine addict obsessed with stamping out evil across Europe. Meanwhile, an unknowing Quincey Harker, the grown son of Jonathan and Mina, leaves law school for the London stage, only to stumble upon the troubled production of "Dracula," directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself.

The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets, but before he can confront them he experiences evil in a way he had never imagined. One by one, the band of heroes that defeated Dracula a quarter-century ago is being hunted down. Could it be that Dracula somehow survived their attack and is seeking revenge? Or is their another force at work whose relentless purpose is to destroy anything and anyone associated with Dracula?

I thoroughly enjoyed it, however, I've never actually read Dracula by Bram Stoker.   Decided this year I'm finally going to read Dracula, especially since I'm on the fore mentioned vampire kick.  Plus I happened to stumble across his very first book The Snake's Pass which looked really interesting so picked it up:

Amazon:   Arthur Severn, a young Englishman on holiday in the west of Ireland, is forced by a storm to stop for the night in a mysterious village, where he hears the legend of "The Snake's Pass." Long ago, it is said, St. Patrick battled the King of the Snakes, who hid his crown of gold and jewels in the hills near the village. But it is not only legend that haunts the town. The figure of the demonic money-lender Black Murdock looms over the village, as he searches for the lost treasure while manipulating the townsfolk to his own evil ends. Even more threatening than Murdock is the shifting bog, personified as a baneful "carpet of death," which will swallow up anything -- and anyone -- in its path. Art and his friend Dick will brave the dangers of the bog to seek out the treasure, but the sinister machinations of Murdock will lead to a deadly conclusion! Featuring a slow accumulation of terror worthy of Le Fanu, The Snake's Pass was Bram Stoker's first novel. A clear precursor to Dracula, The Snake's Pass was the only of Stoker's novels set in his native Ireland. This edition follows the text of the first edition published at New York in 1890.

Come along and join me in a spooktacular read of  Dracula by Bram Stoker.  And along the way, you may as well check out his other stories.

What spooktacular books are you reading this month?

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BW 39: Banned Book Week

Celebrate reading!

It is that time of year when we get to celebrate our freedom to read whatever we choose.

American Library Association:  "Banned Books Week (BBW) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.  Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.  BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings.  Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections.  Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society."

The most frequently challenged books in 2010 were:

1) And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson;

2) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie;

3) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

4) Crank by Ellen Hopkins;

5) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins;

6) Lush by Natasha Friend;

7) What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones;

8) Nickel and Dimed  by Barbara Ehrenreich;

9) Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie;

10) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

The most frequently challenged classics are listed below. See the reason why here.

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger 
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck 
4. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker 
5. Ulysses, by James Joyce 
6. Beloved, by Toni Morrison 
7. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding 
8. 1984, by George Orwell 
9. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov 
10. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck 
11. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller 
12. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley 
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell 
14. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway 
15. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner 
16. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway 
17. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
18. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
19. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison 
20. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell 
21. Native Son, by Richard Wright 
22. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey 
23. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut 
24. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway 
25. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London 
26. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin 
27. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren 
28. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien 
29. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclai
30. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence 
31. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess 
32. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin 
33. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote 
34. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie 
35. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron 
36. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
37. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
38. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles 
39. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs 
40. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh 
41. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence 
42. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer 
43. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
44. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser 
45. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike 

What challenged book will you be reading this week?

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BW 38: L is for Laurie R. King

Laurie R. King - September 19, 1952

 Happy Birthday Laurie R. King

I currently have two of Laurie R. King's books from her Mary Russell Series in my TBR pile: Justice Hall and Locked Rooms.  The series follows Mary Russell and her relationship with Sherlock Holmes and their adventures in crime solving. 

From her website:   In 1994, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was published, featuring young Mary Russell who becomes an apprentice, then partner of Sherlock Holmes in early 20th century England. Books in that series appear regularly, taking the duo and their cohorts on into the Twenties and around the world, winning admiration far and wide. These historical novels allow King to explore all sorts of ideas: the roots of conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan; feminism and early Christianity; patriotism and individual responsibility, while also having a rousing good time with revisiting the scenes of The Hound of the Baskervilles and Kim, setting a pair of Bedouin nomads down in a grand country house in England, and forging an unlikely relationship between two remarkably similar individuals who happen to be separated by age, sex, and background.

There are 11 books in the series with the latest release September 6th of The Pirate King. 

I'm a sucker for series and usually like reading them in order so don't know how I ended up with two books out of order.  Something tickled my fancy the day I bought them.  In honor of Ms. King's birthday this week, I'll be reading Justice Hall.    If you like detective fiction and Sherlock Holmes, be sure to check out the Mary Russell Series.

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BW37: Book Bloggers Appreciation Week

This week is Book Blogger Appreciation Week in which we celebrate all things books.  I have discovered so many different books that I probably would have never read otherwise through the book blogging community.  It's also created some wonderful connections not only with book bloggers, but also with writers and publishers.  

Book Blogger Appreciation was started by Amy Riley of My Friend Amy in an effort to recognize the hard work and contribution of book bloggers to the promotion and preservation of a literate culture actively engaged in discussing books, authors, and a lifestyle of reading.

The first Book Blogger Appreciation was observed in the fall of 2008 and occurs every September. The week spotlights and celebrates the work of active book bloggers through guest posts, awards, giveaways, and community activities. Book Bloggers are encouraged to register their participation for inclusion in a database of book bloggers.

The theme is Cultivating a Community of Bloggers and Readers.  There will be all kinds of giveaways and contests, guest posts by authors, publishers and bloggers.   Come join in on the party.  You may just win some awesome books and establish some new friendships.

The daily topics this year are:

Monday, September 12 - Community:  It is the opportuntity to highlight those bloggers who have made book blogging a unique experience.  Mentors, bloggers who have encouraged you to try a different kind of book, opened your eyes to a new issue, made you laugh or supported you with comments on your blog.

Tuesday, September 13th:  Blogger Interviews:   An interview swap between bloggers and a chance to get to know them better.  I swapped with Brianna of The Book Vixen who took over "The Novel Challenge blog" with the help of a few other bloggers when Wendy decided to move on to other things.  Be sure to check out her interview on My Two Blessings and my interview on her site.

Wednesday, September 14th: Community Part II:  A day to share tips for connecting with the community.

Thursday, September 15: Readers:  Book bloggers blog because we love reading. Has book blogging changed the way you read? Have you discovered books you never would have apart from book blogging? How has book blogging affected your book acquisition habits? Have you made new connections with other readers because of book blogging? Choose any one of these topics and share your thoughts today! 

Friday September 16th: Blogging:  The world of blogging is continually changing. Share 3 things you are essential tried and true practices for every blogger and 1-3 new trends or tools you’ve adapted recently or would like to in the future.

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If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW36: I is for Intellectual Devotional

Some time ago I picked up this nifty, interesting book The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class.  It is a secular educational devotional, much like a spiritual devotional with 365 days of lessons. Each day is devoted to a certain topic:   Monday is  history, Tuesday is literature, Wednesday is visual arts,  Thursday is Science, Friday is music, Saturday is Philosophy and Sunday religion.   

Since the general edition has come out, the authors David Kidder and Noah Oppenheim have come out with a few other editions:  Biographies, American History, Modern Culture and Health.  They are available in hard cover or in ebook format now.  

Fun to read, stimulates your mind, and makes you want to find out more.  And honestly a good bathroom book.  *grin*  

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.