It’s been a hectic time around here – as evidenced by my lack of posts! I’m scurrying to finish off a couple more deadlines, not just because of Christmas, but also because I’m headed off to Disney World at the end of this month; my family and I will be welcoming in the new year from there!
So Happy Holidays, everyone! Have a fabulous, fun and safe holiday, spent with family and friends!
And here’s to a fabulous new year, filled with lots and lots of wonderful books and new bookish friends and book blog discoveries. I’m looking forward to it!
I have always given books as gifts; one of my first thoughts when thinking about a gift is whether I can match a book to the person. Not always the easiest thing, as only my closer circle of friends and family are readers.
In the end, though, even though my first thought is always a book, I don’t end up giving books to everyone. When I gift a book, I want it to be well-loved. I want the recipient to open the package and feel absolute delight at the joys that lay ahead. Unfortunately, there are people in my life who wouldn’t necessarily feel this way about a book. And there are people on my gift list who would be internally horrified to be getting a book, even though on the outside, they respond with a smile. (That smile is often somewhat pained. My first clue, shall we say? I don’t always read people well.)
The result? There’s really just a select group of people who end up getting books from me. They include my friends Ann-Kat and Chrissie (who might be book blogging soon). Both of them are readers and we share similar tastes. My sister usually gets a cookbook as a part of her gift. My husband will get a massive number of cookbooks (as well as all sorts of kitchen things). My older son gets a couple of mysteries or science fiction books, while his much-younger brother will get a handful of well-chosen picture books. My daughter, on the other hand, is into filmmaking, not reading.
As for receiving books? I love getting a book as a gift! I do prefer, though, receiving books from people who know what I like. For example, I don’t read Christian fiction and I don’t read historical fiction (much); the year I received that Christian historical novel will stay in my memory, if only because of a strange admiration for the knack at which the giver managed to snag the two genres I don’t read and bring them together so efficiently in one book.
But in the end, I am always thankful to open up a gift to find a book, even if it’s one I probably won’t read until that day that never comes when I’ve scraped the bottom of my to-be-read pile. It means the person giving the gift does know me, and who I am. Books make up a huge part of my life, and an understanding of that means the world to me.
What about you? How do you feel about giving and receiving books? To check out what other book lovers are saying, check out Booking Through Thursday here.
It’s finally happened. I always have my nose in a book, but for some reason, friends and family tend to buy me book store gift certificates and book-related accessories – and never books.
Not that I minded either the gift certificates, or the book-related accessories. For example, one year I got this great portable book light from Lee Valley (well, not quite the same one, but very similar). I love it because it’s one of the few mini book lights I’ve seen that isn’t battery operated – a real blessing because unless I used rechargeables and recharged regularly, I felt like I was always replacing the batteries.
But this year, things are a little bit different. It might be because of this blog – now not only am I reading like normal, I’m always saying things like, “Oh, I’ve got to go write up this review for my book blog.”
Could it be, everyone is actually starting to take my reading more seriously? Hah!
This morning, my older son asked me to put together a books wish list. He and his sister are going to head over to our local Chapters store to buy my presents.
And I’m going to have a great evening, looking through my i-want list, and browsing through my feedreader, looking for all the books that I want that aren’t available at the library.
This was a much better week in terms of incoming books! The only problem is that, with the holidays coming up (and I haven’t done much in terms of shopping yet), it will be a challenge finding time to sit down with these. And I really want to!
Mibs Beaumont is about to become a teenager. As if that prospect weren’t scary enough, thirteen is when a Beaumonth’s savvy strikes – and with one brother who causes hurricanes and another who creates electricity, it promises to be outrageous … and positively thrilling.
But just before her big day, Poppa is in a terrible accident. Suddenly, Mibs’s dreams of X-ray vision disappear like a flash of her brother’s lightning: All she wants now is a savvy that will save Poppa. In fact, Mibs is so sure she’ll get that powerful savvy that she sneaks a ride to the hospital on a rickety bus, with her siblings and the preacher’s kids in tow. But when the bus starts heading in the wrong direction only one thing is certain: After this extraordinary adventure not a soul on board will ever be the same.
The Snapshot Review
What I Liked: Unusual premise, strong characterization, engrossing plot, great fantasy elements set within our contemporary world. This book also delivers some very wonderful messages without being at all preachy.
Fantastic First Line: When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it.
Ms. Bookish’s Very Quick Take: This is a wonderful book that will have you laughing, crying and rejoicing with the characters. Highly recommended.
I’m not even going to say, “my goodness, the week has just flown by – it’s Friday Finds already!” because I suspect I might be saying that every Friday. (But it has flown by, don’t you think? Especially with the holidays looming ahead of us. And Ms. Bookish hasn’t bought a single gift yet …)
It’s a short list for me this Friday because I’ve been busy tackling deadlines so haven’t had the chance to surf around the book blog world as much as I would have liked. I am always so grateful to all the book bloggers out there, who make sure that my TBR pile stays filled with succulent, juicy and tempting reads (can you tell I’m looking forward to turkey dinner this holiday? Especially since I won’t be cooking it!).
This week, it’s essays and short stories that have been catching my eye:
Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea (discovered at Meg Cabot’s blog) Maybe it’s the play on the title, with that bit of homage to Judy Blume, but this sounds like it would be such a funny read. Here’s the synopsis:
When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power — vodka. You would too if you found out that your boyfriend was having an affair with a Peekapoo or if you had to pretend to be honeymooning with your father in order to upgrade to first class. Welcome to Chelsea’s world — a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense.
In this hilarious, deliciously skewed collection, Chelsea mines her past for stories about her family, relationships, and career that are at once singular and ridiculous. Whether she’s convincing her third-grade class that she has been tapped to play Goldie Hawn’s daughter in the sequel to Private Benjamin, deciding to be more egalitarian by dating a redhead, or looking out for a foulmouthed, rum-swilling little person who looks just like her…only smaller, Chelsea has a knack for getting herself into the most outrageous situations. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea showcases the candor and irresistible turns of phrase that have made her one of the freshest voices in comedy today.
And then there’s Just After Sunset, by Stephen King, which I found via Bookzombie. Joanne’s not thrilled with the collection, but she gives a wonderful mini-review of each of the stories and I spotted a few with premises that sound good. So I thought it was worth requesting this from the library. Not to mention it’s been a while since I’ve read a Stephen King short story. Here’s the synopsis:
Who but Stephen King would turn a Port-a-San into a slimy birth canal, or a roadside honky-tonk into a place for endless love? A book salesman with a grievance might pick up a mute hitchhiker, not knowing the silent man in the passenger seat listens altogether too well. Or an exercise routine on a stationary bicycle, begun to reduce bad cholesterol, might take its rider on a captivating-and then terrifying-journey. Set on a remote key in Florida, “The Gingerbread Girl” is a riveting tale featuring a young woman as vulnerable-and resourceful-as Audrey Hepburn’s character in Wait Until Dark. In “Ayana,” a blind girl works a miracle with a kiss and the touch of her hand. For King, the line between the living and the dead is often blurry, and the seams that hold our reality intact might tear apart at any moment. In one of the longer stories here, “N.,” which recently broke new ground when it was adapted as a graphic digital entertainment, a psychiatric patient’s irrational thinking might create an apocalyptic threat in the Maine countryside . . . or keep the world from falling victim to it.
I found Happy Trails, by Julie Hecht in the same Meg Cabot blog post I mentioned above, and it sounds like a story collection I will really like. I particularly enjoy a deadpan style of humour, and this collection sounds like it has oodles of that:
In this new collection of stories, Julie Hecht reclaims the darkly funny, existential territory for which she is known: “People say ‘Good morning,’ but don’t believe them. It’s just something to say.” The uniquely eccentric narrator reappears in Happy Trails to You and recounts her perplexed engagements with our society and the larger world — whether she’s attempting to withdraw money from a bank machine, worrying about Paul McCartney, or seeking a nonexistent place of calm on Nantucket, where nail guns and chain saws have replaced the sounds of birds singing.
Appalled by life in our times, the narrator recounts innumerable artifacts from a now vanished America (civility, idealism, Elvis Presley, well-made appliances). She is also exquisitely attuned to the absurdities of our culture; her acute observations illuminate every subject, from the dangers of microwave ovens to the disappearing ozone layer. With deadpan wit, the author reveals the truths of a new century. Happy Trails to You is a radically distinctive work of American fiction.
So these are my finds for this week! What wonderful books did you add to your i-want list?
I quite like serendipity, so I was happy to learn last night that there’s a new Stephanie Plum YouTube video out – Stephanie Plum’s 12 Days of Christmas. I’ll be putting the video at the end of this post, but where does the serendipity come into play, you might be asking? It’s serendipitous (what a word! I’ve always wanted to use it somewhere) because I’ve been meaning to write about the audiobook versions of the Stephanie Plum series for a while now.
I used to devour all the Stephanie Plum mysteries, back when the series was relatively new, but somewhere along the line, they lost their sparkle for me. I’m not sure what it was – they continued to be funny, and each one definitely made me laugh, but something seemed to be missing. So for a while there, I stopped reaching for the latest and newest Stephanie Plum.
That is, until I discovered the audiobook versions read by Lorelei King.
This past summer, my family and I rented a beach house in Nova Scotia. It was a 19 hour drive there, and since I, unfortunately, can’t read in the car, I decided to give audiobooks a try. I wanted something familiar, and funny, but with a bit of a mystery; I decided that Stephanie Plum might just fit the bill. So Seven Up, Eleven on Top and Twelve Sharp accompanied me on the long drive there and back.
I was delighted to discover that the Stephanie Plum series works well in audio. King is the perfect reader for the series. I had absolutely no problems believing she actually was Stephanie Plum, and she performs the New Jersey accents for the secondary characters incredibly well. The audiobooks had me in stitches – there were many occasions on the drive when I would burst out laughing and everyone would say, “What? What are you listening to, Mom? Can I listen too? What’s so funny?”
Of course, most of the humour isn’t meant for little ears. But Stephanie Plum definitely made the 19-hour drives fly by for me. Not only that, but my husband, who isn’t much of a fiction reader and uses his iPod only for music, decided to give them a try too. And when he did, it was my turn to go, “What? What part are you on? What’s so funny? Is it Grandma Mazur? It is Grandma Mazur, isn’t it?”
So when I got back home, the first thing I did was get my hands on more of the audiobooks. Somehow, listening to them had brought back that sparkle for me – they were so entertaining. But I also discovered what a big difference the reader of an audiobook can make; I listened to High Five, which has a different narrator, and after having been regaled by Lorelei King all those hours, it just wasn’t the same (not to mention, the version I listened to was abridged. I just don’t get abridged audiobooks, really …)
King makes me believe she is Stephanie Plum, and that makes all the difference, I think, when it’s an audio version of a novel that’s written in the first person.
And now, here’s Stephanie Plum’s 12 Days of Christmas – a perfect way to end this post, I think!
1. Do you get to read as much as you WANT to read?
The answer to this question, at this time of the year, is no. Unfortunately. I’m a freelancer in the publishing industry and fall and winter are my most busy times of the year. Come spring and summer, though, things get much less hectic. That’s when I find myself with ample time to read.
Despite a lack of time right now, last month I made a commitment to reading every day. It’s made a real difference to me, I’ve been finding. Somehow, that little bit of time to escape into a book eases away the stress of deadlines. Even if it’s only a chapter or two each day, it’s like magic.
2. If you had (magically) more time to read–what would you read? Something educational? Classic? Comfort Reading? Escapism? Magazines?
Everything in my TBR pile. Which actually includes everything listed above.
As Harry well knows, there’s hardly a place on earth cozier than Crozet, Virginia, at Christmastime. The snowflakes drifting lazily down, the soft glow of the winter light, the sound of old carols in the streets … even cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter get into the spirit, battling ornaments and climbing the holiday tree. In fact, it’s this year’s tree that Harry and her husband, Fair, have gone to fetch when they find the one they’ve chosen grimly decorated with a dead body.
The Snapshot Review
What I Liked: Mrs. Murphy, Pewter and Tucker are as fun as ever; Crozet, Virginia, is as cozy as ever; and the snow and lights and merry-making add up to a Christmas-y feel, in spite of the murders. The mystery is a good, solid one. And the illustrations by Michael Gallatly are lovely.
Not Thrilled With: Unlike previous Mrs. Murphy mysteries, the characterizations just aren’t quite there. Dialogue in particular is a bit clipped.
Ms. Bookish’s Very Quick Take: A fun read for Mrs. Murphy fans, though readers new to the series should make sure to check out a previous book in the series, too.
A very odd thing has happened: for today’s edition of Mailbox Monday here at MsBookish.com there is very little to report. (Mailbox Mondays is hosted every week by The Printed Page, for those who want to join in on the fun.)
It feels odd because my entire week has been swimming with books; but when I sat down to write this post, I discovered there wasn’t much to report in terms of new arrivals for my TBR pile.
Here’s what came to the Ms. Bookish household this past week (yes, it’s a scant list …):
Triskellion, by Will Peterson. Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:
A sense of foreboding sets in the moment fourteen-year-old twins Rachel and Adam arrive from New York to visit their English grandmother. The station is empty, village streets are deserted, locals are hostile, and even their frail Granny Root is oddly distant. And what about the bees that appear to follow a mysterious force? It all seems tied up with the Triskellion — an intertwining symbol etched in chalk on the moors. With a growing sense of danger and white-knuckle suspense, the twins are compelled to unearth a secret that has protected the village for centuries, one that reveals a shocking truth about their ancestors — and themselves.
I also received a couple of audiobooks. These didn’t arrive in my mailbox, but I think audiobook downloads fall within the spirit of Mailbox Monday, don’t you? So here they are:
Holidays on Ice (unabridged), by David Sedaris. Thanks to Kathy for suggesting this one. I’ve been listening to it at night, and it’s very funny. Sedaris’ voice is a perfect match to the tone of his essays.
Tomb of the Golden Bird (unabridged), by Elizabeth Peters. I’m a big fan of Elizabeth Peters, but it’s been a while since I picked up an Amelia Peabody book, so I thought I’d give the audio version a try, since I’ve heard great things about the narrator of the series.
So that’s it for this week. I’m hoping next Monday the list will be a bit better.
