eleneariel | Entries tagged with books

1. Loose Girl, Kerry Cohen

A "memoir of promiscuity", this book is nothing but sad. Although Ms Cohen eventually realizes how deadening and empty her life of casual sex was, she never really grasps WHY promiscuity isn't fulfilling. That leaves the ending almost as sad as the rest of the book. (warning: though tastefully presented, the subject matter means that this is not a book for everyone.)

2. Little Brother, Cory Doctorow

Best book I read this month - and I read it online for free, thanks to Doctorow's views on copyright, for which I love him forever. In a way I think it's a present-day version of 1984, and most worthy of reading for the moral and political issues discussed alone - nevermind that it's also a cracking good read.

3. For Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn

So I found a stash of Christian relationship books for cheap at a thrift store, right? And usually I'm not too impressed by them, but I'm always curious what they say, and I knew I could sell them on half.com or trade them at Paperbackswap. This one ... eh. Fairly shallow, with no startling revelations but several good reminders. She speaks very much in generalities, and I would suggest giving it to your guy and see where he thinks it applies to him ... and where it doesn't. Men are individuals too, you know. =P

4. Remember Me? Sophie Kinsella

A fluff of a read that was adiquate as a time-killer but, in retrospect, lacking any real worthwhile reasons to read, considering my other options.

5. Boy Meets Girl, Joshua Harris

Okay, those who told me this was better than I Kissed Dating Goodbye were right, and I so much appreciate that he does admit that different people will have different circumstances and that there's no One Right Way to have a relationship. But the principles he sets forth are good and worthy of pondering how to implement them in your own particular circumstances.

6. Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan

An old one, a good one, and one worthy of rereading.

7. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

Why yes, I prefer to wait to read massively popular books until the series is complete. :) Okay, maybe that's not my official modus operendi, but it's worked with Harry Potter and Twilight and now these. I certainly enjoyed this one (read it in basically two days) - it's fast-paced, thoughtful, and keeps the you on the edge of your seat - but I wouldn't say that it grabbed me in the way that my very favorites do. I liked Katniss and Gale and Peeta, but I don't feel compelled to pick a team. :)

8. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
Finished this last night at midnight. NOW SOMEBODY GIVE ME MOCKINGJAY.

Books from the stack: 3

A short list this month because I spent so much time on the road. I always think of travels as times to read more, not less, but I forget this doesn't really work when you are the responsible adult driving, and not the kid hanging out in the backseat with nothing to do but read.

1. Teaching True Love to a Sex-At-Thirteen Generation, Eric & Leslie Ludy

I've heard about the Ludy's for years and thought it was time I read something of theirs. This one is billed as being for parents teaching a true and healthy view of sex, romance, and godliness to their children, but I found plenty of convicting and encouraging things for myself. I would definitely reread this if I someday have children. However. There's something about this book and almost all the others like it (Joshua Harris, John and Staci Eldridge, etc.) that I've read that rubs me the wrong way. It makes me squirm uncomfortably in the same way reading Lori Wick does. I don't even want to get in to the reasons why this might be - I'm not completely sure, and I don't want to offend anyone while I'm trying to figure it out. :)

2. Authentic Beauty, Leslie Ludy

See above!

3. Heist Society, Ally Carter

After hearing this described as the "female version of Ocean's 11" I had high hopes - too high. I think if I had gone into with fewer expectations I would have enjoyed it more. It was fine for what it was, but I'd hoped for a little more depth and details, a little more of the dash and romance of crime.

4. Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl: wide-eyed wonder at God's spoken world, N. D. Wilson

I loved this book so much. I can see how others could have quite different reactions, but I loved the unorthodox, almost chaotic style: it reflects the world we live in, God's world, a world that is like like a tilt-a-whirl you can't get off, but can find beauty and joyfully wild abandon in anyway, at least if you'll only open your eyes and see.

5. This Book is Overdue: how librarians and cybrarians can save us all, Marilyn Johnson

I liked this book solely because I am a librarian, and I like reading about libraries and books and people who work in and with them. Other than that draw, the book is poorly organized, disjointed, and wanders rather pointlessly.

6. Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz

I'd always heard that Koontz was a readalike for Stephen King (and he is), and since Stephen King creeps me out, I had also avoided Koontz. Actually, let me rephrase. Nothing so strong as "avoided" - I had never even given a thought to reading him at all. That changed because of reading the graphic novel prequel to Odd Thomas last month, where I discovered that ... Dean Koontz has a sense of humor! This book is still suspenseful, but somehow the humor saved it from being creepy or gruesome to me (I won't vouch for your experience, however.)

( Cut for spoiler )

7. A Sweet and Bitter Providence, John Piper

First time I've ever read Piper. I liked it! He has a pleasant way of writing, and of course it didn't hurt that the book of Ruth is one of my favorites.

Books from The Pile: one.

Last night I brought home from the library the book Buying In: the secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are by Rob Walker. Perfect weekend reading, I thought. I love the intricacies of branding and marketing and why people buy what they do and how we are influenced without even realizing it. I couldn't wait to start reading.

Except when I read the opening chapter about an advertising stunt by Red Bull, it sounded awfully familiar. So I flipped ahead and ... hm, the chapter about Etsy, I'd read that somewhere too. And the discussion about Pabst beer? Definitely familiar.

I didn't recognize the cover, though, and I certainly didn't remember reading the book before. Maybe I heard the author interviewed somewhere, or read excerpts online.

Then I checked back in my reading log, and saw that I'd read Buying In last November. *headdesk*

So I think you should read it. It's so good I almost read it twice.

Current Mood: cheerful

Because I opened the book and saw these words:

"Hello, Chief of Staff, er, Bill. Hello, James." M said, smiling broadly at the two men. She was glowing with happiness. Bond immediately confirmed his earlier suspicion. M was in love.

"Good evening, ma'am," he said.

"Oh please, we're not at the office. Call me Barbara," M said.

UGH UGH UGH BLASPHEMY.

Also, I stopped reading We Bought a Zoo as soon as I realized the guy's wife was going to die of a brain tumor.

This will leave me more time to finish The United States of Arugula before the end of the month, because I'd dearly love to have it make April's booklist - I want to talk about it.

And yesterday morning I read Psalm 107, which is very beautiful with its refrain of give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love, and his wonderful deeds for men.

This quote nicely expands on my life motto, 'live joyfully' - or at least how I view it.

I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.

— Shauna Niequist in Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life

At last, those bookshelf pictures I promised

kiwiria!

1) Almost everything is doublestacked, so you're only seeing half of what I have
2) I think if you click enough times on each picture, you'll get to a full-sized version where you can actually read the titles. (Perhaps opening it in a new window helps?)

( Lots of books beneath the cut )

London, 1940, during the Blitz; a group of men return to an underground bomb shelter to report on the damage.

Then one woman looked directly at her husband. "Is our place gone?"

"I'm afraid so, girl," he said. "There isn't much left up there. But we're alive. We're all lucky to be alive. We'd have been dead if we'd stayed up above."

"Oh, what a mercy we didn't!" she exclaimed. "How lucky we are!"

Incredible though it sounds, within a few moments, a whole lot of people were congratulating each other on their extraordinary good fortune in only having lost all their worldy posessions.

Safe Passage, by Ida Cook

This was a book worth reading.

Tonight is the night of Random. I have been eating random food and reading and writing random emails (*waves to

ransomedsea *) and randomly cracking up about random stuff (like a random story involving a random man and six McDonald's hamburgers [*waves at

kiwiria *])

Speaking of

kiwiria , I have these three things to say:

1. She is made of awesome
2. Lately I seem to always mistype her name on the first go 'round as wikiria, probably because I have been playing with our work wiki for weeks on end, and
3. Whenever I go to my userinfo to find her among my friends, I always look for her in the list of "Ljers I've met" even though CLEARLY I've never been to Denmark.

There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road.

I will never read the book The Underneath because it contains (perhaps starts with?) the above sentence, which I somehow find too sad to be born.

/ random

I was reading the American Libraries magazine and saw a blip of discussion about a new genre - the "post 9/11" novel. They were predicting that a capstone work will emerge soon and essentially kill the genre, much like The Road's affect on post-apocalyptic fiction, not that I've noticed a dearth of post-apocalyptic novels and anyway I thought The Road was Horrible with a capital H, but that's another topic for another day.

So - have you read any post-9/11 fiction? I know of quite a few books that would qualify, but I don't think I've read any. I don't think I'd really care to. It hits a little too close to home and I prefer my fiction further removed from life.

Current Mood: lonely

I stole this list from

kiwiria . :)

I've bolded the ones I've read, ~~struckthrough~~ the ones I didn't like, and italizised ones know I would like to read .

What I want to know, though, is what is the list and who draws it up? And why did so many Picoult books get on it? *confusion*

( the list )

Current Mood: curious

Let's talk about books, because let me tell you, the best therapy I know among booklovers is a good bookish discussion. (I wandered around town during lunch trying to get my mind off something and ended up at the bookstore, comparing reader's advisory notes with the men who work there. Bliss!)

So here are some bookish questions that I found somewhere quite awhile ago (at

kiwiria 's journal? maybe?). Feel free to chime in or answer the questions yourself!

1. Do you remember how you developed a love for reading? I don't remember not being able to read, so ... no, I guess not. Our home was full of books, my parents read to me, I observed them reading for pleasure. I'm sure all of those things helped.

2. What are some books you read as a child? The very first thing I can remember is probably Amelia Bedelia, but I soon moved on to Nancy Drew, A. A. Milne, Janette Oke, Laura Ingalls Wilder ... a lot of the classic children's books I didn't discover until I was in my teens, though, like The Hobbit, Anne of Green Gables, Roald Dahl, and E. Nesbit.

3. What is your favorite genre? I don't have one. Seriously. I read just about everything.

4. Do you have a favorite novel? Going purely by number of times read, I'm pretty sure Gone with the Wind would win, I've read it at least eight, possibly ten times. Lord of the Rings would come next; I think I've read each volume about six times.

5. Where do you usually read? In bed!

6. When do you usually read? During breakfast, during lunch, during dinner (assuming I'm eating alone), while on the elliptical at the gym, while waiting in line anywhere, and I usually read for about an hour before bed.

7. Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time? Er. Yes. At least four and as many as seven or eight.

8. Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction? How would you read nonfiction in a different way? You mean, like, backwards? or while standing on your head? The only way in which I read books differently is that I usually choose lighter fare to read in public (at the gym or the airport, say) because I like to people watch and it's harder to read a book on a Deep and Weighty Topic when you're looking up every twenty seconds to wonder about a stranger's life story or WHAT THE HECK WAS SHE THINKING WHEN SHE GOT DRESSED THIS MORNING, HEY?

9. Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library? I work in a library, ergo I read a lot of library books. But I'm a book horder, so I if I really like a book, chances are high that I'll do my best to obtain my own copy.

10. Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them? I keep most of them, but sometimes I accidentally buy duplicates. I give them away or put them on paperbackswap.com

11. If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child? No kids, but I have lots of plans if I ever have any. :D We're going to definitely start off with lots of Mo Williams!

12. What are you reading now? Hollywood Irish (interviews with Irish actors), Doing Our Own Thing (I have such a huge academic crush on John McWhorter), The Luxe (all I can say now is that it had potential to be a Wharton-esque teen novel), and Buying In (about brands and consumerism).

13. Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list? That would be at Goodreads.

14. What's next? See the Goodreads list.

15. What books would you like to reread? I wish I had more time to reread. I used to a lot more - I'd read Lord of the Rings and the Anne of Green Gables series at least once a year, and there was that time when I spent almost a year chain-reading Gone with the Wind. *cough* Anything that I've really enjoyed, I'd enjoy reading again.

16. Who are your favorite authors? C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, Tolkien, Douglas Adams, Diana Gabaldon, Terry Pratchett, David Hackett Fischer, um ... lots more.

Current Mood: tired

Also, I would like to log a complaint. My copy of Breaking Dawn is still in Kansas City, when it should be here, being read by me.

Oh Amazon, how thou hast failed me.

Current Mood: cranky

Okay,

equuschick: I finished My Name is Asher Lev about five minutes ago. Discuss away!

(I keep comparing authors to Amy Tan, but I'll say it anyway: I think Chaim Potok is the Amy Tan of Brooklyn Jews.)

I should note that inferior to The Doomsday Book as it was, after reading The Plague Tales I found myself absent-mindedly fingering my neck, searching for swellings.

(I woke up at 6:30 and had to spend fifteen minutes figuring out a) what day is it, and b) do I have to go to work; the day began a strong upward trend when I realized that the answers were a) Saturday, and b) no.)

On the agenda for today:

- send off rest of family for a day spent at the Pea Ridge civil war battle site, leaving me here all by my lonesome, oh no, what shall I do, the horror, etc.
- wash car
- wrap Christmas presents
- eat bacon
- try out some of the 40-odd new beauty products I was gifted with last night
- finish transfering the notes from ruthette's copy of Beowulf into mine (Ah, Seamus Heaney, thank you for being our consolation when we hear of the abomination that is movie-Beowulf)
- curl up and read, read, read (These Old Shades, for one, what glory!)
- make a pot of coffee and drink alternating cups of coffee-with-gingerbread-flavored-creamer and coffee-with-peppermint-flavored-creamer

-
So this is the secret of feeling productive: getting up early enough to make from-scratch baked goods on a morning I have to be out of the house by 7:30. And mmm, it surely does smell delicious.
-
I own Heaney's Beowulf!!! It came in the mail yesterday. Now I just wish I had all of

ruthette's notes; I'm tempted to ask you to send it back someday so I could copy them over, Ruth. *grin*
-
These days I do most of my reading over meals or bedtime snacks. It's ironic, then, that the two books I'm reading the most are Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and the Omnivore's Dilemma, neither of which are particularly suited to reading-over-food.
-

Considering that I only 'discovered' Terry Pratchett a few years ago, I feel rather smug that my collection of his works now numbers thirty.

Sometimes I just sit and stare at them. They make me happy. :)

There are a number of opening lines that have sunk into my memory:

* It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

* "When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

* "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

* Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy.

* There was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself - not just sometimes, but always.

* Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.

* My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes.

But there is only one last line that I remember:

* The joy of the children was in his voice.

What lines do you remember?

Have finished reading Bridget Jones's Diary. Am tempted to begin blogging in BJ style. V. bad, as have always said have no writing style of own, but merely absorb that of recently read books.

I am really enjoying Paperback Swap! I've been using it for several months now. It's so easy: you get three credits automatically just for signing up and listing at least nine paperback books, and then each time someone requests one of your books and you send it to them, you get another credit. Each credit then allows you to choose a book from some other member. It's a cheap and mostly easy way to get my hands on books I've wanted for a long time or need to finish out a series. I'm having so much fun. :)

During lunch I bought a $70 dress for $10. As I told Hannah, it is tres cute. It needs a little *cough* modification, however. Easily done, easily done.

Tomorrow after work I'm going to go hang out at the coffee shop by my lonesome and look really chic curled up on the leather sofa with my books and iced caremel latte. Yes. I need this.

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Joie de vivre

i thank you God for most this amazing day

Entries tagged with books

August Booklist

May reading list

Disappointment: I has it.

Why I decided not to read The Facts of Death, by Raymond Benson, "a new Bond adventure."

I wish I had written this. Except for the tomato part.

Especially for kiwiria

Perspective

(what else?) Random

Year of the Book: post 9/11 fiction

Whitcoulls Top 100 for 2008

Book talk

ALSO

My Name is Asher Lev

Addendum

I have a suspicion that today is going to be a very, very good day.

(no subject)

My Pratchett shelf, it overflows

The First and the Last

weight: 104.5, alcohol units: 0, cigarettes: 0 (v.g), calories (will start counting tomorrow)

/I thought I'd pegged you an idiot's dream/