Monday, May 19, 2008

Raved-About Reads Challenge


MizB (also known as Jenn) over at The Book Zone has created this new challenge. It starts on June 31, 2008 and will be perpetual.

This is how MizB explains the challenge:

The challenge is to create (and read) a list of books you’ve always heard people rave about and thought you should read yourself…but always put off reading “until later”.

*You can choose books that you’ve recently heard of IF a bunch of people are raving about how good they are and how everyone should read them.

* Your list has to have at least 3 books on it. Of course, you can make it much longer than just 3 books. But, you could also just read 3. That’s up to you.

* Yes, your list of books can overlap with other challenges.

* There are no limitations on genre… books can be fiction, nonfiction, religious, secular, etc.

* Audiobooks and E-books are allowed

* Your list can change at any time, but the books you add still have to be “raved about” reads

((There may, or may not, be more rules coming. Stay tuned!))

Since I have so many book loving friends, I am contantly hearing rave reviews of books and add them to my giant TBR, so this is a great challenge for me.

Here's my started list, but I am sure I will be adding more in the future:

'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini
'The Birth House' by Ami Mckay
' My Sister's Keeper' by Jodi Picoult
' Searching for the Secret River' by Kate Grenville
'Empress of Asia' by Adam Lewis Schroeder
'Bee Season' by Myla Goldberg
'The Horseman's Graves' by Jacqueline Baker
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein


Posted by Teddy Rose at 4:23 PM 5 comments  

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Chloe Anne: Force of Nature by Valerie Oblath





Fun Cat Memoir for Cat Lovers


This is Chloe Anne’s memoir, written for her by her mother Valerie Oblath.

Poor Chloe Anne, her family is moving and gave her to the Humane Society. She lives in a little cage until her new mom and author, Valerie Oblath adopts her. Chloe Anne loves her new home and cat sister, Cinders. Her new mother is very good and patient with her. Chloe Anne shares with us insights into her new family and her escapades.

This is a fun and entertaining romp with a real-life cat. However, since Chloe Anne lives with a Jewish mother, there is one chapter that makes a lot of references to Jewish Holidays and some of the customs. Some readers, who do not know much about these, may not get a few of the references. None the less, this is a great book for most cat lovers.

4/5

Thanks to Three C's Publishing for an advance copy of this book!

Note to my fellow bloggers who also reviewed this book: If you would like me to link your review at the bottom of my review, please leave a comment with the link to your review.


Posted by Teddy Rose at 5:41 PM 6 comments  

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury




Feels Like a Real-Life Thriller




In a futuristic society when firefighters don’t put out fires anymore. Their job now it to create fires. When an alarm is called in, firemen gear up as they use to and speed to the scene, a house with forbidden books in it. All the books are gathered up and hosed down with not water, but kerosene, then set a blaze. Montag is one of those firemen.

This is a time when in most homes, the walls in the living room aren’t walls, their giant screen televisions. The shows on mostly comprise of nonsensical bickering, for entertainment. People are not concerned about any issues, except forbidden books. Ignorance is bliss.

When Montag meets Clarrise, a 17-year-old girl, at first she annoys him. She likes to ask a lot of questions and notices things that most people just don’t notice or even care about. However, as he gets to know her better, he starts to question things himself. A question that he has is a very dangerous question: why are books so dangerous that we have to burn them? What’s in them? As he pursues this question, he gets in trouble.

This book was first published in 1951. I found this it quite frightening because there are some countries that seemed to have arrived to this in our world, and others seem to be heading towards it. In the West, people turn on their televisions and watch sitcoms much more then crack open a book. When most people ask me what I like to watch on TV, I respond that I only watch a couple things, mostly on PBS. I mostly read books, they look at me like am strange and proceed to name off all the shows that they watch.

4/5

Also Reviewed By:

Chris at book-a-rama

Nymeth at things mean a lot

Susan at You Can Never Have Too Many Books

Tanabata at In Spring it is the Dawn

If you've reviewed this book, please leave a link in the comments.


Posted by Teddy Rose at 4:57 PM 11 comments  

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Weekly Geeks 3

This week’s theme comes from Samantha, who suggested that one week we all write about our fond memories of childhood books.


There were several different ways suggested to do this. I chose to re-read a childhood favorite and write about it.


I was the youngest of 4 children in my family. My siblings were all quite a bit older than me. I use to drive them crazy asking them to read the same book over and over to me. I must have been around 3 or 4 years old at the time. To tell the truth, I remembered the tile of this book, but I couldn't remember what it was about. LOL! I believe I had it memorized back then.


The book is Stone Soup:












While I was searching for a copy the other day at the library, I found out that is an old French Folk Tale. It has been re-written and illistrated by many different authors. The one I chose was written and illistrated by Marcia Brown.



It only took me a few minutes to read, it about three hungry soldiers who come across a village and ask the villagers if they could spare any food. The three soldiers say that they will have to make stone soup. This of course peaks the villagers curiosity. While the soldier make the soup, they con the villagers into giving them food for the soup.



It was a cute little story, and I can see how a young child would like it. It says it's for ages 4-8, but I think that the oldest child it would appeal to these days, would be perhaps 5.


My rating: 4/5

Posted by Teddy Rose at 7:32 PM 6 comments  

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Friday, May 9, 2008

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan



Wonderful Southern Fiction

In 1939, at 31 years old, spinster, Laura meets Henry McAllen. After a bit of dating, they get married and start a family. Henry works for the Army Corps of Engineers, they’re in the city. This is great, because Laura is a city woman through and through.

One day Henry comes home with news, he has bought a farm in the Mississippi Delta and is quitting he job to farm. Of course this is quite a blow to Laura, Henry didn’t even consult her. The farmhouse has none of the conveniences that city folk take for granted such as running water, plumbing, electricity, etc. However, Henry is her husband, so Laura goes along with it.

After WWII Henry’s brother Jamie shows up at the farm. At the same time Ronsel Jackson returns home as decorated solder. He is the son of the black sharecroppers’ family living on the farm.

Ronsel and Jamie become friends, which is very risky in the Jim Crow south. This unlikely friendship is what brings this powerful novel to its grim conclusion.

Mudbound is told by each of the character’s own point of view. This technique works very well for this novel. Jordon was able to write each characters point of view so well, that it felt as if I was each character. She really enables the reader to get in side the heads of the characters.

Jordan’s prose sings! She makes the farm a kind of character itself and captures both its beauty and muddy short falls, exquisitely!

I highly recommend this book and can hardly wait for Hillary Jordan to write another novel!
5/5

Thanks to Harper Collins for an advance copy of this wonderful book!

Also Reviewed by:

everything distils into reading

Posted by Teddy Rose at 7:51 PM 11 comments  

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Wednesday, May 7, 2008

BFF Award

Christina from Book-a-rama gave me this award.

This is so cool but I was wondering how much free credit I get on this credit card and how I cash it in? Must be at least $5000, right? LOL!

All kidding aside, I would like to thank Christina for this honour! If you haven't been to her blog, it is worth the stop, she is an excellent blogger and I love visiting her blog. As a move novice blogger, I have learned a lot from her!

I would like to pass this award on to others, whose blogs I love:

Marg at Reading Adventures

Tanabata at In Spring It is the Dawn

BookFool at Bookfoolery and Babble

Posted by Teddy Rose at 7:54 PM 6 comments  

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Sunday, May 4, 2008

Weekly Geeks #2 and My New Policy Open to All My Fellow Bloggers




This is how Dewey explained this week's Weekly Geeks:
The theme for Week 2 is something I borrowed (yes, she said it was ok!) from Darla at Books and Other Thoughts. She says in her sidebar that if she reviews a book that you’ve reviewed, you can email her and she’ll link to it in her review. I love this idea for three reasons.

1. As a blog reader, I like that I can have my review linked in someone else’s blog.

2. As a blog reader, I like that if I’m interested in a book Darla writes about, there will be other reviews linked at the bottom of the page, so I can get other viewpoints. You can see how this works
here.

3. As a blog writer, when I review a book, I often remember that I read someone else’s review at some point, but whose? And when? With Darla’s method, people tell her about their reviews, and she can see what they had to say about a book that is still fresh in her mind.

So here’s your challenge! If you’re willing, adopt Darla’s policy in your own blog. I realize this is a big commitment, so think it over first, but I think it can be really community-building.

1. Write a blog post as soon as possible telling your readers that you’re adopting Darla’s policy.

2. As much as you can with the time available to you during the week, visit other Weekly Geeks who are adopting Darla’s policy and see if you have any reviews of books they’ve reviewed.

3. Later in the week (by Thursday is easiest for me, but by Friday is also ok) write about your experience this week: did people take you up on your offer, did you find reviews you could give to other bloggers, did you enjoy the experience, do you think you want to keep this policy, etc.

4. I would remind people for a while, at the end of your reviews, that you’re doing this. After a while, your regular readers will remember your new policy, but you might want to state it somewhere permanent for new readers.

Attention Fellow Bloggers:

I love Darla's policy and am adopting it for my blog too. Therefore, if you also wrote a review on your blog for the same book I reviewed on my blog, please leave a link to your review in the comments section on my blog for the applicable book. I will add the link to the end of the applicable book review I have written. (this is retroactive, so will also include all previous reviews I have posted on this blog.)

I will also be updating this post at the end of the week to let you know how I like or dis-like this new policy. I reserve the right to cancel it at any time.

May 7, 2008 Update:

Hooray, I finally figured out how to use labels! To find out if I reviewed any of the same books that you did, scroll down to the bottom right hand side of my blog and look in Labels. That should make it much easier. Then, as before, just leave your links to your reviews in my comments here.

May 9th Update:
Summary of my experience with Weekly Geeks #2:

This weeks challenge seemed like a big scavenger hunt to me. I visited every Weekly Geeks # 2 participant's blog and tried to find reviews of books that I also reviewed.

It was time consuming, but worth while. I not only found some reviews of some books that I also review, but in the process also found more incredible blogs! I really like linking reviews, I think it gives my readers more opinions of the same book to help them decide if a particular book is for them or not.

Thanks for this awesome challenge!

Posted by Teddy Rose at 3:38 PM 13 comments  

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Mini-Challenge 2008

This challenge was created by Wendy.

To see the complete details for this challenge, please see my side-bar or visit Wendy.

Mini-Challenge #6 was to Read two (2) articles from any one magazine - tell us about them.

1. In Time Magazine's issue dated April 21, 2008, The was an article about Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, titled 'A Mother's Story'.

She was born in 1942, just 5 years before Hilary Clinton was born. Her father wanted a boy and that's why her parents named her Stanley, however after enduring years of teasing, after high school, she used her middle name Ann.

She attened the University of Hawaii, where she met het first husband, Barack Obama Sr. Not long after they were married, he went back to his home country, Kenya and Ann did not follow. She filed for divorce in January 1964.

After Barack turned two, Ann returned to college where she got her bachelor's degree, which wasn't easy for a single mother on food stamps. But, she had the assistance of her parents to help raise Barack.

Back in school she met her second husband Lolo Soetro. Mother and son moved to Lolo's home country of Indonesia. There was no electricity or running water and inflation was at 600%. Barack attended a Catholic school there and Ann taught English in the U.S. Embassy. She also had a daughter, Soetoro Ng.

When Obama was 10, she sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents where he attend an elite prep school that he's received a scholarship for. It was important to Ann that Barack get a strong education. A year later Ann returned to Hawaii and wnet back to school, where she received her Master's degree in anthropology.

In 1980 she filed for divorce. Three years later, when Barock was 14, she went back to Indonesia to do field work for her Ph.D. Barack of his own choice, remained in Hawaii. She completed her Ph.D in 1992.

Due to Ann's professional work, she left a last legacy of helping to build a microfinance program in Indonesia. She died of ovarian and uterine cancer on November 7, 1995.

2. The second article I read was titled 'The Epic Man' and was about Charlton Heston, who died on April 5th at the age of 84. As a movie star I believe he was a great, however as the President of the National Rifle Association, I was and am still totally opposed.

Mini-Challenge #12 was to Participate in a group or buddy read and discussion (this can be either a face to face book club, an on line group, or a blog/buddy read). Tell the group what you read and with whom; give us a review.

For this challenge, I read and discussed Hawaii by James A. Michener with my Classics Book Club. If you haven't already read my review, you can read it here.

Posted by Teddy Rose at 1:43 PM 2 comments  

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Saturday, May 3, 2008

6 Random Things About Me Meme


Bookfool tagged me for this meme. She also created the wonderful image above!

6 Random Things About Me:

1. I am addicted, and way out of control, to books! I'm sure you had no clue about this, LOL!

2. I am also addicted to international film.

3. I love Bruce Springsteen and Bono from U2!

4. I am deeply in love with my husband Bill and we will be celebrating our 13 year anniversary in June! (He knows about Bruce and Bono and he's okay with it, LOL!)

5. I have a lot of trouble saying "no" to publishers who offer me historical fiction ARCs. (See # 1)

6. I am also addicted to blogging!
I'm not going to tag anyone specifically for this meme, because it has been going around for quite awhile. This is round 2 for me. If you would like to participate in the meme, consider yourself tagged!

Posted by Teddy Rose at 11:22 PM 4 comments  

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Elizabeth Gaskell Mini-Challenge 08

Now through November 15, 2008
Becky at Becky's Book Reviews set up this challenge.

Here's how it works:
Read and/or watch TWO works by Elizabeth Gaskell. For example: Watching two moviesReading two booksReading one book; watching one movieYou can always read (or watch) more. But two is the minimum. I don't know that this has ever come up, but you CAN count abridged versions of the novels. You CAN also count audio books.

This is perfect timing, because Masterpiece Theater on PBS is broadcasting the mini series 'CRANFORD' starting tomorrow night (Sunday). It is based on three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell.





Posted by Teddy Rose at 10:29 PM 5 comments  

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