She Is Too Fond Of Books ... » Friday Finds

Friday Finds: March 6, 2009

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:27:45 +0000

Friday Finds is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. This is a round-up of the books that caught my eye and were added to my wish list over the past week.

I added A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg after reading a review and recipe for “Banana Bread with Chocolate and Crystallized Ginger” on Shelf-Awareness (March 3). In her review, Marilyn Dahl says:

What a treat! Molly Wizenberg writes like a dream. She’s funny. She has moving stories about family, friends and life that flow and are never forced. She has a wonderful blog, Orangette, which you’ll want to bookmark. The recipes are terrific. The cover is pretty.

Sounds like a book I could sink my teeth into

I got an email from Chris Tusa asking if I was interested in reviewing his debut novel, Dirty Little Angels. Unfortunately, the review copy is an e-book, and I don’t “do” e-books!

I did visit his blog to learn more, and I got pulled in with the description and first chapter. Click here to read it yourself.

Friday Finds: January 23, 2009

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 13:49:27 +0000

Friday Finds is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should be Reading. Click on over to her blog to read what others have found this week.

My first discovery: from this review at S. Krishna’s Books I found Conscience Point by Erica Abeel. This “modern-day Gothic mystery” will be published by Unbridled Books in May. Another reason to look forward to spring!

Jennie Nash’s The Only Genius in the Family came to my from two bloggers’ Teaser Tuesdays. One was Avis at She Reads and Reads; the other was ??? I don’t remember! The mystery Teaser quoted something about “she poured herself another glass of wine in response.” This quote and Avis’ (the opening lines of the novel) have me adding The Only True Genius in the Family to my wish list. If you posted the mystery Teaser, please let me know so I can credit you with the ever-growing wish list!

update 2/2/09: Thanks to Avis, we’ve identified the mystery blogger. It’s Dar from Peeking Between the Pages, here’s her Teaser with the quote.

What’s been added to your wish list this week?

Friday Finds: January 9, 2009

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:30:20 +0000

Friday Finds is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should be Reading.

I’ve seen ads for the film The Reader based on the book of the same name by Bernhard Schlink; I thought, “I’ll have to read the book before I see the movie,” which generally means that I’ll end up renting the DVD months down the road. Then I read this review over at My Friend Amy’s and knew I had to add the book to my wish list right away … then to my TBR stack … then to my nightstand! Maybe I’ll see the film on the big screen after all, instead of Netflix. Another bonus – it will fit nicely into the War Through the Generations Challenge.

Jill at Breaking the Spine had a Booking Through Thursday post with her list of “the best” books of 2008. Since I agree with her choices of Tomato Girl and Olive Kitteridge, and Loving Frank is waiting for me on the bookcase … I’m adding her other two picks, which are:

Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee, which just came out in paperback, and …

The Distance Between Us by Bart Yates

What books were added to your wish list this week?

Friday Finds: January 2, 2009 (yes, 2009!)

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:17:41 +0000

Friday Finds is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should be Reading. Click over there to read more about books that have tempted people this week.

I became interested in Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves after I read this review at Kittling: Books. The book was published in 1994, and I haven’t been able to find it to buy at any of my usual haunts; I’ll be looking at the library for this one!

Illustrated with rare photos, this strong book provides a touching insight into the lives of the ladies of the night.

This speaks directly to my interests – I was a history major (social history, not military history), and this sounds like a fascinating case study of a sector that doesn’t get much exposure (sorry, no pun intended!)

What books grabbed your attention this week?

Friday Finds: December 19, 2008

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:58:07 +0000

Friday Finds is a peek at what books have caught my eye this week; it’s a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should be Reading. I’ve added both of these to my wish list:

Hitler and Mars Bars, written by Dianne Ascroft, has popped up on several blogs in the past few weeks. I added it to my Friday Finds after reading this review and interview at Fyrefly’s Book Blog and at Wendi’s Book Corner

I read a review of One Red Paperclip at Betty’s Books. The memoir, by Kyle MacDonald, chronicles how he started with a red paperclip, and kept trading up until he traded for a house (really!). I had heard this story a few years ago, but didn’t know he had written an inspirational book about his experience. Yep, that’s the cover, plain and simple!

What books caught your interest this week?

Friday Finds: December 12, 2008

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:53:53 +0000

Friday Finds is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Here’s where you can find a list of books that caught my eye as I read the blogs, newspaper reviews, and … talked to strangers:

The Paper Bag Christmas by Kevin Alan Milne; read some great reviews at Booking Mama and BermudaOnion.

The Little Book by Selden Edwards. While waiting for Gregory Maguire’s event, I was chatting with the man next to me (yes, I strike up conversations with strangers. I got that from my mother. Hi Mom!). He said this was one of his favorite books this year.

We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver; there was an online book club this week over at Gayle’s Everyday I Write the Book Blog. Gayle calls it “one of most intense, disturbing, well-written, and deeply affecting books I have ever read.”

What books came into your radar this week? Have you read any of these three I listed?

Friday Finds: November 28, 2008

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:13:17 +0000

It feels like I was just sitting here writing last week’s Friday Finds (well, not here exactly, since we’re in NJ for the Thanksgiving weekend and here is at my sister-in-law’s kitchen island; herelast week was home at the desk in my kitchen) … anyway, the week has really flown by, with Thanksgiving preparations and our fun pre-holiday events at the kids’ schools.

Well, here is a snapshot of my week in new books:

I was so excited to win the three volumes of The Paris Review Interviews from the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC). Their blog, Critical Mass, ran a contest and I was the first to correctly identify an excerpt of an interview with Joyce Carol Oates. Picador has just published the third volume (pictured here); they are a delight to read.

I’ll be reading The Islands of Divine Music(John Addiego) for a blog tour with Unbridled Books in December. Like all the Unbridled Books I’ve seen, this book has a cover that is so inviting; this one looks a little quirky and whimsical, just what I’m in the mood for!

What books came across your path this week?

Friday Finds: November 21, 2008

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:48:37 +0000

Here we go, time to round up the books that have crossed our paths this week! I have a few new and interesting books to review, as well as a couple that friends have lent me just for fun:

I’ll be reviewing Julie Gabriel’s The Green Beauty Guide for her TLC Book Tour on December 4. The book promises “shortcuts to going green without going broke” and “how to spot organic frauds and gimmicks.” I have very sensitive skin and always use products that cater to this; I’m also looking for a solution to very dry skin, which plagues me especially in the winter. Anyone else out there suffer from cracks on the tips of your fingers during these dry cold months?

Not a book for kids, Santa Responds (penned by Santa himself!) is a collection of letters to Santa, with his frank, no-holds-barred, tough love (and tough luck!) responses. I’ve read a few of the entries, and think this is a good book for the curmudgeons on your list. The cover pic shows Santa smoking a cigar, with a glass of scotch in his hands!

Amy Dickinson’s The Mighty Queens of Freeville is a memoir of “a mother, a daughter, and the people who raised them.” I love personal memoir, and I think this will be a good one! It isn’t out until February, so look for my review after the new year.

Two books I got were lent from friends: my niece sent me Marisa de los Santos’ Love Walked In (thanks, Nicole!), and my girlfriend Donna lent Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife to me. Here’s a question for you, how do you keep books you’ve borrowed from getting “lost” in the TBR stack? Do you put them to the top of the pile so it’s Last In, First Out (so you can get that book back to its owner and rid yourself of the responsibility of caring for it?), do you get to it “whenever”? I put a large bookmark with Nicole’s name and the date she lent it to me … she doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to have it back, I’ll take good care of it while it’s here, and it has ID so it I know who it really belongs to … Is my Type A personality coming through loud and clear?

Friday Finds: November 14, 2008

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:21:28 +0000

We had firefighters come to the house this week, instead of UPS! My book intake was low, but there’s something to be said for that old adage “slow and steady wins the race;” I’m racing against myself to shorten my TBR stack!

Bloomsbury USA sent me this gorgeous hardcover of Vivian Swift’s When Wanderers Cease to Roam. It’s full of whimsical drawings and watercolors, notes and observations on a year spent … at home! Here’s the product description:

A charming, illustrated celebration of puttering, doodling, daydreaming, and settling down after years on the road.

Following a lifetime of trekking across the globe, Vivian Swift racked up twenty-three temporary addresses in twenty years, finally dropped her well-worn futon mattress and rucksack in a small town on the edge of the Long Island Sound. She spent the next decade quietly taking stock of her life, her immediate surroundings, and, finally, what it means to call a place a home.

The result is When Wanderers Cease to Roam. Filled with watercolors of beautiful local landscapes, seasonal activities, and small, overlooked pleasures of easy living, each chapter chronicles, month by month, the beautifully mundane perks of remaining at home—from curious notices in the local paper to the variations of autumnal clouds. At once gorgeously rendered and wholly original, this delightful and masterfully observed year of staying put shows us how the details of travel and the details of our lives remain with us—how they can nurture and sustain us, and how the past and the present become, in the end, intertwined.

I underlined a few parts of that description because I can tell, even without yet reading the book cover-to-cover, that this will be a great “stop and smell the roses” reminder.

OK, I’m off to make hot chocolate for my kids now; it’s a cold raw day here, and making hot chocolate is one of those beautifully mundane perks of remaining at home (“not very exciting” as Eric Carle’s The Mixed-Up Chameleon would say) … but I know they’ll enjoy it! Maybe I’ll put that in my book one day

Friday Finds: November 7, 2008

sheistoofondofbooks — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:52:37 +0000

I’m happy to see Friday rolling around this week! That nasty conjunctivitis/virus that has been working its way through my house the past two weeks finally hit me Four family members down, two to go … although I’m hoping my husband and LW12 will be spared! I wasn’t able to get out for the dinner/discussion of The Scarlet Letter with my TriCon book group last night, but I’m really happy I re-read this classic (which I wouldn’t have done if it weren’t the book group pick). I think we’re reading The Book Thief next month, which has been on my radar for a while. Here are my Friday Finds for the week:

Safe Suicidewas sent to me by the author, DeWitt Henry. DeWitt saw my review of Revolutionary Road and offered me his collection of linked biographical essays, which include stories of his friendship with Richard Yates:

Against a background of suburban Philadelphia in the 1950s, and the family secret of his father’s alcoholism, Henry comes of age as the youngest of four children. He rejects his father’s course in managing the family chocolate factory for a third generation, and goes on to college, then to graduate school in the 1960s, becoming a writer and teacher. When Henry marries, and becomes a father himself, he is impacted by the social revolutions of the 1970s, and struggles to avoid his father’s flaws. He leads a literary life in Boston, founds the literary magazine PLOUGHSHARES, teaches writing and literature, and befriends novelist Richard Yates. During 1980s, Henry suffers the deaths of his parents, infertility, rejections of his work, and setbacks in his teaching career. In the 1990s, while his daughter and adopted son are swept up into trials of adolescence and young adulthood, and as his wife grieves the deaths of friends and family, Henry confronts a spiritual abyss similar to his father’s, and learns to surrender to life, to love, to aging and mortality.

I got a nice surprise – I won a copy of Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran (Azadeh Moaveni) from a drawing at the Random House Reader’s Circle website. I opened up the book to see a note from the editor, none other than David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife! (my review is here). That reminded me that I have interview questions to submit to David; I’ll get that done today. In the meantime, more about Honeymoon in Tehran, which will be published in February:

Both a love story and a reporter’s first draft of history, Honeymoon in Tehran is a stirring, trenchant, and deeply personal chronicle of two years in the maelstrom of Iranian life.

In 2005, Azadeh Moaveni, longtime Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, returns to Iran to cover the rise of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As she documents the firebrand leader’s troublesome entry onto the world stage, Moaveni richly portrays a society too often caricatured as the heartland of militant Islam. Living and working in Tehran, she finds a nation that openly yearns for freedom and contact with the West, but whose economic grievances and nationalist spirit find a temporary outlet in Ahmadinejad’s strident pronouncements. Mingling with underground musicians, race car drivers, young radicals, and scholars, she explores the cultural identity crisis and class frustration that pits Iran’s next generation against the Islamic system.

And then the unexpected happens: Azadeh falls in love with a young Iranian man and decides to get married and start a family in Tehran. Suddenly, she finds herself navigating an altogether different side of Iranian life. Preparing to be wed by a mullah, she sits in on a government marriage prep class where young couples are instructed to enjoy sex. She visits Tehran’s bridal bazaar and finds that the Iranian wedding has become an outrageously lavish–though often still gender-segregated–production. When she becomes pregnant, she must prepare to give birth in an Iranian hospital, at the same time observing her friends’ struggles with their young children, who must learn to say one thing at home and another at school.

Despite her busy schedule as a wife and mother, Azadeh continues to report for Time on Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West and Iranians’ dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad’s heavy-handed rule. But as women are arrested on the street for “immodest dress” and the authorities unleash a campaign of intimidation against journalists, the country’s dark side reemerges. This fundamentalist turn, along with the chilling presence of “Mr. X,” the government agent assigned to mind her every step, forces Azadeh to make the hard decision that her family’s future lies outside Iran.

Powerful and poignant, fascinating and humorous Honeymoon in Tehran is the harrowing story of a young woman’s tenuous life in a country she thought she could change.

And for a work of fiction, I have Who By Fire, the debut novel by Diana Spechler. I discovered Diana’s book on Book Club Girl, where she’ll be part of the Authors on Air interview series on November 20. Diana wrote a fun post about Book Club Expo here. I’m looking forward to reading Who By Fire:

Bits and Ash were children when the kidnapping of their younger sister, Alena—an incident for which Ash blames himself—caused an irreparable family rift. Thirteen years later, Ash is living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel, cutting himself off from his mother, Ellie, and his wild-child sister, Bits. But soon he may have to face them again; Alena’s remains have finally been uncovered. Now Bits is traveling across the world in a bold and desperate attempt to bring her brother home and salvage what’s left of their family.

Sharp and captivating, Who by Fire deftly explores what happens when people try to rescue one another.

A great week, right? Autobiographical essays, memoir and fiction … everything from soup to nuts!

What books have found their way into your home and into your heart this week?