Bookmark My Heart

I read about this book somewhere. Don’t remember where. But the hook got me. The dog talks. Only to her owner, but she’s really really smart. And funny.

When Paul (the owner) comes in after being gone a few hours, the dog says, “I thought you were dead,” because her memory is so short. Funny stuff.

***SPOILER***
The only problem: I forgot about Rule #1 concerning books with dogs on the cover. The dog ALWAYS dies. Always. Never fails. I hate that. I just bawled and bawled and bawled.

It’s beautifully written. The dog is, of course, the best character in the book. The dad is next. Loved him, too. Fabulous book.

I have a huge pile of library books waiting for me. My favorite part of my job at the library is going through all the new books and deciding which ones to put on the “New Books” shelves and which ones will find their way directly to the regular shelves. Today, I found a few that made their way to my shelves.

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James. She wrote The Secret Diaries of Jane Austen which I enjoyed a while back, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Murder at Longbourn by Tracy Kiely. Okay. I’m only partially sure of what the connection is to Pride and Prejudice. From what I can gather from the jacket copy, a girl named Elizabeth is invited to her Aunt’s bed and breakfast in Cape Cod to one of those host-a-murder things. Hilarity ensues. I hope.

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano. I’ve been wanting to read some of his work since 2666 came out, but I was too chicken to read anything that vast. This is a much slimmer novel. I think I can handle it.

I wish I didn’t have to shop for a new range this weekend so I would have more time to read. Such is life.

My neighbor wrote a book. A real book! And you can be just like me and order it from Amazon.

Click here since something seems to be wrong with my Amazon picture thingy.

I feel like I have been reading this book forever. Perhaps it is just the snail’s pace that my life is moving at right now.

The subtitle is “What to love and what to skip in 50 of literature’s greatest hits”. That pretty much says it all. He takes 50 books that are considered “classic” literature, tells you basically what they’re about and tells you what parts you can skip and still feel like you’ve read the book.

Firstly, this whole thing goes against my personal OCD complex. Skip parts of a book?!! Unheard of.

Secondly, he doesn’t include Les Miserables on the list. There are some pretty obscure “classics” on the list, but not this one? Humph.

Thirdly, well, I forgot what I was thinking of putting for thirdly. I must still be pretty tired.

On the whole, it’s an interesting, funny book. And the chapters are pretty short, so I can concentrate on it in my stupor.

I’m re-reading this right now, and I find myself thinking, “How is it that I forgot how funny Edward and Bella are in the beginning of the book?” And not unintentionally funny, either. They are witty and sarcastic and make me wake up Mike by laughing out loud. How did I forget this?

The big gimmick with this book is that you can read it two ways. You can read it the normal way, which would be start at chapter 1 and read straight through. Or, you can read the hopscotch way. At the front of the book is the list of chapters in a different order that supposedly make a different story. As it turns out, you read the first 56 chapters in their regular order with these other “bonus” chapters interspersed.

The writing is a lot like Hemingway. Since it was written in the 1950s, that makes some sense. Also, it has been translated from the Spanish. Half of it takes place in Paris and half in Buenos Aires. There are lots of bits still in French or Spanish and I am too lazy to plug them into Babelfish to figure out what they said.

Okay, so the plot… There’s this guy – Horacio Oliveira. He is living in Paris with a woman he calls La Maga. He is part of some intellectual club made up of various artists and writers and whatnot living poor in Paris. They get together and drink and philosophize and poor La Maga can’t keep up.

Oliveira is not really a likable guy. He’s self-obsessed and over-occupied with navel gazing.

In the second half, he is in Buenos Aires, but he’s basically the same guy.

I am pretty positive I didn’t get all the little things I was supposed to pick up on in this book. I might read it again one day to see if I catch anything I missed.

I don’t even know where to begin describing this book. The main character is like Indiana Jones only better read and a dinosaur. Yes, you read that right, ladies and gentlemen. A dinosaur. On his adventures he meets some really good people, and some really, really bad people.

One of the best parts of this book is the illustrations! The author has illustrated his book with pen and ink drawings of monsters and bookhunters and books. They are so much fun.

The Orm was definitely flowing when he wrote this.

I read this for the Summer Reading Challenge I wrote about yesterday. It’s part of the 3 centuries task. I read The Book Lover by Ali Smith for the 2000s. This one is from the 1900s. One more from the 1800s and I’ll be all set for that task.

In The Patron Saint of Liars, Rose is waiting for her sign from God about what she is supposed to do with her life. She meets Thomas who says all the right things and clearly loves her very much. After she marries him, she realizes she was wrong. When she finds herself pregnant, she leaves. Just takes the car and disappears. She ends up across the country at a home for unwed mothers.

Ann Patchett writes so beautifully that it’s so easy to just read and read. Everything flows so easily. I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for this book, but it just sucks you in.

I didn’t like Rose very much. She wasn’t very personable. But the other main characters, Son and Cecilia, are really sympathetic. Just trying to deal with Rose.

It wasn’t too “issue-oriented”. I hate that. Yes, it takes place in a home for unwed mothers, but it isn’t preachy or even really about the home too much.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned before that I am on Goodreads.com. My favorite part about the site is the group I joined called The Next Best Book Club. There are tons of threads on there about everything under the sun, book-related and otherwise. There are close to 4000 members, but everyone is really nice, and I’ve come out of my shell a little bit and left some comments.

Anyway, one of the things I’m participating in is the Summer 2009 Reading Challenge. This thing is amazing. Basically, there are a bunch of “tasks” to complete to earn points. They are divided into point categories from 5-50 points. The total points you can earn is 940!

Each task has a theme, mostly. The 25 and 30 point tasks are made up by the winners of last season’s challenge, but the rest of them are created by one woman, who also moderates the challenge and keeps up with everyone’s points. I think that would be a hard job, but so much fun!

Essentially, I looked at my “Mt. To-Be-Read” stack and tried to fit as many of them into the challenge as possible. There’s no way I could read 940 points worth of books, but I can knock out a few of my TBRs.

Anyway, here are a few of my favorite challenges:

For 5 points: “Jerry Garcia – Born August 1, 1942 – Read a Fiction or Non-Fiction book about a musician or band.” I’ll be reading Crued and Tattooed by Vince Neil (big shocker, right?)

“This Day in History – July 27, 1858: First use of fingerprints as a means of identification – Read mystery of crime fiction book.” I’ll read The Black Tower by Louis Bayard.

For 15 points: “Casting Call – Read a book that hasn’t already been made into a movie and post a list of who you would cast if you were making the film.” I think I’m going to read The Reincarnationist by MJ Rose.

“What’s in a Name? – Read 2 books written by 2 different authors who share either a first or last name.” I’ll read A Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg and Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout.

For 30 points: “In celebration of young adult librarians everywhere – Read Three YA books.” I’m not sure about this one, yet, but I have plenty to choose from.

“Pick and read 2 books from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die List” Sweet! I can work on two challenges at once! I’ll read The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Midnight’s Children.

Basically, The Book Lover by Ali Smith is a collection of works and segments of works that Smith liked reading. It is really hard for me to read collections like this. I have to switch gears every few pages to start reading the next selection. It was distracting. There were a few I really liked, but I’m not about to run out and find other work by those authors. This was just too tiring. It took about 10 days to read its 450 pages.

I would have blogged about this book before, but I was having trouble getting to my site.

Anyway, The Elegance of the Hedgehog takes place in a posh Parisian apartment building. One narrator is the middle-aged concierge who is not all she appears to be. The other narrator is a 12 year old resident of the building who is precocious, to say the least. The two strike up an unlikely friendship.

It is translated from the French by Alison Anderson, but I don’t think it loses in the translation. It is wonderful and funny and poetic.

Hey! I’m back. Between vacation and jury duty, I’ve been a bit distracted.

But on vacation I finished a Challenge book!

The Master by Colm Toibin is a novel of Henry James. The main action takes place between 1895 and 1899. But there wasn’t much in the way of real action at that time. Mostly, it was action in the form of flashbacks so that the reader gets a picture of most of James’ life. The writing is beautiful so it isn’t too hard to keep going through the less interesting segments. James would have been the quintessential Englishman (you know, stiff upper lip old chap) if he had happened to have been English. He chose to live in England, but he was born and raised in Boston.

I do intend to read more of Toibin’s books based solely on the beauty of the language in this book.

Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a book of trivia about books and authors, basically. Normally, I’m a huge sucker for that kind of book. My problem with it was the vast quantity of typos! If you’re going to spend that much money to have a book produced in hardcover, wouldn’t you take the time to check that sort of thing? I’m just saying.

Also, there were some fact checking problems. For example, he mentions that the 2005 movie of Pride and Prejudice has made about $121M. Then he says something about women wanting to look at Colin Firth’s nipples through a wet shirt. Oops! Colin Firth was in the 1995 made for TV movie. Things like that made me not entirely trust his other assertions.

View all my reviews.

I finished this on Saturday. Sigh. I laughed all the way through. I had to stop reading funny bits to Mike or he would never bother reading it for himself.

The chapters match up to the original chapters in Pride and Prejudice, so if you’ve never read P&P, you could read one chapter of it, then one chapter of zombies for a fun comparison.

If you are a die-hard Jane Austen purist, this book will only make you angry. If you are tired of reading crappy Austen take-offs, this might be just the book for you. It does get kind of bloody, but the “ultra-violence” in the title might be pushing it. Maybe. Maybe I’m just inured to that sort of thing from all the martial arts movies I’ve watched.

You’d think from the title that this book has something to do with Emma by Jane Austen, but you’d be wrong. This is a manga book about a Victorian ladies’ maid named Emma. I’d show you a picture of it, but Amazon doesn’t seem to know what I’m talking about. And I can’t remember the author’s name. It starts with an M. Anyway, it was a pretty cozy read even if there were elephants.

This is a twist on true crime. It starts with the crime and the trial, etc, but then it goes on to detail the convicted man’s continued quest to prove it wasn’t him. In the OJ Simpson trial, DNA evidence was first used. That same DNA testing was used to prove that Ronald Cotton did not rape Jennifer Thompson 11 years earlier, even though she asserted that is was him. He was exonerated of the crime and went out to try to make a life for himself. Strangely enough, that life includes a deep friendship with Jennifer Thompson.

The book details both sides of the situation. It is thrilling when Ronald walks out of court a free man, but it is equally wonderful, when Jennifer realizes that she needs to speak to him in person to forgive herself for her mistake.

It’s not brilliant literature, but it did keep me up very late reading it.

I love this series. Have I mentioned that before? Well, it’s true.

Guido Brunetti is a Commissario in the Venice police department. The best part about these books is his family, I think. He has a very outspoken wife, Paola, and two teenage children that never cease to entertain.

In this book, Brunetti is visited by a seemingly shady officer from another city who wants information, but isn’t willing to give any help to get it. He wants the name of a guy who might live near a certain canal port and might be involved in a murder in another town. Well gee, that could be anyone. Just when Brunetti starts to figure it out, the officer is murdered.

If it wasn’t for all the murder in these books, they would be cozies. The lovely Venetian settings. The realistic family interactions. I love this series. Did I mention that?

I probably don’t need to tell you I’ve read a LOT of Austen-related books. Prequels, sequels, re-tellings, you name it: I’ve read it. So I feel qualified to give a fair review of this one.

Pemberley Manor is one of the better of the Pride and Prejudice sequels. By itself, it has some problems, but compared to some really bad P&P stuff, it can hold it’s own. Firstly, there’s no gratuitous sex. Normally, I don’t mind gratuitous sex scenes, but when it comes to Elizabeth and Darcy, I don’t think so. Also, the characters mostly hold on to their personalities as put forth by Jane Austen. I hate it when authors write a sequel and suddenly Georgiana is a budding exhibitionist or something. Anyway, that doesn’t go on here.

I will say that Darcy becomes a bit of a drama queen. I guess it’s not a huge jump from brooding to tortured. I just think that the Darcy Austen created would have been more cool-headed and thought things through before he jumped to conclusions. Also, the whole premise of the book is that Darcy’s horrible childhood is tormenting him and making him depressed. Since this was supposed to take place around 1815, I find this hard to believe. Freud didn’t come along for at least 50 years to make us look at our parents to blame them for everything wrong today. In 1815, people would have just said he was an ass without worrying about why. I’m just saying.

On the other hand, I really appreciated the fact that the author didn’t steal directly from Pride and Prejudice while writing her book. Yes, Mrs. Bennet’s nerves were referred to, but she didn’t run around quoting herself from P&P. Anytime a scene from P&P was referred to, it wasn’t blatantly in order to bring up to date the reader who hadn’t previously read P&P. It is assumed if you are reading this one, you’ve already read the original work. I hate it when authors feel they have to rehash the whole stinking book just in case you hadn’t read it.

So there you go. All in all, it was a pretty good book. No one can write like Jane Austen. She was so subtle and witty. I have yet to see anyone write that way. But this book maintains the integrity of the characters while presenting an interesting continuation of the story.

I saw this reviewed on several people’s blogs. Then I held it in my hands several times at the library. Then I decided to bring it home. I took me almost 4 weeks to read it. Not because it wasn’t great, but because I had to read a bunch of other stuff first, and then because I’ve suddenly lost my ability to read more than a page every 5 minutes.

ANYWAY… It was a great book. Mikael Blomkvist is finishing up his trial for libel. He’s a financial journalist who printed an article he couldn’t back up and got sued. He leaves the magazine he’s working for and goes to the boonies to work for the former CEO of the Vanger Corp. Henrik Vanger wants him to write a history of the Vanger family and try to find out who murdered his great-niece almost 40 years before. Before the Henrik Vanger hires him, he has a personal investigation done on him to make sure they can trust him. The person who does the investigation is a 24 year old ward of the state who is thought to be mentally deficient, but is actually brilliant with a computer. She is the eponymous Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Lisbeth Salander (of the dragon tattoo) is my favorite character. She’s independent and feisty and vulnerable and wonderful.