Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

The Best of the Best-ofs

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The January Bookworm Carnival is up over at Reading with Becky. She’s got a very impressive list of people’s varied 2007 Best-of lists. It takes some time, but it’s worth your while to go through (at least some of) them.

The 8th Edition of the Bookworms Carnival will be hosted at The Book Ninja. The theme is “The Geography of Make-Believe.” Full details are available at her site. You’ll need to read them. Really. Send an e-mail to thebookninja at gmail dot com with an appropriate subject line like “Bookworms Carnival” or “CARNIVAL OF AWESOMENESS!!!!” or “CARNIVAL EIGHT FOR THE WIN!” (Be creative, but use the words “bookworms” or “carnival” somewhere). The deadline for submission is February 8th.

I’ll have to go through my lists and posts and see what I can send Renay for next month’s carnival. This will take some thought.

Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little

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I’m really reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma (and enjoying it), but last night after all the girls were in bed, it really wasn’t what I wanted to curl up with.

So, it’s a good thing — on a recommendation from Becky — that I picked up this book, the first by Peggy Gifford, at the library the other day. It hit the spot: short, cute, and very funny. Just right for the evening of a stressful day. In fact, I think you could safely call this book adorable. (Though I’m not sure Moxy would like being called that all that much.)

Moxy Maxwell, 9-year-old, almost-fourth grader has had all summer to read Stuart Little. But there never seemed to be enough time. Until it’s come down to this: the last day before school starts, the day of the “Goodbye to Summer Splash” show where she’s 1/8th of a swimming daisy, and an ultimatum: read the book or don’t go.

Simple. And it works. Moxy is an amusing main character, coming up with all sorts of ways to get out of reading the book. But when she finally does, it’s — like many things we are “forced to do” — love. But that’s another story. This story is her adventures in getting out of reading the book. And it’s a winner. (I’m passing it on to C, who I’m sure, will just love it as much as I did.)

Loving Will Shakespeare

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I picked this up on a whim at the library a month or so ago, partially because Erin reviewed it and liked it well enough (at least I remember her reviewing it, but now I can’t find the link) and partially because I’ve read and like some of Carolyn Meyer’s other stuff.

And this one was okay. Nothing spectacularly brilliant, but nothing really bad either. It’s the story of Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, and how she came to marry Will Shakespeare. It’s an interesting enough story, but a less-than engaging one. I liked Agnes/Anne, but I really didn’t feel that connected to her. I was interested in her life at the beginning, but after a while I just got bored. So her mother died when she was little, and her father married a shrew. So she fell in love with a rogue and accidentally set fire to her father’s barn. So a man she was engaged to died from a fever. So she was 26 when she married an 18 year old because he got her pregnant. I really wasn’t all that interested. Which is sad; I should have been. There is so little known (the author’s note, while brief, was fascinating) about Shakespeare and Anne, that this really could have been a compelling love story. But it wasn’t. Maybe it was because of the length of time involved: the book covers 47 years, beginning with Will’s birth and ending when he comes back to Stratford-on-Avon from London five years before his death. Maybe I just wanted more… I seem to be wanting that from a lot of YA books these days. (Well, maybe not “a lot”, but this isn’t the first time.) But it just felt like a very long list: this happened, then this happened, then several months passed and this happened. And that doesn’t make for a very engaging story.

What did you read?

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I popped over to overdue books with the intention of browsing the links for the stacks challenge, when I discovered that michelle created a meme. I don’t know how many others have done this, but feel free to copy and pass it along. Here’s what she wrote: Let’s make this into an end of year meme! Copy and paste this list. Bold the ones that you’ve read. Add an asterisk to those that are “keepers” or favorites. Then add yours [maybe 5 best?] to the end of the list. Might be fun to see what everyone has read this year.

Twilight – Stephanie Meyer*
New Moon – Stephanie Meyer
Eclipse – Stephanie Meyer
The Rest Falls Away – Colleen Gleason
Season of the Witch – Natasha Mostert
The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
Queen of this Realm – Jean Plaidy
The Other Boleyn Girl – Phillippa Gregory
The Boleyn Inheritance – Phillippa Gregory
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling*
Austenland – Shannon Hale*
Book of Lost Things – John Connolly
Little, Big – John Crowley
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke [I’ve read it, but not this year]
Rebecca – Daphne DuMaurier
The Last Witchfinder – James Morrow
Map of Bones – James Rollins
History of Love – Nicole Krauss
Pomegranate Soup -Marsha Mehran*
Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher*
The Invention of Hugo Cabret — Brian Selznick*
Stardust – Neil Gaiman*
Fairies of Dreamdark: Blackbringer – Laini Taylor*

Go and have fun with this. 🙂 (Let me know in the comments if you do put one up; I’d love to see your list.)

It’s Award time

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Fuse has got her Newbery and Caldecott predictions up… and they’re very interesting. She feels that there’s no hope for Hugo Cabret to win anything. Sigh. I really should win something but I fear she’s right. I’m also feeling a bit ashamed, since I’ve not read nearly as many of the books she talks about as I think I should have. Though, maybe that’s a good thing: I won’t have read the winner already. Right?

What are your thoughts?

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

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I saw this video over at bookshelves of doom a while back, and I knew I just had to read Sherman Alexie’s book (go take 10 minutes and watch it).

Done watching? Good. There was a quote on the back by Chris Crutcher that pretty much summed up my reaction to this book: “I know Sherman Alexie is on his game when I’m reading his book, laughing my a** off while my heart is breaking. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian captivates absolutely.”

So true.

Junior is a Spokane Indian, living in Wellpinit on the rez and pretty much the lowest guy around. He gets picked on, beat up, called names… all because he was born with medical problems. But when he discovers his mom’s name in a geometry book (it’s not anything compromising; I wondered, too), he realized he needed a change. He transferred to the nearby (well, 22 miles) town of Rearden to go to high school. This book is the diary of his freshman year and all of it’s trials and triumphs.

The beauty of Alexie’s writing is that he can take the most depressing, pathetic person and situation and make you laugh. It’s actually a joyful book, a hopeful book. But I was depressed, too: so much poverty, so much alcohol, so much death. And yet, Junior is such a likable guy, a good kid, that you can’t help but root for him to rise above his situation. It’s funny and heartbreaking, pathetic and hopeful, depressing and inspiring all at the same time. That, in my book, is amazing writing.

I won’t be going around recommending this to everyone I know, though. It’s definitely for older kids — it’s too old for M — and it’s a bit vulgar. But then, it’s a 14-year-old boy who happens to be surrounded by death, alcohol, abuse, poverty and, well, high school. I don’t think I was really expecting it to be squeaky clean. Still, if you can stomach all that in addition to a few cuss words, then this book is really really worth your time.

My favorite quote is one that was in the video (but there are many others): “Every book is a mystery. And if you read all the books ever written it’s like you’ve read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning there is so much more you need to learn.”

Ain’t that the truth.

The Hummingbird’s Daughter

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I have had a hard time with Latin@ (see, turtlebella? I do learn!) literature in the past. Magical realism and I have not been good friends. I hear over and over again people loving these books and I read them, and… I think they’re just weird.

But this one, by Louis Alberto Urrea, is different. Maybe it’s because though the magic is there, it’s not nearly as prevalent as in other books. But I think it’s mainly because it’s a work of historical fiction, and more than that: it’s a work of love.

The story is that of Urrea’s great-aunt Teresa. She was the bastard daughter of Thomás Urrea, a patrón of a ranch in Mexico. She flies under the radar for the most part during her early life, living in squalor and unloved by her aunt (her mother left when Teresa was small) until she came under the guidance of the local healer, Huila. Then she learns the secrets of the Indians (of which she is half), and how to heal and dream and guide. Eventually, after the ranch moves north to a different location, he and her father become reconciled (though it’s more like “become introduced”) and she moves in the main house with him. She learns to read, her life is pretty quiet. Until one day, when a vaquero attacks her in her sacred grove of trees. She dies… and is resurrected. And from there, we see the evolution of Santa Teresa, the woman who will help the masses rise in revolution against the dictatorship.

Writing that, it sounds very simple, but this book is anything but. It’s immense. It’s lyrical. It’s funny. It’s sorrowful. The one thing I could tell is that Urrea really cared about his subject. The love and respect he has for Teresa, as well as all the years of research he did, is evident in every page. And because of that, the book (for me, at least) soars. I couldn’t put it down. I hung on every beautiful descriptive word. An example:

Only rich men, soldiers and a few Indians had wandered far enough from home to learn the terrible truth: Mexico was too big. It had too many colors. It was noisier than anyone could have imagined, and the voice of the Atlantic was different than the voice of the Pacific. One was shrill, worried, and demanding. The other was boisterous, easy to rile into a frenzy. The rich men, soldiers, and Indians were the few who knew that he east was a swoon of green, a thick-aired smell of ripe fruit and flowers and dead pigs and salt and sweat and mud, while the west was a riot of purple. Pyramids rose between llanos of dust and among turgid jungles. Snakes as long as country roads swam tame beside canoes. Volcanoes wore hats of snow. Cactus forests grew taller than trees. Shamans ate mushrooms and flew. In the south, some tribes still went nearly naked, their women wearing red flowers in their hair and blue skirts, and their breasts hanging free. Men outside the great Mexico City ate tacos made of live winged ants that few away if the men did not chew quickly enough.

It’s books like this that make me glad I read as much as I do.

Mr. Linky Problems

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Mr. Linky doesn’t like the fact that I put six Mr. Linkys up on the review blog. So, due to technical errors, I’ve had to do away with all of them. Sorry. (hangs head) It was a good idea. Just leave links to reviews in the comments, so we can all read them. Thanks, Robin for the heads up on this one!

M picked the winner…

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of this lovely prize package (I’m sounding a bit like Merv Griffin here):

And it is (drum roll please)….

Dave (Tuko Pamoja)

Congrats! If you could send your snail mail address to mmfraf AT sbcglobal DOT com, I’ll pop it in the mail to you!

Book reviews are slowly starting to trickle in over at the review blog… (since we’re only four days in, I wasn’t expecting a flood!) We’ll have another drawing next month, so C can have a turn picking the name. 🙂