Author interviews

Lula and I have briefly talked about the idea of having author interviews on the site. Would any of you be interested? Who would you want interviewed? And what kind of things would you like to know about them? It could be fun to learn about them, and the world of publishing and writing. Let us know what you all think

Warbreaker

Lula you are always doing all the work on the blog. For that I say thanks and so I am feeling inclined to post so you don't feel like your the only one.

This is for all you fantasy lovers out there. Warbreaker is a story of people who return from death and become "gods". Living breath that can "awaken" people or objects and command them to serve the awakener. Colors that hold power of their own and the country that 1/2 loves and worships colors versus the other 1/2 that loathes color and thinks it to be abominable.

Sanderson is a fantastic writer. He weaves very complicated plots and complicated characters.

I like this world and the story. Political intrigue and religious debate abounds in this book. And your always wondering who is good and who is bad. What religion is right? What makes a "god"

In the midst of all this wondering you will find yourself laughing.

This is a full blown fantasy, even has a little scifi feel to it. I will say that I liked Sanderson's Elantris better. It felt like it was edited better and cleaner. There were aspects of Warbreaker that just didn't seem to make sense, like the whole color thing. So if you are a casual reader of fantasy I would say to read Elantris first. They are long, complicated stories, but they always keep me on edge.

I gave it 4 stars on goodreads for whatever that means to you.

The Spirit of Sweetgrass by Nicole Seitz

There's something to be said about a well cast first sentence on page one of a novel - This is what I remember about that night - my last night alive.

Was the main character, 78 year old Essi Mae already dead then and telling her story from the grave? Why did she die? Who was she? I wondered all these things like a fish wonders what that worm dancing in the riffles would taste like. I was hooked. By that first sentence and the warm tones of that cover.


Essie Mae Jenkins is a sweetgrass basket maker who sells her finished products from a roadside stand on a tiny anonymous highway along the coastal islands of South Carolina. From there she sews her baskets, weaving in some of the sweetgrass and Gullah culture, and a little voodoo magic for good measure, all in the presence of her dead husband, Daddy Jim.

Like the vanishing sandy beach ecosystems that sustain that billowing native grass, so is the talent of making these unique baskets. Essie Mae wants to pass it on like it was passed on to her. But nature's forces are working against her, not unlike the forces of prosperity are working against the disappearing sweetgrass. Like all of us as we age, Essie Mae feels like she's slowly disappearing from the landscape as well.

Well-written in great Southern voice, The Spirit of Sweetgrass hits on many levels. It brings into sharp focus the fears that we all worry about as we age - of being forgotten and replaced. I wondered what I would leave behind for my family, suddenly wanting to take up a new skill or perfect the two or three that I have! And, I thought of what's been left for me in previous generations and I became both happy and melancholy at the same time. Memories, love, cherished mementos, and most importantly a knowledge of things particular to my family and friends always bring in torrents of emotion. We all wish for this, in any culture and time.

I enjoyed reading about other lifestyles and customs unfamiliar with my own. Now, if I could just get my hands on one of those baskets!

3 stars

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead A play by Tom Stoppard

To be or not to be, that is the question.

We all remember that famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, that play of all plays. Was Hamlet really being told what to do by his dead father, or was he really insane after all? Did his mother know what was going on? Did his uncle really murder his father? Were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's friends from childhood, as funny and brilliant as they seemed?

What?

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Hamlet from a different point of view. A play within a play, within a play! Two minor characters bewildered and apparently unable to accept their present condition are brought to life in such a way that I thought of Deep Thoughts on SNL and laughed out loud more than once. It was genius. It was thought-provoking, and as you see from my book - full of such excellent word play between the two characters that I should now buy stock in sticky notes.

A sample -

Inside where nothing shows, I am the essence of a man spinning double-headed coins, and betting against himself in private atonement for an unremembered past.

And -

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.

This clip from the movie is one of the best parts of many.

This play is an easier, and much, much shorter way, to view the struggles in Hamlet. It almost explains why it ended like it did - with a cornucopia of death.

We're tragedians, you see. We follow directions - there is no choice involved. The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

I highly recommend reading this, and then watching the movie. You will never look upon Shakespeare's most famous play the same again.
5 stars
Thanks to the Good Books Club for recommending it.

Plants, Plants, Plants!

Ah, I'm such a sucker for spring! It's almost here, in this part of the world anyway. I couldn't get to the backside of January and February fast enough. I'm one of those weirdo's who actually enjoys yard work, and despises house work.

Detests it.
Hates it.
Loathes it with a passion.
What does dish pan hands mean anyway..

When the weather warms so do my reading choices, almost against my will. If I can't physically get my hands dirty, I want to read about others doing so. I want to smell the fresh cut flowers through someone else's nose. If I must.

I've been rewatching this PBS series about two gardening sleuths. It is excellent!! And perfectly named.





And my reading choices for this month are:

Anybody else have any good gardening or outdoorsy sort of books they read this time of year? How does one fill that void of time and space that only a really good seed catalog can fulfill?

Suggestions?

The Tudors - The Good Queen, The Ugly Queen, and the Stupid, Stupid Queen. Season 3

It's the 1500's in Tudor England. The King's wives keep dying, either from a broken heart, by losing a head or for giving their all while finally birthing the King a son. What's a poor grieving King to do? Marry a mysterious German princess of course, Anne of Cleves who happens to have a nose as long as the Empire State Building, poor girl. At least she had the sense to except his divorce and continue to live rather richly and quiet-like in England. Katherine Howard however, well, she just seems doomed to follow in her cousin's footsteps, or is it just me??

Season 3 of this series did not disappoint. As far as I can tell in my limited knowledge, they are following the actual story very well. You just can't write this stuff! It's unbelievable what happened back then, over 400 years ago. My only qualm of course, is King Henry's size. He was in fact quite hefty by his forties, and probably wasn't even close to the lion they portray him in the bedroom. But this is Showtime after all, not the History Channel.

Still though, very interesting to see it all played out on the screen. Aside from Cromwell's death however, which is horrible to read about, let alone see on tv. It's fun to see these people and times brought to vivid life. The next season will be the last. I wish they'd continue on into Queen Mary's and eventually Queen Elizabeth's life, both of whom were equally if not more interesting than their famous father.

But oh well, I'll take what I can get I guess.

I highly recommend this series if you like early English history at all.

Super Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

I should've known I wouldn't really like this book after I read the first line on the cover written all in caps:

THE EXPLOSIVE FOLLOW-UP TO FREAKONOMICS.

Whoopity-freakin-do.

Blah, blahblahblah, b-blah.

At least in this one I wasn't forced to read as a header to every chapter how ridiculously full of himself and his multiple accomplishments Steven Levitt is, Mr. "I was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most influential economist in the history of the universe under the ripe old age of forty". And I'm personally over forty by the way, and that-is-not-young-by-any-standard. Hell, if you're a man you're already past middle age by that time. Practically on death's door for crying out loud. Get over yourself already man.

Their desire for the almighty dollar and their own ideas on politics came shining through throughout most of the book. I thought I'd be reading an unbiased account of the "facts". Apparently they didn't even check those. Isn't that what economists are supposed to do? Get to the very bottom of an issue. To the truth? After all, do numbers and statistics lie? I guess I was expecting more than bathroom reading material from this one.

Double ew-ew!

I did learn something though, economists are like emergency room doctors - they think they know everything about everything. I bet people are just lining up to talk to them at parties.

Or running in the other direction.

After reading this, it's not hard for me to guess which I'd do. But you decide for yourself. I'm just a regular old American who will continue to recycle and use her carseats regardless of what their "facts" say.

But then again, I haven't won any awards other than The Most Mischievous at girls camp.
2 stars

Remarkable Creatures - Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll

The first part of this review is Stephanie's because her computer is broken and I stole this from Goodreads without asking her, because that's the sort of person I am..

The excellent Stephanie said..
Science has a reputation for being boring. I’ve made the acquaintance of many a science textbook in my time, and I can say that, in spite of my love for science, that reputation is not unwarranted. Textbook writers could stand to learn a thing or two from Sean B. Carroll, author of Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species.

In Remarkable Creatures, Carroll tells the stories of many of the men and women that have made great discoveries in the field of evolutionary science. It turns out that these scientists are not the stodgy, grey-haired stereotypes that we’d expect. Henry Wallace Bates lived 11 years alone in the Amazon. Alfred Wallace spent 10 days in a leaky lifeboat after his ship burned and sank. Paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews may be the real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones, right down to his fear of snakes and his ever-present pistol.

Their stories are fascinating, and while I read them, I couldn’t help but learn an awful lot about evolution. Perhaps if science was presented with a little more personality, more people would be interested in studying the sciences, or (if the threat of inhospitable environments and tropical diseases are just too daunting) at least reading about them.

The last two chapters leave the field behind and dwell almost exclusively in the laboratory where the science can get a little intense (I had to read those chapters very slowly and more than once), but otherwise, I think this is a book that almost anyone would enjoy.* *

Unless you aren’t a fan of evolution, but I probably didn’t need to say that, did I?

And Lula added...
Sooo.....we did evolve from apes. I knew it! That explains so many things, all the hair in unusual places, the urge to groom my husband, why my youngest hangs on me like a monkey. Carroll includes a quote on the last page of this book, talk is cheap, exploration and discovery is hard. Boy, oh boy is that true! Some people are just born to find stuff. Some people are just pre-made to tackle decades of dealing with sunburns, throwing up, fire ant bites, fevers, sea-sickness, more throwing up, starvation, bitter cold, gale force winds, spear-holding natives, being buried in sandstorms, and sore bums from riding donkeys. But I don't know, being the first to set foot in unexplored wilderness, places no humans have tread in thousands of years, if at all, may make it worth it. Just maybe...

A great group of mostly men (and a few briefly mentioned women - Mary Leakey), some tiny men (Darwin), some Indiana Jones types (Roy Chapman Andrews), and some nerdy, but cute multiple Nobel Prize winning scientists (Linus Pauling) are included along with several others in this book. I learned a lot of things I didn't know about some the greatest explorers of the last centuries. What trials they went through to make their discoveries. What great determination!

After reading this I felt a great urge to marry a determined explorer and let him take all the credit for my discoveries, or maybe take up rock collecting again, or visit the nearest fossil beds, as I live in Idaho and there are a lot of past tense creatures buried around here, not including our current state political leaders....

Ahem.

Read this book if you are the least bit interested in science, you've always wanted to discover something new, and if you've ever in your life hit a rock with a hammer with hopes of finding a diamond inside.

Just be sure to wear protective glasses if you do that.
Trust me I know.
4 stars.

I feel all giddy...

We'll looky here...we have 30 followers!

I'm feeling all sheepish, and guilty.

Maybe we need to actually post something once in awhile...

Thanks everyone!

What are you reading Mondays....and good riddance January!

I haven't done this in a while, but January is f-i-n-a-l-l-y over and I read a lot this month - take that you sunless, gloomy, depressing sky. I've read some fun books recently to release me from my doldrums. Check out J Kaye's book blog to see what other's are reading too!



I just finished -
The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl
The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Chocolat by Joanne Harris

All these took my mind off my extremely white skin!

And I'm just finishing up this week -

Rough Stone Rolling - A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder Joseph Smith by Richard Lyman Bushman
This book is over 500 non-footnote pages of deep, dense material on the early Mormon church and its first prophet. Very interesting that's for sure.

Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler
Short and sweet. I really love the cover of this one.

And Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
I finally got this one from the library. Whew! Collins has a way of hooking her reader from the beginning. I hear there's a cliffhanger at the end though. Drat...

So good bye January. I will not miss you even though reading brought me through the solitude of your gray skies.

Happy February 1st!

Fun things to do this month:

Light candles all over your home on Candlemas Day, Feb. 2.

Watch the movie Groundhog Day on Feb. 2 as well!

Invite your friends over for a Valentine's day tea party.

Read as much Georgette Heyer as you can.

Make a batch of fudge or heart-shaped suckers.

Rent Out of Africa and watch it while eating the fudge.

Wear read lipstick at least once - out in public even!

What are you going to read to ring in February?

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Lately my tastes have been straying away from young adult fiction, mainly YA fiction that's geared more towards adults than kids (which I think ruins it most of the time), but this movie looks pretty good, see here, so I decided to listen to the book first before I take my kids in February.

My review will be short.
It was okay.
But as a side note, I probably shouldn't have listened to it, as I was not a fan of the reader. His voices seemed too cartoonish, like they were straight off of Sesame Street, and kept reminding me this book was for kids (you know like Trix), and I think I'd have liked it better if I'd have just read it and invented my own voices in my head. I plan on reading the rest of the series eventually and see if my little theory holds true.

Kudos to Riordan for keeping the content in this one for young adults. Imagine a young adult book that is actually for young adults! Perish the thought!

As for content, just think Harry Potter/Greek mythology, but I like mythology (I am a huge Clash of the Titans fan after all), and even though it's not half as good as Harry Potter as far as predictability and character development goes, I will give it full marks for excitement. It was good fun. Any kid would like this book. And the movie looks even better. Maybe we'll even see it on the first weekend. For me that's really saying something.
3 stars.

The Rose of York - Love and War by Sandra Worth

The more I read about the early monarchs, the more I'm convinced - a lot of them were loony birds. They were paranoid (probably because most of their extended families wanted them dead), often delusional, unable to form stable relationships after being raised by multiple people in multiple places usually amongst a war for dominance, forcing them to grow up too fast. I wonder, can they be blamed for their erratic behavior after such odd and bizarre upbringings?

Richard the III is no different from these. I've seen how he's depicted in Shakespeare's plays. His hump, his paranoid and murdering behaviors are legendary. Author Sandra Worth's depiction here argues that may not be true about him. Was Shakespeare's view skewed by the reigning, rival Tudors? He may have been handsome. A shy product of his violent environment. In love with a beautiful woman as depicted on the cover of her book, Love and War.

I'm a big fan of John Waterhouse paintings. A lot of authors use them for covers. In fact when I notice a Waterhouse on the front, I have a hard time resisting a book's contents, regardless of how good it may or may not be (the one below was on Mistress Shakespeare.)

His paintings of mainly women are so lovely and filled with emotion. He had a way with catching just the right expression, the slope of a shoulder, how their hands lay atop each other. And I've always wondered who the woman was he painted the most. Her face and red hair. Her absolutely flawless pink skin. Talk about giving me a complex!

While I thought the cover of this one beautiful, I had a hard time stomaching it as Richard III sitting there with his lovely Anne Warwick, the woman it took him nearly a decade to marry amidst the war between the Roses. I thought more of this knightly clad hero as his earlier ancestor, a younger John of Gaunt and his mistress and eventually third wife, the beautiful Katrine - who also had red hair. Worth's take on Richard and Anne is obviously modeled after their lives, and from a favorite book of mine by Anya Seton entitled Katherine, about their courtship and later marriage.

In truth, Love and War, is much more about the history of the epic battle between York and Lancaster than it is about Richard and Anne. And I liked that because I'm a big English history buff. But the love stories themselves seemed more like filler than anything, definitely running second to the battles and treason that took place during the time period. Maybe that story line evolves more in the second and third books in the series.

So don't be fooled by the cover! If you want a fantastic love story amidst war and strife, read Katherine. If you want to learn about the history of the War of the Roses, read this one, the first in The Rose of York trilogy.

And most importantly, wear sun screen so you'll have beautiful skin like the ladies in these pictures!

We can dream anyway...
3 stars

The Road

By Cormac McCarthy

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of depressing books. Nor am I fond of loose ends and unanswered questions. The Road by Cormac McCarthy has all of those characteristics in plenty, but I kind of liked it.

None can argue that this book is very, very (very, very) depressing. Some horrible disaster (what kind of disaster is one of those aforementioned unanswered questions) has occurred, leaving the earth a desolate wasteland. There are no plants, no animals, just a handful of straggling humans who have been reduced to thievery, murder, and even cannibalism just to survive.

Our heroes are a man and his son. They have no names, but they are two of the “good guys” simply because they will never, ever resort to cannibalism. They are on a road, heading to the sea where they hope things will be better, scrounging for what canned food they can find and avoiding all other humans because as far as they know, they are the only good guys left. The father lives for his son, the son for his father.

This is one of the reasons this book appealed to me: that in spite of the desperation of the situation, there was a gleam of hope; that the love between a father and son could provide sustenance in such circumstances.

However, I must admit that the main reason I liked this book is that it supported one of my pet theories: that in the case of a widespread disaster, I am toast.

Allow me to explain. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a Mormon, My church encourages its members to have food storage. I love food storage, mainly because it looks so beautiful, all those jars and cans lined up on my shelves, but also because I can see its value for a short-term disaster or even in the case of unemployment. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will do me a bit of good in a disaster of Biblical proportions.

A major catastrophe will strip away the veneer of civilization. There are people that will do anything to survive, and I’m not sure I’m one of them. Even assuming I would have the nerve to kill a person for the good of my children (I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it for myself), there are plenty of folks bigger and stronger and more ruthless than me. Sure, I’ve got my brains, but while I’m frantically trying to assemble a crude weapon out of a piece of bamboo and homemade gunpowder, someone with brawn is simply going to amble over and take me out with a large rock. And then they’ll take my food.

If you don’t believe me, read The Road. (But don’t read it if you dislike bleak stories, disturbing mental images, or the fall of human civilization.)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Having never heard of this book let alone Robert Heinlein (sorry my science fictiony meter must be running low, and I was concentrating on being born in the 60's and couldn't yet read), I had many assumptions about what the title meant before I read it:

- The moon was a hooker and the Earth her pimp.
- The moon was inhabited with an Amazon group of women who took over the Earth.
- And then Amazon women flew on a Wonder Woman spaceship and took over the galaxy, after killing all the men.

So, obviously, I really hadn't a clue what this book would be about, but now that I've read it the title makes perfect sense. It was ingenious really (the book did win a Hugo after all), as was obviously its famous author, Robert Heilein, a man so good at writing science fiction in the 60's, they named a Mars crater after him - no unnamed craters on the Moon I guess . That would've made more sense because....

Set in 2075, a former penal colony on the Moon (Luna) rebels against its masters on Earth. Having been transplanted, and some were even born there, on the Moon for so long now, this population of people have evolved almost into their own species (think Galapagos Islands) having there own novel ideas regarding marriage and family customs, some have their own dialects, and because of less gravity, they age slower and move their bodies differently than humans on Earth. Tired of being treated as second class citizens, a revolution takes hold.

Four unlikely cast of characters move this cause forward - a computer technician who can't figure out how he got dragged into this, a Marilyn Monroe type female anarchist who kisses instead of shaking hands, an elderly academic who probably wore tweed until his elbows wore through, and then there's Mike, a self-aware supercomputer who reaches his blinkety-blink orgasm by bombing things.

Will Luna be set free? Who will die in the process, because someone always dies if it wins a Hugo Award right?

It says in the book jacket - A great political novel and a great survey of the human prospect. I agree. This is a very forward thinking book, and it was written almost 50 years ago during the tumultuous 60's. A time when young people were battling against the hypocrisy of war, in academia, in government, and any authority that told them what to do. That spills over onto the pages here. But, Heinlein takes his time telling his story, and even though it's a mouthful, it still goes down smooth enough without too many rough edges.

Worth reading at least once. And I'm not even a Republican. (Oops, tea-bagger.)
4 stars.

Here is a new author I have found. Her name is Sarah M Eden and I love her regency romance books. She is trying to get her name out there and she does these funny interviews on Fridays so take a look at her blog. Also, Lula I thought you should be a guest on her little blog. You get a stick figure drawing of yourself. Sarah has a new book coming out in March and if you like regency romance you won't be dissapointed. Follow the link and have a grand day.

Sarah M Eden