Not a problem. So do you read any Stephen King, or just looking for mom? I see that you like historical fiction, I keep promising myself to attempt to read a few of them, but I never get around to it. Any good suggestons in the genre? I had a professor reccomend Ladies of the Club, have you heard of it?

Lähettänyt: beckylynn 10:01 am (EST) Jul 4, 2008

I eavesdropped on one of your blogs to Booksloth. I hope you don't mind. You should defintly check out Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box. It's the only 'major' book of his out right now. I think he has ghost story collection as well. FYI- he has a profile on library thing. If you check out my profile there's a link to his on mine. Hope that helps :)

Lähettänyt: beckylynn 9:46 pm (EST) Jul 2, 2008

The only one of his I've read so far is Heart-Shaped Box. I loved it and could easily have mistaken it for a Stephen King. I think that's the only full-length novel he's published so far though there is a book of short stories called 20th Century Ghosts which has had some great reviews - I've got that one ordered at the moment. I guess much will depend on whether your mum prefers novels or short stories but whichever you go for, I think you'll be her favourite child for a long time - especially if she doesn't already know about Joe. I'd be thrilled if I was her.

And also (but don't quote me on this as I could be wrong) I have a feeling I've heard about a second novel due for release in the autumn. I don't know where I heard that and I might even have dreamt it but there is a website www.joehillfiction.com that will probably have details (I got the address from my copy of Heart-Shaped Box so haven't looked at the site myself yet. Might do that later).

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 2:40 pm (EST) Jul 2, 2008

I posted my review of Through a Glass Darkly on my blog @ www.passagestothepast.blogspot.com

Lähettänyt: abruno 3:33 pm (EST) Jun 12, 2008

I tried again this morning and it worked...strange! Thanks for adding me to yours!

Lähettänyt: abruno 7:59 am (EST) Jun 11, 2008

Hey, if you're on Myspace look up my Outlander Fans page. We're almost 900 members strong!
Myspace.com/sassenach65

Lähettänyt: MDLady 7:54 pm (EST) Jun 10, 2008

It will not let me add your blog address on my blog..weird. I will keep trying though. I am almost done with Through A Glass Darkly and am loving it! I will post my review when I'm done. It is definitely a great read!

Lähettänyt: abruno 4:45 pm (EST) Jun 10, 2008

Hey there! I hope you don't mind, but I started a blog and I added a link to your blog. Please check mine out, but please note that I am still "under construction". I wrote my first review, but since it was my first it wasn't all that great, but I plan on getting better! Hope you have a great day! www.passagestothepast.blogspot.com

Lähettänyt: abruno 2:51 pm (EST) Jun 9, 2008

You can't imagine how pleased I am that you liked it! It's like introducing the love of your life to your best friends and being scared they won't like him! You say you're interested to know what else Faber can do - in my opinion, he can do anything - absolutely anything. The one you're going to have to read sooner or later is The Apple which is a collection of short stories. Many of them feature characters (both major and minor) from The Crimson Petal. While they don't exactly tie up all the loose ends, they do tell you more about what happened later and, in some cases, what happened in the past to get those characters to the place they are in when petal opens. It's up to you whether you want to dive straight into this one right away or whether you prefer to let Petal settle down in your subconscious for a while yet.

Under the Skin couldn't be more different and yet is equally good in its own way. Faber writes so beautifully he makes me want to cry with every sentence. Under the Skin is a shorter and somewhat lighter read but it hits on some serious moral issues too. It's another of my all-time favourites, but in a different way. His other books are somewhat shorter - Some Rain Must Fall and The Fahrenheit Twins are both collections of short stories. now I can usually take or leave short stories but he has a way of writing that is perfect for the task, so any time you're in a short story mood they are great too. My other favourite is The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps - not really much more than a novella but enchanting all the same. Even The Courage Consort, which is my least favourite and which I'm not even sure I completely understood, was very nearly as good to read as the others, just for the sheer loveliness of the writing.

One thing I can certainly say for Faber is that he never does the same thing twice. If it weren't for his perfect prose you'd have difficulty believing all the books were by the same person and yet all are sublime in their own way. I so hope you eventually discover them all and love them as much as I do. I've found a few interesting ones so far this month - looking forward to sharing that info, but I'll keep it secret for now!

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 3:52 pm (EST) May 21, 2008

The children need your help!!

We are a group of students from DePaul University trying to collect books for children in grades one through eight. Even if you can send us just one book it will be appreciated. The books will be sent to an organization called Chicago Lights. (Chicagolights.org).

This organization distributes the books to kids in Cabrini-Green summer programs, homeless shelters, and Juvenile Detention Centers
If you have any books please send them to the following address:

Group 1
990 West Fullerton
Attention - CDeBose, Sociology
Chicago, IL 60614

Thank You in Advance!

Lähettänyt: booksforkids 4:13 pm (EST) May 15, 2008

Hi Friend! Thanks for the invite! I seem to have been getting through a lot of historical fiction lately and I have a feeling you'll love some of it. I'll wait until 'Book of the Month' to reveal all but I've had some really good reads.

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 6:10 am (EST) May 15, 2008

Perfect description of Jamie! I have not gotten into Lord John books either, as I am not that interested in historical mysteries. Maybe when my TBR pile is low I will try. Hmm..what else am I interested in? I haven't deviated from historical fiction in some time, but before it got it's hold on me I read Dean Koontz, Gregory Maguire (I loved Wicked and Son of a Witch), Neil Gaiman (Stardust, American Gods and Neverwhere were all great)and I also like true crime, Ann Rule. What about you?

Lähettänyt: abruno 2:48 pm (EST) May 14, 2008

Whoohoo!! And Yippee too! I'm so please you're enjoying it. I love that book so much I feel almost as if I'd written it myself (wish I had!) School work? Who cares about that? (Oh dear - now I'm really being a bad influence.) I bet you remember Sugar long after you've forgotten what Disney was up to, and what kind of teacher could possibly complain about you reading great literature? (That's my excuse, anyway.) Good luck with the rest of it!

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 11:41 am (EST) May 14, 2008

Thanks for the group ideas! I am on the 3rd book of the Outlander series and am loving every minute of reading it. After the 2nd book I thought I would put the series down for a while because the book seemed a little slow, but then of course it roped me in at the end and I just had to start Voyager. Like every other woman that has read the series I am now totally in love with Jamie! What hubby doesn't know won't hurt him right?

Lähettänyt: abruno 2:25 pm (EST) May 9, 2008

Holl, I can tell already that you like making lists (or why would you be doing the B of the M every month?) Come and add your thoughts to Desert Island Books (on Book Talk).

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 5:28 pm (EST) Apr 26, 2008

Thanks for replying - lovely to have you along!

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 11:27 am (EST) Apr 14, 2008

Sure -

This year:
Unaccustomed Earth
Mudbound
The Story of Forgetting

Read last year:
Stoner

Year before:
Astrid & Veronika

And some before that:
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Year of Wonders

Everything listed above is fiction. There are so many good books I could go on and on, but these are the ones that came to the top of my mind.

Happy reading.
Nancy

Lähettänyt: alphaorder 4:16 pm (EST) Apr 11, 2008

Hey there fellow Book of the Month club member! Thanks for tagging my library as interesting.

Nancy

Lähettänyt: alphaorder 10:29 am (EST) Apr 11, 2008

Brilliant! Except that now I'm just going to keep worrying that you won't like it. I'll just give you a word of warning that doesn't give anything away - I've seen reviews from lots of people who say they were disappointed at the 'non-ending'. If you are the sort of person who wants everything tied up neatly at the end then try not to get too hopeful. I loved the very fact that a lot of things are left up in the air as, by the time I got to the second page I was already convinced I was reading about real people with real lives so I was already expecting things to tail off in a realistic way - in fact, I absolutely loved the ending as I was left hanging there wanting to know all about the rest of these people's lives. If you do enjoy it but feel a bit lost at the end then go ahead and try The Apple (by the same author) which is a collection of short stories, several of which touch upon things that have happened in the lives of the 'Petal' characters - some before the timescale of the novel, some after. Whatever you do DON'T read The Apple first - it will ruin your life! I really hope you enjoy it - you'll have to keep me updated as to what is going on.

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 9:46 am (EST) Apr 11, 2008

Good morning! Thanks for 'tagging' me as an interesting library. How's the April reading coming along? I'm reading Kavalier & Clay and listening to A Blunt Instrument. I really enjoyed the discussions in Book of the Month Club group and look forward to more.

Karen

Lähettänyt: karenmarie 5:54 am (EST) Apr 11, 2008

Final verdict on [Jane Boleyn, The Infamous Lady Rochford] by Julia Fox (I see Touchstones don't work in these messages)!
I'm glad you sent me off in search of that one as it's been a little while since I read any 'Henry and his Wives' stuff and it was fun to get back into it again. It was a very enjoyable book - so much so that it wasn't until I put it down and started thinking about it properly that I realised it wasn't really telling me anything I didn't already know. Annoyingly, with about 75% of what goes on we are given rehashed stories about things that are already well-known (eg the Field of Cloth of Gold etc) and then told 'Although Jane's name does not appear on the list of attendants, it is likely she would have been there'. That happens incessantly, with the author rarely being able to be absolutely certain that Jane was anywhere relevant at the time. There certainly seems to be very little evidence for the story that it was Jane who betrayed George to the authorities but, of course, there isn't always evidence for a lot of things - that proves neither that they are true or false. The author makes no mention at all of Jane's relationship with, or feelings towards, Anne (I was rather hoping for perhaps a personal letter to have emerged that tells us more about that, but no luck) and Jane, herself, is strangely silent throughout the book, with no references to her tastes, feelings or anything else that might have given an insight to her character. In the final chapter, Fox presents a plausible case for how the rumours and scandal about Jane MIGHT have arisen, but they could have come about in many other ways too. In fact, her final sentences refer to some drawings by Holbein of designs for dresses. Speaking of the model, she writes - 'She is elegant, poised and animated. It is not Jane, but it is how she really was.' I thought that comment was fairly typical of the book as a whole - in other words, we know very little about Jane and we're never likely to know much more. I can't help feeling that, unless new evidence in the form of letters or documents ever emerges, everything there is to be said about Anne, Henry, George etc (and probably most of Henry's other wives as well) has now been said.

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 12:43 pm (EST) Mar 18, 2008

Oops! Thought mine was bad and I've spent all this year so far trying to whittle it down from somewhere in the 70s. Trouble is, I'm much quicker at buying than I am at reading. I'm down to 71 at the moment but Jane Boleyn arrived this morning (so to speak)- at least I'm keen to get cracking with her, but I've still got another half dozen or so on order so I don't think I'm going to get down that low again for a while. I made two resolutions this year regarding books - 1) that I would not buy any more until at least half of Mount TBR had been read (broke that one on Boxing Day, but it's really rude not to spend your book tokens, isn't it?) and 2) that I was going to keep track of everything I read this year. I'm still doing fine with that one. I seem to remember the resolution started out as 'keeping track or all the books I BUY', but that would really be too painful.
Speaking of the Brontes, Jane Eyre was another set book and it was one I read when I was about 12 and didn't 'get' at all. I think now that was way too young as it is now one of my favourite books and one that I can read over and over again. I have enjoyed Ann's Wildfell Hall and mean to get round to Agnes Gray sometime, but I loathe and detest Wuthering Heights. I started it at least four times before I finally managed to get through it at all and I will never understand what makes Heathcliffe anybody's love interest - I swear I can actually smell him as I read. I am quite fascinated by the lives of the sisters (and Branwell) though.
Jane Boleyn looks good. Unfortunately, I still have to struggle through the rest of a Cadfael, which I'm not really in the mood for, before I can get round to reading that one. Like you, I don't know a lot about her except as the villain in the lives of Anne, George and Catherine Howard - the jealous wife who sent her husband and his sister to the block rather than suffer witnessing the closeness of their relation. It makes her a great 'baddie' but she's maybe been a bit one-dimensional until now so I look forward to finding out some more about her. The author seems pretty sympathetic but I can't tell yet whether she is going to claim that Jane was innocent of all the scandal or whether she will just give us an insight into what made her so bitter - I rather hope it's the latter - I like to have the odd villain around!

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 8:13 am (EST) Mar 15, 2008

P&P was one of my set books at uni (what are you studying, by the way?) I was a little bit afraid, when I first started the course, that having to study books might stop me actually enjoying them, but I found it worked quite the opposite way around, and I learned how to appreciate things that I might not otherwise have bothered with. I also found that reading a book several times over usually had the effect of getting me to like it against all odds (with a couple of notable exceptions; I never want to see Heart of Darkness or Germinal again as long as I live!). I wasn't really a Jane Austen fan before then but I love her books now, especially that one. Right now, I'm reading a book called Canvey Island by James Runcie, which tells the story of a family in England (Canvey Island is near London) from just after WWII up to the 1980s. It's one that has been on the TBR pile for ages and it was more a question of getting it out of the way but I'm really enjoying it.

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 7:49 am (EST) Mar 13, 2008

I love Tudor stuff too. I think one of the first 'grown-up' books I ever read was a Jean Plaidy one and I was hooked. Always hated history at school too - I think we had a particularly terrible teacher. Have you tried any of the C J Sansom books yet? I only discovered him recently, but he has written a trilogy of murder mysteries set at the time of Henry VIII and I found them quite fascinating; well researched and plausible. They are called Dissolution, Dark Fire and Sovereign (which I haven't read yet). My one real 'hate' is Philippa Gregory, who I find wildly inaccurate most of the time but I know lots of people love her and there is a thread somewhere on LT where lots of people praise her to the skies so maybe it's just me.
Probably my all time favourite historical period for novels is the Victorians. I love Sarah Waters, Iain Pears, Christopher Peachment (though some of his can be a bit hard going sometimes) and my all-time favourite Victorian book, and joint all-time fave in any genre (with Captain Corelli's Mandolin) is Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White, which I consider absolutely faultless though, judging by some of the negative comments I have seen on LT, I don't think everyone felt the same way as me about it.
I also loved Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Unfortunately, I have never read any of the others in the same series as they are all in really tiny print and it feels like a proper slog getting through them as I'm short-sighted and really had to strain to see them properly. Maybe the US versions are a bit clearer. As a genre, they are very hard to define; they are set around the time of the Enlightenment and touch on many characters who were really around at the time but they also have a bit of a fantasy feel to them (and I rarely, if ever, enjoy fantasy books).
My BA was in English Lit and Language and I did one year on 19th Century novels so now I also love Hardy, George Eliot (well, I already loved those two), Dickens etc. Ooh, just remembered - there's also Caleb Carr, who has written some good detective novels set in the 19thC.
I'm rambling now, as I usually do when I get onto the subject of books. I'm sure I'll think of more after I log out! 'Speak' again soon!
Lyn

PS - You just put me so much in the mood that I've been online and ordered Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford, by Julia Fox, which is a biog, not a novel, but I am a bit Anne fan - I think she was one of the most fascinating women in all of English history - so I read lots of non-fiction about her too. I'll let you know what I think of it. If I hate it I'll blame you for 'making' me buy it;=)

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 11:22 am (EST) Mar 11, 2008

Thanks for adding me to your 'interesting' libraries. I always feel really flattered when people do that. As you are a fan of historical fiction I'm sure you'll find loads in my library and I'd be very happy to let you know what I thought of any of them. I see you're new to LT - please be warned, it's very addictive - you can now say goodbye to work, family, study etc. Hope you enjoy it!

Lähettänyt: Booksloth 5:56 pm (EST) Mar 8, 2008