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Post by gams on Dec 20, 2007 8:25:07 GMT -5
I love those "The Little Big Books". I have The Little Big Book of Thrills and Chills; it's full of all kinds of Halloween traditions, folklore and scary stories and poems. A few years ago I gave LX The Little Big Book for Girls. All of us, LX, BP, and me, will sometimes sit and read little blurbs from it before they go to bed. Fun stuff.
I haven’t been doing much reading lately, but I’ve done a whole lot of browsing, looking for Christmas gifts. I got my sister-in-law the best cookbook; it’s perfect for her! Food to Bring to Get-Togethers, or some such title. I saw it and it cracked me up – no more will she be resigned to bring the traditional “beans, rolls, and pie” to family get-togethers, a family joke. Actually, she loves to cook, and thumbing through this cookbook not only made me hungry, it made me want to bring something other than napkins and silverware to the next pot-luck I’m invited to, (another family joke).
I found the perfect book for my boss, got it home, read half of it ever-so-careful not to leave it looking like I read it before I wrapped it. I would have read more, but didn’t want the pages covered in cat hair, because a cat on your lap continuously nudging the book to let you know that yes, there is a cat in your lap, is a reading necessity…or so the cat thinks. I then called up the shop I bought it from; they had one copy left, and I had it held for me for another friend. The title is Garden Voices, and it’s about women and their gardens. The stories of these women are not garden tours, “Here I’ve planted pansies, and over here is my azalea.” They are stories about life. "Beneath the soil of every garden is a story. Garden Voices presents a dozen tales about heartache and triumph set within plots of lovingly cultivated land. While many outcomes of gardening are visible and tangible, these pages reveal the rewards of delving in the soil: daily wonders, gradual discoveries, and life-changing epiphanies."
I’ve also received a couple of really nifty things as gifts. The London Scene; Six Essays on London Life by Virginia Woolf, and not a book, but a six CD set of Edgar Allan Poe stories that aired on the radio from 1937 to 1957. The gifts are just “poe”-fect, and I can't wait to wrap myself up all toasty in Virgin Wool after getting in the Christmas spirit listening to "The Fall of the House of Usher" while sipping Edgarnog as I bake cookies, write Christmas cards, and wrap presents.
First comes the book I borrowed from the library though; I can feel the Biddies breathing down my neck. <shudder>
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Post by gams on Jan 2, 2008 1:44:17 GMT -5
I thought I'd finish. January 2nd is the due date, and I was barely halfway into the book when we started for Mom's Friday, but the nail-biter of a drive kept me from even attempting to read in the car.
Oh, I could renew it on-line - the Biddies always tell me I can when I bring my over-due books back. But that would deny me the opportunity to face their pursed lips and sullen stares as I dole out my dime-a-day penality for getting it there late, and hear the imagined tsk-tsking while I'm fishing around in my wallet.
I should not have checked it out; I knew I most likely would not have time to read it in the pre-holiday rush. At the library with a friend though, recommending a book for her to read, and I saw it, and could not resist. I could also put in it in drop-box outside, and listen to it unceremoniously plop into the catch-bin. But oh-no! I finished. It is I who will smirk as I hand it back to them on time! I love to mess with the Library Biddies.
The book was Herb n' Lorna: A Love Story, and the second book I read in a series of books by Eric Kraft. It also happens to be the second in the series, though Leaving Small's Hotel, was not the first, but rather the first I read in the series. Going in no particular order here, kind of like my thoughts as I type this.
I loved this as much as I did Leaving Small's Hotel. In Herb n' Lorna, Peter Leroy, the main character and narrator of the series, chronicles the lives of his grandparents in a posthumus biography - his sweet, sweet grandparents who he learns, upon his grandmother's death, that separately, and unbeknowst to one another during nearly all of their forty year marriage, practically pioneered the "coarse goods trade" - the erotic jewerly industry.
The women in these books are strong - they come with quirks, but are intelligent and wickedly witty. The men are good, but flawed...perhaps their biggest flaw being that they love their women too much. A cast of quirky characters comes with each book, and it very easy to fall in love with each of them....except the ones you're not supposed to fall in love with; every book's gotta have a baddie or two.
The Philiadelphia Inquirer says of the series, "“The sex is bracing and the boating can’t be beat…These books are awfully funny.”
BOLL. The review is as quirky as the books. Sex and boating as separate activities, and sometimes rolled into one, are entwined throughout, but it's a sublime twine. They are more about life - simple and good, or sometimes simply bad, but always fun to read.
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Post by gams on Jan 11, 2008 8:12:01 GMT -5
I finished Virginia Woolfe's six essays on London; it was short - barely eighty pages, and I could have easily whipped through it rather quickly. Her work, though, I think requires a more leisurely stroll. Read this, and re-read that, until suddenly a perfect image of what she's describing hits you like a ton of bricks falling from an ever-changing building on Oxford Street, which is the topic of one of the essays. Someone on the other board compares her writing to rich chocolate cake: it's dense; it should be savored, but should be digested in small doses. I think that is a perfect comparison. I haven't read a lot of her work; much of it seems daunting to me. One short story, I really liked though, is titled "A Haunted House". When I first read it a few years ago, I had to re-read it to get it, and then read it once more just to savor it. Just did a two minute drill, and found it on a website - and did the same thing. Here's the link. Read it if you've got a few minutes; it's very short. www.world-english.org/woolf_haunted_house.htmNext up for me is Poe CD series of original radio broadcasts. I thought it'd be easy to listen - just pop one in the CD player while I'm home alone during the day. Problem is, I'm never in one place in the house long enough to hear the whole story. Maybe in the kitchen while cooking.....I wonder what kind of dish I'd end up with? Poe-boy Sandwiches? The Murders in the Roue Morgue? The Sirlioned Letter, perhaps? What a creepy horror story for a vegetarian, eh Q? How about the Open-Pit Barbecue Sauce and the Pendulum.
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Post by Joxcee on Jan 11, 2008 16:54:41 GMT -5
You need a CD walkman. Wonder what the trail would be like with a book instead of music? O/o
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Post by Quettalee on Jan 11, 2008 22:25:25 GMT -5
...Poe-boy Sandwiches? The Murders in the Roue Morgue? The Sirlioned Letter, perhaps? What a creepy horror story for a vegetarian, eh Q? How about the Open-Pit Barbecue Sauce and the Pendulum. Your writing skills (of which there are many) are surpassed only by your sense of humor, my friend. Thanks for the smile. I wonder how long before I feel comfortable sitting and reading just for fun again? Other than a cookbook, of course. I spent two hours today compiling a mailing list and stuffing envelopes. My last unread Nora Roberts spent a minimal amount of time in the bottom of my book bag before it was removed completely to make room for my planner and my folders of flyers and menus and a couple of rotating cookbooks and 35 envelopes that need to go to the post office in the morning...what else? Oh yeah, the little tiny backpack that serves as my "purse". First time in my life, I'm pretty sure. Checkbook wallet, Xena business card case, cell phone, pen...sheesh! Pockets can only be so deep.
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Post by gams on Jan 14, 2008 0:29:57 GMT -5
I thought about that, but there is something wrong with my walkman. It cuts off continuously - I'd get barely 10 yards and the music would stop. I thought it might be the wheels on my skis were unbalanced - sometimes that'll cause an uneven glide, but Hubs aired them up, and still no music. Batteries not the problem. Cleaning; I did that too. I think moisture must have got it in, and caused things to go weird. It only works when I'm perfectly still, which I never am. Extremely frustrating; I gotta have music for a good glide. Hubs got me an ipod shuffle for Christmas, and I've been busy transferring all Mix Mistress Q's mixes onto it. Oh-so-cool!
I did listen to Poe on Saturday while cooking, except I kept getting interupted by the girls and Hubs, who'd walk into the room talking about this and that. I think this is definitely going to be a home alone listening pleasure.
One word, Quetta. Short stories. Ok, that's two - I can never limit myself to just one, and while I'm at it, I might as well though a bunch more behind those two. I rarely read novels while I'm working - especially in the summer when there's so much to do when I get home, and it stays light outside for so long. By the time I can sit down to read, my eyeslids are too heavy and I end up reading the same sentence over and over, until usually the book drops as gravity takes over both it and my eyelids.
But I hate not to read. So it's short stories - ones I can read in a half hour or so, and if I can't pick up the book again until a week later, I haven't forgotten where I left off, as might happen if I did the same while reading a novel. I also like non-fiction when I don't have a lot of time to read. Books where each chapter can be a stand-alone topic for the same reason as short stories are contained in little packages.
But cookbooks can be fun reading too! This was posted at the other book by someone who found it in a cookbook. I love this quote.
"I know this recipe sounds strange...at least the saltine cracker part. But it tastes great. Don't worry about what people may think. As my great granddad always says, 'Don't worry too much about what other people think about you, because, truth is, they don't think about you too much.'"
~Burns Hargis, Oklahoma banker and political commentator
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Post by Joxcee on Jan 14, 2008 17:27:19 GMT -5
Perhaps you need new headphones. The wire gets a short in it sometimes and staying still when the wires are touching is the only way to get them to work. Moving about causes the wires to touch/not touch . . . touch/not touch . . . and therefore it works/doesn't work . . . works/doesn't works. I went through a lot of headphones when I worked at the speaker factory.
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Post by Quettalee on Jan 15, 2008 8:34:06 GMT -5
Kinda sounds like the ears to me, too, C.
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Post by gams on Jan 16, 2008 7:49:16 GMT -5
I'll try changing them and see if that works....though, I'm thinking not. The music just stops; the disk quits spinning, and the display thingy is blank. I'd think if it was the ear buds, (which are new, but granted are cheap, cheap, cheap - Wal-Mart: $0.99), the disk would continue to play, I just wouldn't be able to hear, yes?
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Post by Joxcee on Jan 16, 2008 16:01:52 GMT -5
Yeppers. I agree. Everything else should still be working if it were just the headphones.
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Post by gams on Feb 8, 2008 7:50:28 GMT -5
I just finished "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" by Ilene Beckerman.
It's a funny little book that describes in 139 pages, including illustrations, the story of her life through the clothes she wore while living it, starting in the 1940's with her Brownie uniform. It's a "closet full of memories....a survived divorce, the death of a child, the quirks of family and friends, crushes and heartbreak and bursts of joy and happiness. Her Pucci was a copy and her Rita Hayworth-style strapless was from the Neiman Marcus outlet store, but she is the real thing."
In simple prose, and maybe no more than 150-200 words each....some, much, much less...every page is a description of an outfit, and where she wore it, or what she did while wearing it. At first, I thought the jacket description was much more interesting than the book itself. Then about half-way into it, I got to know the author, and realize there was a very subtle, and at times very sarcastic humor - nearly always held off to the last line of the page - in her descriptions. I'll have to re-read at some point to pick up on that humor I missed in the first half. Good for a very quick read on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
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Post by Joxcee on Mar 26, 2008 19:59:36 GMT -5
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Post by Joxcee on Mar 26, 2008 20:06:36 GMT -5
I've been feeling the need to reread Practical Magic sometime down the road. I was turned off that it wasn't like the movie, and so it threw me off course, so to speak. Now that I know it's completely different, I think I should give it another try. This time I can read it for itself, and not for what I liked about the movie.
I'll let you know if I like it better after the second go around.
But that's also the way with Ella Enchanted ... that book is also different than the movie. There are parts I like in each, and parts that I prefer in one or the other.
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Post by Joxcee on Feb 28, 2009 3:03:54 GMT -5
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Post by Joxcee on Apr 4, 2009 19:22:25 GMT -5
I sometimes Google member names to see if I can catch up on where they've wandered off to. Anyhoo, one member has been conversing with Nicola Griffith, and I thought I'd share the author with you in case you'd never come across her.
Her partner is: Kelley Eskridge.
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Post by Quettalee on Apr 19, 2009 17:47:01 GMT -5
Jox...I'm so sorry you haven't received the book I promised you. With all the moving and rearranging and cleaning and purging and yard-sale-ing I have been doing, I missplaced it. I did find it again and I promise to try and get it in the mail sometime this week. Meanwhile, do you know about this site... cash4books.net/index.php?ref=40245? I immediately thought of you when I came across it. I'm sure it's probably old news to you, but I thought I'd share anyway.
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Post by Joxcee on Apr 19, 2009 23:19:09 GMT -5
You're forgiven. I figured you were busy. And I didn't want to be a pest.
And thanks for the link. I haven't been to the site before, but I will post it at my forum for safe keeping.
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Post by Joxcee on May 9, 2009 18:41:03 GMT -5
BookSwim is the first online book rental library service lending you paperbacks, hardcovers and now college textbooks Netflix®-style directly to your house, without the need to purchase! We stock all the latest bestsellers, new releases, and classics with free shipping both ways! Read your books as long as you want — no late fees! Even choose to purchase and keep the books you love!
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Post by Joxcee on May 31, 2009 23:29:45 GMT -5
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Post by Joxcee on Jun 12, 2009 21:35:14 GMT -5
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