Tag Archives: book

The Weed That Strings The Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley

This is the second (after The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) Flavia de Luce Mystery I have read and they are fast becoming my new favorite books.

Think precocious, english, eleven year old solves mystery’s with an ample dose of chemistry, while tormenting her sisters.

If that’s too difficult to imagine go find yourself The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  It’s excellent, and this one is just as good!

Would I recommend it? Yes!

Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker

I’m only including this book to say I’m no longer putting Parker’s Spencer novels on here. They are all good, I recommend them all.

Well, I’m also including it because Storm is weird. Can anyone tell me why her foot is hovering in midair over the book?

Would I recommend it? Yes.

What do you recommend? I love the super quick reading, non-gruesome murder and humor of these books. Does anyone have any other suggestions of like books?

(S)mythology by Jeremy Tarr

As I’ve said before I hate reading the back of the book, it always tells too much of what happens. Instead I like to read the first page. Standing in the library the first sentence in this book caught my attention, here it is for your enjoyment:

“Because this is ultimately a fairy tale, and because it is sacrilege not to begin all fairy tales with four simple words, and because I can think of no better words than these four to start off this particular fairy tale, because of all this we begin Once Upon a Time.”

Probably Jeremy had all his papers marked with big red R.O.’s in school too.

When the book took short funny and completly random tangents to explain things that didn’t need explaing I was hooked. Unfortunatly it got a bit long, while it made me laugh out loud at times it’s not something I can broadly recommend.

Unless you think things like this are funny:

“The Cabbie went red. He looks constipated, Sophie though. She was right, the Cabbie was constipated, he hadn’t had a constitutional in just under a week and though usually a pleasant man, one could understand why any mishap could cause him great rage.”

Then maybe you should try it.

Please excuse Piper, she was cuter than the book cover.

Would I recommend it? No

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

First off I’d like to take this opportunity to mention something that has irritated me for years.

Ahhem…

Why are science fiction and fantasy always grouped together?

They are not the same.

The end.

This book is science fiction but please don’t run away yet, I have a sci fi theory. Sci fi, has it’s good, it’s bad and it’s ugly when it comes to books, just like every other genre, it’s just that people have a low tolerance for the bad and the ugly when it involves  science fiction and write the whole lot off. So here is my advice – do what I do, only read the ones people recommend. You get rid of just about all of the bad and the ugly and will hopefully end up with a book you may not otherwise have looked twice at that falls firmly into the good category.

P.S. Also never judge a science fiction book by it’s cover, I just finished this book and I’m not really sure what the deal is with the picture, please ignore it.

Would I recommend it? Yes. It was recommend to me, so following my own advice, I read it. I got sucked in, stayed up too late reading and by the end my head was reeling and I told John he needed to start it immediately.

Summer Reading

It’s been months since I’ve posted a book review, but trust me I’ve still been reading. According to my calculations, otherwise known as the little notebook I write down all the books I’ve read in, I’ve read 36 books since Shanghai Girls.  The problem is my book memory is so pitiful that some of the titles I read in June are already only vaguely familiar to me, only the very good and the very bad stick out.  This is one of the reasons I write titles down when I’m done with them, I’d never remember what I have and haven’t read otherwise. That being said, I”m not going to break my brain attempting to give you a mini review of any of them but here is a list of the books that I remember being recommendable:

The Spencer books by Robert B Parker, Potshot and Cold Service were my favorites of the ones I’ve read recently.

Joanne Harris books, while they are all good my favorites of hers are Five Quarters of the Orange, Chocolat and The Girl With No Shadow.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James

The one book that stands out of my list as my least favorite was, as I brace myself to make an enemy of my husband among others…

A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony.  If you’ve never read fantasy, don’t start here. Unless you are an adolescent boy, then it’s probably great. Otherwise it’s every bad stereotype you’ve ever heard about fantasy books all rolled into one.  Skip it!

How about you? Favorite books from the summer? Any horrible books none of us should read?

Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth

Please allow my lovely assistant Ivy to show you one of her (and my) new favorite children’s books.

Here you see her posing with the cover of the book.

It’s a pretty cover, after all it is a Caldecott Honor book.  You’ll know when you see it at your library because it’ll be the one with the panda with the red umbrella on the cover.

Here you see Ivy showing off more of the illustrations. Wonderful, beautiful, some of my very favorite ever, illustrations.

In addition to the gorgeous watercolor ink paintings (have I mentioned that I really like them?) the book has three “zen shorts” within the main story.  According to the author’s note at the back, ” “Zen shorts” are short meditations – ideas to puzzle over – tools which hone our ability to act with intuition. They have no goal, but they often challenge us to reexamine our habits, desires, concepts and fears. ”

It sounds all scary and woo woo and heavy but I promise it’s not.  It’s just wonderful.

Would I recommend it? Yes, and so would Ivy.