Tag Archives: recommended read

Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark

One day my travels on the internet brought me to Stuck in a Book.  As I browsed the site I discovered that Stuck in a Book and Harriet were hosting a Muriel Spark reading week. Who, I thought, is Muriel Spark and what is this reading week business of hers all about? Ever the intrepid internet explorer at one AM I hit Wikipedia to discover just who Muriel Spark was. Then it was onto my library loan site to get a few books of hers so that I could read them, post reviews the week of April 23-29 and thus join the Muriel Spark reading week.

And so that brings me, finally, to Loitering With Intent, the first Muriel Spark novel I have read.

There are main characters, and there are main characters. The most common ones are those who you suspect due to their large amounts of charisma, good luck, good looks, and the fact that they have a series of books named after them will, survive to have the fairy tale, good karma, feel good sort of end. Then there are the other ones, the more interesting ones.  The main characters who range from a bit off the moral high road to the down right dubious and nasty (Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris comes to mind) characters who leave you in doubt up to the end whether they’ll get their happy ending, or even if they deserve it.  These main characters are sometimes hard to love, like, or even enjoy reading about the workings of their twisted minds, but they do without a doubt make a book much more interesting.

Loitering With Intent‘s Fleur is by no means all the way to the evil end of this spectrum, but she does fall squarely into the dodgy (may I use that word- American that I am- since I’m talking about a book set in London???) portion of things and that is what makes the book so interesting.  She’s not your normal shining star of a girl. Fleur is more of an penniless, egotistical, writer, who’s not completely believable… but I sorta liked her anyway.

Would I recommend it? Yes, the book kept me guessing and you really need to meet the fabulous Lady Edwina who was the best part of the whole thing!

If your interested in more Muriel Spark don’t forget to check in with Stuck in a Book and Harriet as they alternate posting this week!

One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde

One of the fun things about the Weekly Photo Challenge is that in looking at other peoples entries I have found some amazing blogs. One of them is Anne Freeman Images: Art of the Outdoors. Anne’s pictures are amazing, her short stories are fun and she has posted a few book reviews – what’s not to love? I read about One of Our Thursdays is Missing on her site and she gave it such a fantastic review that I went and requested it through the library system as I promptly forgot half of what she said in her review.

She says, right there, in plain English, that this is not the first in the series but do I remember?

No.

Fortunately Anne was right, this was a very fun book and I also will be heading back to the library to get the first in the series The Eyre Affair.

Would I recommend it? Yes. War is threatening between Racy Novel and Women’s Fiction you don’t want to miss out on that! Unless you have an issue with puns. If you have an issue with puns you may want to steer clear. In that regard it is reminiscent of the Xanth books but less 14 year old boy humor and more book humor.

And don’t be like me.

DON’T FORGET!

This is not the first in the series, if you want to start at the beginning don’t start here look up The Eyre Affair instead!

City Dog, Country Frog by Jon J. Muth and Mo Willems

A sweet, simple story about friendship, seasons, aging and loss.

Illustrated by the same man who did Zen Shorts and Zen Ghosts the pictures are touching and funny all at the same time.

There is not a great deal of text, yet it is enough that the story can be read as a slightly silly, slightly sad book about a dog and his friends or as something that goes beyond that into friendship, aging, loss and the constant changing of the seasons while life goes on.

Would I recommend it? Yes.

Mirror by Jeannie Baker

First off if you go find this book don’t be like me. Don’t pick it up, open it and think that it must be defective because there are no pages. Be smarter than me, be more like Ivy, she can figure out how to open it, see:It opens from the middle out… very tricky.

The book follows two boys, (the boy on the left lives in Sydney Australia and the one on the right lives in Morocco) as they go about their day.

Designed to be looked at together it requires a lot of space to open it all up, but it’s totally worth it.

The pictures that tell the story are amazing collages… …with unbelievable detail. Ivy and Clara didn’t really pick up much of the different culture, same life aspect but their interest in the pictures more than made up for it.

Would I recommend it? Yes, I’m hoping to remember this book again when the girls are a little older and can understand a bit more, but it was worth it just to check out the cool chickens!

City of Dragons by Robin Hobb

If you’ve ever gone to my page of fiction books and looked around you’ll see that I’ve got nine posts of Robin Hobb’s which in total review eleven books and almost every one says that you should really read Assassins Apprentice. So I just thought I’d start this one out by saying it again.

You should read Assassins Apprentice.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way I’ve only one really important thing to say about this book.

Even though this is the 15th book of Robin Hobb’s that I have read, even though ALL the others came in sets of three, (you know a trilogy, the thing fantasy writers seem to love) this is not book three of a trilogy. This is book three of four.

I just thought I should warn you.

Would I recommend it? Yes, but I have I mentioned that you should read Assassins Apprentice?

Pocketful of Posies, A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes by Sally Mavor

I love nursery rhymes.

Once, just after starting my blog I wrote about some of my thoughts on children’s books. You can take a quick peek here: Pick a Good One, O Best Beloved, I’ll wait while you do…

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After reading that I’m sure you know exactly why I love reading nursery rhymes to the girls but just in case you didn’t go read it I’ll elaborate.

Even the most well known of the nursery rhymes have uncommon words, (dame, contrary, posies) and once you venture into some of the other less well known rhymes you get even more, horrid, doth, stile, delve, caper, sup and comely just to name a few. We certainly don’t stop and identify each unknown word, that would be boring but Ivy will often ask if she doesn’t understand a word even if it’s in a rhyme that she’s heard many times before. I like to think I’ve got a decent vocabulary but I’m not throwing around comely and caper very often! I can’t think of a better way to sneakily expand vocabulary than through a bunch of short fun rhymes.

Since the rhymes are so fun and short both girls are starting to memorize a few (beyond Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star)  so we can now “read” together trading lines back and forth. Good for the memory and just plan fun!

Nursery rhymes, gotta love ’em!

Recently one of my librarian cousins told me about this book:

As you now know from reading my old post I say gorgeous illustrations trump even crappy writing when we pick out a book.

This book has nursery rhymes and fantastic pictures -what can I say librarian cousins are great!

The illustrations are photos of artwork made out of everything from acorn caps to beads, sewn together on felt backgrounds and populated with little handmade people. Ivy and Clara have both poured over the pictures and so have I, they are fascinating!

Would I recommend it? Yes!

Kudos to anyone who can name all ten nursery rhymes my uncommon words came from!

Diana Gabaldon

Start with Outlander and then keep going.

I’ve been re-reading them in between other books since Jane has been born and I’m on my 6th book of hers in a month.

I haven’t yet had the words “dinna fash” or “you’ll ken” come out of my mouth yet but it’s a good thing I’ve only got one book left or I’d be yelling “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ” next time I burn dinner.

Would I recommend them? Having just stared blankly at the computer screen for a many minitues I have no tidy way to sum up the books nor why exactly I’d recommend them.

I think I’m in a Jamie and Claire induced stuper… and now I have to go read what happens next – even though I’ve read this one twice before.

In The Woods: Who’s Been Here? by Lindsay Barrett George

I like this book for many reasons but I’ll admit the reason it really stands out is because it doesn’t shy away from the fact that goshawks eat blue-jays and fox eat woodchucks.  Perhaps it makes me overly bloodthirsty and morbid but I think that’s awesome and rare find in recent children’s books.  When you read an older book, things get eaten up all the time,  Peter Rabbit’s father was made into a pie after all.  Nowadays it’d be more likely that he’d get sold to a pet shop and spend the rest of his life in as a classroom pet.

Come to think of it, Mr Rabbit may have preferred the pie.

In any case, in this book children are walking through the woods finding animal sign.

For instance they find blue feathers on the ground, and ask the question:

“Who’s been here?”

The answer is provided on the next page – a goshawk and a blue jay.

In addition to the bloodthirsty aspect and the excellent pictures I like that there is not a lot of text. Not  much text has two benefits, either we can whip through the book at mock 10 because we’ve read it six times that day already and I really need to be getting dinner ready, or we can talk about what’s happening in the pictures, what time of year it is and try for the 7,000 time to convince Clara that it is a MUD dauber not a wood dauber.

But she is two and so I’m afraid it’s going to be a wood dauber for the foreseeable future.

Would I recommend it? Yes, there happens to be a whole series of these, I think we are going to have to find more at the library but I’m glad to own at least this one!

Terrier by Tamora Pierce

I had just finished this book and was trying to explain to John a why I liked it and this is what came out:

“It’s a book that had it been a movie I would have loved it but because I liked the book I’d never see the movie, but do you know what I mean?”

Fortunately he did know what I meant.

Here is a translation for the rest of you. The book involved a lot of beating the bad guys up with big sticks, funny quippy sort of comments from the good guys, who weren’t all guys and weren’t an angelic type of good. The main character is a girl who’s quite adept at beating people up herself, and she has an interesting purple eyed cat.

As it turns out my favorite movies are the ones where good guys aren’t really that great and they make lots of quippy comments while they are running around blowing things up, which is always good because there is significantly less gore and guts.

I’m not a fan of gore and guts.

-Or I like romantic comedies.-

What I really don’t like, and have just stopped watching altogether are movies based on books that I liked. My reasons are as follows:

1)They are never as good as the books.

2)My mind is then poisoned with movie images that I can never shake, which is extra lame because of the first reason.

3)I don’t actually read a ton of books where stuff gets blown up, so I don’t really have to worry about overlap there.

4)I do read books full of suspense. Suspense in books is fine, I just read faster, I like it. Suspense in movies irritates me and I ALWAYS jump. I hate jumping.

5) I also hate nightmares. It takes a bit in books to give me nightmares, Steven King gives me nightmares. When it comes to movies I could probably manage a nightmare after watching the Sandlot. Therefore half the books I read are movies I would never see for fear of nightmares.

6)If I want to have deep thoughts about something I’ll read a book. Movies are, in my opinion, for open mouthed, drooling, mindless, entertainment. Therefore if I’ve read a book that requires any sort of brain power I’m not interested in seeing it on the screen.

When in comes to movies I didn’t love Seven Pounds (way too much thinking) I won’t be watching the Time Travelers Wife, or Inkheart (because making a movie about a book like that is just wrong) and don’t even get me started on Harry Potter…

But I did really like this book. So much so that if it becomes a movie I’ll never – ever – watch it.

Would I recommend it? Yes!