Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson

I love Jeri Westerson's Crispin Guest novels.  She really makes me feel like I am right in the middle of the medieval atmosphere she has created, London in 1384, experiencing the sights and sounds along with her hero, the Tracker, Crispin Guest.

The thing I love about Crispin is that he operates within this historical framework while maintaining personal integrity, his own moral compass, and a sense of humor that never seems to desert him no matter the circumstances.  And the circumstances have not been the best for Crispin since he was banished from court, stripped of his title and his land, losing his money and position in the process, and forced to survive by his wits and skill as the "Tracker".

In this second book in the series, a simpleminded tavern girl shows up at his door in the Shambles asking for his help.  A body was found in her room with an arrow protruding from the man and she must have killed him.  The man was a courier from the French king transporting a relic to England.  Crispin is drawn into the events and they quickly spiral out of control to the point where Crispin is implicated in the murder.  With time running out he has to unravel the conspiracy behind the murder and save his country and himself in the process.  How he manages to do this is a reader's delight in the hands of the skillful Westerson.  This book is pure fun and one of my favorite reads of the past few months.  I highly recommend it.  I can't wait to tackle "The Demon's Parchment" [Book 3], and the 4th installment, "Troubled Bones", which is due out in October.

Awesome people reading

Here's one of many cool photos found here.

Bookcase in a stairwell that you access by Bosun's Chair

from boingboing

The ultimate compilation of Summer Reading lists

Thanks to largehearted boy, here is the ultimate compilation of Summer Reading lists.  Enjoy.

My pictures, My Words by Mac Kenney

This wonderful little picture book arrived recently for me to review and I must say I found it delightful.  Mac Kenney is a nature photographer and poet, but this is his first effort to combine those two interests.  He was born and raised in Colorado, so was able to experience the four seasons as only the Rocky Mountains and the wide-open plains can display them.

This slim volume contains 20 color photographs that run the gamut of human emotion and powerfully illustrate the beauty of the natural world.  The photos are suitable for framing or for giving as gifts.  The poetry reminds us of how brief and precious life is and how we need to take advantage of our brief time here and accept the love that's out there waiting for us if we would only open our hearts.

The contents of this book are indeed, as the back cover says, food for the soul.  So pick up a copy, and bon appetit.

Ghellow Road by T. H. Waters

Ghellow Road is billed as a "literary diary of a young girl's journey through the tangled labyrinth that is her life."  It most certainly is that, and much more.  T. H. Waters' story is a painful one, but her willingness to share it with people is quite admirable.

I don't want to give away too much of the story so as not to spoil it for those of you who would like to read it, and I do recommend that you do, but suffice it to say that Theresa Waters has more thrown at her in her early years than a lot of people have to deal with in a lifetime.  Her mother is mentally ill, and in and out of hospitals; her father desperately tries to hold the family together, but is eventually overwhelmed by the task; and she is shifted from one temporary home to another, passed among relatives and friends, all the while trying to maintain some semblence of normalcy with her school activities and friends.

This is a tragic story to read, but this lady actually lived it, and managed to triumph over the worst of circumstances.  It does indeed give you hope for the human race.  You keep turning the pages cheering for Theresa, wanting so badly for things to smooth out in her life, and I was amazed at her resilience.  In tone, the book reminded me of another coming of age story that has gotten a lot of press lately, "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls.  Sometimes life throws a LOT at you.  These women learned to persevere under incredible circumstances, and not be bitter and give back what they got, but to reflect love and be successful despite great obstacles.  There are life lessons to be learned here.

Okra Picks

It's that time of year again.  Here's the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance's suggestions for good books to escape the summer heat.

Ten Most Powerful Women Authors

Forbes magazine has showcased the Ten Most Powerful Women Authors.  They were selected because of their ability to influence us with their words and ideas.  They have won lots of awards and sold lots of books, so obviously they know how to tell (and more importantly, sell) a story.  I've heard some quibble about the names on the list.  See what you think. 

Isaac Asimov's Letter to Future Patrons of a New Library

97 writers sent letters in 1971 to celebrate the opening of a new library in Troy, MI.  One of those letter writers was Isaac Asimov, who wrote the following:

Probably one of my favorite book related posters

5 Reasons Why E-books Aren't There Yet

This posting at wired.com made some good points about E-books.

Waterfall by Lisa T. Bergren

Lisa Tawn Bergren is an award winning author with over 30 books to her credit.  This is book one in a new series called "River of Time".

I must say that before reading this, I was only familiar with her 'God Gave Us' series of children's books, which are beautiful, and check out well here at our library.  The artwork is wonderful and they are so colorful and sweet.  So I was anxious to read this new YA series and see what her teen books were like.

She does not disappoint.

The Bentarrini sisters, Gabi and Lia, are spending the summer in Italy with their mother, a famed Etruscan scholar.  One day they wonder into an ancient tomb and happen to place their hands atop a handprint there and find themselves transported to fourteenth century Italy.  To complicate matters, the sisters are separated in the time jump, Gabi falls for a knight on one side of the conflict, and in the search for her sister gets caught up in a battle between two opposing forces.  Gabi is frantic to find her sister and find a way to return home, but what about her knight in shining armor who is literally from a different world? Can she truly leave behind a love she has only just found and yearned for her whole life?

This book is a nice blend of history, romance, and time travel.  Gabi is a spunky heroine whose dialogue and thoughts ring true as typically those of a teen and add humor to the unusual predicament she finds herself in.  The writing is good, the story flows well, there is good characterization, and the story is laced with adventure so you are compelled to keep turning those pages.  This book would definitely appeal to teens, but also to adults as well.

Cascade, the next volume in the series, is due out shortly.  I will definitely be adding this to my "to read" list, as I am interested in seeing how the rest of the story unfolds.

The Tattooed Lady: A History by Amelia Klem Osterud

This is a fascinating book.  Combining thorough research with lots of wonderful historical photos, it delves into the history of tattooing, telling us that tattooing was a tradition that survived from early tribal and pagan times and was adapted by European peasants to their new Christian reality.

Modern European tattooing doesn't reappear until the fifteenth century, when Christian crusaders began arriving home from Jerusalem with symbolic tattoos, and then again in the seventeenth century, in the form of mystical alchemist marks and Christian symbols worn as souvenirs of a pilgrim's visit to Jerusalem.

The Greeks learned how to tattoo from their neighbors, the Tracians, who lived in what is now Turkey.  Tracians used tattoos to indicate higher cultural status, and tattooed Thracian women were depicted on Greek vases.  The Greeks used it to permanently mark Greek slaves.

The Romans picked it up from the Greeks and used it until Emperor Constantine banned penal tattooing in 316.  The Picts, an ancient matrilineal pre-Celtic tribe of the British Isles, were notorious for tattooing, especially among women.

The custom spread as sailors learned to tattoo each other and tattoo shops began to spring up in large cities and ports on both sides of the Atlantic during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, attracting men and women interested in putting an indelible mark on their bodies.  Perhaps the poorer residents of cities and ports yearning to tap into some tribal yearning wanted to decorate their skin.

In any case, as with other fads taken from the working class, by the end of the nineteenth century the stylish upper classes of the U.S. and England had started to get tattoos.  In addition to the sailors, gentlemen officers and princes of European nations had begun visiting places in the Far East.  When these officers returned to their upper crust lives, the permanent marks were seen as racy and daring, and they inspired other stylish individuals to acquire tattoos.  Even upper-class women participated.  Lady Randolph Churchill, Windston Churchill's mother, became the most famous of these well-bred tattooed ladies.  According to popular lore, she had a snake tattooed around her wrist, which she could hide by wearing a bracelet. 

But the heart of the book concentrates on a gutsy group of women (including Irene Woodward, Nora Hildebrandt, and Artoria Gibbons) who covered their bodies in tattoos and traveled the country performing nearly nude for all to see (at a time when it was scandalous to show even a bit of ankle!).  Though they were the precursors of a cultural movement (almost a quarter of Americans now have tattoos), little has been known of their real lives, until now.

Nora Hildebrandt

Tattooed women were accused by many of being exhibitionists, desperate, oversexed women who needed men to look at their bare tatooed limbs as some kind of kink.  However, placed in the historical context of tattooing, they were simply taking the next step.  They saw a need, and they filled it.

Tattoos became more mainstream throughout the 1980s, and with the explosion of the early 1990s grunge/alternative music style, tattoos were dubbed by some as "the nose job of the '90s".  Thirty-six percent of Americans age 25-29 and 28% of those age 30-39 sport tattoos.  So, tattooed women have gone from being unique and exotic spectacles to being fairly common in just over a hundred years.  These women helped bring tattooing out of the realm of the sideshow and put it into everyday life.  Whether you already have a tattoo or whether you would never even consider getting one, this is a most informative and enthralling book. 

Date a girl who reads

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

— Rosemarie Urquico

In Honor of Mother's Day

Rae Meadows, author of Mothers and Daughters, has recommended three books about mothers who will make your mothering seem perfect.

5 myths about the 'Information Age'

This article is worth reading just for the refutation of #1 alone.

11 Best Books on the Civil War

Just in time for the 150th Anniversary, the Daily Beast has come up with this list of essential books about the war.  There are no fiction titles here (that would be a separate list), and they may be missing a few essential ingredients, but it is an excellent starting point.

I Still Dream About You by Fannie Flagg

I loved this book.  It was sweet and funny and a really quick and easy read.  Fannie's books always have so much heart in them.  It's the perfect thing to read if you are trying to decompress from something stressful (for me it was an algebra class), or a lovely book to spend a couple of hours reading on a nice afternoon outdoors.
The main character in the story is Maggie Fortenberry, a former Miss Alabama who has returned to her home town of Birmingham to sell real estate.  On the surface, it looks like Maggie has the perfect life, but things aren't always what they seem.  She is berating herself for a lifetime of missed chances, and feels like life is just not worth living any more.  You will fall in love with Maggie as she makes plans to leave a world she can no longer bear, and darn it if life just keeps interfering with her plans.  My other favorite character from the book is Maggie's boss, Hazel, an eternally optimistic midget who calls herself "the biggest little real estate woman in the world."  There is even a neat little mystery wrapped up in this whimsical tale of a southern belle who has lost her way.
This book is also a love letter to Birmingham and the state of Alabama (my home state, so I share Fannie's love for the place).   When Fannie describes the heyday of the city and those grand old houses on the hill you can almost smell the magnolia blossoms. 

Here's a link to a video of Fannie being interviewed about this book.  For some reason it wouldn't let me embed it for you, but I think if you take the time to view it, you'll see why Fannie is a favorite of book clubs.

I absolutely adored this book, just like I adore and admire the irresistably delightful Fannie Flagg.

Challenged Books 2010

Yesterday, the American Library Association released its list of the top 10 most frequently challenged books of 2010. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins made the list this time in "what's become a virtual rite of passage for young adult sensations," the Associated Press (via the Washington Post) reported.

"I've read in passing that people were concerned about the level of violence in the books," Collins said. "That's not unreasonable. They are violent. It's a war trilogy."

This year's top 10 are:


1. And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson Reasons
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
3. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
4. Crank by Ellen Hopkins
5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
6. Lush by Natasha Friend
7. What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones
8. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
9. Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
10. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Some random comments:

"It almost makes me happy to hear books still have that kind of power," Alexie said. "And there's nothing in my book that even compares to what kids can find on the Internet."

The ALA reported 348 challenges to books in 2010 and at least 53 outright bans. According to Barbara M. Jones, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, some books on the list "reflect current trends and changes in technology, including Hunger Games, inspired in part by reality television; Aldous Huxley's classic Brave New World, which anticipates antidepressants and artificial fertilization; and a work of nonfiction: Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's despairing account of trying to get by as a waitress, maid and Walmart worker," the AP noted.

"The closer books come to things that are really happening in a lot of lives, the more they become a reminder of what people don't like to think about," Jones said, adding that Ehrenreich's book "really hits hard what it's like to have a low paying job."

My take: Nickel & Dimed was a great muckraker of a book. Sherman Alexie's book is funny and deserves all the awards it has won. Brave New World...Twilight...you have got to be kidding. What a joke this whole Banned Books thing has become.

Video Preview of Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit"

First of all, if you haven't read The Hobbit--read it. Tolkien's The Hobbit and his Lord of the Rings trilogy are fantastic books. Secondly, Peter Jackson did a wonderful job interpreting the trilogy and everybody is waiting with baited breath for The Hobbit. This film snippet will whet your appetite and prime you for the filmed experience of Tolkien's magical book.

Top Ten Books of the American South

Everyone has their own favorite list of southern books. Southern literature is definitely one of my favorite genres. Here's Glen Taylor's top ten. Harper Lee is no surprise, and I'm gratified to see Rick Bragg on the list. Eight, nine and ten on his list are certainly classics. There are a few new ones to me that I intend to check out. Maybe you should too.

The Ultimate iPad Accessory

From BuzzFeed....LOL...I love it!