From the publisher’s website: In the final weeks of the Weimar Republic, as Hitler and his National Socialist party angle to assume control of Germany, beautiful girls are seen sleepwalking through the streets. Then, a young woman of mysterious origin, with her legs bizarrely deformed, is pulled dead from the…
Category: books and reading
The haul from this year’s book sale!
It’s been a full week since Friends Night at the annual TSCPL book sale, and I’m only NOW able to post about it, although I took the photo and entered everything into my LibraryThing catalog last Saturday. Life is just too damn busy. Also, when I DO have some free…
Journal entry for August 6
One week ago, August 6, was my first time taking part in an event called Do Nothing But Read Day. Sounds right up my alley, right? Of course it is. But sometime during the afternoon, my mood took an extreme downward turn. Later in the evening, after a nap, I…
Mini-review of The Shadow of the Wind
This mini-review was initially posted on my local library’s website. To enter the grand prize drawing for the summer reading program, adults had to read eight books and write a review of at least one of them. I wrote mine for The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón…
Review of Half a Life: a Memoir by Darin Strauss
From the back cover: In the last month of his high school career, just after turning eighteen, Strauss is behind the wheel of his father’s Oldsmobile, driving with friends, having ‘thoughts of mini-golf, another thought of maybe just going to the beach.’ Then, out of the blue: a collision that…
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone
The unusual title caught my eye (of course), and I saw a lot of good buzz on Twitter when this book came out last year. Then, leading up to the release date for the paperback edition, Rebecca from The Book Lady’s Blog offered up several copies of The Handbook for…
Mother’s Day blurb
I’m calling it a “blurb” because I don’t have time to cover anything in a substantive way, but yikes it’s been four weeks since my last post, and I’m at the laptop, so I’m jotting down some notes before unpacking the dishwasher. Two weeks ago, Easter Sunday, a nearby house…
Super-Short Read-a-Thon update
It’s just past midnight here, and I just finished an awesome book, a novella by the late great Muriel Spark called The Driver’s Seat. This is maybe my fifth Spark book overall, and man, no one else writes like she did. Her imagination is sort of creepy and twisted, and…
TGI Read-a-Thon time!
We’re between my sons’ basketball and baseball seasons, and tomorrow is the 24-Hour Read-a-Thon. Thus, while one of my kids has a baseball practice scheduled, Jeff will be taking him to that, and maybe taking the other one as well, and I have nothing scheduled. So I decided a couple…
So many books: To Keep, or Not to Keep?
Yesterday was the last day to use a coupon at Hastings to “trade in five, get an extra $5.00 in credit.” The five items could be any combination of books, DVDs, music CDs, and games. I found nine or ten books I was willing to part with, knowing that they…