I hereby notify my vast (ha) readership that for the next two weeks, I will be managing the Mercer Island Patch site along with my husband, and I will not have any time to post to any of my blogs.
I have a stack of great fiction that I got for my 50th birthday this past Sunday, but I will doubtless have scant few moments to pick them up and read them. I got Paul Darrow's (Avon on the 70s British SF series Blakes 7) autobiography, called "You're Him, Aren't You?" and I got a copy of Patricia McKillips "The Bards of Bone Plain" and Alan Dean Fosters "The Human Blend" as well as Sharon Lee and Steve Millers "Mouse and Dragon" and Jennifer Cruisie and Bob Mayer's "Don't Look Down."
Anyway, here's a few items that I thought would be of interest from Shelf Awareness:
"I am not a Luddite (she said, somewhat defensively), and I do not
oppose all change simply because it is change.... Here's my bottom line:
There's no way to avoid using energy either to print books or
manufacture e-readers, to transport books or to transport e-readers, and
disposal issues crop up in both cases, as well, so why would I elect to
read in a format that requires additional inputs of energy? Why not just
take my book out under a tree or to the beach or read it on the front
porch or under the lamp that's turned on in the winter evening, anyway,
so I won't be tripping over my dog when I get up from my chair to go to
bed?
"It will be a while before all the dust from the new e-reader revolution
settles, and the final settling may not come in my lifetime. Meanwhile,
I'm watching the dust storm with interest and sticking with my
old-fashioned books. As the Water Rat said of his old riverbank: 'It's
my world, and I don't want any other.' "
--Pamela Grath, owner of Dog Ears Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10363465,
Northport, Mich., on her Books in Northport blog
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10363466
This is so true, I love the smell of books!
Number 16 among New York magazine's Reasons to Love New York
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10353388: "Because
We're Home to Not Only the Publishing Industry But Also to a Woman Who
Spends Her Days Smelling Books"
Six months ago, artist Rachael Morrison, who works at the Museum of
Modern Art's library, began wondering about the unscented future of
e-books and "decided to spend her lunch breaks chronicling the unique
scent of each book in the MoMA stacks." Morrison said that "smelling
books is really nostalgic for me--I am often reminded of my
grandparents' homes, or libraries where I used to go when I was a
child."
I loved Douglas Adam's books, so I would really like to see these series:
BBC Four released a trailer
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10353394 for
the upcoming series Dirk Gently, based on two novels by the late Douglas
Adams--Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark
Tea-Time of the Soul. Blastr
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10353395 observed that
BBC Four "bills the show as a 'drama,' but if it uses any of its source
material, it should contain plenty of light British wit, ghosts and the
poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It may even involve the creation of
all life on Earth."
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
A Holiday Treat/An Irish Country Girl
Happy Holidays, to all my fellow Bibliophiles! As a special treat, as a list of Nancy Pearl, Seattles doyenne of books and book lore, picks her favorite memoirs:
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/03/131392774/happy-holidays-voyeurs-nancy-pearl-picks-memoirs
Then, a quote that I know that I can relate to, as an book lover who still feels the thrill of anticipation every single time I delve into a new book:
(From Shelf Awareness)
"I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at
the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important
thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I
remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into
images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and
allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under
the sea, fight with d'Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the
intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu,
or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean
carrying Marius's inert body on my back.
"Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams and placed the
universe of literature within reach of the boy I once was. My mother
told me the first things I wrote were continuations of the stories I
read because it made me sad when they concluded or because I wanted to
change their endings. And perhaps this is what I have spent my life
doing without realizing it: prolonging in time, as I grew, matured, and
aged, the stories that filled my childhood with exaltation and
adventures."
--Mario Vargas Llosa in his Nobel Lecture
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10334483,
"In Praise of Reading and Fiction," which he delivered yesterday in
Sweden.
I just finished reading "An Irish Country Girl" the 4th book in the series by Patrick Taylor, a physician from Northern Ireland. This delicious volume was even more appropriate, as it is set during the Christmas season in the tiny town of Ballybucklbo in Ireland. The Irish are, as everyone knows, talented storytellers to a man and woman, and in this case, we hear the story of Maureen "Kinky" Kincaid; her family life, her development of the 'second sight' and her marriage to the love of her life, who died at sea after only a year of marriage. The story begins with Kinky telling the 'fairy tale' of her elder sisters love, who didn't believe in the wee folk and was taken by those selfsame fae when he cuts down their favored tree on a cold night in November that is dedicated to the 'good folk.' As Kinky tells the tale to a group of young carolers, you can almost hear the brogue and feel the chill winds and snow set out by the fox and the raven, harbingers of the faeries, or Bean Sidhe, pronounced Ban Shee. The only problem with this, and the whole book, is that Taylor draws the story out longer than need be, padding what would make a nice short story into many chapters, and then adding on what seems like a whole different story in the middle and trying to cap it with the same ghost story at the end. Though it ties up well, the ending seems rushed, and we don't learn more about things that the author could have embellished, like Kinky and Paudeen's first year of marriage, or their wedding, or the storm that took Paudeens life. Still, I'd give this book a solid B+, and recommend it to all who have read Patrick Taylor's Irish Country Doctor series and often wondered about his miraculous housekeeper and cook.
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/03/131392774/happy-holidays-voyeurs-nancy-pearl-picks-memoirs
Then, a quote that I know that I can relate to, as an book lover who still feels the thrill of anticipation every single time I delve into a new book:
(From Shelf Awareness)
"I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at
the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important
thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I
remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into
images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and
allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under
the sea, fight with d'Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the
intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu,
or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean
carrying Marius's inert body on my back.
"Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams and placed the
universe of literature within reach of the boy I once was. My mother
told me the first things I wrote were continuations of the stories I
read because it made me sad when they concluded or because I wanted to
change their endings. And perhaps this is what I have spent my life
doing without realizing it: prolonging in time, as I grew, matured, and
aged, the stories that filled my childhood with exaltation and
adventures."
--Mario Vargas Llosa in his Nobel Lecture
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz3642037Biz10334483,
"In Praise of Reading and Fiction," which he delivered yesterday in
Sweden.
I just finished reading "An Irish Country Girl" the 4th book in the series by Patrick Taylor, a physician from Northern Ireland. This delicious volume was even more appropriate, as it is set during the Christmas season in the tiny town of Ballybucklbo in Ireland. The Irish are, as everyone knows, talented storytellers to a man and woman, and in this case, we hear the story of Maureen "Kinky" Kincaid; her family life, her development of the 'second sight' and her marriage to the love of her life, who died at sea after only a year of marriage. The story begins with Kinky telling the 'fairy tale' of her elder sisters love, who didn't believe in the wee folk and was taken by those selfsame fae when he cuts down their favored tree on a cold night in November that is dedicated to the 'good folk.' As Kinky tells the tale to a group of young carolers, you can almost hear the brogue and feel the chill winds and snow set out by the fox and the raven, harbingers of the faeries, or Bean Sidhe, pronounced Ban Shee. The only problem with this, and the whole book, is that Taylor draws the story out longer than need be, padding what would make a nice short story into many chapters, and then adding on what seems like a whole different story in the middle and trying to cap it with the same ghost story at the end. Though it ties up well, the ending seems rushed, and we don't learn more about things that the author could have embellished, like Kinky and Paudeen's first year of marriage, or their wedding, or the storm that took Paudeens life. Still, I'd give this book a solid B+, and recommend it to all who have read Patrick Taylor's Irish Country Doctor series and often wondered about his miraculous housekeeper and cook.
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