Monday Malarkey

Happy Monday!  I can't remember the last time I did a Monday Malarkey post (and I'm too weary to go look) but it's definitely time.  I actually received some books in the mail, this week!

Just walked in, this week:

Small Wars by Sadie Jones and
Copper Star by Suzanne Woods Fisher - both sent by my lovely friend, Paula
Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick - via Paperback Swap
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - from Splinter (a Sterling imprint)
Emma by Jane Austen - from Splinter 

Great Expectations and Emma are from the series with covers by artist Sara Singh.  I wrote about four other Splinter classics, here.  I absolutely love these covers in a gushy, ridiculous, want-to-cuddle-them way.  They are paperbacks-with-flap.  I compared them to Persephone books in quality, in my previous post, and I still believe the comparison is apt.  Also, on a side note, I'm calling these two books my "brat pack".  I've read them both and they are favorites.  Pip and Emma are just a tiny bit full of themselves, though, aren't they?  It's my opinion that Emma at least meant well, while Pip's motivations were more selfish.  Joe Gargery was by far my favorite character in Great Expectations. 

Speaking of Persephone books, my Persephone Biannually catalog just arrived.  We were actually going to be in London, this week, but the trip had to be canceled because Huzzybuns had an important meeting he could not miss.  I'm okay with that, since we went to London in March (I will never pass up an opportunity to go to the UK) but I was looking forward to a visit to Persephone Books.  Instead, I've perused my Persephone shelf and made little checkmarks and notations and circles in the catalog. Next up: a cup of tea and some time reading the articles in a fat, comfy chair.  Might as well have fun dreaming, even if I can't go to the store, right?  

Brace yourself:

If you've looked at my sidebar, lately, you know I am well and truly behind on reviews.  I just added a couple books to my 2012 Books Read list and will add them to my sidebar, shortly (I always leave my current year's Books Read list in draft form till the year ends) and realized I actually have two books from August that I've yet to review.  Oh. My. Gosh.  

I've had trouble finding the time to sit down to type and for a while I couldn't even get myself to read, I was so weary at the end of the day, but I think I'm up to snuff, now.  That means I'm going to have to start hitting those reviews hard.  I apologize in advance for the potential review avalanche.  As always, I don't expect anyone to comment on every post.  If you feel like commenting, great.  If you can't bear to read all those posts, no worries.  I will do a few posts with mini reviews but not all will be done that way, so there should be quite a few posts by the end of the week, if I succeed.  

The only hindrance will likely be the arrival of our sofa on Thursday. Excitement! 

Cat news:

Fiona is irritated with me because I've misplaced her laser.  Sorry, Fi.  Isabel decided to climb in with the wet laundry as I tossed it into the dryer and curled herself up at the back like she owned the place.  You should have heard the howl when I pulled her out.  

That's about all the malarkey I've got, for now.  Happy Monday!

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Operation Hearbreak by Duff Cooper

I figure you guys already know what a Persephone Book looks like, so I decided to share my personal favorite shot, Operation Heartbreak with cats! The kitties thought the book smelled excellent, in case you're interested. Here's a closer image of the bookmark (which is, of course, the same as the endpapers):

I snagged that image from dovegreyreader scribbles' review of Operation Heartbreak, a review that contains the spoilers I've avoided putting in my own. It's such an excellent review that any excuse to link up to it is a good one. The spoilery bit is carefully set apart, so no worries if you'd like to read a second opinion but avoid finding out about the ending to Operation Heartbreak.

Title: Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper

Copyright: 2004/Reprinted 2010; originally published in 1950

Published By: Persephone Books - Fiction

Length: 160 pp.

Reason for Reading: I love Persephone Books! And, this one touches on WWII, although it is not strictly a "WWII book".

A quote I thought was interesting and which seemed very much "of the time period":

He thought it a pity that girls should own cars and should drive them. Especially at night. What were taxis for, anyway? He said good night almost crossly when she left him at his flat.

Brief summary:

Willie Maryngton is orphaned, but his deceased parents have left him an income and, thus, a future. His guardian, the widow of his father's fellow soldier, kindly cares for Willie in spite of her circumstances. As a youngster, Willie desires to be a soldier and anxiously awaits his turn to go to the front, during WWI. But, within days of his deployment, the war ends. He remains a career soldier, oddly hoping that war will break out again so that he may have his turn in battle, but by the time WWII breaks out, he is deemed too old.

So it goes with Willie in love and war. Whatever he truly desires is always just out of reach. A popular fellow when young, he becomes jaded and sad with the passing years as love eludes him, he misses out once again on battle during the Second World War and his beloved horse guard is mechanized, leading him to eventually resign from the service. But, Willie's final chapter becomes a turning point beyond his imagination.

What I liked about Operation Heartbreak:

I liked the book but I loved the ending, a perfect wrap-up to Willie's story. He is a hapless character, unlucky in love and life, a friendly guy but an underachiever. In perusing favorite blogs, I discovered that what happens in the end actually occurred in WWII, but I can't say a thing about it without spoiling that perfect ending.

What I disliked about Operation Heartbreak:

It's such a sad story, since Willie's adulthood boils down to a lengthy run of bad luck. Occasionally, it seems like things might be looking up, but Willie's just not sharp enough to catch on when he needs to make a change and that leads to one heartbreak after another.

Recommendation:

4/5 - Clear writing in a compact story that is particularly redeemed by its terrific ending and excellent characterization. I'm glad I read it, if only for the ending. I think Persephone's books are distinguished by their clarity and charm. Although Willie's life is heartbreaking, hence the title, his story is interesting and I particularly love the dialogue between Willie and the young men he grew up with, who were as good as brothers to him. Willie doesn't know their younger sister as well, although she becomes important later in the book. Two of the key female characters were both unreliable and (in one case) a bit flighty; I did love the strength and caring of the woman who took Willie in.

Jenclair's blog, A Garden Carried in the Pocket, has a recent post through which I hopped via link to her review of a book about an operation in WWII that is obviously the basis for the ending of this book. I want to find out more about the real-life event that was fictionalized in Operation Heartbreak, so I'll definitely be adding that book to my wish list. If you're curious, here's Jenclair's review, but be advised that it's a complete spoiler, especially if you like a nice surprise in your reading.

When I went to Google Images to search for a cover image, I found this:

I thought that was a pretty awesome cover.

I've been roaming the yard, taking pictures of blooming things, today, so there should be a flower post coming up in the near future. But, I do need to knock out a few reviews, first, so I'll leave you with just one. We had such a mild winter that the lavender didn't freeze, this year, and it's blooming like crazy.

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

A hodge-podge of miscellaneous including Fiona Fursday, Alex George and books

This is going to be a wildly disparate bunch of subject matter, but some of you are used to the occasional wacko post. First things first: I got to attend Alex George's signing of A Good American at Lemuria Books in Jackson (aka, "The Big City"), last night. Alex is an excellent speaker and every bit as charming in person as I've found him to be in our Twitter exchanges. I had a great time chatting with him and listening to his reading and discussion about the book.

Kiddo is officially on Spring Break, so this will be my last post for about 10 days. I'm planning to totally walk away from the internet. We'll see if that works. So, it's Fiona Fursday instead of Friday. Here is Fi in front of the shelf I call Grandpa's Shelf (because my grandfather built it):

I shared this photo -- one of my recent favorites -- on Facebook but I don't recall posting it here. It's one worth leaving up for a while. Every time I look at it, I can't help but grin.

And, one flower pic for the road. The wisteria is blooming all over town and it is breathtaking! I managed to spend some time in my church parking lot, beside which there is quite a lot of it growing.

My gerbera daisies are as big as saucers and about 90% of the trees are either budded or in full leaf. I still haven't planted a thing and I keep saying, "Soon, soon," but this may be another one of those years that I'm just too busy with the book purging (which is going very well) and spring cleaning (also plugging right along) to bother with the potted plants. I guess we'll see. I'm very happy with the improvements I've made in our living space, lately.

I've received quite a few books, this past 2 weeks, and I bought more than I should have (including a finished copy of A Good American, of course!) but I'll stick to just those that have arrived in the mail:

Each of the following were accepted for review by request from the author -- something I rarely do, but two of the authors are on my "Any time you ask," list:

• A Whisper of Rosemary by Colleen Gleason
• Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls by Gary Buslik - (who managed to seduce me into reading his book by offering to share a photo of his cat, haha)
• Kitty Cornered by Bob Tarte

From Shelf Awareness:

• Next to Love by Ellen Feldman
• Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans
• The Reconstructionist by Nick Arvin

And, a bunch of children's books from 2 publishers. I'm considering hosting a Children's Week for these, although I usually just mix children's in with everything else:

• Pobble's Way by Van Booy and Edelson
• I Always, Always Get My Way by Krasnesky and Parkins
• I Need My Monster by Noll and McWilliam
• Zaira and the Dolphins by Pavon and Coco
• The Word Collector by Sonja Wimmer
• Drops of Life by Tiitinen and Tiitinen

The latter three are translations. I've received a few other titles I haven't mentioned but they went straight into my ARC piles, which are divided by release month, and they will be read so soon that I'm not going to go to the other room to haul them in here to list, although there aren't many. I'm reading one of them, The Land of Decoration by Grace McLeen (interesting book, so far). You can see why I have that note in my sidebar saying I'm not accepting books till further notice.

I wish you all a happy reading week! Again, I plan not to even get on the internet, so if it takes forever for me to approve a comment, don't fret. I'll be back in about 10 days and I always respond.

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Fiona Friday - New lens fun (cats and flowers!)

I got a new lens, this week! While it's mostly for travel, I discovered that the new lens makes capturing both cats at once easy . . . if they're not moving, that is.

Fiona looks completely freaked out. She probably was. I had the camera no more than a foot away from her face.

Chris of Stuff as Dreams are Made On mentioned missing the nature photos I used to post regularly, so I'm tossing in a couple flower photos, today. These are for you, my dear Chris! But, the rest of y'all can enjoy them, too.

Those are all from my yard and I'll toss more into future posts. Happy Friday!

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Demian by Hesse and The Book Borrower by Makkai

Because I feel like I have very little to say about either of these books, I've decided to lump them together in one post.

Demian by Hermann Hesse is a book I plucked off my shelves when someone on Twitter mentioned a German Lit discussion. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to "favorite" that comment and never saw another tweet about a discussion, but that doesn't matter. At the time, I was having trouble settling on a book to read. I wandered to my shelves to look for the book the twitterer mentioned, Homo Faber by Max Frisch, but wasn't able to locate it (I've since found my copy). Demian was on the shelves, though, and when I sat down to read a few pages, it grabbed me.

Demian is a very internal book. I had to look up notes about it because, to be honest, it's hard to describe. Wikipedia's entry on Demian describes it as a Bildunsroman, a novel focusing on the psychological and moral. Well, that's certainly on target. Max Demian is the name of a friend of the hero, Emil Sinclair, who begins with a story of being bullied and lying to impress a bully and feeling tremendous guilt when his immoral choice causes him to end up in an even worse situation. When Emil meets Demian and Demian somehow drives away the bully, Emil is grateful but also impressed by his maturity and insight. Eventually, he becomes obsessed with Demian's ideas about spirituality. After many years, he slowly settles on his own beliefs.

Here's the plot summary from Wikipedia:

Emil Sinclair is a young boy raised in a bourgeois home, amidst what is described as a Scheinwelt, a play on words that means "world of light" as well as "world of illusion". Emil's entire existence can be summarized as a struggle between two worlds: the show world of illusion (related to the Hindu concept of maya) and the real world, the world of spiritual truth. In the course of the novel, accompanied and prompted by his mysterious classmate 'Max Demian', he detaches from and revolts against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a realization of self.

This is the kind of book I probably really needed a teacher to guide me through, but I liked the prose; I was drawn in and really wanted to know what would become of Emil and his friend, whom he refers to as "Demian". I'm not all that familiar with existentialism and I admit that a good portion of the book eventually became a little frustrating. But, I don't regret reading it. Demian was definitely an unusual read for me and reading it broke me out of my slump. It also made me yearn to go back to school to take some literature classes. I'm glad I read Demian, but it was certainly not a favorite so much as a nice break from the common.

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai is one of my "Goodbye, Borders" purchases. I bought it primarily because of Jill, aka Softdrink's review at Fizzy Thoughts.

In The Borrower, Lucy Hull is a young librarian living in a small Missouri town who works in the children's section of her library and does weekly chapter-book readings. One of her favorite patrons is a 10-year-old boy named Ian Drake. Ian's parents are hyper-religious, the kind who don't allow their children to read Harry Potter . . . the banning kind, I suppose. Ian likes to read everything and Lucy is happy to check out books she knows his mother won't approve of and quietly smuggle them to Ian.

Lucy's not particularly happy at her job, but she's got a bad case of inertia. When Ian spends the night in the library and she finds him in the morning, Lucy tries to take him home. But, she doesn't have a phone number or address for Ian's parents and he's not the slightest bit interested in sharing that information. Instead, he tries to direct her to his grandmother's home. Even though Lucy suspects the grandmother is fictional, she goes along with him and ends up inadvertently driving him across the state line . . . kidnapping him without intent. And, then they just keep on driving and end up spending weeks away from home while his parents and the police are frantically searching for the missing boy.

The idea is far-fetched, but The Borrower starts out very fun because of the light-hearted tone and all the references to books. Unfortunately, the author seems to have had an agenda. Eventually, the book becomes a bit of a diatribe about tolerance and a rather scathing view of Christianity. The author confuses intolerance with Christians, in general. Of course, Ian Drake's parents are the extreme type -- book-banning, homophobic and willing to close their child off from the world, if necessary. But, being a liberal Christian who loves her gay and heterosexual friends equally, I was really put off by the preaching. In the end, I felt like The Borrower was a waste of perfectly good reading time and regretted the purchase, but not only because of the heavy-handed theme. I also grew weary of Lucy's voice. She's cheeky but eventually she becomes tiresome.

The one thing I continued to love about The Borrower was the literary references. And, Ian Drake is a very lovable, spirited character. Lucy's Russian heritage and her father's illicit activities are an important part of the book and pretty entertaining, as well. Unfortunately, there were two things that were supposed to be mysterious during her travels and I figured out both of them long before the end of the book, so they turned out not to be surprising. I don't personally recommend the book.

And, now, you must have a happy picture to offset one iffy and one negative review. Things are blooming like crazy, now that it's cool and lovely in Mississippi. Here's one of my favorite recent photos from our yard, a rosebud:

The onslaught will continue as long as I feel like reviewing, but as always . . . no need to comment on everything, if you're a regular reader!

©2011 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Fiona Friday and More Garden Pretties

Yes, I almost forgot about Fiona Friday, again. Looks like kitty is trying to tell me she did not give me permission to photograph. In fact, she bolted after this shot.

And, here are more garden pretties.

All of which beg the question, "Just how many photos of the same cat and gardens can one person take? I won't theorize. Not feeling talkative, today. Wishing everyone a happy weekend!

Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler

Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler

Copyright 2009

Little Brown & Co. - YA

290 pages

I picked up my library copy of Twenty Boy Summer on a Monday evening and simply could not put it down till I finished at 2:00 am. A little over a year has passed since Anna fell for Matt--her best friend's brother (and, till then, her other best friend, a boy she secretly loved for years). Weeks into their romance, Matt suddenly died. Now, Matt's sister Frankie and her parents are returning to their usual vacation spot in California and Anna has been invited along.

Frankie comes up with a challenge. They should try to meet 20 boys and find a way for Anna to lose her virginity. During their three weeks in California, they spend time with Frankie's parents and go boy-hunting. Once they've located a couple of decent guys, they begin sneaking out to meet with them regularly. Meanwhile, the two girls are still dealing with grief; and, a surprising revelation by Frankie leads to a rift in their friendship. Will their summer vacation help them learn to live with Matt's loss? Or will Anna and Frankie's experience lead to the end of a lifelong friendship?

This is a great YA, very well written, but a really hard read because it's mostly about dealing with grief and you can practically feel their pain. As to the "losing the virginity" part, it's worth mentioning that Anna is only 16. I've grown weary of books in which it seems like early loss of virginity is not only expected but it's implied or boldly stated that there's something seriously wrong with a female who remains a virgin past the age of 18. In this case, I must say it was handled well. I've opted not to include any spoilers but the bottom line is that the book is beautifully written and takes grief, young love and teen angst seriously but handles them with tact and care.

Twenty Boy Summer is not a "dumbed down" book. The writing is on par with fiction not targeted at teens and it's accessible but intelligent. Definitely recommended, and I'd encourage mothers of teenage girls to read it with their daughters; it could prove a good starting point for some excellent discussion.

4.5/5 - A smart, beautifully-written young adult novel about grief, friendship and love. Tackles serious teen issues and the pain of loss with tremendous respect.

More pretties blooming around our home:

I've decided I probably ought to keep a garden journal, like Chris mentioned. I have a tendency to plant a lot of the same annuals from one year to another, but sometimes I can't remember the name of "that pretty plant with all the tiny red flowers that I grew last year" when planting season rolls around. So, I'm going to try to get cracking on that. I have several empty journals lying about.

Currently reading:

Nothing. Duh. I'm typing on the computer. ;)

Okay, I started reading The Passage by Justin Cronin, last night. Kiddo had to turn the light out and tell me to "get some sleep, Mom." It's nice to know he cares. I haven't picked up A Rumor of War in a few days, but I plan to get back to that book, tonight. And, then I'm sure I'll get crazy and find at least 2 more books to add to the mix.

Just walked in:

Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.-Soviet Submarine War by W. Craig Reed - "If Tom Clancy had turned The Hunt for Red October into a nonfiction thriller, Red November might be the result" says James Rollins in the cover quote. My copy came from Goodreads.

Also arrived:

A set of A & E "romances" on DVD, including Jane Austen's Emma. I missed the PBS Austen specials, last year (except for Northanger Abbey, which I still need to read). When shopping online, my objective was to locate a set of the Thin Man movies for hubby, but DeepDiscount.com had a really great DVD sale going and the A & E romance set leaped into my cart. Pinkie swear.

And, hurricane season is upon us. Here's my favorite bit of humor about the potentially lethal combination of the Gulf oil spill and hurricane season.

For some reason, that made me hungry. Or, maybe it's just supper time. Better go. The neighbors are going to start calling if my stomach growls any louder. Happy Wednesday! Got any wahoos to share?