Pride and Prejustice and Zombies/Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters Book Trailers

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

I still haven't been able to read this first one, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and now there is going to be a second one, which I really want to read too, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Nineteen Minutes Book Trailer

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

I have been spending a bit of time watching book trailers so over the next few days I am going to share some of my favorites with you.

I really want to read this one, I love Jodi Picoult

Western novelist Elmer Kelton dies

Monday, August 24, 2009

I have never been the biggest fan of Westerns but back when I worked at Barnes and Noble I remember showing many a customer to the Western section and Elmer Kelton's books.
For more info go here:
Western novelist Elmer Kelton dies

Shared via AddThis

Time Traveler's Wife movie trailer

Friday, August 14, 2009

I loved the book and can't wait to see the movie which opens today

Book Review - Hunter: A Novel by Campbell Jefferys

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Description from Amazon.com:
Did the Australian government really bring known Nazi party members to Australia and protected them until their deaths? Having survived the horrors of the Eastern Front, Peter Fischer leaves post-war Germany behind and moves to Australia. 40 years later, Eric Messer is struggling to find his place at a new high school south of Perth. The two meet just before the Gulf War, sparking a strange friendship tainted by mistrust and half-truths, and complicated by a mysterious and overly friendly Austrian named Baum. Of Germany descent himself, Eric becomes fascinated by the men and the stories they tell. Are they possibly wanted Nazi war criminals?

My Thoughts: Just the idea that parts of this book could be true is stunning, it makes me want to find an Australian history book and see what I can find out. Other than that it was a bit of a flop with me, the idea is intriguing but the way it is presented is less than entertaining. The story is a bit hard to follow and the characters aren't entirely flushed out making this read seem much longer than its 262 pages.


Currently "Reading":
Magazine - finishing up the People magazine that has been in my bathroom for days
Book - almost done with How to Train a Rock

Book Review and Giveaway - The Apostate Theory by Mr. Pat

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

I had a hard time with this one not because the book is poorly written in any way but because I personally disagree with nearly everything The Apostate Theory tries to convey. I will say that although the book is fiction the subject matter is vividly current.

The product description from Amazon.com:

America’s pending withdrawal of its military from the Middle East in the wake of the Apostate’s promises and congressional demands, has made the fishing ports at Marka, Somalia on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and the Port of Sudan on the Red Sea, the locations of choice for the new Muslim terrorist camps. It does not matter what you or I believe. What does matter is what the world of Islam believes. The Americans spit in Allah's face when they chose the Apostate over the woman. Men are flocking to the camps to avenge Allah and His Messinger. In order to assimilate the refugees into mainstream America there would be religious concessions in America's schools and workplaces. Secular laws pertaining to marriage, divorce and criminal punishment would be reviewed to accommodate the growing communities. The Twin Towers will no longer be America's worst nightmare.

I am including this video to further do my best to inform my reader about this book:




Knowing that others do not feel the same about this book and hoping to pass this book on to someone who will enjoy it much more than I could I am giving it away.

How do I enter?
1. Leave a comment on this post, yep that's it just tell me what you think about this post/giveaway and you will get one entry.

2. Tweet about this giveaway, comment here with url for tweet (1 entry)

3. Make a comment on any other post on this blog, then come back and comment here telling me which other post you commented on, you can comment on as many other posts as you wish for more entries. (1 entry per comment)



What are the Rules to this Giveaway?
1. An email address is required so leave it with your comment (or else how will you know you won)
2. A winner will be chosen using random.org
3. The winner will be contacted via email and will have 2 days to reply before a new winner is chosen.
4. Open to US address'
5. Ends on 8/31/09 @ 10PM CST. Good Luck!!!


The Winner is Daniel M!!!! Thank you all for entering.

Book Review - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Monday, August 10, 2009

I am not a big mystery reader, I find that most of them follow a formula that becomes old and stale after just a couple books. There is that rare gem where you didn't see it coming, but those are truly few and far between so when I was given The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie to read I was almost positive I wasn't going to enjoy it. I was wrong.
From the very beginning the writing and the characters sucked me into the story and held me there for the entire book. This was one of those books you don't want to put down and you take to bed with you at night.
Flavia de Luce our 11 year old heroine with an extensive knowledge of chemistry follows what at times seems a childish adventure through her family's past to solve not one but two murder mysteries. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was voted Amazon's Best of the Month in April 2009.
I was pleasantly surprised by the twist near the end but when the truth comes out the pieces fit together perfectly. The character of Flavia de Luce is fun and wonderfully fulfilling to follow, apparently I am not the only one who thinks so because she has already spawned her own fan club, do check it out. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie gets two thumbs up.

Here is a Q & A with Alan Bradley the author copied from Amazon.com:

Question: With the publication of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, you’ve become a 70-year-old-first time novelist. Have you always had a passion for writing, or is it more of a recent development?

Alan Bradley: Well, the Roman author Seneca once said something like this: “Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms--you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.” So to put it briefly, I’m taking his advice.

I actually spent most of my life working on the technical side of television production, but would like to think that I’ve always been a writer. I started writing a novel at age five, and have written articles for various publications all my life. It wasn’t until my early retirement, though, that I started writing books. I published my memoir, The Shoebox Bible, in 2004, and then started working on a mystery about a reporter in England. It was during the writing of this story that I stumbled across Flavia de Luce, the main character in Sweetness.

Q: Flavia certainly is an interesting character. How did you come up with such a forceful, precocious and entertaining personality?

AB: Flavia walked onto the page of another book I was writing, and simply hijacked the story. I was actually well into this other book--about three or four chapters--and as I introduced a main character, a detective, there was a point where he was required to go to a country house and interview this colonel.

I got him up to the driveway and there was this girl sitting on a camp stool doing something with a notebook and a pencil and he stopped and asked her what she was doing and she said “writing down license number plates“ and he said “well there can't be many in such a place“ and she said, “well I have yours, don’t I? “ I came to a stop. I had no idea who this girl was and where she came from.

She just materialized. I can't take any credit for Flavia at all. I’ve never had a character who came that much to life. I’ve had characters that tend to tell you what to do, but Flavia grabbed the controls on page one. She sprung full-blown with all of her attributes--her passion for poison, her father and his history--all in one package. It surprised me.

Q: There aren’t many adult books that feature child narrators. Why did you want Flavia to be the voice of this novel?

AB: People probably wonder, “What’s a 70-year-old-man doing writing about an 11-year-old-girl in 1950s England? “ And it’s a fair question. To me, Flavia embodies that kind of hotly burning flame of our young years: that time of our lives when we’re just starting out, when anything--absolutely anything!--is within our capabilities.

I think the reason that she manifested herself as a young girl is that I realized that it would really be a lot of fun to have somebody who was virtually invisible in a village. And of course, we don’t listen to what children say--they’re always asking questions, and nobody pays the slightest attention or thinks for a minute that they’re going to do anything with the information that they let slip. I wanted Flavia to take great advantage of that. I was also intrigued by the possibilities of dealing with an unreliable narrator; one whose motives were not always on the up-and-up.

She is an amalgam of burning enthusiasm, curiosity, energy, youthful idealism, and frightening fearlessness. She’s also a very real menace to anyone who thwarts her, but fortunately, they don’t generally realize it.

Q: Like Flavia, you were also 11 years old in 1950. Is there anything autobiographical about her character?

AB: Somebody pointed out the fact that both Flavia and I lacked a parent. But I wasn’t aware of this connection during the writing of the book. It simply didn’t cross my mind. It is true that I grew up in a home with only one parent, and I was allowed to run pretty well free, to do the kinds of things I wanted. And I did have extremely intense interests then--things that you get focused on. When you’re that age, you sometimes have a great enthusiasm that is very deep and very narrow, and that is something that has always intrigued me--that world of the 11-year-old that is so quickly lost.

Q: Your story evokes such a vivid setting. Had you spent much time in the British countryside before writing this book?

AB: My first trip to England didn’t come until I went to London to receive the 2007 Debut Dagger Award, so I had never even stepped foot in the country at the time of writing Sweetness. But I have always loved England. My mother was born there. And I‘ve always felt I grew up in a very English household. I had always wanted to go and had dreamed for many years of doing so.

When I finally made it there, the England that I was seeing with my eyes was quite unlike the England I had imagined, and yet it was the same. I realized that the differences were precisely those differences between real life, and the simulation of real life, that we create in our detective novels. So this was an opportunity to create on the page this England that had been in my head my whole life.

Q: You have five more books lined up in this series, all coming from Delacorte Press. Will Flavia age as the series goes on?

AB: A bit, not very much. I think she’s going to remain in the same age bracket. I don’t really like the idea of Flavia as an older teenager. At her current age, she is such a concoction of contradictions. It's one of the things that I very much love about her. She's eleven but she has the wisdom of an adult. She knows everything about chemistry but nothing about family relationships. I don’t think she’d be the same person if she were a few years older. She certainly wouldn’t have access to the drawing rooms of the village.

Q: Do you have a sense of what the next books in the series will be about?

AB: The second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, is finished, and I’m working on the third book. I have a general idea of what’s happening in each one of the books, because I wanted to focus on some bygone aspect of British life that was still there in the '50s but has now vanished. So we have postage stamps in the first one... The second book is about the travelling puppet shows on the village green. And one of them is about filmmaking--it sort of harks back to the days of the classic Ealing comedies with Alec Guinness and so forth.

Q: Not every author garners such immediate success with a first novel. After only completing 15 pages of Sweetness, you won the Dagger award and within 8 days had secured book deals in 3 countries. You’ve since secured 19 countries. Enthusiasm continues to grow from every angle. How does it feel?

AB: It's like being in the glow of a fire. You hope you won't get burned. I’m not sure how much I’ve realized it yet. I guess I can say I‘m “almost overwhelmed”--I’m not quite overwhelmed, but I’m getting there. Every day has something new happening, and communications pouring in from people all over. The book has been receiving wonderful reviews and touching people. But Flavia has been touching something in people that generates a response from the heart, and the most often mentioned word in the reviews is love--how much people love Flavia and have taken her in as if she’s a long-lost member of their family, which is certainly very, very gratifying.

Currently "Reading":
Magazine - People with Saved by the Bell cast on cover
Book - How To Train A Rock
Audio - still haven't been doing much on the audio book front recently.

The Oblivion Society by Marcus Hart Trailer

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Another book that looks like a really fun read. Again I haven't gooten around to reading this one yet but I plan on picking it up soon.

Currently "Reading":
Magazine - waiting for my next Parents magazine to come in
Book - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery
Audio - not much here either.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

This looks like a fun summer read, I haven't gotten around to it yet but I am looking forward to it.

Currently "Reading":
Magazine - no magazines right now
Book - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery
Audio - I have been so lazy recently with my audio book listening. Nothing here either.