Book Review - Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster by Terrence Dicks

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monsteris another novelization of the television series with Tom Baker. Again I say reading these really helped me appreciate the show and The Doctor even more. Although the story is recycled and reads a bit like a script I much enjoy exploring the world of The Doctor in a way I just can't seem to do with the older television series.

For anyone who watches or reads Doctor Who all you really need is the title to tell you the premise but here it goes. Something is killing people, The Doctor and his companions show up, turns out to be an alien plotting to take over the Earth doing the killing, here's the change up it all ties into the legend of the Loch Ness Monster.

I must admit I like the original stories in book form better but overall this was an entertaining read.

This book knocks off one notch on three different reading challenges:

1. Food

2. Plant

3. Title

4. Place Name

5. Body of Water

6. Music Term

Book Review - Part of Me: Stories of a Louisiana Family by Kimberly Willis Holt

Saturday, May 8, 2010

I picked up Part of Me: Stories of a Louisiana Family by Kimberly Willis Holt while in Florida in unabridged audio for listening on the long drive back home and also to fill a requirement for the What's In A Name Reading Challenge.

From Booklist copied from Amazon:

Set in Louisiana bayou country, this unusual collection of stories spans four generations of one family and uses reading as the thread that strings them together. The first three tales, which begin in 1939, concern Rose, who must go to work at 14 and passes herself off as 17 to drive the library bookmobile. Two stories tell of Rose's 12-year-old son, Merle Henry, reading Old Yeller around 1957. In 1973, his daughter, Annabeth, an eighth-grader, clings to fairy tales in the face of first love. Then Annabeth's 13-year-old son, Kyle, in 2004 can only find a library job--though he doesn't like to read. The final story, also taking place in 2004, centers again on Rose, now 79. Though readers may sometimes wish for more about a particular character, this collection offers a different experience: marking the passage of time through a succession of related characters. Readers intrigued by Rose, whose early entries are the only stories told here in first person, will have the satisfaction of seeing her in later tales and watching her quiet triumph at the end. The author of My Louisiana Sky (1998), Holt sketches a broad range of characters with verve and sensitivity.

I just loved this book not just because I live in Louisiana so the place names sound familiar but mostly because the writing is wonderful. I loved each and every character how their lives all weaved together was beautifully crafted, never strained which is something I always fear in books that try to follow families through multiple generations.

1. Food

2. Plant

3. Title

4. Place Name

5. Body of Water

6. Music Term

I am getting close to finishing this challenge which will be pretty exciting, I haven't finished a challenge yet, like ever since I really just started challenges this year. I am currently in the middle of Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster which should take care of the body of water now I just need to work on the plant.

Book Review - The Finer Point of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith

Monday, May 3, 2010

I listened to the unabridged audio of The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith a few weeks ago when I was in Florida to make my driving around go faster. I have wanted to read a book my McCall Smith ever since I worked at Barnes and Noble when the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency books were really popular. I was looking for a title to take care of a spot on the What's In A Name Challenge and this fit perfectly.
I was really happy with this book, it was cute and entertaining. I really liked McCall Smith's style so I will be picking up more of his books in the future.
Product Description from Amazon:

Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, now have new cause for celebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due–a quest which has the tendency to go hilariously astray.

In The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Professor Dr. Von Igelfeld is mistaken for a veterinarian and not wanting to call attention to the faux pas, begins practicing veterinary medicine without a license. He ends up operating on a friend’s dachshund to dramatic and unfortunate effect. He also transports relics for a schismatically challenged Coptic prelate, and is pursued by marriage-minded widows on board a Mediterranean cruise ship.

1. Food

2. Plant

3. Title

4. Place Name

5. Body of Water

6. Music Term

Book Review - Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguo

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I picked up Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro at the library in Florida for my drive back to New Orleans last week. I picked it off the shelf simply because it filled the "music term" requirement for the What's In A Name Reading Challenge I am working on, it was only later that I learned Ishiguro wrote The Remains of the Day. Honestly I never finished watching that movie but now I am tempted to go read the book and then try watching the movie again, because I think I fell in love with Ishiguro's writing style while listening to Nocturnes.

From Publisher's Weekly:

"This suite of five stories hits all of Ishiguro's signature notes, but the shorter form mutes their impact. In Crooner, Tony Gardner, a washed-up American singer, goes sloshing through the canals of Venice to serenade his trophy wife, Lindy. The narrator, Jan, is a hired guitar player whose mother was a huge fan of Tony, but Jan's experience playing for Tony fractures his romantic ideals. Lindy returns in the title story, which finds her in a luxury hotel reserved for celebrity patients recovering from cosmetic surgery. The narrator this time is Steve, a saxophonist who could never get a break because of his loser ugly looks. Lindy idly strikes up a friendship with Steve as they wait for their bandages to come off and their new lives to begin. In the final story, Cellists, an unnamed saxophonist narrator who, like Jan, plays in Venice's San Marco square, observes the evolving relationship of a Hungarian cello prodigy after he meets an American woman. The stories are superbly crafted, though they lack the gravity of Ishiguro's longer works (Never Let Me Go; Remains of the Day), which may leave readers anticipating a crescendo that never hits."

Nocturnes being my first Ishiguro book I wasn't left hanging in anticipation of a "crescendo that never hits" as the above review suggested so if you are new to his work maybe this is the title to start with as it is engrossing and delightful to read but doesn't leave you hanging as it might if you read one of the more popular novels first. I would definitely recommend reading Nocturnes and look forward to reading more from Kazuo Ishiguro.

1. Food

2. Plant

3. Title

4. Place Name

5. Body of Water

6. Music Term

Currently "Reading":
Book - The Adventures of Doctor Who. Omnibus comprising: Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks; Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen; Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster by Terrance Dicks
E-Book - The Man Upstairs & Other Stories - From the Manor Wodehouse Collection, a selection from the early works of P. G. Wodehouse by P.G. Wodehouse
Audio - Selected Shorts: A Touch of Magic (Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story) by Various Authors

Book Review - Count Karlstein by Phillip Pullman

Friday, April 2, 2010

In an effort to get started on the What's in a Name Challenge I picked up Count Karlstein by Phillip Pullman on audio at my local library. I had never read a Phillip Pullman novel for the simple reason that his adult novels are really nothing like what I normally read so I just pass them over in the bookstore. This one being a young adult novel (recommended ages 9-12) I decided to give it a try. In short, I liked it. I wasn't swept away by it to the point that I would go pick up his adult books but found it pleasant and mildly entertaining.


From Amazon Review:
"I might have occupied my mind usefully with Improving Thoughts, but the only improvement I could imagine then was a pair of wings, to enable me to fly to freedom. And, of course, a Head for Heights. I cleaned the dust from the window and peered out hopefully, but there was nothing but a Horrid Precipice, with jagged crags several thousands of feet below." Such are the woes of young Charlotte, locked in a tower room of her uncle's gloomy Castle Karlstein in 19th-century Switzerland. Escaping this predicament seems the least of her worries: in a solemn blood pact, her evil uncle, Count Karlstein, has promised to sacrifice his two orphaned nieces, Lucy and Charlotte, to Zamiel the Demon Huntsman--on midnight of All Souls' Eve--in return for his current riches.
First, however, the heartless Count and his "lip-licking, moist-handed, creeping, smarming" secretary, Herr Arturo Snivelwurst, will have to catch Lucy, too--and it is no small task with the headstrong, 14-year-old Hildi Kelmar; her 18-year-old, handsome-in-a-scowling-sort-of-way brother, Peter; and the intrepid English teacher Miss Augusta Davenport on the girls' side. As Miss Davenport herself points out, "an English gentlewoman can rise above any circumstances, given intelligence and a loaded pistol." The events in this delightful gothic farce unfold quickly in a variety of narrative voices, artfully building in suspense to a powerful, terrifying, deeply satisfying stand-off between the Count and the Demon Huntsman of Impenetrable Darkness himself. Subplots and loose ends are gracefully, happily, justly tied up in the light of day, finally allowing readers to exhale."

I am glad that the What's in a Name Challenge brought me to finally read a Philip Pullman book but I don't think I'll be doing it again any time soon.

1. Food

2. Plant

3. Title

4. Place Name

5. Body of Water

6. Music Term

Currently "Reading":
Book - The Adventures of Doctor Who. Omnibus comprising: Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks; Doctor Who and the Revenge of the Cybermen; Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster by Terrance Dicks
E-Book - The Man Upstairs & Other Stories - From the Manor Wodehouse Collection, a selection from the early works of P. G. Wodehouse by P.G. Wodehouse
Audio - The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith

What's in a Name Challenge

Friday, December 11, 2009

I just signed up for another reading challenge which shouldn't be too hard (I hope). This is the third reading challenge I put myself up for in the coming year. I hope I am not overflowing my plate. I don't think so, we'll see I guess. I haven't picked out any books to read for this challenge yet but I will soon, I have to check out my library to see if I already have anything that fits in this challenge, I think I do.


So here's how it works: Between January 1 and December 31, 2010, read one book in each of the following categories:

1. A book with a food in the title: Clockwork Orange, Grapes of Wrath, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
2. A book with a body of water in the title: A River Runs through It, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, The Lake House
3. A book with a title (queen, president) in the title: The Murder of King Tut, The Count of Monte Cristo, Lady Susan
4. A book with a plant in the title: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Wind in the Willows, The Name of the Rose
5. A book with a place name (city, country) in the title: Out of Africa; London; Between, Georgia
6. A book with a music term in the title: Song of Solomon, Ragtime, The Piano Teacher

Currently "Reading":
Book - Critical Mass by Kathleen Henry
E-Book - The Alphabet Challenge by Olga Gardner Galvin
Audio - The 7 Stages of Motherhood: Loving Your Life without Losing Your Mind by Ann Pleshette Murphy