What Stephany Read in 2010

The Foundling by Georgette Heyer

Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

This is the most recent Newberry Winner.  If you liked A Wrinkle in Time, you will like this.  In fact, you should probably re-read A Wrinkle in Time before you read this.

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

I finally read Herriot's books after my grandmother passed away when I heard how much she had loved them and how her copies were dog-eared and worn out.  What took me so long?  So good.

All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Not my favorite of the year.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Alan Bradley

Recommended to me by my good friend Heather.

The Dante Club: A Novel by Matthew Pearl

Great literary mystery recommended to me by my Aunt I.B.  Fictionalized account of the process of Longfellow's translation of Dante's Inferno with Longfellow and other real historical figures as characters in the novel.

The Toll-Gate by Georgette Heyer

Katherine Wentworth by D.E. Stevenson

The Marriage of Katherine by D.E. Stevenson

Gerald and Elizabeth by D.E. Stevenson

The House Of The Deer by D.E. Stevenson

The English Air by D.E. Stevenson (no image available)

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

Lisbeth Salander has grrl power!

Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer

Sizzling Sixteen (Stephanie Plum) by Janet Evanovich

Liked it, but didn't love it...#15 was so funny, that it must have been hard to follow it up with the next one.

Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer

Very romantic, swashbuckling story.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Disturbing, but eerily romantic.

Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer

Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer

Among the Hidden (Shadow Children #1) by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Another dystopian novel, recommended to me by my son Quinn.  God bless teachers who read aloud to their classes.

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

One of Heyer's most delightful and engaging heroines.  

Sylvester: or The Wicked Uncle by Georgette Heyer   

Some say this is Heyer's novel that most closely resembles Pride and Prejudice.  I enjoyed it, but it is not a strict re-telling of P&P.

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer   

Hilarious!  "Fool" as hero/smartest guy in the room...like Pudd'nhead Wilson or The Scarlet Pimpernel.  Pat and I love this motif in stories.

Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins. 

 I can't say enough good things about this series.

The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer

Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer

Linger (Wolves of Mercy Falls, Book 2) by Maggie Stiefvater

Beautiful prose, but somewhat disappointing story.  I thought she should have let the first one stand alone with no sequel.

Sprig Muslin by Georgette Heyer

Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer

Sweet story about two young people who get married too young (or at least immature) and for all the wrong reasons, but grow up together and into love.

The Corinthian by Georgette Heyer

Ape House: A Novel by Sara Gruen

Not as good as Water for Elephants, but worth reading.

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer

Not as happy a book as the rest of the Regency romances, but I liked it.  I choose to think that although the hero and heroine do not share a strong romantic bond, they find something equally worthwhile in a deep affection and friendship that develops into love.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (audiobook)

I had read this book several years ago (I found it before Oprah!) and liked it a lot, so it was fun to revisit it in audio form while I was driving my car.

Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (audiobook)

I got a great deal from iTunes on audio versions of The Chronicles of Narnia.  So far we (the boys and I when we are in the car) have listened to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; and are halfway through The Silver Chair.  Yes, I do think that you should read them in publication order, not in Narnian chronological order.

Gifts for Book Lovers, Part Two

I found a few more things that I thought would be good gifts for the readers in your life.


4. First, another journal.  I don't have this one, but it popped up on Amazon as a suggestion for something I might like, and I do!  I don't own it, but added it to my Amazon wish list.  It has many reading suggestions and book lists that the previously discussed journal has as well as several other lists like the Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Target lists, and book club suggestions.  It also has charts to track what you've read, what you want to read, and how much you liked what you've read.




5. Pentel Automatic Crayon Pencil.  Don't let the word "crayon" throw you. This is an awesome dry highlighter, perfect for those of us who like to mark up our Bibles, first because you have eight colors all in one writing instrument which is handy if you have a system for highlighting in different colors and secondly, because this is a dry highlighter that doesn't bleed through thin Bible pages.  The texture of the leads falls somewhere between colored pencils and crayons.   My pastor's wife first told me about this, and I always carry one with my Bible now.  My three sons thought that my multi-colored highlighter was so cool that they each wanted one of their own and the two younger ones use theirs to do art projects.  You can buy refills at Amazon, and the leads are very easy to exchange so if you want to have more than the standard eight colors on hand, it is no problem.

6. Clothing.  I have enough shirts and sweatshirts about books that it could comprise my whole wardrobe if I wanted.  In other words, I could wear one every day of the week and not have to do laundry any more often than usual.  I love my book shirts.  Amazon has a few like the one pictured here, but there are other sites that have a better selection.  Check out Signals (I particularly like the Atlas Shrugged sweatshirt because I particularly like Atlas Shrugged) and its sister company Wireless.  I also really like the  Cafe Press site.  They not only have clothing, but many other gifts, decorations and trinkets to suit just about any interest.  Search "reading," "books," or even "Jane Austen" and you will come up with more gift ideas than you know what to do with.


7. Books!  No list of gifts for book lovers would be complete without actual books.  This year's best bets are two trilogies:  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (a Young Adult dystopian series, but good for adults too)
       and Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy (not a gentle read, my friends, but a nail-biting thriller featuring a tough-as-nails heroine that you love to love even though you probably would not be friends with her outside the pages of these books).

Happy shopping!

Gifts for Book Lovers

I love reading other people's lists about what to buy the book lover in your life during the Christmas season, so I thought I would do some checking around and find some things that I personally would recommend.  Here we go:

1. Reading Journals.  One day this past year the weirdest thing happened to me.  I received two reading journals from two completely different sets of people in my life, and it wasn't Christmas or my birthday.  Believe me, I felt loved.


This one is called Reading Journal:  For Book Lovers.  My two aunts, Amy and Susie (aside:  these are the wonderful women who introduced me to Jane Austen...I will be forever grateful), gave this to me because they know that reading is the passion of my life.  It is a nice little hardback with many pages to list individual books you have read.  It actually gives you two pages per book, including space for the title, author, rating, category, date started and finished, notes about the book and what subjects that book inspired you to learn about.  Then, randomly through the journal are pages for such things as favorite authors, books, children's books, places to read, and quotes from books.  There are also several other pages for various book trivia related specifically to you.  This includes such things as a page of literary superlatives (books that made me laugh the most, books that made me cry, characters I'd most want to be, places in books I would want to visit, etc.), a flow chart mapping how one book lead to others, literary face-offs (If I were an Austen heroine I'd be...; If I were a literary villain I'd be..., etc.), and several others.  My favorite aspect of this particular journal, though, is that there are several book lists in the back with boxes you can check off as you read the books.  These lists include several lists of awards like Pulitzer Prize Winners and Man Booker Prize Winners, as well as others; The Modern Library:  100 Best Novels; The Readers' List; BBC Top 100 Reads; Time Magazine Top 100 Novels; Oprah's Book Club Picks; and genre lists including Adventure favorites, Epic Novel favorites, Gothic/Horror favorites, Graphic Novel favorites, International favorites, Mystery/Detective favorites, as well as Romance, Science Fiction, and Spy Novels favorites.  Despite the length of this blog entry, I have not listed everything included.  I love this little book.

My Best-Friend-Since-Kindergarten gave me this journal.  I have used it so much.  It has three general sections:  Books to Read, Favorite Books and Passages, and Books Borrowed and Lent.  I constantly have books and DVD's lent out, and this journal has been invaluable in helping me keep track.  Thanks, Wendy!  I would recommend this journal for the person who is creative and needs a little less guidance in figuring out what to read and how to write about books, or who just wants to generally keep track.

There are many other journals about books out there, and almost any would be good for the reader in your life.  I linked to these two because I happen to be familiar with them and like them both a lot.

2. Books about books.  I have so many books about books, that I could not begin to list them all, so I thought I would highlight my two favorites, Book Lust and More Book Lust, both by Nancy Pearl.  (I want to assure those of you that know me personally that these books are not about lustful books.  They are about lust for books).  These books are permanent residents of my night stand.  Nancy Pearl is a librarian-cum-NPR commentator-cum-literature professor who authored/compiled these charming little books organized into categories you will never see anywhere else.  If there is a genre within genre within genre that you read, you will find it in her tables of contents.  Some examples of her categories of books include American History (a list of fiction and a list of nonfiction); A Dickens of a Tale; First Novels; Humor; I Love a Mystery; 100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade; Fiction for Foodies; Winston Churchill (various biographies); Florida Fiction; You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover; Russian Heavies; King Arthur; A...My Name is Alice; and I could go on and on.  Between the two books she has over 200 categories, so if you are casting about for your next read, if you have these two books handy, you will be able to find something that interests you.  Amongst the categories of books, she also lists various authors that are "Too Good to Miss."  When you turn to one of these sections in her books, you will find a brief description of the author's writing, as well as a list of his or her works.  Examples of authors that are too good to miss are P.G. Wodehouse, Lee Child, Ian McEwan, Carol Shields, and Iris Murcoch, among many others.

3. Kindle or NOOK (or iPad).  I'll let you do your research...WiFi or 3G, Color or E Ink...so many choices.

I actually just bought a NOOK color and  I am mostly happy with it, although, I can certainly see the advantages of going with a Kindle.  I bought the NOOK Color because of the color touch screen and because so far this is the only eReader that is backlit.  I have found several disadvantages, though.  Since it is a color screen, it does not have the amazing eInk and will be very difficult to read outside.  It is also only WiFi...no 3G model yet, so I can only get my books instantly if I am in a WiFi Hotspot, and since we don't have WiFi at our house yet, this is a problem.  When I bought it I thought I would be able to sync it to the computer with the included USB cable, but so far this is not possible.  The USB cable is only for adding pictures, music, and I think short videos to the NOOK.  I am hoping that they have a software update that allows you to sync from the website, as I'm told by a friend this is possible on the regular NOOK.

This is the wave of the future, folks, and even though I will never be completely without books with paper pages (Heaven forbid!), I am excited that I will be able to store so many books without taking up so much space in the house.  Do you think they will ever be able to invent a NOOK or Kindle with that new book smell, though?

By the way, don't buy the NOOK products through these Amazon links.  Buy them from Barnes and Noble.  Amazon has these prices jacked up way higher than they are at B&N because NOOK is the Kindle's biggest competitor.


More to come soon...

Book Review: Ape House by Sara Gruen

I just finished Ape House, the much anticipated follow up to Water for Elephants, which was a book that I highly enjoyed and is one of the first things I recommend when friends or family ask me what they should read.  Unfortunately, almost everyone I know has now read Water for Elephants, so I pretty much can't suggest it anymore.  All my friends to whom I lent it or at least suggested it ("all save one," to borrow from Shakespeare in Love) delighted in the book as much as me and thought it was one of the cleverest "murder mysteries" to come along in a long time.

Alas, as is the case with so many authors' works, the follow up (not a sequel in this case), does not compare favorably with the "masterpiece" that came before it.  The plot is not as intricate nor as gripping in Ape House, and it was hard for me to get very emotionally involved in the story.

In a nutshell, the plot revolves around Isabel Duncan, a scientist who works with bonobo apes in an ape language lab set at the University of Kansas (Go Jayhawks!) and John Thigpen (yes, the name is klunky, but there is humor in the book addressing this awkwardness), a journalist who interviews both Isabel and the apes right before the language lab is blown up, thereby "freeing" the apes.  Isabel is severely injured, and the apes mysteriously disappear, then suddenly reappear on a "reality" television show.  Together, John and Isabel investigate the mystery of the explosion and try to discover who is behind the exploitative television series.

Despite my overall opinion that it is not as well-written as Water for Elephants, I wonder what I would have thought had I never read that first book, because there are things I truly like about Ape House and I do think it is worth the time to read it.  It wasn't one that I "couldn't put down," but it was very sweet in parts.

Except for the villains, of course, I truly liked the characters.  John's marriage is troubled, and at first I thought his wife was going to be a vain, shallow, one-dimensional character, but the author surprised me.  Despite her flaws, I truly was rooting for Amanda in her struggle to find her identity and self-worth.  I was also rooting for John, even though at times he and Amanda were at cross-purposes.  It takes a skillful writer, in my opinion, to write about a stressful marriage and make neither partner the villain and further, create sympathy for both in the mind of the reader.

The apes are also characters, maybe even more so than the elephant in WFE.  We come to know and love the bonobos who have learned to communicate through American Sign Language.  These include Bonzi, the alpha female; her baby Lola; Mbongo, who teaches John that apes can get offended/have their feelings hurt; and the pregnant Makena, as well as several others.  At one point in the book, Isabel says they are her family.  We get hints that Isabel grew up in a less than ideal human family as a girl, but I wish the author had fleshed her backstory out a little more.

Other intriguing characters include Celia (Isabel's assistant or secret radical activist?); Peter, Isabel's fiance who may not be what he appears on the surface; and the green-haired boy who takes strong exception whenever he sees someone eating meat and who has a surname that is eerily familiar to John.  Not to mention the aging porn star bent on revenge and determined to make a life for herself.

The author also cleverly works in the Fred Phelps cult (I refuse to call them a church) by having them protesting at the Ape House reality show as the "Eastborough Baptist Church" (Ha!)  Since the show turns into a media circus, I know Sara Gruen is right and that his clan would be there in all its ridiculous glory.

Overall, I did like this book and I would recommend it.  When I was finished, I was sad, not so much that I was done with the book, but that I was done with the characters and would not find out what happened next in their lives.

Give me some feedback and let me know what you think, both about Ape House and my review.  Happy Reading!

P.S.  This is a fairly clean read.

One Happy Mom

I am so happy for my son Quinn right now.  He is reading The Hunger Games  and can't put it down.  Nothing pleases me more as a mother and a reader than to see one of my boys walking around with his nose in a book, oblivious to the world around him.  At this moment in time, Quinn wold rather be reading this book than playing the Wii, his Nintendo DS, or sitting in front of any other kind of screen.  Oh, joy!  And last night, when I told him it was time to turn out his light, it was music to my ears when he replied, "But Mom, I only have six more chapters!"

Books transport us to other times and other places and allow us to meet, even become new people.  I know some characters in books better than I know my friends.  I have visited Pemberly in England even though I have never physically been in Europe.  Right now Quinn is in Panem having the adventure of his life, hanging out with Katniss, Rue, Peeta and Gale, and there is nowhere I'd rather have him be.

Dad

LYNDON - Gilliland, Delton M., 70, passed away on Wednesday, September 29, 2010, at a Wichita hospital. He was born on June 21, 1940, on the family farm north of Lyndon, the son of Frank and Lucille Parker Gilliland. 

Delton earned a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from K.U. in 1964 and worked for Boeing in Wichita for 3 years. He attended K.U. for his law degree, was on the University of Kansas Law Review from 1968-70 and was admitted to the bar in 1970. He was Law Clerk for the Idaho State Supreme Court, 1970-71 and was Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Ada County, Idaho from 1972-74. He then moved back to Lyndon where he joined the firm of Coffman, Jones & Hederstedt, which later became Coffman, Jones & Gilliland. 

Delton was a member of the Osage County and Kansas Bar Associations. He became Osage County Counselor in 1989 and County Administrator in 2002. He had served as Past Master of the Euclid Lodge #101 in Lyndon and the Ridgeway Lodge #62 at Overbrook. He served as District Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Kansas and was a Scottish Rite Mason in Topeka. He was a member of the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War and the Sons of the American Revolution. 

On January 21, 1967, Delton married Janet Mustard in Wichita. Delton is survived by his wife, Jan of the home; his two daughters, Stephany Hughes (Pat) of Leon and Lindy May (Karl) of Clearwater; his son, Josh Gilliland of San Diego, CA.; three brothers, Darrel Gilliland (Susan) of Topeka, Frank Gilliland (Betsy) of Holton, Milton Gilliland (Becky) of Topeka; three sisters, Ina Beth Jordan (Jim) of Centennial, CO., Amy Feitel (Tom) of Tulsa, OK., and Susan King (Mike) of Republic, MO.; five grandsons, Ian Hughes, Quinn Hughes, Parker May, Colin Hughes and Brody May. 

Funeral services for Delton will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, October 4, 2010 at the Feltner Funeral Chapel in Lyndon. Burial will be in the Lyndon Cemetery. Delton will lie in state from 3-5 p.m. on Sunday at the funeral chapel where the family will recieve friends from 3:30-5:0pm. Memorial cotributions may be made payable to The ARC of Sedgwick County, for the Y.E.S.S. Preogram which serves children with special needs, and sent in care of Feltner Funeral Home, 818 Topeka Ave., Lyndon, KS. 66451.