Wordless Wednesday

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB ofShould Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today my teaser is from The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge by Patricia Duncker

Reason is neither gentle nor kind,and the Judge believed in Reason with as intemperate a commitment to her own credo as any of the secret initiates who had given their hearts to the suicide Faith. She sought the Truth, and nothing but the Truth. Yet the Truth is not, and cannot be, the instrument of freedom for every one of us; and to know the Truth may well imprison gentle souls in wretchedness for ever.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is hosted by: Marcia @ The Printed Page. Join in the fun and check out what arrived in everyone's mailboxes last week by visiting Marcia's blog.

I received only one book this week.

Hailey's War by Jodi Compton

from back of book:

Twenty-four year old Hailey Cain has dropped out of a U.S. military academy for reasons she won't reveal. Now working as a bike messenger in San Francisco. Hailey keeps a low profile until her high school best friend Serean Delgadillo makes a call that will turn her whole life upside down.

Serena is the head of an all-female gang on the rough streets of L.A. She wants Hailey to escort the cousin of a recently murdered gang member across the border to Mexico. It's a mission that will nearly cost Hailey her life, causing her to choose more than once between loyalty and lawlessness, and forcing her to confront two very big secrets in her past.

This was sent to me by the publisher for review.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is hosted by: Marcia @ The Printed Page. Join in the fun and check out what arrived in everyone's mailboxes last week by visiting Marcia's blog.

Since I'm new to the blogosphere this is my first Mailbox Monday. Hopefully I'll be able to add this as a regular feature. Here's what came into my house this week:

WARLORD by Ted Bell (ARC from Harper Collins) James Bond type thriller that involves the Royal Family

ADAM & EVE: a novel by Sena Jeter Naslund (ARC from Harper Collins) The author of Ahab's Wife returns witha daring and provocative novel that envisions a world where science and faith contend for the allegiance of a new Adam & Eve.

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COMPOSER AND HIS JUDGE by Patricia Duncker (book sent from Bloomsbury Publishing) A murder mystery involving an encoded book of celestial maps that points to the composer Friedrich Grosz.

Alexander Cipher review

If you're a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, then you'll enjoy this book by Will Adams. It's an archealogical thriller full of political intrigue and history surrounding the final resting place of Alexander the Great.

Daniel Knox is an Egyptologist who gets pulled into a plot to give Macedonians the rights of ownership to Alexander the Great's tomb. He stumbles into an excavation that only wants to move the tomb from Egypt.

The twists and turns in this book were fun. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who likes non-stop action and history.

If you like books like this here are some other author you might enjoy and have read:

Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody series)

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Matthew Reilly (Jack West Jr. series)

Barbara Cleverly (Laetitia Talbot series)

Steve Alten (Domain series)

David Gibbins

Hunt for Atlantis Andy McDermott

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB ofShould Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser if from The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams

There was a freshwater spring at the lowest point of the cave, like a single black nail at the tip of a twisted, charred, and mutilated leg. A thick layer of lichen and other scum clotted its surface, barely disturbed in centuries except to ripple and shiver at the touch of one of the insects that lived upon it, or to dimple with bubbles of gas belched from deep beneath the floor of the surrounding desert.

Silver Phoenix Review

From Amazon.com:

At 17, Ai Ling is past the age when most girls in the kingdom of Xia have married and borne children. The gods, it would seem, have a different destiny in store for her, one that begins to reveal itself when her father travels to the Emperor's Palace and fails to return. Ai Ling is determined to find him and destroy his captor, a corrupt advisor who has unnaturally extended his life by feeding on the souls of others. On her journey, which is rich in action but a little slight on character development, Ai Ling meets Chen Yong, a young man of mixed race who seeks the truth of his birth and faces a variety of predators, both demonic and sexual. Fans of Tamora Pierce's and Robin McKinley's work will enjoy the adventure and strong female protagonist; the Chinese-influenced society and bestiary may also tempt aficionados of Asian culture and media.

I loved this book. It's beautifully written and full of adventure and friendship. As Ai Ling is venturing to the Royal Palace to find her father and avoid a marriage she doesn't want she discovers that she was destined to do this from a previous life. This is a great adventure novel for young girls complete with dragons and daggers. Check out the author Cindy Pon's website. This was a fun read and I look forward to more things by this author.

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All the Pretty Girls review

If you like books written by Alex Kava then you'll enjoy this book. I loved this book it was fast paced and never got boring.

Taylor Jackson is a homicide detective in Nashville and a serial killer is on the loose. This killer kidnaps young girls in one town, dumps them in another. Taylor's lover, an FBI profiler, is stumped and together they rush to catch this killer. This story had lots of twists and turns and you are solving the mystery along with Taylor. I plan to read more in this series. If you're a fan of Bones, CSI and other show like that then I highly recommend this book and this author.

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Check out this blog

Good morning everyone,

I wanted to introduce you to a blog that I just love Desert Book Chick she has reviews, tips on blogging and is just a fun blog to read. Check her out sometime.

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Dystopian Literature for Young Readers

If you aren't a subscriber to the New Yorker magazine, but are a reader of dystopian literature for YA's then check out the article in this week's edition. I haven't read any of this type of literature, but after reading this article and seeing how a lot of my patrons are reading Hunger Games I plan to start reading some of these type of books.

Happy Reading

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Book Blogger Hop

Book Blogger Hop: June 11-14, 2010

7:00 PM | Thoughts by Jennifer (Crazy-for-Books) |

ABOUT THE HOP:

In the spirit of the Twitter Friday Follow, the Book Blogger Hop is a placejust for book bloggers and readers to connect and find new book-related blogs that we may be missing out on! This weekly BOOK PARTY is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, make new friends, support each other, and generally just share our love of books! It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs that they may not know existed! So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list below!!

The Hop lasts Friday-Monday every week, so if you don't have time to Hop today, come back later and join the fun! This is a weekly event! And stop back throughout the weekend to see all the new blogs that are added! We get nearly 200 links every week!!

Your blog should have content related to books, including, but not limited to book reviews.

If you start following someone through the Hop, leave a comment on their blog to let them know! Stop back during the week to see other blogs that are added! And, most importantly, the idea is to HAVE FUN!!

DISCLAIMER:

The Hop isn't just for you to throw your link in there and not visit any other blogs. It's all about networking and finding new blogs that are of interest. So, in the spirit of the Hop, try to make some time to visit other blogs and don't post your link if you are not planning on visiting other blogs in the Hop that week. This is a weekly event, so if you don't have time this week, that's fine! We'll see you next week!

What's on your Reading Pile?

A weekly meme that's about what books are on your reading pile. It can be library books, ARC's, whatever.

Here are the books on my reading pile this week:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (bought at used bkstore)

All the Pretty Girls by J. T. Ellison (bought at used bkstore)

Adventures of Jack Lime by James Leck (library)

The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams (library)

The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Lear from the New Researh on Well-Being by Derek Bok (library)

Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon (library)

What's on your reading pile this week?

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Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB ofShould Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My "Teaser Tuesday" is from All the Pretty Girls by J. T. Ellison

The day was stifling, humidity in the high nineties, a threat of rain on the horizon. Though it was full light, the sun was not shining. A thick miasma of haze blanketed the sky, turning the blue to gray. Nashville in the summer. p18

Taylor was putting the finishing touches on a Bolognese sauce. She tasted, stirred in another spoonful of oregano, tasted again. Hmmm. Garlic. Another clove went into the pot and she shut the lid, savoring the rich spiciness that wafted through the steam. p.27

Happy Reading!

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From Writers Almanac website

On this day in 1949, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.

Nineteen Eighty-Four begins with the famous line: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

In 1936, Orwell sold off the family silver and left to fight against the fascists in Spain. He was very tall; one morning his head was up above the parapet, and a sniper's bullet hit his throat. He barely survived and was discharged, so he went back to England with his wife, Eileen. He got so sick that doctors were afraid he had tuberculosis, and he had to spend six months in a sanatorium. He wrote Homage to Catalonia (1938) about his experiences in Spain, but because he was critical of the Communists and also anti-Fascist, pretty much everyone who read it took offense at it. And not many people even read it — it was published in April of 1938, and by the time that WWII broke out in September, only 900 copies had been sold.

Orwell tried to join the war effort, but he was found unfit for any sort of military service. He kept busy writing reviews and political essays, and eventually he found a publisher for Animal Farm (1945), but not until it had been rejected by several publishers, including T.S. Eliot at Faber and Faber.

In 1945, Orwell was hired as a war correspondent for The Observer, and he was in France when he got news that his wife had died from a routine operation that he barely knew was happening.

Orwell was heartbroken and wasn't feeling well, but he returned to England to take care of their adopted son, Richard. Animal Farm was successful, which also meant more work for Orwell, more lectures and invitations. David Astor, the editor of The Observer and a good friend of Orwell's, asked if his friend would be interested in staying on his family's estate on an island in the Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland. There was no electricity or telephone, the mail came twice a week, and they were 25 miles from the nearest store. The weather was harsh much of the time, and besides walks and fishing with his son, mostly he wrote and wrote, a new novel called The Last Man in Europe.

He said, "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness." He kept working on the book, even after in 1947 he was confined to his bed and diagnosed with tuberculosis. He wrote from bed, and by longhand when his typewriter was taken away from him in the hospital. He went through an intense drug treatment in the hopes of curing his TB, which caused him mouth blisters, throat ulcers that made it hard to swallow, rashes, and flaking skin, and his hair and nails fell out. He was losing weight, had fevers, and his right arm had to be put in a cast, but he kept writing with his left. Under pressure from his publisher, he finally finished the book by the end of the year, and had to retype the messy manuscript himself.

He decided to change the title — from The Last Man in Europe toNineteen Eighty-Four. It was published in June of 1949. It was a huge success — the critics loved it, and it sold well. But his health got even worse, and by September he was back in the hospital. In January of 1950, just seven months after Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, Orwell died at the age of 46.

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Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah review

This book is great and I highly recommend it. It's your typical teenage angst novel, but Amal is a Muslim and decides to wear the hijab full-time at her secular private school. The author does a wonderful job of showing all the prejudices people have of Muslims and other people. One of the best lines in the novel comes from a elderly lady who's on the bus with Amal and the driver has the radio turned up because it's a news story about Muslims attack non-Muslims. The elderly lady asks the bus driver to turn it down and says to Amal:

I'm sixty-seven years old. And, dear, in my sixty-seven years I've never let politics tell me how to treat people.

I feel that this line sums up why a lot of people are prejudice is because politics, family, and even religion has taught them to be that way. Amal smiles as she gets off the bus and thinks,

Sometimes it's easy to lose faith in people. And, sometimes one act of kindness is all it takes to give you hope again.

Later in the novel Amal finally understands the whole reason for being who she is as a Muslim teen.

It's not that I was arrogant. It's the fact that I felt that somehow, because I'm being educated and brought up in an open-minded environment, I had the right to be arrogant and superior.

All this time I've been walking around thinking I've become pious because I've made the difficult decision to wear the hijab. I've been assuming that now that I'm wearing it full-time, I've earned all my brownie points.

But what's the good of being true to your religion, on the outside, if you don't change what's on the inside, where it really counts.

I've been kidding myself. Putting on the hijab isn't the end of the journey. It's just the beginning of it.

If know of a teen that thinks only certain types of people are superior, please suggest they read this novel, it may make a difference in how they see the world.

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Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

I'm currently reading this Ya novel and enjoying it and wanted to share a few lines from it:

"Do you have any idea how it feels to be me, a Muslin today? I mean, just turn on the television, open a newspaper. There will be some feature article analyzing, deconstructing, whipping up some theory about Islam and Muslims. Another chance to make sense of this phenomenon called 'the Muslim.' "

This book appealed to me because I want to try to understand what it's like to be a Muslim in a world where that is considered by some to be a "dirty word."

Australian 11th-grader Amal is smart, funny, outspoken, a good student, and a loyal friend. She is also a devout Muslim who decides to wear the hijab, or head covering, full-time. The story tells of her emotional and spiritual journey as she copes with a mad crush on a boy, befriends an elderly Greek neighbor, and tries to help a friend who aspires to be a lawyer but whose well-intentioned mother is trying to force her to leave school and get married. Amal is also battling the misconceptions of non-Muslims about her religion and culture. While the novel deals with a number of serious issues, it is extremely funny and entertaining, and never preachy or forced. The details of Amal's family and social life are spot-on, and the book is wonderful at showing the diversity within Muslim communities and in explaining why so many women choose to wear the hijab. Amal is an appealing and believable character. She trades verbal jibes with another girl, she is impetuous and even arrogant at times, and she makes some serious errors of judgment. And by the end of the story, she and readers come to realize that "Putting on the hijab isn't the end of the journey. It's just the beginning of it."

Have a good Thursday!

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Forty Rules of Love Review

This is a hard book to review because there's so much in it and it's one of those books that anyone who reads it will get something different from it. I loved the language and flow of the story, even when we flip to Ella who's reading this story for her job. The story is about Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, who becomes the muse for Rumi's poetry. This is the type of story that will transform you and make you think.

I had heard of Rumi, but never read any of his work. I have a book of his poems and they are just magical and thoughtful. Even if your not religious this book and his poems will move you in some way.

This book takes you back to Rumi's beginnings and how we came to be one of the world's most loved poet and mystic.

Here is an example of his poetry:

The garden of
Love
is green without
limit
and yields many
fruits
other than sorrow
and joy.
Love is beyond either
condition:
without spring,
without autumn,
it is always fresh.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi

The book is written by Elif Shafak, the most widely read woman writer in Turkey.

from the author's website:

Shafak's first novel, Pinhan (The Mystic) was awarded the "Rumi Prize" in 1998, which is given to the best work in mystical literature in Turkey. Her second novel, Şehrin Aynaları (Mirrors of the City), brings together Jewish and Islamic mysticism against a historical setting in the 17th century Mediterranean. Şafak greatly increased her readership with her novel Mahrem (The Gaze), which earned her the "Union of Turkish Writers' Prize" in 2000. Her next novel, Bit Palas (The Flea Palace), has been a bestseller in Turkey.

Just like love, literature shows us the connections. We live in a world in which the unhappiness of someone in Pakistan can affect the life of someone in Canada. In this world nobody lives in a vacuum. The sorrow of one person can sadden the entire humanity. The happiness of one person can contribute to the joy of all. Literature and art help us to feel connected with the universe.

If you want to be transported to a different time and place and meet an amazing man I highly recommend The Forty Rules of Love.

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Last night,

I saw the realm of joy and pleasure.
There I melted like salt;
no religion, no blasphemy,
no conviction or uncertainty remained.
In the middle of my heart,
a star appeared,
and the seven heavens were lost in its brilliance.

Last night,
I saw the realm of joy and pleasure.
There I melted like salt;
no religion, no blasphemy,
no conviction or uncertainty remained.
In the middle of my heart,
a star appeared,
and the seven heaven

Last night,

I saw the realm of joy and pleasure.
There I melted like salt;
no religion, no blasphemy,
no conviction or uncertainty remained.
In the middle of my heart,
a star appeared,
and the seven heavens were lost in its brilliance.