My Daughter’s Top 10 Books of 2010

A Guest Post by my 12 year old daughter!

Some of My Favorite Books that I read in 2010

• Thirteenth Child By Patricia C. Wrede
• A Stitch in Time By Ann Rinaldi
• Deep Down Popular By Phoebe Stone
• The Young Wizard Series By Diane Duane
• Princess of Glass and Princess of the Midnight Ball By Jessica Day George
• The Season By Sarah MacLean
• If I Stay By Gale Forman
• Mockingjay By Suzanne Collins
• Alanna: The First Adventure By Tamora Pierce
• The Lost Hero By Rick Riordan

This list is in not ordered and mostly represents the books of the second half of the year.

 

December wrapup

I’m not going to post many thoughts on my reading– I’ll save those for my yearly wrapup, but I did want to list my final reads for the year, particularly since I didn’t review many of them!

So:

Books on Paper:

1. Secrets to the Grave (Deeper than the dead #2) by Tami Hoag
2. The Heir by Grace Burrowes
3. Skating Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
4. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
5. Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros
6. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
7. A Secret Gift by Ted Gup
8. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

Books on my MP3 player

1. The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
2. Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville #1) by Carrie Vaughn
3. Paper Towns by John Green
4. Slay Ride (Christopher Miller Holiday Thriller #1) by Chris Grabenstein
5. The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas by Lauren Willig
6. Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb
7. Blue Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews
8. Whispering Rock (Virgin River #3) by Robyn Carr

Books on my Nook

1. The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair

I think this brings my total for the year to 181 books total: 93 paper books, 14 Nook books, 75 audio books.  The most delightful book of the month was The Mischief of the Mistletoe.  The book that is really going to stick with me is A Secret Gift.

Happy New Year everyone!

http://blog.imbookingit.com/2010/12/15/an-object-of-beauty/

 

Review: The Heir by Grace Burrowes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Heir was a good read, although a little uneven at times.

Summary via the publisher:

An earl who can’t be bribed…

Gayle Windham, earl of Westhaven, is the first legitimate son and heir to the duke of Moreland. To escape his father’s inexorable pressure to marry, he decides to spend the summer at his townhouse in London, where he finds himself intrigued by the secretive ways of his beautiful housekeeper…

A lady who can’t be protected…

Anna Seaton is a beautiful, talented, educated woman, which is why it is so puzzling to Gayle Windham that she works as his housekeeper.

As the two draw closer and begin to lose their hearts to each other, Anna’s secrets threaten to bring the earl’s orderly life crashing down—and he doesn’t know how he’s going to protect her from the fallout…

The strengths of The Heir include the absolutely delightful supporting characters, particularly Morgan (Anna’s deaf companion) and Westhaven’s brothers. I think we’re going to see more of all of them in future books, and I’m really looking forward to reading more.

My opinion of Anna herself was also positive. I found her sympathetic, with some depth to her character. This depth includes some character flaws, situations where she did things she swore she wouldn’t only a few pages earlier. This struck me as her being a real person rather than as inconsistency in the writing.

Unfortunately, Westhaven’s foibles were more confusing to me. The character wandered back and forth between Sensitive Guy and Arrogant Nobility, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to be thinking of him. I often don’t see the appeal of romance novel heroes, and overall I did like him better than many, but I was a bit baffled at times.

Looking at the plot, it primarily involves the love/lust story and the unveiling of Anna’s Secret, with the Earl’s father’s prodding towards marriage serving to move the plot along when needed.

The romance was steamy. You can decide for yourself if this is a plus or minus. This aspect of the story was about lust before it was about love, but both aspects of the relationship did advance as the book moved along.

I enjoyed watching Anna’s back story unfold. The plot was generally well thought out, but with a couple of points where I felt plausibility was stretched as needed to make the book work overall. Even with those bits taken into account, I felt that it had a stronger story than many books I’ve read in the genre, which encourages me even more toward reading future books by this author.

This is an intriguing first novel, by an author I’m looking forward to following in the future.

I received my copy of The Heir from Sourcebooks so I could review it. I appreciate their providing me with this opportunity.

 

Mailbox Monday: December

I’ve been neglecting my blog recently, particularly Mailbox Monday.  I’ll try to get my act back together next month, but here’s a quick overview of some of the books I’ve acquired over the last month.

Books for Review

Sent by the publisher

Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

I’ve reviewed this one already! Told you I’m behind on my mailbox.

The Heir by Grace Burrowes

I’ll get my review of this one up soon– I’m hoping tomorrow.  We’ll see if I manage that!

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

I’m reading this one for a TLC tour in January.  I jumped at the chance to participate in this tour, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Guilt by Association by Marcia Clark

From Mullholland books, I’m adding it to the pile of their books that I’m excited to start reading soon!

Jane Austen’s Birthday

Sourcebooks had a terrific celebration of Jane Austen’s birthday, offering a number of their Austen related e-books for free for the day!  I downloaded most of them to my Nook!

Audible books

I’ve got books to keep me listening for a long time!

Bought at the late November Audible Sale:

• Slay Ride by Chris Grabenstein
• The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
• Killing Floor by Lee Child/li>
• River’s End by Nora Roberts
• Paper Towns by John Green
• Whispering Rock by Robyn Carr
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn

Using my credits:

• The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig

Free books:

• <Holiday Classics by O. Henry
• Even the Queen & Other Short Stories by Connie Willis

Scholastic Warehouse Sale

As a volunteer at my daughter’s school’s Scholastic Book Fair, I went to their Warehouse sale.  I bought a large box of books.  Most were for my daughter (although I’m asking her to share some with me), with some for gifts for nieces and nephews, and a couple for me alone :-).

Books I brought home that I plan to read include:

• North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

Others looked interesting too, but those were books I bought more with me in mind than with my daughter.

One of my goals for 2011 is to get back into the swing of Mailbox Monday– both posting and visiting other blogs. For now, I hope everyone had a great book month in December, and that 2011 holds even more wonderful books.

Mailbox Monday is a weekly post where I talk about the books that have arrived in my house over the last week.

Marcia at The Printed Page started the Mailbox Monday Blog Tour. This month’s host is Let Them Read Books.

Leave a note here with what new reads came your way (and any thoughts about mine), then go there to check out some other blogs!

 

Review: Secrets to the Grave by Tami Hoag

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

OK, calling this book a fun read, or an entertaining one doesn’t quite send the right message. It’s a compelling mystery, with some great characters. It’s also quite disturbing, deliberately so.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

Marissa Fordham had a past full of secrets, a present full of lies. Everyone knew of her, but no one knew her.

When Marissa is found brutally murdered, with her young daughter, Haley, resting her head on her mother’s bloody breast, she sends the idyllic California town of Oak Knoll into a tailspin. Already on edge with the upcoming trial of the See- No-Evil killer, residents are shocked by reports of the crime scene, which might not have been discovered for days had it not been for a chilling 911 call: a small child’s voice saying, “My daddy hurt my mommy.”

Sheriff’s detective Tony Mendez faces a puzzle with nothing but pieces that won’t fit. To assist with his witness, Haley, he calls teacher-turned-child advocate Anne Leone. Anne’s life is hectic enough-she’s a newlywed and a part- time student in child psychology, and she’s the star witness in the See-No-Evil trial. But one look at Haley, alone and terrified, and Anne’s heart is stolen.

As Tony and Anne begin to peel back the layers of Marissa Fordham’s life, they find a clue fragment here, another there. And just when it seems Marissa has taken her secrets to the grave, they uncover a fact that puts Anne and Haley directly in the sights of a killer: Marissa Fordham never existed.

Secrets to the Grave looks at several aspects of violence, starting with an extremely brutal murder of a young mother, and the attempted murder of her 4 year old child. Several other characters are brutally attacked, some characters are living with the results of previous violence– some recent, some from childhood long past.

I started to list all the characters I liked, but decided not to bother. The book is full of generally likable but interesting people. If Vince and Anne walk a little too close to the too good to be true line, they have enough personality and struggles to keep them worth reading about.

The children are a large part of what makes the book interesting and disturbing. Disturbing, due to what 4 year old Haley has been through; disturbing, due to what 12 year old Dennis has done, and even more, what he’d like to do. Again, each is an intriguing character on their own (well, as much so as a realistic 4 year old can be), and they way they work into the events of the story builds on that.

The supporting cast of police officers and suspects and other people of interest were varied in situation and personality. I admit to having some trouble keeping track of the names of some of the characters– I think this is my weakness, and it is one that came back to bite me toward the end of the book. Until then, I could keep the characters straight by context, but a few references at the end left me with the sinking feeling that I wasn’t quite sure who was being referred to. I’d recommend paying closer attention that I did to this aspect.

Another detail of this story that interested me was the choice of setting it in the 1980s. I occasionally wondered if the only reason for this decision was to avoid computers and cell phones. Mostly, it didn’t matter, but occasionally it seemed like the author was winking at the readers, about things we know or take for granted, but which weren’t yet part of the lives of these characters. In addition, there were a couple of points where I was pulled out of my reading, wondering if this or that detail was authentic to the time period. Probably they were but it still disrupted my reading to think about it.

If you like a violent but thoughtful mystery with well thought out characters, check out this book.

Secrets to the Grave will be released on December 28. I read it as part of a TLC Book Tour. Thank you to Lisa for the chance to participate!

For other opinions of the book, check out the other tour stops:

• Monday, December 6th:  A Bookworm’s World
• Tuesday, December 7th:  Luxury Reading
• Wednesday, December 8th:  Musings of an All Purpose Monkey
• Thursday, December 9th:  Under the Boardwalk
• Friday, December 10th:  Life in Review
• Monday, December 13th:  The Well-Read Wife
• Tuesday, December 14th:  My Two Blessings
• Wednesday, December 15th:  Musings of a Bookish Kitty
• Thursday, December 16th:  Bewitched Bookworms
• Friday, December 17th:  Presenting Lenore
• Monday, December 20th:  Man of La Book
• Tuesday, December 21st:  I’m Booking It
• Wednesday, December 22nd:  Rundpinne (Deeper Than the Dead)
• Thursday, December 23rd:  Rundpinne (Secrets to the Grave)
• Monday, December 27th:  Reviews by Molly
• Monday, January 3rd:  Teresa’s Reading Corner
• Wednesday, January 5th:  Lesa’s Book Critiques
• Monday, January 10th:  Jen’s Book Thoughts

 

Review: Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

My rating: 3.5 stars

I found Goodnight, Tweetheart a fast, fun, very light read. It worked on that level, but it left me wishing it was just a little more.

Abigail Donovan has a lot of stuff she should be doing. Namely writing her next novel. A bestselling author who is still recovering from a near Pulitzer Prize win and the heady success that follows Oprah’s stamp of approval, she is stuck at Chapter Five and losing confidence daily. But when her publicist signs her up for a Twitter account, she’s intrigued. What’s all the fuss?

Taken under the wing of one of her Twitter followers, “MarkBaynard”—a quick witted, quick-typing professor on sabbatical—Abby finds it easy to put words out into the world 140 characters at a time. And once she gets a handle on tweets, retweets, direct messages, hashtags, and trends, she starts to feel unblocked in writing and in life. After all, why should she be spending hours in her apartment staring at her TweetDeck and fretting about her stalled career when Mark is out there traveling the world and living?

Or is he?

Told almost entirely in tweets and DMs, Goodnight Tweetheart is a truly modern take on a classic tale of love and loss—a Griffin and Sabine for the Twitter generation.

The biggest problem with the book is that I kept thinking I’d seen this movie before. The twist of the pen pals meeting over Twitter vs. e-mail or old-fashioned snail mail was fun, but I never got a feeling for the Twitter world– the thing about Twitter is that it is a public conversation, and we never see that aspect of it.

Abby and Mark immediately take their conversation to direct messages, and out of the Twitter world. I would have loved to see Mark comment on a tweet that Abby sent out to her fan followers (once she had settled in a bit), or some other such interaction with the rest of the world.

I don’t mean to imply that I didn’t enjoy Mark and Abby’s interactions, I did. They were fun and clever and showed a nice process of them getting to know each other.

There was never any doubt that Mark had a secret, the only question which secret it was. I was betting against “married with wife and kids in the other room”, but there were a number of other possibilities that would have fit the situation. Because Mark is hiding for most of the book, and all we do see of him is the 140 character messages, he never turns into a real person to me.

Abby was real. I enjoyed her character, and the portrait I had of her (which was still fairly shallow, but fine for a book that took under 2 hours to read). I particularly enjoyed seeing her as a writer, overwhelmed by her initial success and not sure where to go next. I wished I’d seen more of her second novel, as a way to get to know her more deeply.

Again, I enjoyed what was here. I read it very quickly, smiling most of the time. It just didn’t quite leave me satisfied in the end.

I received Goodnight, Tweetheart from the publisher as part of a blog tour.  Thank you for allowing me to participate.

 

Celebrate Jane Austen’s Birthday with Sourcebooks

Note:  As of the morning of December 16, there are problems with some sellers.  Sourcebooks is working on correcting this, and is extending the offer through tomorrow.

December 16 is Jane Austen’s birthday, and Sourcebooks is celebrating!

I received an e-mail from Sourcebooks Publicity, and I thought I’d pass it along.  I don’t do this often, but I thought this was really cool and I wanted to share:

Sourcebooks, the world’s leading publisher of Jane Austen fiction, is offering a unique deal to readers who want to celebrate Jane by reading special editions of all six of Austen’s beloved novels in a 21^st century format.

Special e-book editions of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion and Mansfield Park will be available for free for one day only. These celebratory editions include the full novels, plus the legendary color illustrations of the Brock brothers, originally created to accompany the books in 1898.

In addition to the Jane Austen classics, readers can also enjoy these bestselling Austen-inspired novels. The following bestselling e-books will be free on December 16th in honor of her birthday:

Eliza’s Daughter by Joan Aiken
The Darcys & the Bingleys by Marsha Altman
Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll
What Would Jane Austen Do? by Laurie Brown
The Pemberley Chronicles by Rebecca Ann Collins
The Other Mr. Darcy by Monica Fairview
Mr. Darcy’s Diary by Amanda Grange
Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One by Sharon Lathan

Lydia Bennet’s Story by Jane Odiwe

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy by Abigail Reynolds

Available wherever eBooks are sold.

I’ll be taking advantage of this to load many of these books on my Nook. What about you?

 

Review: An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up an advance copy of An Object of Beauty. I was enjoying it, but eventually put it down until I could buy a copy to read. Why? Because I felt I was missing out without the pictures.

This book is firmly rooted in the art world, and includes photos of some of the artwork mentioned. I don’t know enough about art to have more than the vaguest idea of anything but the biggest works. Seeing some of the art mentioned wasn’t necessary to follow the plot, but it did help to set the stage for the events in the book.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

Lacey Yeager is young, captivating, and ambitious enough to take the NYC art world by storm. Groomed at Sotheby’s and hungry to keep climbing the social and career ladders put before her, Lacey charms men and women, old and young, rich and even richer with her magnetic charisma and liveliness. Her ascension to the highest tiers of the city parallel the soaring heights – and, at times, the dark lows – of the art world and the country from the late 1990s through today.

Lacey is a very interesting character. She’s young, beautiful, smart, and looking to make her mark on the art world. She’s almost amoral– she means no one harm, and genuinely likes many of the people around her, but if it doesn’t obviously hurt someone else, she’ll do what’s necessary to further her own cause. I won’t say that she’s a sympathetic character, but she’s an interesting one, and she never goes far enough across the line to turn me off.

Although Lacy has a college background in art, her real education comes while working at an auction house, and later at a gallery. The book is much more about the art world than the art it revolves around, and most of the talk of art is more about its relation to the people that surround it. I found it interesting to learn about both.

I found the structure of An Object of Beauty interesting. The story is narrated by Daniel, but it isn’t his story. Lacey is a good friend of his, but it isn’t always clear how he knows so much about her (although he does say at the beginning of the book that “imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience”). It’s occasionally distracting when Daniel does actually enter into the events of the book, but most of the time, it works.

An Object of Beauty isn’t like any other book I’ve read. It’s an interesting introduction to a world I wasn’t familiar with, and has an intriguing main character. These add up to an interesting read.

I picked up an advance copy of An Object of Beauty at BEA last spring (Thank you, Grand Central Publishing!), but ended up reading a copy I purchased myself.

 

Christmas audiobook mini-reviews

I decided I wanted to try to get a little more Christmas spirit going, and thought I’d track down some holiday related audiobooks.

I headed to my library’s Overdrive site, and searched for Christmas.  I downloaded the first two audiobooks that currently had copies available to check out, and where the description held any appeal at all to me.

They were two very different books, but they had more in common than just featuring Christmas.  They were both short and funny. The short was exactly what I needed, but in both cases I didn’t quite get into the humor.

First book:

Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb

This book was 3.5 stars for me. I think it may have been a 4 star book that just wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

From the HarperCollins website:

In Wally Lamb’s pitch perfect new novel, it is 1964. LBJ and Lady Bird are in the White House, Meet the Beatles is on everyone’s turntable, and ten-year-old Felix Funicello (distant cousin of the iconic Annette!) is doing his best to navigate fifth grade—easier said than done when scary movies still give you nightmares and you bear a striking resemblance to a certain adorable cartoon boy. But there are several things young Felix can depend on: the birds and bees are puzzling, television is magical, and this is one Christmas he’s never going to forget.

Felix just isn’t my kind of kid, and while I could laugh at his hijinks, I never quite connected with him or any of the other characters in the book– except maybe the teacher.

Wishin’ and Hopin’ was a genuinely funny book, with a mixture of schoolboy humor and the kind of views of childhood that are best viewed from a distance. I didn’t really enjoy the recurring sexual jokes (fairly mild) that went right over Felix’s head, but most of the looks at school politics (between the students as well as those involving the teachers)

Still, the details of the book were fun– I particularly enjoyed Felix’s crush on his third cousin he’d never actually met– Annette Funicello.  I liked Felix’s family, his relationship with his older sisters, and with his mother.  I enjoyed his mother’s televised trip to the Pillsbury bake-off.

If you enjoy stories featuring a mischievous (although well-intentioned) young boy, by all means check this one out. It’s a fun romp.

Second:

Blue Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews

Another 3.5 stars, although that may have been more of the audiobook production– I think it might have been 4 stars on paper.

It’s the week before Christmas, and antiques dealer Weezie Foley is in a frenzy to garnish her shop for the Savannah historical district decorating contest, which she intends to win. Weezie is ready to shoot herself with her glue gun by the time she’s done, but the results are stunning. She’s certainly one-upped the owners of the trendy boutique around the corner, but suddenly things start to go missing from her display, and there seems to be a mysterious midnight visitor to her shop.

Still, Weezie has high hopes for the holiday—maybe in the form of an engagement ring from her chef boyfriend. But Daniel, always moody at the holidays, seems more distant than usual. Throw in Weezie’s decidedly odd family, a 1950s Christmas tree pin, and even a little help from the King himself (Elvis, that is), and maybe there will be a pocketful of miracles for Weezie this Christmas Eve.

The characters were all so exaggerated as to take away from the rather enjoyable story, at least at first.  I’m not sure how much of this was how they were written versus how they were performed. Other than this, the narration was good, and I think the over-the-top characters may work better for others than they did for me.

By the end, I really enjoyed Weezie, and was OK with her boyfriend, her best friend, and the mysterious homeless woman that catches Weezie’s attention. I never was entirely comfortable with the portrayal of the gay couple that own the competing store across the square, and Daniel’s family was just too much for me.

The story was fun, featuring competing Christmas displays,two dogs in love, a crazy Christmas Eve celebration, and even stranger family revelations.

The ending headed toward sappy, which was exactly what I was looking for in a Christmas book.

 

What I’m doing when I’m not doing bookish stuff

In general, I talk about the bookish side of my life here.  As with everyone else, I do have other things that keep me from reading and blogging all of the time.  Some of them are important– the time I spend with my daughter and at her school.  Some of them are not– anyone who is friends with me on Facebook knows I like Farmville and other such games.

Starting in early November, my time is sucked into one of my husband’s hobbies:

I’ve set up a blog with some information on the lights.  I help out, I try to keep things from getting too out of control, and I try to program the musical sequences.  I did the Muppet one last year, with some help from my daughter.

I’m working on another one this year, and I find this extremely time consuming.  Since I’m trying to work with the music I’m choreographing to, I can’t even listen to an audio book while I’m doing it.

Together with the general craziness of the season, that’s where a lot of my book time has been going!