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Good Bye

March 4, 2013 – 2:47 pm

It was six years ago that I launched this blog/web site with the hopes that readers like myself would find this a place to post and discuss favorite books.  A book club with no responsibilities if you will.   As I’ve said many times this site was a labor of love for me.  But with technology comes upkeep to stay current and that costs money, lots of money.  Money this website has never generated.  So I’m moving on and have decided to put this website to bed and focus on my HelensReads facebook page (fun bookish news ) and my Novel Cook blog (where recipes and fiction blend together).  If you choose to ‘like” or  become a subscriber, I promise not to abuse you with postings.  Happy reading.  It’s been fun!

Best,

Helen

 

 

By helen | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

2012 Books That Author Emma Straub Gulped Down

January 28, 2013 – 5:27 pm

Since 2005, The Millions, an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture, has put out a end of year special called A Year in Reading in which they ask a selected group of the magazine’s favorite writers, thinkers, and readers to weigh in on what they’ve enjoyed reading over the past year.  Perusing their 2012 list, I chose to focus on the 2012 favorites of author Emma Straub (Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures - a book club favorite). Since I too, gulped down Where’d You Go, Bernadette and am right now in the middle of reading and very much liking Beautiful Ruins, I feel a sort of simpatico with Ms. Straub.  In her own words:

I actually like waiting to read books, because then the hoopla has hooped down the street and the buzz has stopped buzzing and it’s just you and the page in front of you, and then the page after that. Still, even I am occasionally immune to my own rules, and accidentally read a book immediately after purchasing it. This year, I gulped down Maria Semple’sWhere’d You Go, Bernadette, Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements, and Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins. Each one was precise, skilled, quick-witted, and warm-hearted. Well worth the price of (hardcover) admission and all of the (richly deserved) accolades. Sometimes all that buzz is there for a reason.

By helen | Posted in Book Buzz, Book Clubs, Book World | Comments (0)

A Halloween ‘Pooh’ Tale

October 18, 2012 – 11:03 am

By helen | Posted in Musings | Comments (0)

Fall Reading in Charted Territory

October 9, 2012 – 10:33 am

My husband spotted this in the current issue of  TIME magazine (October 15, 2012). It quickly nets out what you should read next in handy chart format. Apparently, cat owners were not considered in the mix. Meow!

Double click on image to enlarge for viewing.

By helen | Posted in Musings | Comments (0)

“30 Years of Liberating Literature”

September 29, 2012 – 11:07 am

"30 Years of Liberating Literature"

By helen | Posted in Book World | Tagged , | Comments (0)

What The Class of 2016 is Reading

September 2, 2012 – 10:42 pm


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According to a recent article in USA Today titled A Cheat Sheet to What Makes Today’s College Freshmen Click the class of 2016  are electronically sophisticated, yet woefully unprepared for the real world.

 ”This is a generation with an average of 241 social media friends, but they have trouble communicating in person,”

So what are the colleges and universities asking these freshman to read  to help open a discussion about the world they live in?  The non fiction book The Other Wes Moore about two boys from similar backgrounds meeting very different fates seems to be a top pick followed by last year’s popular title for freshman  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This of course is only a partial list from what I could readily find online.  I would love to keep the thread going if you have college freshman in the house reading and ready to leave the nest.

Brown - Sons of Providence by Charles Rappley
Bucknell Univ – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Clemson - Wading Home by Rosalyn Story
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering - The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites
Georgetown University- The Tiger’s Wife: A Novel by Téa Obreht
Goucher College – An Enemy of the People – Kwame Kwei-Armah
Gustavus Adolphus - The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
Hampshire College – Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between, by Jeff Sharlet
Ithaca - Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson
Kalamazoo College - Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Montana State Univ - Extraordinary, Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice
NYU Gallatin - Antigone by Sophocles
Pomona - The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar
Reed - The Odyssey by Homer
Rhode Island College - The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot
Smith College - Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis by Alice Yaeger Kaplan
The University of the South – The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell
Tulane - Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
University of Alabama Birmingham-The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
UNC-Chapel Hill – The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains  by Nicholas Carr
University of Mississippi - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
Washington State Univ -  The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot
Washington University in St Louis –  The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
Whitman College - The Warmth of Other Suns  by Isabel Wilkerson.
WUSTL - The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

By helen | Posted in Best Of | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Something Old, New, Borrowed & Blue in Summer Reading

July 18, 2012 – 6:23 pm

Publishers Weekly just came out with the bestselling books (so far) of 2012. I must say I’m a bit bored. The Hunger Games and Fifty Shades of Grey top all lists with a smattering of old favorites (The Help, The Girl that Kicked the Hornets Nest, Steve Jobs. Unbroken) thrown in for good measure.  The usuals (Patterson, Grisham, Baldacci and Sparks) made the list, and it is refreshing to see that two of my favorite novels this year, Defending Jacob and Gone Girl, have caught on with the Kindle crowd.

My summer reading list does not reflect the above trends.  So in the spirit of the many weddings that are happening all around me, here goes.

Something Old:
Heartburn by Nora Ephron.  Two reasons.  I’ve always wanted to read it.  I’m still in mourning.

Something New:
Kim Barnes newest In the Kingdom of Men.  This is a tale of what happens to a young woman from Oklahoma who moves with her husband to an oil business  compound in Saudi Arabia in the late 60′s.  I’m a big fan of Ms Barnes and this looks to me to be a big book club hit.

“In the Kingdom of Men” is a mystery, opening with the discovery of a murdered local woman, then backtracking to explain how Gin — and more darkly, Mason — are connected to the death. ~Seattle Times

Something Borrowed:
My sister passed along her copy of Kate Atkinson‘s latest Jackson Brodie mystery Started Early, Took My Dog.   I’ve watched the PBS series so I am familiar with the back story of this Yorkshire private eye whose sister’s murder when he was a young boy haunts him and seems to affect  his relationships with women  and the cases he takes on.

Something Blue:
Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore. If you are new to Moore’s quirky and very funny books (Lamb, Fool, Bite Me) than you are in for a treat.  Nancy Pearl described it as “part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious”.  Seems like the perfect summer read.

With such great books staring me in the face you probably won’t hear much more from me until mid-September.  It’s summer folks and the reading is easy.

By helen | Posted in Best Of, Book World | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

June 27, 2012 – 2:57 pm

Nora Ephron    May 19, 1941 – June 26, 2012


By helen | Posted in Book World, Writer's Salon | Comments (0)

Author/Writer Jennifer Weiner’s Advice To Book Bloggers

June 11, 2012 – 8:45 am

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Or as Ms. Weiner paraphrased in her keynote address at this year’s BEA Bloggers Conference, “No one can hurt your feelings without your permission.”  She used Oprah Winfrey, who Ms. Weiner described as the world’s first book blogger, and her televised book club as exhibit #1. The following is Ms. Weiner’s theory in a nutshell.

In 1996, Oprah launched Oprah’s book club. Not a blog per se, but it did fill the criteria of a blog by offering a fresh innovative voice that was a far cry from the schooled book critics.  Oprah was like a next door neighbor telling you she loved a particular book and just knew you would love it too. The book club became wildly popular, turning each month’s pick into an instant best seller.  Only after Jonathan Franzen poo pooed the fact that his book Corrections had been made an Oprah pick, did the wheels start to come off the Oprah book bus.  Oprah allowed her feelings to be hurt and rescinded the invitation.  The book club went on hiatus a few months later, only to return at a later date with a focus on the classics.  Oprah had become just another book critic.  So what is Ms Weiner’s advice for book bloggers?

Be as transparent as possible.  If your site has a money making aspect to it, spell it out.

Speak in your own voice with the courage of your own convictions about the books and authors you love no matter who tells you you shouldn’t love them.

Dance like no one is watching, sing like no one can hear, tweet like your mom’s not online.  Be brave, smart, creative and kind. Above all else, be yourself.  Readers will find you.

Look for Jennifer Weiner’s The Next Best Thing in stores and online July 3rd. 

By helen | Posted in Book World, Writer's Salon | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” A Retirement Reality

June 1, 2012 – 1:41 pm


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Memorial Day weekend I convinced my husband we needed to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the  film adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s book These Foolish Things. I loved the movie, but what I savored from the film was it’s concept of outsourcing elder care.  To my delight this is actually a reality for many British retirees.  According to The Independent’s  ”Fun in the Sunset Years”,  there is Retirement Township 50 miles east of Mumbai; Malaysia’s My Second Home program; and Manila’s   Indang Village, billed as “The British Village in the Philippines”.  And it is not just the Brits that are on the move.  German and Japanese home care operators are buying up large swaths of land in the Philippians where outside of the rainy season the climate is spring like all year round.  The article concludes that just perhaps, Dev Patel’s wish, the hotel owner and care giver in the movie “…of creating a home for the elderly so wonderful that they simply refuse to die.”  may not be a dream at all.

Here are some other  fun facts provided on the author’s website.

- In the book, the hotel’s name was Dunroamin.

- The movie premier post-party goody-bags contained a copy of the novel, a bag of marigold seeds printed with the movie poster, a tube of anti-ageing cream, a £20 voucher for East and a packet of Hob-Nobs (which Maggie Smith’s character eats) and a Hob Nob mug.

- In the movie,  Penelope Wilton’s character, Jean, can be seen reading a copy of Tulip Fever also written by Moggach.

- Recipe for home made Hob Nobs via Cookie Madness.

By helen | Posted in Behind the Screen, Travel | Tagged , , | Comments (0)