Mailbox Monday

After spending most of a very fun day antiquing in charming Aurora, Oregon, I stopped by one of my favorite library book stores, Second Hand Prose in Oregon City. I ended up with a nice stack of books for my Mailbox Monday list.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (this is the third in her Jackson Brodie series and I am so looking forward to it)



Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910 - 1939 by Katie Roiphe (this looks fascinating and would count for one of my Bibliophilic Books Challenge books)



I, the King by Frances Parkinson Keyes (my mom was a big FPK fan growing up and she got me reading them years ago)



A Maggot by John Fowles (I have trepidation because, while I loved The French Lieutenant's Woman, I absolutely could not stand The Magus)



Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (I only recently read my first Sayers book and now I want to gobble them all)



Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (I've already read this Booker Prize winner, but I did not have a copy and it is one I may like to read again)



The End of My Career by Miles Franklin (I've gathered several volumes of her memoirs based only only enjoying the movie version of My Brilliant Career when I was in high school)

More Matter: Essays and Criticism by John Updike (another contender for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge)



What books came into your house last week?

Challenge: Birth Year Reading Challenge

THE CHALLENGE

I am finally officially signing up for the Birth Year Reading Challenge hosted by Hotchpot Cafe. The idea is to read books published in the year of your birth. There is no set number of books to read, but you earn a "candle" for each book and the participant with the most candles by December 31, 2010 wins a pretty terrific prize.

THE YEAR: 1966

Then came 1966, a remarkable year altogether: a Jewish child was born in Spain for the first time in 374 years, Ronald Reagan was elected boss of California, Indira Gandhi was elected boss of India, the Soviets landed a Luna spacecraft on the moon, John Lennon opined dryly that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, Haile Selassie visited Jamaica, the Grateful Dead moved to a house on Haight Street, the Americans landed a Surveyor spacecraft on the moon, Montgomery Cliff died, the Beatles released Revolver, "Star Trek" was first televised, Namibia declared independence, Jimmy Hendrix changed his name to Jimi, LSD was declared illegal, Catholics began to eat meat on Fridays, Barbados declared independence, the Americans bombed Hanoi, Walt Disney died, Kwanzaa was invented, Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Arlo Guthrie wrote "Alice's Restaurant," Hewlett-Packard introduced its first computer, Buster Keaton died, Guyana declared its independence, Malaysia and Indonesia declared peace, taekwando was invented, Lesotho declared independence, Thich Nhat Hanh visited America, [and] Bill Evans opened a long run at the Village Vanguard jazz club . . .

-- The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vinyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World by Brian Doyle (leading up to the point that 1966 was also the first year that pinor noir vines were planted in Oregon, giving birth to Oregon's wine industry).

THE BOOKS

It's hard to say how many books I will read this year that will earn me a candle. There are probably several books on my TBR shelf that were published in 1966, but without going through them all, it is hard to guess which ones. As I stumble across them, I will add them to the list of possibilities.

I'd like to stick with books I already own, since I have so many to get through. But there are a couple of books published in 1966 that have captured my fancy and I am keeping my eye out for.

So far, my possibilities include:


I, the King by Frances Parkinson-Keyes (I'm a big FPK fan and found this one at a library store the other day)

The Comedians by Graham Greene (on my TBR shelf)

The Anti-Death League by Kinglsey Amis (which I do not own, but would like to because Amis is one of my all-time favorites)

REVIEWS = CANDLES

Indian Summer by John Knowles (reviewed here)
The Valley of the Dolls by Jaqueline Susann (reviewed here) 

NOTE

Last updated on September 22, 2010.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Indian Summer

"Demobilization sounded like the best word in the language in 1946."

-- Indian Summer by John Knowles.

A Separate Peace was heartbreakingly poignant when I read it in high school, but seems to have left no more than hazy, maudlin memory in my book brain. Knowles never became a favorite of mine.

So I don't know when I would have gotten around to reading my husband's high school copy of Indian Summer if it hadn't been for the Hotchpot Cafe's Birth Year Reading Challenge. 'Lo and behold, Indian Summer was published in 1966, the year of my birth. It is the first book I've come across on my TBR shelf that qualifies for this challenge, so now I am officially "in."

A Small Fortune Give-Away and Book Blog Hop

This is a busy Friday! I am going to hop around visiting book blogs and I have my first-ever give away.

Thanks to the author, Audrey Braun, I have a brand new copy of A Small Fortune to give away.

THE BOOK

Publisher's Description: Celia Donnelly sets off for tropical Mexico, longing to repair her nerves, rekindle her marriage, and restore peace with her increasingly difficult teenage son. But just as the radiant coastline begins to thaw the cold within her family, a stranger sparks a long-dead passion inside her, and his connections lead to an unspeakable betrayal. From sea breezes to jungle steam to the crisp air of Zurich, Celia will be forced to uncover what everyone is suddenly after, including her own life. Caught inside a mysterious past, she must throw herself into harm's way in order to protect her son. But matters are complicated after the stirred passion becomes a fever that cannot be contained. Is this stranger worthy of her love and trust? Or is he just another piece in the sinister plot to steal the very thing that Celia has no idea is hers to take? A SMALL FORTUNE is a fast-paced, sexy, thrill-ride to the brink of madness that begs the question: How far will one woman go for the truth?

THE BUZZ

"Nerve-grinding suspense... Strewn with jewels of beautiful writing and apt metaphors--enough to bring on a case of writer's envy."
-- Jessica Morrel, author of Bullies, Bastards And Bitches: How To Write The Bad Guys Of Fiction

"A Small Fortune is scintillating, thrilling, and full of intrigue. A sexy, mysterious romp with literary overtones. Erica Jong meets Harlan Coben on a sticky summer night."
-- Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

"The book is absolutely unputdownable."
-- Rose City Reader (read my full review here)

THE GIVE AWAY

The contest is open until Friday, May 28, 2010. To enter, do any or all of the following, but you must leave a comment for each one:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You must include a way to contact you (email or website address in your comment or available in your profile). If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner. (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway. (Posting the giveaway on your sidebar is also acceptable.) Leave a separate comment with a link to your post. (1 entry)

3. Subscribe to my rss feed, follow me on blogger, or subscribe via email (or tell me if you already are a subscriber or follower). Leave a separate comment for this. (1 entry)

4. Tweet this post on Twitter. Leave me a separate comment with your twitter user name. (1 entry)

5. Stumble this blog, digg it, technorati fave it, or link it on facebook. Leave a separate comment. (1 entry)

There are a lot of ways to enter (maximum of five entries), but you must LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each one or they will not count. I will use random.org to pick the winners from the comments.

This contest is open to entries from the U.S. and Canada only, no PO Boxes. The deadline for entry is midnight in your time zone, next Friday, May 28, 2010. I will draw and post the winner's name on Memorial Day Monday, May 31, 2010.

Useful

This week's Booking Through Thursday question asks: "What’s the most useful book you’ve ever read? And, why?"

Remember the old, silly game of adding "in bed" to any fortune cookie fortune? It made the fortune more meaningful. Har. Har.

When I read book questions like this, I have a similar, if more sacred rule: Add "other than the Bible" to any question that asks what is your superlative book in any category. Otherwise, the answers would be repetitive.

Even with that qualifier, my answer is still easy -- The Joy of Cooking. There is no more useful book in my house. There is no other book I turn to several times a week to teach me or remind me how to do something. It was the first cookbook I ever owned and, even though I have a newer edition now, it is still really the only cookbook I really need.



I may tweak the recipes or only use them for the basic structure, but every recipe is in there, from apple pie to pâté de foie gras. And there are many useful illustrations.  Even my 1995 edition includes everyone's favorite, How to Skin a Squirrel:

Review of the Day: Corked

Neither Kathryn Borel nor her father is the most psychically stable of individuals when they set off on a two-week wine tasting adventure through France. And there is nothing like the pressure cooker of a tin can rental car to bring emotions to the boiling point.

Borel conceived the idea for Corked when, as a newly-minted journalist, she found herself still struggling with depression after a tragic auto accident. Obsessed over her father’s mortality and convinced she had only a short time to heal their relationship, she arranges to accompany him to wineries around his native France, hoping that if she learns to understand wine, she will understand her father.

This is not a travel book about French wine country. It is a memoir about a young woman trying to forge an adult bond with her prickly father. Borel writes with candor and quirky humor. She has insight enough to appreciate her own limitations and, eventually, to accept her father’s.

Hers is not a mature viewpoint, which brings an emotional immediacy to the book that can feel a little raw. But for anyone who has traveled with a difficult family member or gone through a mind-clearing catharsis while traveling, the book rings true.

OTHER REVIEWS

(If you would like your review listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.)

NOTES

Thanks go to Book Dilettante for this book because I won it in a give-away.

I added this book to my French Connection list, were you can find many, many books set in and about France. 

Teaser Tuesday Two-fer

I am reading wine books these days and have teasers from two of them:

The pale French morning sun blundered through the airport windows. In spite of my fatigue from the fretting and the jet lag, I was overcome by the prickly excitement one gets from being in another country with its different smells, foreign McDonald's menus, and drugstore products that somehow are more effective than the ones at home.

Corked by Kathryn Borel.

I laughed when I read this because the women in my family spend a lot of our travel time buying foreign drugstore products, convinced that the face mask will be more cleansing, the cuticle cream more healing, and the lip balm more moisturizing.

A perfect pinot should be lean on entry, expand in the middle of your palate, be smooth and clean as you swallow, and then linger a little when it is gone. If it lingers too much, if it's big and fat and fruity in your mouth, then it's not freshening your palate.

The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vinyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World by Brian Doyle, quoting Jesse Lange, the winemaker at Lange Vineyard and Winery.

This book is actually about wine, unlike Corked, which is really about the relationship between the author and her father.I am learning a lot from this one, but it also makes me want to drink wine with lunch.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Books actually came to me in the mail last week, so this is a legitimate Mailbox Monday list.

Beautiful Maria of My Soul by Oscar Hijuelos (from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program)



Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes by Carl Hoffman (from the Internet Review of Books)



To the Woods: Sinking Roots, Living Lightly, and Finding True Home by Evelyn Searle Hess (from the Oregon State University Press)



Much Obliged, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (a treat for myself)

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Grail

A glorious gleaming glittering October afternoon in the red clay hills of Dundee, Oregon, where hawks float by with writhing snakes in their beaks, and the deer fences are eight feet high and lined with barbed wire to keep out what grape growers call vineyard rats, and the BirdGard machine in the middle of the vineyard is squawking the warning cries of injured starlings at fifty decibels from four speakers covering fifteen acres, ans a thousand wasps are having the most intoxicating day of their whole lives, and the chief winemaker, the songwriter Don Lange, is cursing at the moles and gophers that have riddled the dirt between the rows of his vines, and musing about how maybe roasted gopher would go real good with the wine from his vineyard, and twenty people sweating like mad are picking grapes faster than you have ever seen anyone pick grapes before in your whole life, and the intense younger winemaker, Don's son Jesse, is driving a careening forklift truck at twenty miles an hour up and down the alleys between the rows, picking up bins the pickers have filled from the ends of the rows, and the operations manager, Wally, is cursing quietly but thoroughly as he tries to fix a fermenting tank, and the sales manager, Laura, is not selling or managing anything at all but instead picking madly through the dump tray for mangled grapes and wasps as a river of grapes and leaves and stems and wasps rockets by her on the way to the crushing machine, and the cellarmaster, Chuy, is sluicing juice out of the crushing machine and delivering it right quick into the fermenter or the press, which is to say red wine or white wine, which makes a huge difference here in the red hills of Dundee, because while the juice in the press will make excellent chardonnay and pinot gris and riesling and pinot blanc, the juice in the fermenters will make maybe perhaps mayhaps the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the World, which is a remarkable thing to say about wine from soil that is adamantly not French, and exactly the reason why everyone is working so madly this afternoon, because this is Harvest, the World Series and Super Bowl and World Cup and Grand Final of winemaking, and if the Holy Grail is to be found, which is what pinot noir winemakers call the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the World, it begins here, this week, on this gleaming hill, in a crisp brilliant sun, with the Cascade Mountains glittering snowily to the east and the Coast Range mountains rolling greenly to the west, with a hundred tons of purple-black grapes the size of fingernails roaring like a murky dusty river, and Wally cursing like a drunken sailor.

The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vinyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World by Brian Doyle.

OK, I think this one almost bested my resolve to post the opening sentence from the books I read. They must have been having a sale on commas at the punctuation store.

That was the first sentence and also the first chapter, called "Maybe Perhaps Mayhaps," and as much as I dislike literary gimmicks, it does capture the frenzy of what a wine grape harvest must be like.

I think I am really going to enjoy (the rest of) this book. I wanted to read it because it is all about Oregon wine, and I live in Oregon and I like wine. But I didn't realize that it is about a particular Oregon winery -- Lange Winery -- that is one of my favorites.

Lange is the first winery that my husband and I went to together when we first started going out. He'll never let me forget that I "made him" drive on a gravel road in his 1969 MG convertible. We had to drive about 2 MPH to avoid dinging the car. But we managed to stash two cases of Lange pinot in the back, so it was worth the agony.

Review of the Day: Citizen Vince

Most doughnut-making petty crooks in Spokane don’t have to keep an eye out for mafia assassins. But Vince Camden is in the witness protection program and his sixth sense tells him that someone is gunning for him.

Jess Walter won the Edgar Award for Citizen Vince, this quirky comedy of errors thriller set on the eve of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 Presidential election.

As Vince sets out to find whoever is after him, make things right with the mob, and win the girl, he also wants to make the most of his new status as a registered voter and intelligently cast his first-ever vote. Digressions on stump speeches, the Iran hostage negotiations, campaign tactics, and the role of third-party candidates share page space with a fake credit card scheme, meetings with crime bosses, and cross-county gangland hits.

It may not stand out as the most profound political novel, but Citizen Vince is a cut above the typical thriller and 300 pages of first-rate entertainment.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Corked

"When it comes to champagne and our family, my father has only one absolute rule:  We do not drink it when we are sad."

Corked by Kathryn Borel.

This didn't get very good reviews, but I am going into it with an open mind. I love the cover and the idea of driving through French wine country appeals to me. We'll see how it goes. Good first sentence at least.

Influence

This week's Booking Through Thursday question asks:

Are your book choices influenced by friends and family? Do their recommendations carry weight for you? Or do you choose your books solely by what you want to read?

My close personal friends, Messrs. Booker, Pulitzer, and Black, influence my book choices more than anyone.

Being a compulsive "list" reader, it is hard for me to change course and move into uncharted literary waters. There are so many books already on my TBR shelf that won some prize or made it onto a "Must Read" list that it is hard to get my attention for anything else.

There are a couple of exceptions. My parents and sister pass on books that they finished that they think I would like and I usually take those. And a couple of my girlfriends give me books that I always read. In fact, I had a dream last night about reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society because my friend gave it to me and I'm seeing her next week.

And I will always read a book written by a friend. That's a hard and fast rule for me. It has been a little strange since I started this blog, because now I usually review the books as well as read them. I promise an honest review, so I have been lucky that I have talented friends who write good books. But the day could come when I will be in an awkward spot. If that happens, I'll skip the review.

Here is a partial list of very good books by friends that I've read recently:

Water the Bamboo by Greg Bell (reviewed here)



A Small Fortune by Audrey Braun (reviewed here)

The Age of Reagan (Vol. II): The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980 - 1989 by Steven Hayward (reviewed here)




Lost in Translation and The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones (reviewedhere and here)



The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen's Guide by Sally Pipes (reviewed here)



Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites by Mitchell Stevens (which was really fascinating and engaging and I live with guilt because I forgot to review it but I will one of these days)

Teaser Tuesday: The Red Tent

"Then Inna told Bilhah to take Rachel's place so she could catch the baby; perhaps the birth blood would rouse Rachel's womb to fill again, too. And so Rachel washed in the river of life."

-- The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.

Ack! It's passages like this -- and there are lots of them -- that make me squirm like a pre-pubescent girl in junior high health class. Apparently I am not mature enough or enough in touch with my womanhood to enjoy this book.

I find that if I skim over all the parts about childbirth and menstruation, the story is very interesting. But a lot of the book is about childbirth and menstruation. It's hard to avoid. That's what the whole "Red Tent" thing is all about -- where the women go to breed and bleed.

And I thought the Old Testiment itself was gruesome.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Two books did come into my house last week in time for Mailbox Monday and In My Mailbox.  I got Roger's Version by John Updike and Passing On by Penelope Lively, both from Second Glance Books.

But my long list is the box of books I culled from my sister's garage sale inventory last week, most out of the hands of early bird customers who wouldn't wait for me to get the books out of the boxes. I warned them that I had first dibs on anything they found.

It is a crazy mixed up batch of books, including some I wanted to read, some that had sentimental connotations, and some that just struck my fancy. I didn't have time to post the list last week, so here it is:

A Russian Gentleman by by Sergei Aksakov (My sister read it for a Russian history class in college, I suspect, although it is a novel.)



Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to a Great Social Life by Letitia Baldrige (Oh, the promise of the title!)


The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook by Anne Barr and Peter York (It's the British version of that 1980's classic, The Preppy Handbook. I got this for my sister when I was at school in England.)



More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow (This was the first Bellow book I ever read, but I cannot remember it so it is time for a re-read.)



Echoes by Maeve Binchy (The queen of the "Aga saga" -- I'm a big fan but have not read nearly as many as my mother and sister.)



Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle (This is an old, very pretty little edition. I've never heard of the book, but it claims to have Tristram Shandy in it's literary ancestry, so that was enough for me to want to give it a go.)

Twenty Select Colloquies of Erasmus by Erasmus (OK, so I'm not likely going to sit down with this any time soon . . . )

My Aunt Lucienne by Rose C. Feld (I have no idea what this might be, but it has a great 1950s dustjacket with a definite Auntie Mame look)

Alphabet of Love by Solar Forst (It's a novelty book, but I just love these Peter Pauper Press books.)



Her Best Known Rhymes by Mother Goose (A pretty little edition, too cute to let go.)

Bistros of Paris by Robert Hamburger (My sister used it on her frequent trips to Paris, but I suspect it will be a while before I do the same.)



Buch der Lieder by Heinrich Heine (This is a beautiful, old book. It's poetry in German, so it has little practical use in my house.)

Joy Street and The Royal Box, both by Frances Parkinson Keyes (My sister and I are both big fans of FPK, inspired by our mother, who read the books when she was growing up.)

In Celebration of Wine and Life by Richard Lamb (great pictures of wine-related art works)



Be Cool by Elmore Leonard (the one mystery writer my husband will read)



The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham (I know I read this, but have no memory of it at all.)



Hungry Hill and Rule Britannia, both by Daphne du Maurier (Why have I never read any of her books?)

The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch (I thought I owned this, but I didn't.)



An Italian Education: The Further Adventures of an Expatriate in Verona by Tim Parks (I read his first one, Italian Neighbors, but not this follow-up.)



Weird Tales by Edgar Allen Poe (I've read all of the stories in this, but it is really pretty, so I wanted it.)

Milan & The Lakes (Eyewitness Travel Guides) (It may be out of date, but the pictures are still inspiring.)



Hangover Cures by Ben Reed (It could come in handy!)



A Certain Smile, Dear Sarah Bernhardt, The Heart-Keeper, Lost Profile, and Those Without Shadows, all by Francoise Sagan (Who know my sister was such a Sagan fan? Apparently from her college days, given the age of the books. I am going to read them to understand more about my little sis.)



Panorama Italiano by Charles & Carlo Golino Speroni (This was an Italian textbook of my sisters, which is not very practical, but I like its vintage charm and all the pictures.)

Image of Josephine by Booth Tarkington (If I am ever in a Tarkington mood again after Alice Adams, at least I won't have to spend money.)