Top Ten Tuesday — Winter TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers’ answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND post a comment on our post with a link to your Top Ten Tuesday post to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. If you can’t come up with ten, don’t worry about it—post as many as you can!

I have a list of books I need to finish by the end of the year.  I really got behind on some of these reading challenges.  The list may be long, but I am determined to try and finish…

1. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke — 2011: Bablefish Challenge

2. Finish Fables series for the year (~8 volumes) — Fables challenge

3. Contact by Carl Sagan — Science Fiction challenge

4. Boneshaker and Dreadnought by Cherie Priest — Steampunk challenge

5. The Dress Lodger by Holman — Historical Fiction challenge

6. The Girl from Jungchow by Kate Furnivall — Historical Fiction challenge; A to Z Author F

7. Heart of Iron by Ekaterine Sedia — Steampunk challenge

8.  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein — Science Fiction challenge

9. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury — Science Fiction challenge

10. Snow Crash by Larry Niven — Science Fiction Challenge

11. Another two historical fiction novels

There’s a few more random books and spots to fill, but this is the bulk of it!  Already looking forward to January’s new reading challenges. 

 

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn

Title: The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever

Author: Julia Quinn

Publisher: Avon 2007

Genre: Historical Romance

Pages: 384

Rating:   4 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: A to Z Authors: Q; Historical Fiction

How I Got It: I own it!

2 March 1810 . . .
Today, I fell in love.

At the age of ten, Miranda Cheever showed no signs of Great Beauty. And even at ten, Miranda learned to accept the expectations society held for her—until the afternoon when Nigel Bevelstoke, the handsome and dashing Viscount Turner, solemnly kissed her hand and promised her that one day she would grow into herself, that one day she would be as beautiful as she already was smart. And even at ten, Miranda knew she would love him forever.

But the years that followed were as cruel to Turner as they were kind to Miranda. She is as intriguing as the viscount boldly predicted on that memorable day—while he is a lonely, bitter man, crushed by a devastating loss. But Miranda has never forgotten the truth she set down on paper all those years earlier—and she will not allow the love that is her destiny to slip lightly through her fingers . .

Not bad.  I read this in one sitting, granted I was on a plane, but still one sitting.  I liked the main characters, Miranda.  She was tough and feisty, but still a dreamer.  The male lead, Turner, was mostly likable.  There were a few times throughout the book that I really wanted Miranda to smack him for his actions and speech.  But overall, I thought he was a good character.  I was really rooting for him by the end.  The plot is fairly typical with a “will they, won’t they” romance, a tragedy,  steamy sex scene, and a plenty of other characters to complicate matters.  I admit that I even started tearing up in the last few chapters.  They really pulled at my heart-strings.  But by the end, I was happy and got my fairy tale ending.  Quinn writes description, exposition, and dialogue smoothly.  I’m really looking forward to reading more by her.

 

The Queen’s Dollmaker by Christine Trent

Title: The Queen’s Dollmaker

Author: Christine Trent

Publisher: Kensintong 2010

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 384

Rating:   3 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: Historical Fiction; A to Z: Title Q

How I Got It: Library lend

On the brink of revolution, with a tide of hate turned against the decadent royal court, France is in turmoil – as is the life of one young woman forced to leave her beloved Paris. After a fire destroys her home and family, Claudette Laurent is struggling to survive in London. But one precious gift remains: her talent for creating exquisite dolls that Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France herself, cherishes. When the Queen requests a meeting, Claudette seizes the opportunity to promote her business, and to return home…Amid the violence and unrest, Claudette befriends the Queen, who bears no resemblance to the figurehead rapidly becoming the scapegoat of the Revolution. But when Claudette herself is lured into a web of deadly political intrigue, it becomes clear that friendship with France’s most despised woman has grim consequences. Now, overshadowed by the spectre of Madame Guillotine, the Queen’s dollmaker will face the ultimate test.

I started reading this book with high hopes.  I loved the premise, the characters were interesting, and I really like historical fiction.  Yet, most of this fell flat.  I loved the main character; Claudette was a real women with hopes, dreams, and insecurities.  Beatrice was tiresome, but her daughter was wonderful.  All the other side characters in Claudette’s life were interesting and intriguing.  I even liked the interactions between Claudette and Marie Antoinette.  The setting was unique.  I haven’t read a historical fiction novel set on the Eve of Revolution in France. I was really liking the story.  The part I disliked: the switches in point of view and voice to Marie Antoinette.  I felt like the author was trying to educate us mere mortals about the Revolution by following Marie Antoinette’s story also.  It felt very cluttered and unnecessary.  I don’t think the readers needed a history lesson that detailed.  So what?  We could have understood Claudette’s story and even how her story interacts with Marie Antoinette’s without the switches.  I kept having to reorient myself to various characters.  For that reason, I gave the book 3 stars.  I liked the main storyline and characters, just not the point of view changes.

 

Top Ten Tuesday — Thanksgiving Guests

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers’ answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND post a comment on our post with a link to your Top Ten Tuesday post to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. If you can’t come up with ten, don’t worry about it—post as many as you can!

Great topic for this week.  I’ve picked a variety of authers, but made myself pick only ones that were currently alive.  The restriction made it harder, but I found myself picking some authors I’ve been reading (and loving of course).  In general, I think any of these authors would be make for interesting dinner conversation.  They write very different kinds of books, but I think they are all amazing. 

1. Jill Mansell — Awesome British contemporary romance

2. David Moody — Zombie novels Autumn and Autum: The City are currently in my 2011 favorites list

3. Carrie Ryan — More zombie novels.  Different from Moody’s but still amazing.

4. Gail Carriger — The Parasol Protectorate series is just great steampunk fun

5. Rick Riordan — Percy Jackson, need I say more?

6. J.K. Rowling — HP, duh!

7. Shannon Hale — Loved her updated take on Pride and Prejudice in Austenland (and the sequel is coming out next year!)

8. Garth Ennis — Writer behind comic series The Boys…  very dark, but very intriguing.

9. Jesse Petersen — Author of the Married with Zombies series.  A comedic take on zombies?  Sure!

10. Bill Willingham — Creator of the comic series Fables.  Currently my absolute favorite series.  I am addicted to it!

 

Heartless by Gail Carriger

Title: Heartless (Parasol Protectorate #4)

Author: Gail Carriger

Publisher: Orbit 2011

Genre: Steampunk

Pages: 385

Rating:   5 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: Steampunk

How I Got It: I own it!

Lady Alexia Maccon, soulless, is at it again, only this time the trouble is not her fault. When a mad ghost threatens the queen, Alexia is on the case, following a trail that leads her deep into her husband’s past. Top that off with a sister who has joined the suffragette movement (shocking!), Madame Lefoux’s latest mechanical invention, and a plague of zombie porcupines and Alexia barely has time to remember she happens to be eight months pregnant.

Will Alexia manage to determine who is trying to kill Queen Victoria before it is too late? Is it the vampires again or is there a traitor lurking about in wolf’s clothing? And what, exactly, has taken up residence in Lord Akeldama’s second best closet?

I think this was my favorite one yet from the series.  I love pregnant Alexia; she’s feisty but clumsy.  She’s such a treat to continue to follow her unconventional life.  Although I love her to pieces, Lord Akeldama and Biffy have become my favorite characters.  The interplay between those two is just fantastic.  Carriger has captured me again.  I can’t wait to read Timeless and find out what happens with the baby, the newly installed hive and of course the pack.  It’s such a shame I have to wait until spring!

 

Pondering Reflections

I am at a crossroads… with this blog I mean.  My blog is basically a year old.  I started it sometime in November, but didn’t really get the hang of it until the first of the year.  I signed up for a ton of reading challenges.  I jioned a few memes.  I created a few regular features.  And now it’s time to decide where to go from here. 

I’ve already began to organiaze my TBR piles and reading challenges for next year.  The basement theater is lookiong a bit ridiculous and I’m sure J is about done with my mess.  But I love being organized.  And usually that means making a crazy mess for a bit before everything looks all pretty again.  There are so many great books sitting in the garage.  I want to read them all.  But I know that’s a crazy goal.  So I need to try and organize and scale back.

I’m also trying to figure out the overall shape of my blog.  I know that I’ll still do book reviews and reading challenges.  But what about all those other little feature things (meal plan, music monday, top ten tuesday, etc)?  I have to think about what I want to commit myself to, especially since taking on a full time job and wanting to plan things for when I have the boys (and possibly a vacation with or without the boys).

All this leads to a pondering Tobe.  What to do?  What to do?  In some ways I love these times of decisions.  And then I panic and think “Am I doing the right thing?”  I guess it’s all about the decisions the time.  I can’t get caught up in “What Ifs.”  So I’ll ponder and make decisions.  And make a big year end wrap-up post.  Also, I think I’ll be taking a bit of blog vacation for the second half of December.  A bit of a break to energize sounds like a great idea.

 

U.S. Presidents Reading Project

I found this great idea for a reading challenge, but decided to change it to a perpetual reading challenge.  I was trained as a U.S. History teacher, so reading about the Presidents sounds like great fun to me.  I plan on getting started after the New Year. 

The rules are simple:

1. Read at least one non-fiction book about each of the U.S. Presidents
2. Take as much time as you need
3. Have fun learning about U.S. history and its leaders
4. And if you like buttons for your blog, feel free to add this one provided by the fabulous Michele at A Reader’s Respite. Thanks, Michele!

That’s it! If one book about each president sounds a bit like “too much information” to you, feel free to choose books that talk about more than one president at a time and count it for each one. Tailor this project to suit your personal level of interest. Maybe you just want a passing knowledge of each one. Maybe you found a couple presidents interesting enough to read two or three or more books about them. Maybe you’ll discover so many avenues you’d like to explore that we’ll need to start an American History Reading Project. The possibilities are endless!

LIST OF U.S. PRESIDENTS

1. George Washington (1789-97)
2. John Adams, 1797-1801 (Federalist)
3. Thomas Jefferson, 1801-9 (Democratic-Republican)
4. James Madison, 1809-17 (Democratic-Republican)
5. James Monroe, 1817-25 (Democratic-Republican)
6. John Quincy Adams, 1825-29 (Democratic-Republican)
7. Andrew Jackson, 1829-37 (Democrat)
8. Martin Van Buren, 1837-41 (Democrat)
9. William Henry Harrison, 1841 (Whig)
10. John Tyler, 1841-45 (Whig)
11. James Knox Polk, 1845-49 (Democrat)
12.  Zachary Taylor, 1849-50 (Whig)
13. Millard Fillmore, 1850-53 (Whig)
14. Franklin Pierce, 1853-57 (Democrat)
15. James Buchanan, 1857-61 (Democrat)
16. Abraham Lincoln, 1861-65 (Republican)
17. Andrew Johnson, 1865-69 (Democrat/National Union)
18. Ulysses Simpson Grant, 1869-77 (Republican)
19. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 1877-81 (Republican)
20. James Abram Garfield, 1881 (Republican)
21. Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-85 (Republican)
22. Grover Cleveland, 1885-89 and 1893-97 (Democrat)
23. Benjamin Harrison, 1889-93 (Republican)
24. William McKinley, 1897-1901 (Republican)
25. Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-9 (Republican)
26. William Howard Taft, 1909-13 (Republican)
27. Woodrow Wilson, 1913-21 (Democrat)
28. Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1921-23 (Republican)
29. Calvin Coolidge, 1923-29 (Republican)
30. Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-33 (Republican)
31. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-45 (Democrat)
32. Harry S. Truman, 1945-53 (Democrat)
33. Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953-61 (Republican)
34. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961-63 (Democrat)
35. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-69 (Democrat)
36. Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969-74 (Republican)
37. Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr , 1974-77 (Republican)
38. James Earl Carter, 1977-81 (Democrat)
39. Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1981-89 (Republican)
40. George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989-1993 (Republican)
41. William Jefferson Clinton, 1993-2001 (Democrat)
42. George W. Bush, 2001-2009 (Republican)
43. Barack Hussein Obama, 2009- (Democrat)

 

Top Ten Tuesday — On My Shelf the Longest

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers’ answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND post a comment on our post with a link to your Top Ten Tuesday post to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. If you can’t come up with ten, don’t worry about it—post as many as you can!

I need to preface this week’s Top Ten with a big confession…  I have six file boxes in the garage full of books that I haven’t read yet.  I am a book hoarder.  There, I said it.  But I am trying to change my ways.  After I read a book, if I don’t absolutely love it, I’m getting rid of it (selling, giving, Goodwilling).  And next year, I have a book reward program for myself.  If this topic comes around next year, hopefully I the shelf life will be weeks instead of months and years…

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins — I know, I know.  I’m dying to read it, but I know I’ll want to read the other two books right after and I don’t have them yet.  They are both on my wish list this Christmas.

2. Entire Outlander series — I read the first one and was blown away.  I promptly scoured the used book stores for the rest of the series.  And then, they sat on my shelf.  I even had a reading challenge this year and I have read zero…  I’m going to try again next year.

3. The Magicians by Lev Grossman — J’s recommendation.  He loved it, I’ve heard amazing things.  I really want to read this and yet I kept finding other things to read instead. 

4. Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare — Last Christmas gift card purchase.  I found a boxed set for an awesome price.  I’ve heard some great things about this series.  On my list for next year.

 

5. Charles Dickens — I went on a huge classics book buying kick about two years ago and then I didn’t read 80% of them.  So there are a ton of classics sitting in the garage right now.

6. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton — Classic

7-10. Classic book — Pick a classic, it should probably go on this list…

 

Fables: Arabian Nights (and Days)

Title: Fables Vol. 7: Arabian Nights (and Days)

Author: Bill Willingham

Publisher: Vertigo 2006

Genre: Graphic Novel; Fantasy

Pages: 144

Rating:  5 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: Fables Series

Collecting issues #42-47 of writer Bill Willingham’s Eisner Award-winning creation, FABLES: ARABIAN NIGHTS (AND DAYS) opens a new front in the struggle between the Fables and the Adversary as the worlds of the Arabian Fables are invaded — leading to an unprecedented diplomatic mission to Fabletown and a bad case of culture shock! This seventh volume of the popular Vertigo series also includes “The Ballad of Rodney and June,” the 2-part story of forbidden love among the Adversary’s wooden soldiers, and features stellar Art by Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, Jim Fern, Jimmy Palmiotti and Andrew Pepoy.

When I went to read Volume 7, I found out that the library didn’t have it!!  Horrors upon horrors.  Someone had lost it.  A new copy was on order, but no availability date.  I was saddened.  But I decided to read on in the series.  I would just have to fill in the blanks later.  Thankfully Vol. 8 didn’t rely heavily on Vol. 7.  But I still wanted to read it.  Thursday I received an email from the library that Vol. 7 was available.   Thank goodness!  I rushed to the library Saturday (would have gone Friday, but Veteran’s Day so closed) and snatched it up.  I even thought about reading it before finished the book I was reading, but I restrained myself.

The storyline about the Arabian Fables lands was interesting.  I liked the twist on the djinn (genie in the bottle).  He’s not your Disneyfied version, but much closer to the legendary djinns of mythology.  It was a good bridger bringing in Sinbad, Mowgli, Red Riding Hood, and Boy Blue.  I liked it.

However, I felt like “The Ballad of Rodney and June” was superior storytelling.   It starts out as a simple story about one of the wooden soldiers, but then it becomes something more.  We get insight into the Adversary’s army.  We see how the wooden soldiers think.  And we get a twist…  I won’t give it away, but I imagine it will become important as the series progresses.  I can’t wait to see Rodney and June again!

 

Music Monday — Kate Voegele “It’s Only Life”

  I was pondering this week’s song and couldn’t grab any one particular song…  And then “It’s Only Life” came up on my iPod giant shuffle.  It’s a great song and I love Kate Voegele.   I’ve previously posted one of Kate Voegele’s songs (“Chicago”).   I’ve also met her at a teeny tiny concert in Bloomington, IN opening for Josh Kelley.  I rushed over and bought her EP right after the concert.  I have since bought the rest of her cds.  I love her, her voice, and her music.  Overall, this is just a great feel good song to lift some spirits.  Enjoy!

Lyrics (my favorite lines in bold):

Tears are forming in your eyes
A storm is warning in the sky

The end of the world it seems
You bend down and you fall on your knees
Well get back on your feet yeah

Don’t look away
Don’t run away
Hey baby it’s only life
Don’t lose your faith
Don’t run away
Hey baby its only life
Yea it’s only life

You were always playing hard
Never could let down your guard

But you can’t win
If you never give in
To that voice within
Saying pick up your chin
Baby let go of it

[Chorus]

Take your hesitance
And your self-defense
Leave them behind, it’s only life
Don’t be so afraid
Of facing everyday
Just take your time, it’s only life
I’ll be your stepping-stone
No, don’t be so alone
Just hold on tight, it’s only life

[Chorus]