A to Z Bookish Survey

Jamie over at The Perpetual Page-Turner cooked up this fantastic survey which I spotted the other day, or a few weeks ago, or whenever.  It looked like a fun way to mix things up around here in between sporadic book reviews, so voila!

Author you’ve read the most books from:

Almost certainly Stephen King.  I looooved Stephen King in high school, and I spent a lot of lazy summer days devouring his books.  Last summer I finally read The Stand, and the SK love continues! 

Best Sequel Ever:

Hmm, I don't know.  I'm good at starting series, bad at continuing them.

Currently Reading:

I let Random.org pick me a book just so I'd read something I've had for more than, like, 3 months, and it chose for me Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.  I was thinking I might blow off Random.org to read The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, but then Rules of Civility just sucked me right in.  You're next, Coldest Girl! 

Drink of Choice While Reading:

I've pretty much changed over to drinking mostly water whether I'm reading or not, so probably water!


E-reader or Physical Book?

Physical book forever.  I've recently grown to appreciate my e-reader and it's cousin the Kindle app, but nothing can replace the feeling of turning pages. Plus, what would I do if I couldn't go on used book buying sprees?

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

Wes from The Truth About Forever. 

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:

Angelfall by Susan Ee.  I saw this one for sale in the Kindle Daily Deal, and I had some reservations, but I read the sample and took a chance.  And I loved it.  And I can't wait for the sequel!

Hidden Gem Book:

There's a bunch, but how about one from this year?  The Grave of God's Daughter by Brett Ellen Block.  My parents bought this for me many moons ago at a used book sale thinking I might like it.  I tried my Random.org trick earlier this year and it plucked this one from the obscurity of my shelves, and jeez am I glad because it's so good and nobody seems to know about it!

Important Moment in your Reading Life:

Just before I started my blog, I was chosen to take part in Elle Readers' Prize several times, back when it was still in the magazine and not just web content.  They'd send you 3 books, you'd read them and write short reviews of them and they'd choose a few of those reviews to appear in the magazine, so my reviewlettes have appeared several times in the pages of Elle magazine.  It was the first time it dawned on me that writing about the books I was reading might be fun and maybe even prove valuable to someone other than me.  So, then I started a book blog and the rest is history.

Just Finished:

Here Comes Mrs. Kugelman by Minka Pradelski.  It's got the weirdest narrator and a different sort of story within a story structure, but I ended up liking it a lot. 

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:

Erotica, (and on the totally other side of the spectrum) cheesy inspirational fiction, and books where I can't begin to guess at the pronounciation of the names of the major characters

Longest Book You’ve Read:

Not sure, but The Stand by Stephen King is by far the longest book I've read recently, clocking in at 1100 or so pages.

Major book hangover because of:

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Number of Bookcases You Own:

Er, 6.  More needed.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:

I know this is two, but Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson and The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen may be the only books I've *ever* re-read willingly.  And that deserves a mention, right?  Plus, I think one day I would even re-read them again!

Preferred Place To Read:

The front porch when it's nice out.  My bed when it's not.  A cafeteria table at work in a pinch. :)

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

"Today I am bothered by the story of King Canute. (...) The story is, of course, that he was so arrogant and despotic a leader that he believed he could control everything - even the tide. We see him on the beach, surrounded by subjects, sceptre in hand, ordering back the heedless waves; a laughing stock, in short. But what if we've got it all wrong? What if, in fact, he was so good and great a king that his people began to elevate him to the status of a god, and began to believe that he was capable of anything? In order to prove to them that he was a mere mortal, he took them down to the beach and ordered back the waves, which of course kept on rolling up the beach. How awful it would be if we had got it so wrong, if we had misunderstood his actions for so long." - From After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell

Reading Regret:

I regret that I don't read more and faster!

Series You Started And Need To Finish(all books are out in series):

The Chemical Garden Trilogy by Lauren DeStefano.  I loved Wither, but I suck at keeping up with series likes I should!

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell, and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.  And three is so so so not enough.  I'm already rethinking these choices.  :-P

Unapologetic Fangirl For:

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen.  Also City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell. 

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

Cannot answer, too hard.  So many great authors coming out with new stuff this year that I can hardly conceive of an answer to this question!

Worst Bookish Habit:

Continuing to acquire them even though I'll probably be dead before I can read all the books I already have!

X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

That would be The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold.

Your latest book purchase:

What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang the e-book is on sale for $ 2.99 at the moment and what with how lots of bloggers are crazy for it, I couldn't very well not buy it, now could I?

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

The Fault in Our Stars by John Greene.  I surely couldn't finish it at work, you know?  I mean, all the weeping would probably be a little awkward.


Have you done Jamie's survey?  If you have or if you do now, I'd love to see your answers so leave your link in the comments!  

Stargazey Point by Shelley Noble

Greetings one and all, and apologies again for my unpredictable disappearances.  This time around I was attempting to get a new job.  Alas, all I got for my efforts was a week of stressful interviewing, a near miss, a mega-dose of bitterness, and a growing conviction that working for my current organization is an untenable situation.  Well, I guess everybody needs a wake-up call to get off their butts once in a while.  I hope it's not too "pie in the sky" of me to imagine that there might be a job out there for me that is either really enjoyable (if low paying) or, you know, at least have a career path that doesn't immediately dead-end upon hire.  And yes, I'll probably delete this once I put my next application in, but first I need to re-learn all my lost and wandering Excel skills, so it can stay a while.  *sigh*

Anyhow, enough grumping, it's time for the ever elusive book review!

So, Stargazey Point by Shelley Noble.  You might perhaps remember my gushing over the pretty cover.

Exhibit A:

 

See....pretty, right?  Anyhow, my brain was apparently washed by all the pretty because I requested this off of Wm Morrow Paperbacks blogger outreach list without any sort of contemplation about whether I would, you know, enjoy things about the book that aren't the cover.  After reading the prologue which was so cheesy I may have actually rolled my eyes, I had a few doubts.  However, I figured since I am a jerk who apparently chooses her review books based on cover alone and have no one to blame but myself, I supposed I'd better at least give it the fifty pages I owed it.  As I suspected, it didn't magically transform into a breathtaking work of literature, but happily, it did turn into a sweet beach read (for the non-beach goer) with lovable characters and a sweet (if predictable) plot.

Documentary filmmaker Abbie Sinclair is deeply damaged after her latest project ended in tragedy.  Luckily for her, her best friend stateside has a few elderly relatives who are happy to host Abbie in their crumbling seaside mansion while she figures out what comes next.  Cabot Reynolds the Third is a man who gave up a promising career as an architect to return to the down and out South Carolina beach town of Stargazey Point to restore his uncle's carousel and, hopefully, breathe new life into the town before its natives are forced to sell out to developers.  The elderly Crispin siblings are Stargazey Point's old money, but their funds are quickly disappearing.  The three have fallen to selling off their belongings to pay off their taxes.  Despite their troubles Abbie finds a home with Millie, Marnie, and Beau, and before long she finds that she doesn't have to jet around the world to keep up with the deeds of her over-achieving, do-gooder family members, there's plenty of good to be done right in Stargazey Point.

What to say about Stargazey Point?  It's a stereotype in the best possible way.  It's a town that has been plunged into hard times by a few too many storms, where taxes are still sky-rocketing forcing natives out in favor of soulless, big-money resorts.  It's peopled by a pack of well-intentioned, incredibly meddlesome southern ladies who are at the ready when it comes to pushing this damaged stranger to rediscover her purpose.  All it takes is a little boost from a guy who favors his small-town roots to his big-city career and a woman who seems to know how to draw out the best in people even when she can only see the worst in herself, to give the struggling natives of Stargazey Point the incentive they need to embrace their town's heritage and make it new again.

The plot is a little too contrived, most of the characters are a little too saccharine, the "deep, dark" secrets are little too close to the surface, and the cynics are a bit too easily won over, but Abbie's story is addictive nonetheless.  There's always something compelling about a person finding healing, redemption, and love after tragedy, even more so when she's entwined in a town filled with exaggeratedly loveable characters finding its feet again.  The town of Stargazey Point jumps off the page, and Abbie's story is just the sort of easy-reading, satisfying tale that reads best on a lazy summer day.

(Thanks to William Morrow Paperbacks for providing me a with a copy in exchange for my honest review.)

 

Rutherford Park by Elizabeth Cooke

I feel like I'm always telling the same story.  You know the one about the book that somebody pitched me for review that I accepted, and once it arrived in the mail I had second thoughts and wondered what on earth had taken hold of me that I accepted it, and blah, blah blah and so on?  Well, I've done it again with Rutherford Park. I'm always in for good historical fiction, but not so much the Lords and Ladies cavorting about with their awesome wealth and occasionally scandalous problems.  I've never gotten around to cultivating an interest in Downton Abbey either (though I've been told in no uncertain terms that I should) which, apparently, would put me right in the demographic that would have this book marketed to them.  That said, despite it being the sort of book with the Lords and Ladies and scandals marketed toward an audience of a show I don't watch, something about Rutherford Park caught my eye and landed it on my doorstep.  Perhaps the fact that it takes place in the moments before the outbreak of World War I, perhaps it's just been a few minutes since I'd read any good historical fiction and I was feeling weak.  Happily, the story ends (as it usually ends) with my enjoying the book a good deal more than I expected to when I was busy second-guessing my decision.

Rutherford Park is the palatial home of Lord William and Lady Octavia Cavendish.  Nestled in the Yorkshire countryside, the peaceful-appearing estate is an island unto itself, but the secrets that run deep among the Cavendish family and their staff  and the coming of war threaten to fracture the idyllic, if suddenly fragile, life the aristocratic family has come to know.  As World War I looms on the horizon William struggles to maintain his family and their refuge at Rutherford Park even as his nearest and dearest seem to be moving beyond his grasp.

In Rutherford Park, Cooke allows us to sneak a peek beneath the proper and orderly surface of the Cavendish family and their estate.  William takes comfort in order and propriety, but his wife Octavia chafes at the bonds of what is considered appropriate behavior for the lady of the house.  She longs to show her love effusively, to walk barefoot in the grass, to cuddle her children instead of resigning them to the staff to raise, but William despite being well-meaning is embarrassed by her improper behavior.  The couple's children, Harry, who wants nothing more than to fly away from an indiscretion that ended in tragedy; naïve Louisa, who is about to make her debut in society, and Charlotte, the youngest daughter who might just be a budding activist for change are each slipping away from William and Octavia in their own ways.  As William rushes to gather his family back to himself and to the safety of Rutherford Park in the days before the war, past indiscretions and current scandals threaten to undo the life he and Octavia have built together.

In such a book as Rutherford Park, it might be tempting for the author to focus solely on the Cavendish family.  Their feelings and foibles certainly could a whole book make.  However, Cooke makes the wise decision to take on the estate as a whole exploring the lives of the many servants who keep the wealthy Cavendish household up and running.  From the housemaids, Mary and Emily who made their escape from the dangers of mill work only to come face to face with other heartbreaks, to the footman, Nash, who delights in the occasional book of poetry pilfered from William's library, to the farrier, Jack Armitage, who shared an unexpected and perplexing moment with one of the Cavendish daughters, Cooke breathes life into the whole breadth of characters that make Rutherford Park tick.  The result is a book that quietly explores the beginning of the end of a way of life through the co-mingled lives of a family whose wealthy way of life is becoming unsuitable and unsustainable and the people whose existence as mere servants is slowly drawing to a close.

Rutherford Park is an unexpectedly deep and wide portrait of not just a family but an entire estate's worth of people.  Rather than focus on drama and scandal, Cooke makes the excellent decision to zero in on her characters' inner lives.  As a result, characters both major and minor leap off the page, and much to Cooke's credit she manages to make very nearly all of her cast sympathetic to readers who might not agree with their actions but who might well commiserate with their feelings and motivations.  If you are a lover of historical fiction or can appreciate a few great character studies, you'll find much to enjoy in Rutherford Park.  Recommended!

(Thanks to the publisher, Berkley Publishing Group/Penguin, for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.)

Loose Leafing: Currently

It seems I haven't afflicted you so much with my personal rambling lately, so I lifted this "currently" thing that all the cool kids are doing on Sundays anymore (like Kim and Suey and everybody) and have tweaked it to my liking.

Time:  9:00 PM Sunday night (yeah, I'm totally late, but it's never too late to be current, am I right?)

Place:  My kitchen table (the desk is currently being hogged)

Consuming: For lunch, I was exploring my new appreciation for sushi.  Okay, I come from rural central Pennsylvania, I am a way late comer to sushi.  Happily, a fancy new hibachi steakhouse opened in our humble little town recently, and Sundays are half-priced sushi days, so you can take a chance on new things without wasting a ton of money.  Philadelphia Roll is my stand-by, but I decided to branch out and try a Volcano Roll today, but we think maybe they brought me a Godzilla Roll instead.  So I ate that, and I quite liked it.  I see way more sushi in my future.   Then, we had steaks on the grill for dinner.  (Why yes, I am living the high life these days, thankyouverymuch).

Reading:  I just started Stargazey Point by Shelley Noble.  Okay, looking back, I might have picked this from William Morrow Paperback's blogger outreach e-mail simply because the cover is just so pretty.  Which is a good way to choose books, of course.  The jury is still out on the book itself.  But, I mean, come on.  Look at that cover!  Pretty!!

Listening:  I am 100% addicted to Spotify.  I have this swell catch-all playlist that has just about any random song that comes to my head lumped all together, and it is....how you say...quite eclectic when listened to on shuffle, which I quite love.  This week's theme in adding to the ridiculous playlist?  High school nostalgia!

Watching:  Speaking of being 100% addicted, why oh why did it take me until last month to finally start watching Breaking Bad?  Seriously (Wait, is my boss here?  I mean, seriously but not seriously, okay?), I am on the point of calling off work a couple of days this week to catch up with it before the last season starts. Also, nothing I do seems as important as watching another episode.  Reading?  Eh.  Sleeping?  Meh.  Working?  Oh definitely not.   That's right.  This just in:  TV show about cooking meth is dangerously addictive.  Cue ironic laughter.

Buying: A new mattress, at last!  (and embarrassing quantities of cheap e-books, but that goes without saying).  Next hurdle, cleaning up my dump room for when it gets delivered on Tuesday so that I won't shame myself and everyone who lives with me.  If I survive "Attack of the Killer Underbed Dust Bunnies," maybe I can live the good life for another week...  Maybe.

Not Buying:  The services of my chiropractor every week.  *crosses fingers*

I'd love to stay and chat some more, but really, all this is keeping me from the next episode of Breaking Bad.   =P

The "I Finally Read It!" Reviewlettes

Greetings all, we interrupt the shameless over-buying of cheap books for...some reading!  No, wait.  *analyzes several teetering piles of books looming over just the desk*  Surely that can't be right.  We interrupt the continuous browsing of the Kindle deals page for...some vacationing!  Wait, no, the vacationing appears to over.  I believe this place might be my home...  Okay, one more time, we interrupt the continuous cataloging of new bookly acquisitions for...some blogging!  Ah ha!  Yes, some blogging.  I do that once or twice a month, and considering that the looming pile of books begging for bloggish attention is threatening to topple onto and destroy my computer thus severing my connection from the book blogosphere forever for a couple minutes, it's probably time to re-assume my secret book blogger identity and write about them before they rebel.

It seems that much of this year that I haven't dedicated to reading brand-spanking new books, I've been reading all the books that it seems like nary a soul has failed to read except for me.  What with how I am among the last few people on the earth to enjoy these three selections, I figured a few reviewlettes are in order, if only so I can remember the books I'm reading.  Frankly, it's surprised me how quickly being a barely there blogger has plunged me into complete inability keep the books that I'm reading in my head for more than a few minutes.  I'm all like, "Wait, what did I just read last month?"  Whoa, that's bad news.  So anyway, without further digression, reviewlettes of some books you probably have already read!

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green - I know, right?  Not only had I not gotten around to reading this until this summer,  this is also the first book I've read by John Green.  Oh, the multitude of reading sins being atoned for with just this one book!  Anyhow, if you've been living in a nuclear fallout bunker or something for the last year, I should probably mention that this is the book about the teenagers with the cancer, and I loved it as much as all the people who love it loved it.  Green's terminal teens, Hazel and Gus, are almost unrealistically precocious in a way that I just ate up.  The Fault In Our Stars is full of lovable characters, romance, intelligent unpreachy contemplations of mortality, an exploration of how there is plenty of truth to be gleaned from fiction, and also, sadness.  Of course, sadness.  I had to practically speed read the last third of the book on a Monday night so that I wouldn't be caught weeping at my cafeteria table at work on Tuesday afternoon.  Rather, I wept embarrassingly much from the safety of my own home.  I laughed, I cried, I loved it.  I've already recommended it to a few real life friends who are also behind the times, and I recommend it also to you, last person on the earth to read The Fault In Our Stars!

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson  - Can I just say that I think the problem with my reading last year is that for some infernal and unexplainable reason I pretty much just abandoned YA fiction?  Truly, I swear, my love for YA grows with every year I grow to be less of a, well, young adult.  There is something about charging through a good piece of YA that is totally refreshing to my readerly soul, and it's not because I have a craving for something simple because YA these days is smart, just in a different way than "grown-up" fiction is smart.  Anywhoodle, The Adoration of Jenna Fox.  I didn't love this like I loved The Fault In Our Stars, but I'm glad I finally got around to reading it just the same.  Again, in case you yourself are just emerging from a coma that might have prevented you from reading this book before me, this one's about a girl who wakes up from a coma in a decidedly more technologically advanced future, and as she tries to recall who she was before a tragic accident, begins to discover that she's not quite all of the person she used to be.   Jenna Fox's world is interesting because it seems like just a mildly tweaked version of the world today wherein bio-ethically questionable technological advances have led us into both the miraculous and the catastrophic.  As Jenna unravels the secrets behind her post-accident life, Pearson gets to present a lot of very interesting bio-ethical quandaries involving life and death and where the true essence of a person lies.  The Adoration of Jenna Fox is an excellently paced and compelling story of how much you would do to save someone you love.


The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey - Last but not least, a book which has an intended audience of...adults!  I grabbed a copy of this at BEA the last time I was there, and I was sure I would love it.  Then all the bloggers started saying fantastic things about it, and I was doubly sure I would love it.  After all, I'm sad to report that despite pretty much every review I've read of this book being unrelentingly positive, I was disappointed.  The problem here, and the reason I've waited so long to say anything about The Snow Child is that I can't quite pinpoint why I was disappointed.  Okay, if you're returning from a lengthy undersea holiday, this book is about an older couple who decide to try their hand homesteading in the wilds of Alaska.  Mabel is unable to have a child and is crushed by the loneliness of long winters in the wilderness.  Jack is crumbling under the crushing demands of carving a farm out of a very challenging landscape.  On the night of the first snow, the two find unexpected joy in building a child out of snow.  The next day the snow child is missing, but a real child has appeared in her place. 

Honestly, I'd like a do-over on this one.  I read it over Christmas-time when things were hectic and I was busy trying to save kittens from dying and a lot of stuff was going on, and I couldn't give myself to this book like I might normally.  It's got all good ingredients - excellent characters, incredible descriptions of the dangerously beautiful Alaska wilderness, the sort of magical realism I'd normally just go bananas for, but it somehow it didn't all quite come together for me.  Faina, the snow child, always seemed more magical than real to me, and her not being quite "real enough" in my mind made it difficult for me to get emotionally involved with the latter half of the book.  I'd still happily recommend it, especially to readers who like a good dose of magical realism, but I can't say I loved it, at least, not upon my first (admittedly flawed) read.

And that's three books off my teetering pile, not to mention my overburdened shelves! 

(Oh, and by way of disclaimer, The Snow Child is the only one of these three provided by a publisher.)

Surely, you've read at least one if not all of these, what did you think?  Or perhaps you'd like to reassure me that I was not the last person in the world to, say, read a book by John Green?  ;-)