We interrupt this blogging for some reading...

Greetings fair readers who probably think I've disappeared. Well, I kinda did a little. So I woke up on Friday (or was it Thursday?) and it dawned on me that my deadline for Elle reading is strikingly sooner than I'd imagined (I thought I was doing so good! I thought I was ahead of the game! I should know better!). I've finished two of the three books but only started the third today amid all the Mother's Day festivating this weekend (Happy Mother's Day to you mothers by the way - I'm a big fan of mothers but not so much of Mother's Day where I'm lowered to the level of ill-equipped slave girl in the face of the mothers of my family not having to do anything to contribute to the execution of the festivating because it's like their day or something). That said, I really must finish this book by oh, mid Tuesday night so I can fulfill my bookish obligation. Since upstanding adults and employers seem to frown on people taking unexpected leisure time to finish their uh...how you say...recreational book reviews, the time will probably be extracted from what is usually reserved for blogging (because I really do much of that anyway) and blog-hopping (and I was doing so well with my feed reader!) and TV watching (because I'm sure you even care about this last one).

I am not ignoring your Weekly Geeks links, I promise I will get to them. The one day this week when I was about to attempt them Blogger was acting all flaky, so I didn't get to it. But later this coming week, I will!

In the meantime, I must read and contemplate the pitfalls of reviewing memoirs/travel writing which I will be doing a bit of when I return. I mean, how are you supposed to critique someone's life experiences and their reactions to them? The plot was kind of slow moving? The emotions seemed hollow? The self-reflection somewhat overwrought? The thought processes contradictory? The narrator bizarrely idiotic? Usually I don't seem to have a problem with this kind of thing and half a review magically appears in my head that doesn't question any of this, but these questions are gnawing at me a bit this time around. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the books thus far. I did. I just can't quite peg down what to say about them.

Alas, my blogging time is up and I must return to the book. Here's wishing you all happy reading that doesn't remind you of the rushed type of reading usually prevalent in finishing college homework assignments!

Weekly Geeks #2 - Linking Up

Weekly Geeks time has come again. After some thought, I've decided to partake again this week. This week's idea comes by way of Darla whose blogly policy is to link to other bloggers' reviews of the books she reviews. Dewey's challenged the rest of us to do likewise. I thought to myself, hey, I suppose that's a pretty good way to build some book blog community and help out some readers who are looking for a few different opinions on the same book and see if anybody happens to have the same taste in books as me, et cetera and so on.

Therefore, I'll be happy to link to anybody's reviews of books reviewed by me here, including all the reviews I've posted in the past and all of the ones that I will post in the future in their respective posts. Just leave me a note in the comments on this post or on the post of whichever review, and I will attempt to get around to posting the links in a decently acceptable amount of time (read "relatively quickly given that I have to work for a living and uh...watch American Idol and those great comedies on CBS on Mondays and uh...Grey's Anatomy. And books, I have to read books..."). That said, I've got one condition, sort of. If I link your review to my review per your request (if I just find it and decide to link it all on my own, this will obviously not apply), I'll pretty much be hoping that you too are planning to adopt this policy and will link my review to your own review on your blog, in keeping with the whole "community building" and "reader helping" idea and uh, basic tenets of fairness.

Since I don't have a whole crazy ton of reviews here yet, though I'll admit to having more than I expected, I'll even include a list of the old ones to make it super easy to determine whether you have a review I ought to be linking to. I'm not going to link the reviews in the list though, that would just be too easy (read "I'm too lazy to do that. Isn't the list above and beyond the call of duty enough?"). I will note, however, that I am listing them in reverse chronological order and they're linked from those "Read In (Year)" posts in my sidebar. (Seriously, why can't I be concise? And why am I developing a penchant for seeming really unhinged when I write these Weekly Geeks posts? I'm not even feeling that unhinged this week. And what's with all the parentheses??)

Okay, really, here it goes.

The Widows of Eden - George Shaffner
Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson
Fever 1793 - Laurie Halse Anderson
The Beet Queen - Louise Erdrich
Stealing Heaven - Elizabeth Scott
Sobibor - Michael Lev
The Wentworths - Katie Arnoldi
The Translator - Daoud Hari
Make Lemonade - Virginia Euwer Wolff
Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally
A Break With Charity - Ann Rinaldi
Jumping the Scratch - Sarah Weeks
Have You Found Her - Janice Erlbaum
After You'd Gone - Maggie O'Farrell
Boy Meets Girl - Meg Cabot
A Northern Light - Jennifer Donnelly
Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson
Sleep Toward Heaven - Amanda Eyre Ward
The Thief Lord - Cornelia Funke
From Ashes to Life - Lucille Eichengreen
Even the Stars Look Lonesome - Maya Angelou
Hard Love - Ellen Wittlinger
No Great Mischief - Alistair MacLeod

It's Those Free Books, darnit

So, I was poking around very briefly on the Bookcrossing forum and found this link where you can receive a free Penguin classic of their random choice so long as you agree to review it for their blog within six weeks of receiving it. Now I didn't read the terms and conditions (at length) so I'm hoping I'm actually even eligible to play because I went ahead and registered with only momentary trepidation. Much to my relief, the e-mail I recieved after registering informed me I didn't get a gigantic tome of epic proportions (phew!) or a volume of poetry that would likely prove totally impenetrable to me (phew!) or Shakespeare (okay, I'm sorry, Shakespeare still scares me a little) or something I already own but haven't got around yet (yay!) or, well, anything too daunting to read and review in six weeks. I'm to get A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi, a book I'm actually interested in reading. But jeez, my love for and inability to say no to free books could have got me into a scrape there. A lucky near miss, really, considering that there does appear to be many gigantic tomes and volumes of poetry and wow - looking at it now I can't quite believe what a chance I was taking - I'm so excited that I actually got a book that really appeals to me.

Er...anybody else trying their luck?

The Widows of Eden by George Shaffner

The citizens of Ebb, Nebraska are suffering through their worst drought in history. After more than one hundred days without rain, farmers who have lived in Ebb for their entire lives are packing up and disappearing in the middle of the night unable to make a go of it any longer. Not to worry, though, help is on the way. Word comes that a certain Vernon Moore, mysterious traveling salesman and occasional worker of miracles, is on his way for his first visit to Ebb in about five years. The quaint townspeople of Ebb believe that Mr. Moore is the answer to their prayers and their only chance for rain, but the ailing multi-millionaire Clem Tucker has other ideas. What happens when Clem proposes a deal that would have Mr. Moore choose to spare his life instead of asking for rain?

This is the premise of George Shaffner's The Widows of Eden. It defied my expectations in more ways than one. There were parts of this book that I enjoyed very much and others that nearly discouraged me from finishing it. The premise is very attractive, which is why I requested and received it from Library Thing's Early Reviewer program. The follow-through is a bit less than optimal. At the helm of the book is first person narrator Wilma Porter who operates the bed and breakfast where Mr. Moore stays when he is in town and is also the fiance of the aforementioned Clem Tucker. As one might guess, Ms. Porter is very much at the center of the story given her relationships to those two pivotal characters, however, her first person narration continues even into places and situations where she is not present which is somewhat disorienting. It also often seems that Shaffner has taken every stereotype of small town fiction and played each up to a fever pitch that can, unfortunately, be a bit cringeworthy. Sometimes this can be overlooked - I'll admit to giggling at a few of Wilma's kooky comments such as, "An amendment to the state constitution was supposed to prevent the sale of family farms to big corporations, but it turned out to have more loopholes than a cheap shag rug." Other times, Shaffner overplays his quaint rural fiction hand with his constant use of the endearment "honey pot," the existence of an all-powerful Quilting Circle of gossipy ladies who don't seem to do any quilting at all, and Wilma's irritating way of never referring to her goddaughter by her name but as her "sweet/perfect/adorable little goddaughter."

That said, there were parts of this book that I found so absorbing that I could forgive this book some of its more irritating tendencies. Despite the occasional lapse into pure cheese, Shaffner writes snappy dialogue and creates a cast of very lively characters bent on saving their town and their way of life. The mystery of Vernon's possibly miraculous origins as well as the origins of three widow friends who accompany him on the occasion of this book is well thought out and even a bit suspenseful. My favorite part, however, was Vernon's conversations with Clem on the subject of the deist's paradox (which suggests that a benevolent God would intervene in the affairs of men and since He hasn't in quite some time He has abandoned us), the nature of God, and his attempts to persuade the unbelieving Clem that God cares for His creation and hasn't retreated to heaven leaving His people to their own devices. I'll be the first to admit that having guaged the tone of this novel, I didn't expect a philosophical discussion this well thought out and absorbing. I might not believe everything that was said, but I drank it up and these scenes kept the pages turning the quickest. By the end, I was thoroughly curious whether Vernon would be able to convince this selfish and heartless millionaire of God's existence and providence and what would happen if he couldn't.

All in all, this book seemed to be a paradox in and of itself, as if Shaffner intended to write a lighthearted novel for those in need of some small town centered brain candy but ended up with something a bit more serious than that, and the reader is stuck trying to figure out just how to take it. While it isn't one of my favorite reads and it definitely wasn't what I was expecting, it does have its redeeming qualities and as such could make for a fun summer read with a side of a little food for thought.

The publication date for this book is June 17, 2008.

That's another one down for Pub 2008 and the Spring Reading Thing, too!

Weekly Geeky Numero Uno

So, that whole thing about keeping up with my feed reader this week is already a big FAIL. Until tonight I'd managed to eke out perhaps an hour or so total of internet time since like....Sunday. It's just been that kind of week where everybody's demanding my attention and assistance at work and at home and everything seems to be impeding my progress. I mean, even the bunnies munching grass in my driveway look at me like, "You think I'm gonna move so you can park your car, chump? No way!" It must be a rotten week if I'm imagining the local rabbits are malicious, no? All of you people reading should be glad that I didn't have the time for a proposed ranting post about my week which likely could have been titled "Things the Devil Makes You Do in Hell and Other Tales from the Workplace."

Anyhow, in my vast trash heap of a week, I have, at long last, managed to take some time for the first week of Dewey's Weekly Geeks challenge which is a pretty fine idea if I do say so myself. Something new every week - should you choose to participate every week which you don't even have to! This Dewey - she's a cool character - and I just got a book I won from one of her blogly book drawings today which brightened my day as this trash heap of a week draws ever so slowly to an agonizing finish. So yeah - three cheers for Dewey and stuff!

(I should take a moment to say that I'm feeling a bit unhinged at the moment so should not be held responsible for any excessive ridiculosity)

So yeah, I say again, this week's challenge is to visit the blogs of fellow participants, leave them some comments, and give them some link love on your blog which I am doing herein. Just what my ailing feed reader needs, right? I'm afraid to even look at it right now, but I imagine soon I'll be adding yet more blogs to it...

Anyhow, really, I'm going to get on with the show now. It should be noted that I discovered a surprising amount of blogs that were new to me and that I hope to pop in on at a later date - these are just a random sampling!

Oh and I should say hi to all you folks that visited me as part of the Weekly Geeks, too. It's been great to see some new faces around here - I promise I'm not ignoring you and purposefully being all incommunicado - I'm usually a bit more personable - but in case I haven't mentioned this yet - this week has been more than usually disruptive to my average internet activities!

Now really - some new blogs!

Where Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops - Love the name! Love the woodsy picture up top! Interesting post about how long to press on with a book that's kind of boring her despite its many great reviews. And she's at sea. That's pretty nifty, too.

The Inside Cover - I have to say, her answer to this week's Booking Through Thursday made me smile.

Sarah's Pensieve - Her review of Napoleon's Buttons caught my eye since I've got a newfound interest in science of late. It sounds like a pretty accessible book about chemistry of all things. And this - how cool is that? I mean, really. I guess I'm in touch with my inner nerd, too. *shrugs*

Bookworms and Tea Lovers - Captured me long enough in my web wanderings to get me to add The Blessing Stone to my wish list.

Bookworm - Okay this is kind of weird that I'm using my weekly geeks post to compliment her weekly geek post, but I thought it was really clever how she used her post not only to visit some new blogs but to analyze what makes a good book review complete with book reviewing "morals."


Well, there's one week down. It's been real. It's been fun. It's been real fun. And now I've run out of time to open up the dread feed reader. Blast.