Powell’s Books Daily Dose Winner

Yesterday I received some great news -- I was the winner of Powell’s Books Daily Dose contest! All you have to do is submit a book review and you’re eligible to win a $20 gift certificate (or more, if you're really lucky). To see my entry, click HERE and then scroll down. Or you can read my original review for The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr HERE.

WWW Wednesday

WWW is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions...

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you'll read next?

What are you currently reading? I’m reading Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli. I got this book from Read-It-Forward, so after I’m done with it, I’ll be passing it on. Keep checking back…my giveaway will be sometime next month!

What did you recently finish reading? I just finished The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg. Click here to read my review.

What do you think you'll read next? I’d like to get back to reading The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr. I started it almost a month ago and I keep having to put it aside in order to read and write time-sensitive reviews. But I’m not complaining…I swear!

Book Blog Tour for THE ICE PRINCESS

I really, really wanted to like this book. Suspense thrillers are my favorite and I was very excited to read a crime mystery by a woman as highly regarded as Camilla Läckberg. Maybe I expected too much, but The Ice Princess just wasn’t as astounding as I had hoped it would be.

It did have a decent plot with a few shocking, unexpected twists. Most of the characters were well developed and realistic -- none of them were perfect, just like the rest of us. However, Ms. Läckberg constantly added way too many personal, and unnecessary, details about their lives, which was distracting from the story. 

This is the first novel written by Ms. Läckberg and, at times, you can really tell that she’s a novice. The text seemed amateurish.  It had a very slow but mostly steady pace. Unfortunately, I had to occasionally force myself to keep reading, which shouldn’t happen with a suspense thriller.

I’m sure that as Camilla sharpens her skills as a writer (which apparently she has already done, considering her six best-sellers) her work will become more enticing. I know she’s a hit in Europe, but in my opinion The Ice Princess simply doesn’t compare to others I read. 2 ½ Diamonds
(Received complimentary copy for review purposes only.)

Tuesday Teaser

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

·         Grab your current read

·         Open to a random page

·         In a comment, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

·         BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

·         Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

Here's mine:

“The only not-so-smooth part of the plan came from my father, who couldn’t quite grok the adventure I was about to have:

YOUR GOING TO A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY TO DO WHAT FOR FREE? he wrote in an email, which, given the block letters and misspellings, conveyed the concern he felt about his dear and only daughter going off to a foreign land he’d initially thought was in Africa. (As did many people, although most were too timid to even venture a geographic guess.)”

Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli, p. 14

Friday Finds

One of my favorite books of all time is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. I've always hoped for a sequel and, as it turns out, there is one!
Mr. Beagle wrote a short story called Two Hearts, which is a continuation of the adventures of Shmendrick the Magician, Molly Grue and the unicorn herself. Two Hearts was published as part of collection of shorts stories, Mirror Kingdoms. 

From Goodreads:

When New York Times Bestselling writer Tad Williams described Peter S. Beagle as a 'bandit prince out to steal reader's hearts' he touched on a truth that readers have known for fifty years. Beagle, whose work has touched generations of readers around the world, has spun rich, romantic and very funny tales that have beguiled and enchanted readers of all ages.

Undeniably, his most famous work is the much loved classic, The Last Unicorn, which tells of unicorn who sets off on quest to discover whether she is the last of her kind, and of the people she meets on her journey. Never prolific, The Last Unicorn is one of only five novels Beagle has published since A Fine and Private Place appeared in 1960, and was followed by The Folk of the Air, The Innkeeper's Song, and Tamsin.

During the first forty years of his career Beagle also wrote a small handful, scarcely a dozen, short stories. Classics like 'Come Lady Death,' 'Lila and the Werewolf,' 'Julie's Unicorn,' 'Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros,' and the tales that make up Giant Bones. And then, starting just five years ago, he turned his attention to short fiction in earnest, and produced a stunning array of new stories including the Hugo and Nebula Award winning follow up to The Last Unicorn, 'Two Hearts,' WSFA Small Press Award winner 'El Regalo,' and wonderful stories like the surrealist 'The Last and Only,' the haunting 'The Rabbi s Hobby' and others.

Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle collects the very best of these stories, over 200,000 words worth, ranging across 45 years of his career from early stories to freshly minted tales that will surprise and amaze readers. It's a book which shows, more than any other, just how successful this bandit prince from the streets of New York has been at stealing our hearts and underscores how much we hope he ll keep on doing so.

Tuesday Teaser

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• In a comment, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's mine:

"He felt like an elastic band that was stretched and stretched and sooner or later would reach a point where it broke with a snap. So far, he had grieved without tears, but now Henrik Wijkner leaned forward, put his face in his hands and wept."

The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg, p. 188
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7058405-the-ice-princess

Musing Monday

This week’s musing asks…

What is the last book you bought? Was it for you? for someone else? Have you read it, yet?

See Friday Finds post below (Time and Again by Jack Finney)

Friday Finds

Yesterday I went shopping with my BBF (Book Best Friend), Diana, and we stopped off at our local used bookstore, Buckets of Books. I bought a copy of Jack Finney's illustrated classic novel Time And Again. (A historical fiction/science fiction fantasy with real-life photos -- how cool is that?!) After returning home, I started looking at the pictures and inside the book I found an old receipt and a bookmark. The receipt was for the original purchase at Barnes and Noble in Santa Clarita dated from 1998 and the bookmark was from a used bookstore in San Jose called Recycle Bookstore, date unknown. So far, the round trip mileage this book has made -- practically the entire state of California  -- is almost 500 miles! Who knows where it’ll end up next…

From Goodreads:

"Sleep. And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There are no such things as automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no dictionary. You have never heard the name Richard Nixon."

Did illustrator Si Morley really step out of his twentieth-century apartment one night -- right into the winter of 1882? The U.S. Government believed it, especially when Si returned with a portfolio of brand-new sketches and tintype photos of a world that no longer existed -- or did it?

Book Letters

Last week, Dawn from I Eat Books for Breakfast, posted the funniest story about her best friend, Deniece (What Mimi Loves), playing a ding-dong ditch trick on her. Deniece didn’t do it maliciously…she just wanted a cute way to deliver a couple of gifts. One gift was a box of Ding-Dongs; the other was a “Book Letter”.  Deniece found this project at Little Things Bring Smiles – it’s a perfect way to use old, unwanted books! Here’s mine:

WWW Wednesday

WWW is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions...

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you'll read next?


What are you currently reading? I'm currently reading The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg. Ms. Läckberg's first six novels have all become #1 bestsellers in Sweden and she is the most profitable native author in Swedish history. The Ice Princess is her American debut crime novel. My review will be posted, along with the blog tour, on March 29th. Stay tuned! 


From Goodreads:
Returning to her hometown of Fjallbacka after the funeral of her parents, writer Erica Falck finds a community on the brink of tragedy. The death of her childhood friend, Alex, is just the beginning. Her wrists slashed, her body frozen in an ice-cold bath, it seems that she has taken her own life.
Erica conceives a book about the beautiful but remote Alex, one that will answer questions about their own shared past. While her interest grows into an obsession, local detective Patrik Hedstrom is following his own suspicions about the case. But it is only when they start working together that the truth begins to emerge about a small town with a deeply disturbing past.

What did you recently finish reading? I just finished Philip Carter's Altar of Bones.  I posted a review of this thrilling book last week. Read it here.

What do you think you'll read next? Next I'm going to read the NY Times bestselling novel The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I'd never heard of this book before last week, when my internet mystery/thriller book group introduced me to it. It sounds terrific and I can't wait to read it!

From Paperbackswap:

Barcelona, 1945: A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind, by an author named Julian Carax. When the boy searches for Carax’s other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has ever written. Soon the boy realizes that The Shadow of the Wind is as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget, for the mystery of its author’s identity holds the key to an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love that someone will go to any lengths to keep secret.

Teaser Tusday

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• In a comment, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's mine:

"His black treacherous heart would go on beating, if not forever, at least for now. He smiled at her, then she knew the instant full awareness came, for his gaze left her face and went right to the alter of bones, and she saw the greed and the hunger flare in his eyes before he looked away."

-Altar of Bones by Philip Carter, p. 31

Musing Mondays

This week’s musing asks…

Do you have a favorite children’s book? Either one that you loved as a child, or one that you discovered later, and still enjoy? Tell us about it!

I always loved the book Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I read it countless times when I was a child and my daughter did the same. A new collection of never-before-seen poems and drawings by Shel will be released in September called Every Thing On It. I can't wait!


From LA Times:
The poems and drawings in the book were selected by family members from his archives -- Silverstein died in 1999 -- and care has been taken to echo his best-known works.
Read more at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/03/shel-silversteins-september-book-revealed.html

Book Blog Tour for ALTAR OF BONES

Zoe Dmitroff is a San Francisco attorney whose grandmother was just found murdered. Zoe learns that she is the new Keeper of the Altar of Bones, a real-life fountain of youth deep in the wilds of Siberia.

Ry O’Malley is a DEA agent whose brother was just found murdered. Ry learns that he is closely related to the person that really killed JFK.

Thrown together in a race for their lives, Zoe and Ry must trust each other if they’re going to be able to save themselves and the whole human race.

Altar of Bones by Philip Carter is James Bond meets the Amazing Race and the ultimate prize is life everlasting. Meticulously researched and vividly described, this fast paced page turner is definite edge-of-your-seat excitement.

Suspense, espionage, romance, mystery...the list goes on and on. Altar of Bones has something for everyone! 4 ½ Diamonds
(Received complimentary copy for review purposes only.)

The inside blurb states that "Philip Carter is a pseudonym for an internationally renowned author".
CLICK HERE IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO THE REAL PHILIP CARTER IS!

California Libraries Under Attack!

Can the economy get any worse?!

Library usage is up all over the state (and country), yet our state politicians are trying to cut funding to our libraries. WE CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN!!

From the Friends of the Atascadero Library (my town):

Library supporters throughout California are protesting Governor Brown's proposed 2011-12 California State Budget, now under consideration in the Legislature.  The governor has proposed complete elimination of state funding for library services and programs, including literacy programs, the Public Library Foundation, and the California Library Services Act (CLSA).  The library line items currently represent just $30 million – just over one-tenth of one percent of the state’s estimated $25 billion budget shortfall.

The cuts represent a potentially devastating blow to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara County Libraries, since the CLSA helps fund the Black Gold Cooperative Library System, a regional co-op made up primarily of libraries in the two counties. 

"Black Gold’s computerized operating system is like an umbrella under which library users can search for and request books and other materials, check out books, download audio files and eBooks, and monitor their library accounts," notes Christine Johnson, president of the Morro Bay Friends of the Library. "All the libraries in the Black Gold system -- from Santa Paula to Paso Robles -- share books, DVDs, CDs and the online book catalog, in what has proven to be an efficient and money-saving way."

The Governor’s proposal to eliminate all CLSA funding would severely curtail these vital services, possibly requiring San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties to install new and more costly local circulation systems to replace the one currently supplied by Black Gold.

The California Library Services Act supports universal access to information by enabling the sharing of books and other library materials during times of scarcity.  Elimination of CLSA funding would likely result in:

• Drastic reduction – perhaps even closure -- of the Black Gold Cooperative Library System
• Severe cuts to services at all branches in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties
• Significant increase in fees to request books from a library branch other than one's own
• Loss or reduction of delivery of items from one library to another
• Severe reduction of access to new books currently shared among many branches
• Severe reduction of access to audiobooks and eBooks
• New library fees for services to residents outside the service area of a branch library
• Greater expense for each county to purchase online reference resources by itself rather than as part of the Black Gold regional library network.

Public libraries have helped make America a strong and prosperous democracy by providing free and equal access to information for all.  Even in "the digital age," libraries and literacy are essential to an informed citizenry.

Please write or call Governor Brown. Call your Assembly member or Senator and ask them to speak favorably about the library issue in their respective caucuses. Remind him or her of the importance of these library programs to you and your neighbors! Speak up now and protect our libraries!

WWW Wednesday

WWW is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions...

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you'll read next?

What are you currently reading? I just started reading The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr. I loved The Alienist and I've really been looking forward to reading this second installment!

What did you recently finish reading? Eve Ensler's I Am an Emotional Creature. I posted a review of this inspiring book last week. Read it here.

What do you think you'll read next? I have to finish reading The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks  by Susan Casey. A friend of mine let me borrow it, so I need to get it back to him sometime soon. I also need to finish reading and then review Sentimental Me by Charles L. Fields. I've read a few pages so far and while it's not a page-turner just yet, it is a very vivid narration and I like the way I'm able to picture exactly what the author is describing.

Teaser Tuesday

(My internet was down yesterday, so I'm a day late.)

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• In a comment, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's mine:

"So let Libby Hatch come after me for trying to tell her story. Let her strange, sorry ghost take the breathe out of me for daring to reveal this tale."

-The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr, p. 9

Musing Mondays

This week’s musing asks…

What book(s) are you most excited about right now? (it can either be something you’re currently reading, or something you just bought, or a book/books that are soon to be published).

Well, I guess I'm a little behind on the times, because it was just yesterday when I discovered that one of my favorite authors is the son of another favorite author of mine.  Joe Hill, whose real name is Joseph Hillstrom King, wrote the great horror novel Heart-Shaped Box, is the son of Stephen King. His younger brother, Owen King, is also a writer.  

Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha, named Joe after the famous labor-activist, Joseph Hillström (1879-1915), who was killed by a firing squad in Utah for a murder he didn’t commit.

I recently received a copy of Heart-Shaped Box from paperbackbook.com and I can't wait to read it…I've heard that it’s a wonderfully scary thriller!

From Goodreads:
Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals...a used hangman's noose...a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude cant help but reach for his wallet.

I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder...

For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. he has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts--of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the band-mates he betrayed. What's one more?
But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing.
And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door...seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang...standing outside his window...staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting--with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand...

I Am An Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler

A roller coaster ride of passionate feelings, I Am An Emotional Creature by best-selling author/playwright Eve Ensler, is often sad, occasionally funny, always moving. Ms. Ensler turns the experiences of girls from all social classes into soul-stirring prose. This book should be considered a must for anyone that cares about women’s rights and our world today. Share this one with your mothers, daughters, sisters and girlfriends! 3 ½ Diamonds
(Recieved complimentary copy for review purposes only.)

Friday Finds

I just received an autographed copy of Charles L. Fields new novel Sentimental Me. As the blurb on the back of the book says--don't let the nostalic title fool you...Sentimental Me sounds like one heck of a ride!

From Goodreads:

This fast paced travel mystery is a true gem. It takes Boston lawyer, Charles Stone to Aqua Prieta, Mexico to see why a slain U.S. Border Agent made a woman, with known Drug Cartel connections, the beneficiary of his $500,000 life insurance policy. Stone was often called in by the Franklin Life Insurance Company to investigate what they referred to as "exotic cases". He had recently returned from an assignment in Ireland involving the Real IRA and a notorious international arms dealer. Exposing fraudulent activity almost cost him his life. Needing a little R&R, he accepted the retainer and hoped the trip to Arizona and the Mexican border city would not be as dangerous, but nothing Franklin Life assigned him had ever been a "piece of cake". This investigative journey, rich in descriptive side events, introduces the reader to murder, drugs, arms smuggling and the powerful people who make it all happen.

WWW Wednesday

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions...

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you'll read next?


What are you currently reading? I'm reading The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks  by Susan Casey. It's a memoir about her days spent with two biologists studing great white sharks and their yearly migration to the Farallon Islands off the Northern California Coast.



What did you recently finish reading? Eve Ensler's I Am an Emotional Creature. I should have a review posted in a day or two. Stay tuned....

What do you think you'll read next? I just received a beautiful hardback copy of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier from the fabulous Dawn Nowakoski. She had a giveaway on her book blog I Eat Books for Breakfast and I was the lucky winner! Thank you so much, Dawn--you rock!!

Tuesday Teaser

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• In a comment, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's mine:

"At least three sunken Eqyptian cities thougt to be more than two thousand years old have recently been discovered kicking around on the bottom near Alexandria's harbor. When underwater archaeologists began to explore them, they happened upon Napoleon's sunken fleet."

-The Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey, p. 10