Get Lost in Literature

My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . The Broke & Bookish bloggers seem to be operating on the same wavelength as me this week; I'd planned a blog of my favorite 2013 reads before I even read it on their schedule. Gotta love convenient coincidences. So here's the list of my personal faves, based on what I read this year, not necessarily publication date. These are the stories I didn't know I couldn't live without. 1.   Battleship: A Daring Heiress, A Teenage Jockey, and America's Horse by Dorothy Ours.  -----Nonfiction about Marion Dupont and her hunt race enterprise, reads like fiction. 2. Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  -----This has plenty of metaphors for the reader who likes to analyze and plenty of adventure for the reader who doesn't need a romantic subplot in every story. 3. A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice.  -----Emotionally raw story of bullying, bigotry, and the overwhelming power of ...

If you're familiar with the blog, you are probably already in love with the book and it certainly won't be a surprise or a let down to see this collection of amateur photography.  If you're unfamiliar with the blog, Dog Shaming , it's basically a photo blog like Tumblr or Pinterest where people can send pictures of their canine companions posing with signs that confess their crimes. That means these photos weren't done in a studio by trained photographers, they were captured by shutterbugs with naughty pooches. Personally, I thought the book was absolutely darling! I do think anyone familiar with dogs and the naughty things they do, will enjoy looking through these photos of guilty canine companions; it certainly a good gift idea for the dog lover in your life. Rating 4/5

Guess who got the new Kindle Fire for Christmas? If you guessed me, you're right. Guess who doesn't entirely know what to do with it? If you guess me, you're right again. Here's the thing. I spend a lot of time on my computer. I spend a lot of time with books. I spend a lot of time on horses. I try very hard to keep my worlds from colliding. The barn is probably the one place in the world where I never carry a book. And when I'm reading books, on a device, I want the device to resemble the pages of an actual book more than my computer screen. Which is why I picked out a Kindle Touch the day I went shopping for a eReader. It's simple, black and white, no extra buttons, no back light to tire my eyes. It had extremely long battery life and great memory. The Kindle Fire is an eReader for the gadget lover...Which I am not.  Dog Shaming  was my first download, mainly because I knew a book of photographs was the most obvious thing to have on a Kindle made for color...

Providence: Once Upon a Second Chance by Chris Coppernoll Jack Clayton is a devout Christian, who has spent most of his adult life working to help the poor. He collected the stories of the people who blessed his life, published those stories, and finds himself on a best-seller list with a bossy publishing agent who demands a personal memoir... A memoir Jack doesn't actually want to write because of a misspent youth in which he hurt a lot of people. I had trouble with the book. The writing was straightforward and easy to follow, but in the beginning Jack felt a bit bland. His character develops a bit more, after he's agreed to write his memoir and his character starts to become more flushed out. But then I feel like the story was wrongly titled, Once Upon a Second Chance ...I felt like it could also have been named, Self Flagellation for People Who Blame Themselves for Everything . Jack starts his memoir as he's graduating high school, leaving for Providenc...

I stuck with Providence and I found myself starting to enjoy it. It's a slow story and it get's a little preachy, but it's pretty good, so you're getting two quotes today instead of one. "Arthur Reed had been selling my book for five months-- and taking 50 percent of the proceeds from retailers even before I'd agreed to write it. Arthur could aggressive, certainly ambitious but this seemed out of character." and "Facts are two dimensional. They can't describe depth or intensity, or mystery; and that is, of course, where all the action is. Where the story lies. LIfe is what happens when the skies roll dark and the daylight burns away." I can't help but notice, all the things I highlight haven't been recorded as having been highlighted before... And the passages labeled as frequent reader favorites, mean next to nothing to me. Is it because this was intended for a reader with more Faith than I possess? Or because the people rea...

Y2K approaches and the town of Thebes spirals into chaos as Mrs. Leontina Scales sustains a head injury that leaves her senseless and her daughter, Tabitha, of questionable morals, takes control of the household. Jeremy Carr, a gay church choir singer, is torn between his past and his future, and left to perform for a convent full of aging nuns. I loved Gregory Maguire's first step out of the realm of fairy-tales and into that of religious satire and I'm surprised to find I'm one of the few who thought this book earned 5 stars. I think anyone who gave it a rating of two stars or less, doesn't understand satire or is too deeply devout to laugh at themselves. I thought it was fantastic to use humor to bring a bit of reality to light; the constant press for moral conformity in religious groups and the conflicts with the flawed individuals who attend. I also thought the parallels between Jeremy's long failed relationship with Willem to Tabitha's recently fai...

My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . Today's theme is Top Ten Books I Wouldn't Mind Santa Bringing Me . I struggled for this one. One could reasonably say, "Well, wouldn't the books on the Dec 3 and Dec 10 lists also be qualified for this list?" And why are so many lists revolving around books we don't yet have? But then I thought about how many books I have downloaded on my kindle, unread and unrated and it occurred to me: No matter how many books you want to read, there is always those books you just have to have a physical copy of... So which books on my To-Read list, do I want to physically feel in my hands, smell the new-book-smell, and lovingly peel each page back...? Hollow City by Ransom Riggs -- Though I don't think its going to be released in time for Xmas, but if I win a ARC copy it'll be a Christmas miracle! Inferno by Dan Brown --I just got this on kindle, but I have his 3 other Robert Langdon book...