Giveaway - The Blue Star by Tony Earley

I am hosting my first giveaway thanks to Valerie and the Hachette Book Group. This book sounds exciting - I can't wait to read it!

Book Information (from publisher)

Seven years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Tony Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War Two.

Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's girlfriend, and Bucky has joined the Navy on the eve of war. Jim vows to win Chrissie's heart in his absence, but the war makes high school less than a safe haven, and gives a young man's emotions a grown man's gravity.

With the uncanny insight into the well-intentioned heart that made Jim the Boy a favorite novel for thousands of readers, Tony Earley has fashioned another nuanced and unforgettable portrait of America in another time--making it again even realer than our own day.

This is a timeless and moving story of discovery, loss and growing up, proving why Tony Earley's writing "radiates with a largeness of heart" (Esquire).

About Tony Earley (from Publisher)

Tony Earley is the author of four books: Here We Are in Paradise, a collection of stories; the novel Jim the Boy; the personal essay collection Somehow Form a Family; and The Blue Star, a novel released in Spring, 2008. A winner of a National Magazine Award for fiction, he was named one of the twenty best writers of his generation by both Granta, in 1996, and The New Yorker in 1999. His fiction and/or nonfiction have appeared in Harper's, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Oxford American, The New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South and many other magazines and anthologies.

He is a native of western North Carolina and a graduate of Warren Wilson College and The University of Alabama. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and daughter, where he is the Samuel Milton Fleming Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

Giveaway Details:

There are five copies of The Blue Star up for grabs. If you would like to enter this contest do any of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You must include an email address in at least one of your comments. If I can't find a way to contact you I will draw another winner. (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway or post about it on your sidebar. Leave a separate comment with a link to your post. (1 entry)

3. Become a follower or leave a comment that you already are a follower of this blog. (1 entry)

There are three ways to enter, but you must LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each one or they will not count. I will be using random.org to pick the winners from the comments.

This contest is only open to US and Canadian residents. We also can not ship books to P.O. addresses. The deadline for entry is midnight, Monday, August 31st.

Good luck!

How Well Read Are You?

I found this on Tif Talks Books and thought I'd pass it along and found out how well I stacked up.

How well read are you? Well, at least how well read are you as according to the BBC? The BBC believes that most people will have only have read 6 out of the 100 books on the list below. This intrigued me, so I thought I'd see how I stacked up! How do you think you will do? Have you read six or more?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (X)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (X)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible (-) (only parts)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (X)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (--)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (X)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (X)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (--)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (--)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier(X)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk (X)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (X)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (X)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (--)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (X)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (--)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (--)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (X)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (--)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (X)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame( --)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (X)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (X)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34 Emma-Jane Austen (X)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (X)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein (X)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (--)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (X)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (X)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (--)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (X)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (X)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (--)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (--)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (--)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (X)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (--)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (X)
53 Cold Comfort Farm (--)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (X)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (--)
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (--)
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (--)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon (--)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (X)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (--)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (--)
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (X)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (X)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (X)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (--)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (X)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (--)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (--)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (--)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (--)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (--)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (--)
76 The Inferno – Dante (--)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (--)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola (--)
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (X)
80 Possession - AS Byatt (X)
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (--)
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (X)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (--)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (X)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (--)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (X)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (X)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (X)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (--)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (--)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (--)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (--)
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (--)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (--)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (--)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (--)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (--)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (X)

I have 55! Not too bad and a lot more than 6! I still have room for improvement. Many of these books are either on my giant pile of books to read or are at least on the list! A few are books I've never heard of (The Wasp Factory?). I'll have to investigate them more. It would be fun to do this with a list for mostly American literature.

Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)

I watched and enjoyed Confessions of a Shopaholic this past weekend. I am a fan of the Shopaholic series of books by Sophie Kinsella. Her books are light, fun reads that often have me laughing out loud.

Confessions of a Shopaholic is the story of Rebecca Bloomwood. She lives in Manhattan with her roommate Suze and has a deep obsession with shopping. While she is racking up great amounts of credit card debt, she can’t stop herself from buying the latest scarf or shoe. Through a drunken mix-up, she gets hired as a new voice at a financial magazine. Her editor, Luke Brandon, is a hot, smart guy that she soon finds herself falling in love with. Although she has many personal financial problems, her column that relates complex finances to everyday shopping strikes a cord and she wins wide acclaim. Will she be able to continue being “The Girl in the Green Scarf” or will her personal financial problems end her career and romance?

Confessions of a Shopaholic was a middle of the road chick flick. It was a funny enjoyable romp, as long as you aren’t looking for deep messages or take it too seriously. It followed the basic premise of the book, but there were many changes. One thing I did like was the mannequins talking Becky into buying more items. This did a good job of representing her inner dialogue which is very funny in the book. Overall, I still thought the book was much better than the movie.

I loved the actors in this movie. Isla Fisher is perfect as Becky and Hugh Dancy is a fantastic Luke Brandon. Becky’s parents were played by John Goodman and Joan Cusak. While they were very different from their book counterparts, they had some of the best lines and scenes in the movie. I wish we would have seen more of them! I didn’t think Joan Cusak looked old enough to be Isla Fisher’s mother.

Must see . . . I’d say no. But I’d watch it if it happened to be on TV and have a few laughs.

Favorite Victorian Novelist – Charlotte Bronte

The Victorian era was full of great writers who changed the way novels were written and viewed forever. During the recent poll on this blog, there was a struggle between three writers for the title of “favorite Victorian novelist.” It looked as though they would tie, but at the last minute, Charlotte Bronte broke through to win with 30% with Charles Dickens and Emily Bronte tying for second place with 24% each. Other favorites included Elizabeth Gaskell (10%), George Eliot (4%), Anthony Trollope (4%), and Thomas Hardy (4%). Poor William Thackeray and Wilkie Collins received no votes. I think this poll shows that there are many different and exciting Victorian authors that can be called “favorite” by readers.

Charlotte Bronte is one of my own personal favorites. Her first novel, Jane Eyre, was a masterpiece. Bronte was able to take many of her real life experiences as a poor girl in a terrible school and later as a governess and bring them to life in this magnificent novel. The novel transcends just a tale of her personal trials by being a novel about a strong, independent, woman of the Victorian era who will not sacrifice her personal ideals for an easier road through life. Of course the gothic elements such as a Byronic hero in Edward Rochester and a mad woman in the attic make this a riveting tale. Her later novels (Shirley, Villette, and The Professor) are also good reads, although I must confess that Jane Eyre remains to me the best of the bunch.

If you have never read a Charlotte Bronte novel, I highly recommend that you do. If you only had to read one, I’d read Jane Eyre. If you’ve already read Jane Eyre – try Villette. Villette is based on Bronte’s experiences as a student in Brussels, when she was in love with an older married professor.

What do you enjoy about Charlotte Bronte’s novels or your other favorite Victorian novelist?

Amanda Grange Interview Currently in Progress . . .

Bitten by Books is currently hosting a live interview with Amanda Grange about her new book, Mr. Darcy, Vampyre. I'm really excited to read this book when it comes out. Please join the interview here to learn more about this exciting book! You have until midnight tomorrow night to ask questions and enter to win a chance to win a copy of the book!

Odd Mom Out by Jane Porter

I won the Mother’s Day Giveaway on Jo-Jo Loves to Read blog and received my box of books a couple of weeks ago from Hachette Book Group. It was very exciting! I took the box with me to one of my book clubs and we picked out Odd Mom Out by Jane Porter for our August book club.

Odd Mom Out was a very entertaining read that didn’t take me long to finish. Marta Zinsser is a single mother that has moved from New York City to a wealthy suburb of Seattle for her job and to be closer to her parents. Her young daughter Eva had many friends in New York, but finds it hard to be a part of the crowd in Bellevue. All Eva wants is to fit in, and she would like her “odd” Mom to also fit in. Marta is the owner of her own advertising agency, loves to wear combat boots and drive a Harley, is a free spirit and could care less about fitting in or what other people will say. Life changes when she tries to help her daughter and falls for a “Viking giant” named Luke.

I really enjoyed this book and I think it will be a good book to discuss at my Lakeshore Moms’ Book Club meeting. The many themes of the book include fitting in vs. being yourself, working moms vs. stay at home moms, and working moms vs. working dads. It’s all very interesting and will make good discussion points for myself and my fellow moms.

One of my favorite quotes (pg 288 of the Trade Paperback):

“For the stay-at-home moms, where is the respect? How many men really respect their wives? How many men understand the sacrifices their wives are making to keep the house clean, raise the kids well and make sure dinners always on the table, warm and waiting?”

I wish their would have been more to the ending to finish up the Taylor and Jemma Young storyline, but overall it was good. This is my first Jane Porter book and will not be my last!

Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

Jennifer Weiner is one of my favorite authors. She writes funny, complex characters that one can relate to. Whenever I read one of her novels, I am entertained, and sure that I would like to have a drink with her main characters while discussing men, career, or mommy issues.

Best Friends Forever is Weiner’s new #1 bestselling novel. I couldn’t put this book down when I read it last weekend, much to my husband’s annoyance! I love all of Weiner’s novels, but I would rate this as her best novel since Good in Bed with In Her Shoes a close third.

Best Friends Forever is the story of two friends, Addie Downs and Valerie Adler. They meet each other at age 9 when Valerie moves across the street from Addie. They have a close friendship until a traumatic experience ends their friendship in high school. Now after their 15-year reunion, Addie opens her door to find Valerie covered in blood on her doorstep asking for her help.

I loved the way the novel unfolds. The story is set up with Valerie showing up at Addie’s doorstep and then told through flashbacks to see how the two became friends and what exactly ended their friendship. Meanwhile the mystery of the blood soaked Valerie in current days also plays out.

Overall the characters were the best part of the novel. Weiner is a great character writer. Her women are always women I can identify with, know, or at least want to have a drink with. Addie has a weight problem and significant loss in her life. Valerie had a rough childhood with a mother that sometimes forgets to be a mother.

The only negative I had with the book was Jordan (the investigator) and his obsession with the “Nighty-night” lady. I loved Jordan as a character, but really got tired of reading about the Nighty-night lady and his masturbation to her. I just really don’t like reading about masturbation. Maybe it is the secret puritan hiding within me, I’m not sure.

Weiner must have much more exciting reunions then I do. I’ve only had one (my 10-year reunion of the class of 1996), but I don’t think that much excitement was going on. I have been known to miss such things though! After reading Best Friends Forever and In Her Shoes, I kind of wish I could go to one of Weiner’s high school reunions.

I really enjoyed this book and I highly recommend this or any Weiner novel for those that have not read them. Jennifer Weiner has a fantastic blog that I have been reading for years. She is a funny insightful person. As a fellow mother of two, I love reading how she copes with kids and life. I also love how she goes to bat for female writers. My husband gets sick of me discussing how female writers are ignored . . . (why were only male writers the must reads in my high school and college literature classes?). I plan a future blog posting on classics and female writers soon.

Emma (1996-Paltrow)

I watched Emma from 1996 starring Gwyneth Paltrow this weekend as part of the Everything Austen Challenge (my item #5). I have seen this movie many times before, but it has been about three years since my last viewing. For a summary of Emma, please see my summary of the book that I recently reviewed.

Watching Emma brought me back to the first time I saw the movie in 1996. It was playing at the theatre at the mall in Houghton during my freshman year at Michigan Technological University. Being a fan of all things Austen, I got together a few of my like minded girl friends and we went to see the movie. It was a fun and happy time!

As of today, this is my favorite version of Emma. The movie does a good job of bringing the novel to screen. There are slight deviations, but nothing significant. I also think the casting is almost perfect. I LOVE Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma, Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightley, and Ewan McGregor as Frank Churchill amongst others. Alan Cumming and Juliet Stevenson are hilarious as Mr. and Mrs. Elton. The only bits of casting I didn’t like were Toni Collette (who I love in Muriel’s Weddings and other films) as Harriet and Polly Walker as Jane Fairfax. Toni Collette does not meet the description of Harriet in the book at all and seems off the entire movie. Polly Walker also appears too old and worldly to be Jane Fairfax.

I love the music in this movie by Rachel Portman. I actually have the soundtrack and listen to it while I’m working! I also love that Ewan McGregor shows us his fantastic singing voice by singing with both Emma and Jane Fairfax. Although he plays Frank Churchill (not my favorite character), this movie was a great introduction to me of Ewan McGregor and actually made me like Frank more than I do by reading the book.

As with other Jane Austen movies, I loved watching the dancing at the ball. I wish I could dance like this! My only taste of it was during my British Novel class in college. When we read Pride and Prejudice one of my fellow students project was to teach us all how to dance as they do in the 1995 miniseries. As it was Michigan Tech, there were more gentlemen in my class than ladies so I did not have to worry about a lack of partners! It was a good time. It was my second or third time reading the novel, but fun to have people to discuss it with and a teacher that was British and read it with a fine accent!

Back to Emma . . . I love this movie and heartily recommend it. Gwyneth Paltrow is perfect as Emma. She has class, style, and the haughty, yet nice demeanor that Emma would have. Jeremy Northam is good looking, classy, and perfect as Mr. Knightley. I love the flirtation between Mr. Knightley and Emma. It is apparent, but not overly so, and can really make you see why they should be together. My only sadness is that since it is a movie, it has to shorten the great long ending of the book.

I also think it is funny that my old VHS version says on the back, “If you liked Clueless, you’ll love Emma!” Way to use the remake of Emma to try to win viewers for the movie of the actual source!

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon (audio)

Wow! I just got to the end of Dragonfly in Amber and it ends with a bang. I am glad I have Voyager on CD so I can listen right away!

Dragonfly in Amber is the second in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. I am listening to the abridged versions of the audio book as a refresher before the 7th book in the series, An Echo in the Bone, is released in September. The abridged audio books are read by Geraldine James, who does a pretty good job. There is a lot missing (5 CDs versus 30 or so for the non-abridged), which creates odd gaps at times and missing detail, but it is a good refresher.

Nothing beats the original novels. Whenever I read one of the books, I never want it to end because it is so good. The books are very well written engaging stories. I would love to read all six of them again before the new book came out, but with my book club and challenge commitments, I do not have enough time! Maybe an Outlander challenge will be in order one of these days. . .and I also want to get one of my book clubs to read the first one!

Dragonfly in Amber continues of the story of Jamie and Claire Fraser. If you do not want to know the story . . .stop reading now! The story begins with Claire and her daughter, Brianna, on a trip to Scotland in 1968. They visit Roger Mackenzie, a historian and adopted son of Reverend Wakefield, in hopes of getting information about the battle of Culloden and the aftermath for Jamie and his clan. Upon finding Jamie’s grave, a startled Claire reveals the truth of Brianna’s paternity to her and Roger and the story of her travels through time.

The novel reverts back to Jamie and Claire in the 1740’s and their residency in France. They work together to try to stop Bonnie Prince Charlie and prevent Culloden. Through many adventures that result in tragedy, separation, and finally reconciliation – the story is riveting. The couple makes their way back to Scotland and through a mistake of fate; Jamie is signed up as a supporter and the Bonnie Prince and must lead his men to Culloden. Before the battle, he sends Claire (pregnant with Brianna) through the standing stones. He sends her with a passionate message of his love for her.

“I will find you,” he whispered in my ear, “I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory – two hundred years without you – then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weight against the rest. Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”

Sigh. James Fraser is one of the sexiest heroes in literature. The novel reverts back to 1968 and the revelation that Jamie may not have died. And then it ends! Scream! Good thing I could put Voyager in right away!

As I listened to this story again, I realized that I loved the romantic story of Mary Hawkins and Alex Randell within this story. They are a tragic love story of their own. I also loved the set up of the story with Claire in the future twenty years telling the story and the revelation at the end. I have often wondered however, if Gabaldon has ever regretted doing this. The past few books have moved rather slowly through time, while this book skips over twenty years. The book itself is fantastic, but it is a rather large jump in the timing of the series.

The book is not for the faint of heart with rather graphic violence. The audio book suffers from rather bad music. Otherwise, it is great.

Outlander if a fantastic series – I highly recommend it!

Stephanie Plum Reading Challenge

J.Kaye has come up with a great new reading challenge - The Stephanie Plum Reading Challenge. I love Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books. They are hilarious and have been known to cause me to frequently burst into laughter. I have read the first eleven (and the Christmas one), but it has now been a year since I last read one. Mostly it was because I was afraid to get to the end and have no other new Stephanie Plum books left to read! I'm going to bite bullet and join this challenge. I especially love that I don't need to finish this challenge until December 31, 2010. Since I'm currently obsessed with Everything Austen, this will give me plenty of time to finish this challenge.

The books I have left to read to catch myself up in the series are as follows:

1. Twelve Sharp (2006)

2. Lean Mean Thirteen (2007)

3. Fearless Fourteen (2008)

4. Finger Lickin' Fifteen (2009)

5. Plum Lovin' (2007)

6. Plum Lucky (2008)

7. Plum Spooky (2009)

Thanks J. Kaye for the great challenge!