Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The Help

So after I took back the "How to Knit a Lovesong" to the library... I was playing with my I-Phone and decided to download the "Audible.com" App. So I can listen to books on my I-Phone without having to Download and sync it to I-tunes first. This App is amazing.

So the first book I started listening too on my App was "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett
What's so funny is... I've seen this book around. Different people I know have read it and I kept wondering what all the fuss was about regarding this "self help" book everybody was reading. LOL. When someone told it wasn't a self-help book at all and was an incredible read. I decided to give it a try... They were right. It is absolutely amazing....  here's the synopsis and a hope you will give it a read... Its wonderful to listen to as the are wonderful southern accents. and sometimes I find myself answering my husband in a southern accent not realizing I am doing it and he just looks at me like huh? Go read it Y'all... Terry-Jo
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

How to Knit a Lovesong...

I "WAS" reading: How to knit a Lovesong... I was so disappointed. I was only on Page 86, it was crawling along at a snail's pace and I had already figured out the rest of the book. It wasn't Rocket science. So back to the Library it went. Now I will move on to my next book: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

What we are reading and recommending - June 2011

Wow! We talked about a lot of books this month, our favorite audio book narrators (Jim Dale and Barbara Rosenblat), and even a movie. I compiled a list of links to author information so click away and have a great summer!


http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/a/jean-marie-auel/

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/jefferson-bass/

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/B_Authors/Bass_Jefferson.html

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/alan-bradley/

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/greg-bear/
movie The Cave of Forgotten Dreams
interesting book recommendation I heard about on NPR

Saturday, May 14, 2011

What we read this month - theme: western

150 Western Art Masterpieces (west meaning west of Jerusalem) (great pix)
Poets of the American West (nice change of pace)
Western a novel by Christine Montalbetti (haven't read yet)
The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig (one for, one against)
Last Stand at Saber River by Elmore Leonard (good quick read)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (couldn't put it down)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Inspiration

The Bookshop has a thousand books,
All colors, hues, and tinges,
And every cover is a door
That turns on magic hinges.
--Nancy Byrd Turner

I came across this quote and just loved it.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Henning Mankell

For a list of books by Henning Mankell see Fantastic Fiction

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/henning-mankell/

April 2011 - Classics (or Classics with a Twist)

Books discussed in April

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
short stories of Edgar Allen Poe
Agnes Gray by Anne Bronte
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
(with a twist)
Methuselah's Children by Robert Heinlein
The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines

Theme for May is Western
Theme for June is author Henning Mankell