Bookish Ruth

24 Hour Read-a-Thon: Update the Second

2009-10-24T22:58:00.004-04:00

I'm in the midst of my eleventh hour of the read-a-thon and have just now started to feel somewhat tired. I finished Graceling at the end of the tenth hour, and I absolutely loved it. I wish I had Fire by Kristin Cashore, because that would be my next read for sure. I was a bit wary to read a book of Graceling's length (just under 500 pages, though I'd read about 100 pages prior to today) for the read-a-thon, but I was so engrossed in the story that it felt like a much shorter book.

I took a break during my eighth hour of reading (8 PM since I started late) to make cornbread. This turned into a small odyssey when I discovered that there was only one egg in the house (the recipe calls for two) and it had expired over a week ago. Culinary disaster was saved by my mother, who went to a nearby convenience store -- in the pouring rain -- and picked up a fresh carton of eggs. As mothers go, she's rather awesome, but this was above and beyond the call of duty.

And now, it's back to more reading. I won't make twenty four hours, I know that, but I'm pretty sure I have few more hours in me yet. My cold hasn't proved to be much of an obstacle since my last update. I think I've successfully bombarded it with orange juice.

Time Spent Reading Since Last Update: 279 minutes
Pages Read Since Last Update: 318
Time Spent Blogging: 20 minutes
Total Pages Read: 577
Total Time Spent Reading: 479 minutes
Total Books Finished: 2
Currently Reading: Torchwood: Almost Perfect by James Goss

24 Hour Read-a-Thon: Update the First

2009-10-24T16:35:00.005-04:00

My first 24 Hour Read-a-Thon got off to a bit of a rocky start. I'd been feeling like I was getting a cold for the past few days, but I was hoping it would hold off until after the read-a-thon. Unfortunately that was not to be. I woke up this morning feeling as though I'd been hit by a freight train. I went back to sleep and slept through most of the morning, and after a lot of orange juice and throat lozenges, I finally started my reading just before 2 PM. I'm feeling better now, thankfully, and plan to rest and read for the remainder of the day.

I finished my first book, the graphic novel Persepolis, early in my second hour of reading. This was really my first foray into graphic novels (other than occasional Star Wars or Doctor Who trade paperbacks, which I can't put in the same class as Persepolis) and I enjoyed it immensely.

I'll post periodic updates throughout the day, probably when I feel like I need a break from reading. I may update more frequently on Twitter than I do here.

Time Spent Reading: 200 minutes
Time Spent Blogging: 20 minutes
Total Pages Read: 259
Books Finished: 1 (Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi)
Currently Reading: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

24 Hour Read-a-Thon: Reading List

2009-10-23T20:04:00.004-04:00

After wistfully sitting on the sidelines for the last 24 Hour Read-a-Thon back in April, I'm very excited to be able to participate in tomorrow's event. I saved two books that I bought as a direct result of Dewey's reviews (The Uncommon Reader and Paper Towns) for this read-a-thon and will be reading them in memory of Dewey.

Since this is my first time doing the 24 Hour Read-a-Thon, I have no clue what to expect, so I'm not setting a lot of goals for myself. I would like to surpass the 585 pages I read as part of the 12 hour Mystery Read-a-Thon I participated in during the summer, though. Other than aiming for that, I'm just going to focus on reading and having fun. I haven't done as much reading as usual since I moved, so it's nice to know that I have tomorrow completely set aside as reading time. I also haven't blogged much since the move. Hopefully posting updates throughout the day will get me back into the habit of blogging regularly.

Right now my tentative reading list looks like this:

Coraline by Neil Gaiman (re-read)
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt
Paper Towns by John Green
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (re-read)
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

I may also pull out some of the Doctor Who and Torchwood novels that I've been wanting to read. I think they would be perfect for fun, fast reads since I'm already very familiar with all of the characters and the world-building in the Who/Torchwood universe.

Book Review & Giveaway: The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl

2009-10-07T06:00:00.002-04:00

The Last Dickens
Author: Matthew Pearl
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (Oct. 6, 2009)
Trade Paperback, 416 pages, $15.00
ISBN-10: 0812978021
ISBN-13: 978-0812978025

Despite literary talent such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston-based publisher Fields & Osgood is facing economic catastrophe. The publishing house’s survival may depend on their shining star, celebrated British novelist Charles Dickens. As Dickens’s only authorized American publisher, Fields & Osgood hope that The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens’s first novel in five years, will bolster sales enough to avoid financial ruin.

The unexpected death of Charles Dickens in June of 1870 leaves The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished. James Osgood entrusts Daniel Sand, a young but industrious clerk, with the task of retrieving Dickens’s final, incomplete manuscript as soon as it arrives in Boston. But when Daniel is found dead -- without the manuscript in his possession -- is his death simply a tragic accident or something more sinister?

With the fate of the publishing house very much in doubt, James Osgood and Rebecca Sand, Daniel’s sister and a bookkeeper at Fields & Osgood travel to England to see if Dickens left any clues as to how his final book would end. Osgood and Rebecca soon find that they are not the only ones looking for Dickens’s last work, and there is much more on the line than just a manuscript. Events that were set in motion two years earlier during Charles Dickens’s American reading tour will provide surprising answers and provoke new questions. Their journey will take them from the Dickens family home, Gadshill Place, to the opium dens of London and finally back to Boston in a deadly game of literary cat-and-mouse.

I greatly enjoyed the characters of James Osgood and Rebecca Sand but my favorite parts of the novel were the flashbacks to Charles Dickens’s American tour. Dickens is described as “a man with exclamation points for eyes” and that bubbly vitality was present in Pearl’s characterization of Dickens. There’s something universal about Charles Dickens. The endurance of his works are perfect evidence of this. I thought Matthew Pearl expressed the reasons for Dickens’s continual appeal exceptionally well in this passage:

“Dickens alone, among all the writers of popular fiction of the day, could employ wit and discernment, excitement and sympathy, in equal parts in each one of his books. The characters were no mere paper dolls, nor were they thinly veiled extensions of Charles Dickens’s own persona. No, the characters were utterly themselves. In a Dickens story, readers were not asked to aspire to a higher class or to hate other classes than their own but to find the humanity and the humane in all. That is what had made him the world’s most famous author.” -- p. 33

During most of the book, the story alternates between two main storylines: that of Osgood and Rebecca and that of Dickens’s American tour. There is also a third subplot involving Frank Dickens, the son of Charles Dickens, in India. The two main storylines come together well by the end of the novel, but I felt that Frank Dickens’s storyline needed a clearer resolution. And, while I liked Rebecca as a character, I wondered more than once if she came across as a bit too modern for the time period. If I had to sum up The Last Dickens in one word, it would be subtle. It’s a book that rewards the patient and observant reader as the story progresses. Major revelations are presented without fanfare, and somehow seem more powerful for it.

Some readers may wonder how The Last Dickens compares to Drood by Dan Simmons. If not for the common theme of Charles Dickens and his last work, I think it would be almost unfair to compare the two. They are two very different stories. I enjoyed both of them, each for their own reasons, and I can’t say that I preferred one over the other. My favorite aspect of Drood was how Victorian London came fully to life, almost as though it were a character in itself. I didn’t have the same sense of time and place with The Last Dickens, even though Boston and London were both well-portrayed. The Last Dickens shows Charles Dickens in a kinder and more objective light than the reader receives from Drood’s narrator, Wilkie Collins. I suspect that The Last Dickens will have more mass appeal due to its less intimidating length and more likable characters. Both are worth reading for anyone who enjoys literary fiction. Both are must-reads for anyone with an interest in Charles Dickens.

This was my first experience with Matthew Pearl's writing, but it most certainly will not be the last.

The Last Dickens was released in trade paperback yesterday. Visit Matthew Pearl's website for more information.

Book Giveaway:
Thanks to TLC Tours and the publisher, I have a copy of The Last Dickens to give away to a lucky reader. U.S. or Canadian residents only, please. I'll announce the winner a week from today. Please include a valid e-mail address so I have a way to contact you if you win!

Edit: This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to the winner, BermudaOnion!

Quotable: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

2009-08-28T00:00:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Quotable, a weekly feature at Bookish Ruth. Each Friday I'll share a short passage that caught my attention -- it could be an old favorite or something that jumped out at me during that week's reading. I hope you'll enjoy it and perhaps share something that resonated with you during the week.

Today I'm highlight a passage from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I reviewed Guernsey earlier this week. There are dozens of great lines that I could have chosen from this book, but this one really stood out to me as it's something that's true in my own life:

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book and that tiny thing will lead you on to another book, and another bit will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight, and for no reason other than sheer enjoyment."
-- Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows,
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, pp. 11-12

R.I.P. IV Challenge

2009-08-26T22:58:00.011-04:00

I have been eagerly anticipating R.I.P. IV (R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge) since last year. R.I.P. III was one of my favorite blogging events last year as a new blogger. I love autumn, I love a good literary scare...Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings has created the perfect reading challenge for me (and lots of others judging by the challenge's popularity). If you're a new blogger or haven't participated in R.I.P. before, definitely check it out. It's a lot of fun. I got so many great book recommendations from the other participants in last year's challenge.

Once again I'm choosing Peril the First, which means I've committed to reading four books during September and October from any of these genres:

Mystery
Suspense
Thriller
Dark Fantasy
Gothic
Horror
Supernatural

And, my possible pool of books looks like this so far:
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (Re-read)
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Dracula by Bram Stoker (Re-read)
The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl
The Last Nightingale by Anthony Flacco
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman

I most likely won't get all these read this year, let alone during the challenge, but this list gives me a good variety of books to choose from. I'll probably try to squeeze a Wilkie Collins book in there somewhere -- maybe The Moonstone or The Woman in White. Scribbled amongst my reading notes for Drood, which I read earlier this year, is: "Read a Wilkie Collins book for R.I.P. IV!"

(I like to plan ahead.)

With the exception of Dead Before Dark and a Wilkie Collins book, all of the books listed are ones that I already own, so this challenge will hopefully help me decrease my mountain-sized To Be Read Pile. I'm trying to read at least three of my own books before I even think about buying a new book. This strategy has been working quite well so far.

Are you participating in R.I.P IV? If so, what are you planning to read? Any good, creepy recommendations?

Book Review & Giveaway: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

2009-08-26T06:00:00.002-04:00

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Authors: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback (May 5, 2009)
Paperback, 304 pages, $14.00
ISBN-10: 0385341008
ISBN-13: 978-0385341004
Read an excerpt here.

In January of 1946, as war-torn Europe begins the rebuilding process after World War II, author Juliet Ashton is struggling to find a subject for her next book. She never expects that the subject will find her, literally showing up in her mailbox in the form of a letter from a stranger.

Dawsey Adams, a resident of the Channel Island of Guernsey, finds Juliet's address inside a secondhand book by Charles Lamb. He writes to her to inquire if Lamb wrote any more books since there are no bookstores in Guernsey. In his letter, Dawsey mentions that he's a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, an organization which, thanks to one woman's quick thinking, saved several Guernsey residents from German arrest. Juliet writes back and wants to know more about this oddly named book club. Soon she is corresponding with several other Guernsey residents, all of whom are eager to share their experiences during the past five years of being cut off from the mainland by the Germans. Reading was an integral part of getting the small community through the years of German occupation. As Eben Ramsay writes, "We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us."

The story is told through a series of letters and the epistolary format works splendidly here. With each letter I read, I fell in love with Guernsey just as much as Juliet did. After reading two or three letters from a single character, I no longer needed to reference the italics above the letter that stated who was writing to whom. I could tell Dawsey's letters from Isola's and Isola's from Eben's just from their unique writing styles. I particularly enjoyed the banter between Juliet and her longtime friend and editor, Sidney.

I picked up The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while I was in the midst of moving, and this delightful book helped defuse a lot of moving-related stress. I had short, infrequent opportunities to read and the epistolary format was perfect for that situation. I could read several letters at a time, set the book down, and continue my reading later without missing a beat.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society has received a lot of praise, so much that I worried it might not be able to live up to my expectations. I'm pleased to report that it exceeded my (very high) expectations. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows have created something truly special here, and the book deserves all the accolades it has been given. Smart, witty writing, a diverse cast of characters, and tales that range from heartwrenching to hilarious made this book into an instant favorite for me. My only complaint about the book is that it had to end.

Rating: 10/10.

Book Giveaway
Thanks to the publisher and TLC Book Tours, I have FIVE copies of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society to give away to my readers. US and Canadian residents only. Leave a comment on this entry for a chance to win. Please include with your e-mail address so I have a way to contact you if you win. I'll announce the winners a week from today.

Coming Soon: Review of CSN Office Furniture

2009-08-25T21:00:00.001-04:00

In the coming weeks I'll be reviewing a bookcase from CSN Office Furniture. Since I've just moved, I still have a lot of books packed away so I'm looking forward to getting my books onto a new bookshelf.

I'll be reviewing the Winsome Espresso Wide 2 Shelf Storage Shelf. The espresso finish looks like it will be a good match for my living room furniture, and I like the fact that I can use wicker storage baskets with it as well. None of my current bookshelves are deep enough for a good-sized basket.

CSN sells all sorts of home office furniture, everything from bookcases to desks, filing cabinets and chairs. Be looking for my review of the bookcase and their service soon!

Sunday Salon: Be It Ever So Humble

2009-08-16T16:59:00.006-04:00

"Domus, my mind offered. Familia, my heart replied. Home." -- Laurie R. King, Justice Hall

The past eight weeks of my life have been some of the most hectic I've experienced thus far in my adult life. If you've been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you already know that I spent most of June and July preparing to move. We had been planning to move sometime during the fall, but when we learned that our new house would be available in August, we decided to move early. Thus began six weeks of frantic packing and organizing, and another two weeks of slightly less frantic unpacking, painting and generally settling in to our new home. While this process is by no means finished (There will be much celebrating when all of my books are finally unpacked), things have reached the point that normal living is no longer a far-off concept.

July was not a good month for reading. For the first time since 2006, I went an entire month without finishing a single book. This week has been better, as I've read both The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, both of which were awesome in very different ways.

Things will probably be a bit slow here at Bookish Ruth through the fall as I continue to work on the house, but I will still be blogging regularly. I've missed the book blogosphere so much over the past two months and can't wait to jump back in with both feet.

Fittingly, the last piece of mail I physically received at my old house was a book (Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard, a long-wishlisted book that I've been consuming in five minute bites and then pondering over hours of painting) and the first piece of mail received here was, again, a book. (The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl, which I'm excited to be reading for a book tour in October.)

I think I've contacted all of the publicists that I work with on a regular basis with my new address, but if I've missed anyone, please shoot me an e-mail with the contact form, especially if you send books via UPS or FedEx. My postal mail will be forwarded to my new address automatically for a year, but UPS and FedEx do not offer a forwarding service.

Guest Blogger & Book Giveaway: Paul Martin Midden, Author of Toxin

2009-07-23T06:00:00.002-04:00

Let There Be Light

A good friend of mine once observed after reading several of my novels that in each of them something totally improbable happens in the first few pages and the rest of the book is spent making sense out of that unlikely occurrence. There is something to this.

I do not know how other authors get ideas or formulate the architecture of their works. For me, the paradigm is the Big Bang, the notion that everything in the universe (or Universe) was at the very beginning contained in an infinitesimal point that exploded (I believe the current term is “expanded”) for reasons no one understands. Hence life as we know it.

No one knows where that tiny point came from, so some wizard named it a ‘singularity’, which means, I believe, that it was a one-time event with no known origin. This is how an idea for a novel comes. There might be an explanation for it—I am, after all, a psychologist, so one would think I’d have some idea about this—but any explaining I would do would be as idle a speculation as could be done by anyone. The beginning of the novel always has the same feeling as the beginning of any new endeavor. “Let’s go to France,” say, or “Time to quit smoking.” New directions. “Let’s create a universe.”

At base writing is about creating something where nothing was before. This is as mysterious to me as the Big Bang, which, for all its theoretical elegance and compelling empirical underpinnings, still boggles the mind. The idea that all we see can be traced back to something we cannot see is a notion of dizzying significance.

I am sure there are laws according to which the Universe unfolds. I am sure there are laws that govern how novels unfold. In both cases, those laws are unavailable to me. The laws of physics are knowable to physicists, so they could be found. On the other hand, the laws that govern story development, I believe, are particular to any particular writer. To say “I make it up as I go along” is to diminish the experience somewhat, but I make it up as I go along. That is, I do not know exactly what the characters will do until they do it; I do not know what they think until they think it. Sometimes they are faced with choices that seem simple on the surface but are confounding to them; sometimes they do things with ease that I would find onerous or undoable.

So the things that are seen--the words on the page, the people and places and events that are so clearly in evidence as the story proceeds—derive from a source that is unseen. We do not know the Universe until it exists. I do not know the story until the character and the story exists. It is, at base, a mystery. Let there be light.

Book Giveaway

Paul Martin Midden is giving away a signed copy of his book, Toxin, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to his book tour page, http://paul-martin-midden.omnimystery.com/, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 8385, for your chance to win. Entries from Bookish Ruth will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on their book tour page next week.

Guest Blogger & Book Giveaway: Larry Mild, Author of Boston Scream Pie

2009-07-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

Rosemary and Larry Mild coauthor the Paco & Molly Mysteries: Boston Scream Pie (new!), Locks and Cream Cheese and Hot Grudge Sunday. They teach mystery writing at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland. They're members of Mystery Writers of America and both the Chesapeake and Hawaii chapters of Sisters in Crime. Visit them at www.magicile.com. E-mail them at roselarry@magicile.com.

WHO’S THAT?

By Larry Mild

By the time I complete a 250-page first draft, my characters are as well known to me as relatives and friends. I easily recognize them by name, deed, dress, and personality. There’s a comfort level in knowing this when I pass my draft on to Rosemary, my wife and coauthor.

So I’m surprised and annoyed when the second draft comes back to me and there are strangers moving through my original plot: Stan, Phil, Louise, and Joy. What happened to my buddies, Ralph, Bill, Jill, and Harriet?

“Well,” my wife replies, “the character just didn’t act like a Ralph to me, so I made him Stan.”

“And Jill?” I ask.

“Her name sounds too much like Bill, so I made her Joy.”

Rosemary has a valid answer for each name change, so now I have to introduce myself to four new characters. Usually, I try to defend my choices, but in the long run, we iron out the third draft with her choices.

We write at different paces, and so, more often than not, we are working on different projects. I might be a whole novel ahead of her. This means that when she interrupts me to ask about one of the characters, I have to reply, “Who’s that?”

In writing Locks and Cream Cheese, the first book in our mystery series, our initial idea was to make Simon and Rachel our sleuths and alter egos. By the time we finished the second draft, it became clear to us that Paco LeSoto and Molly Mesta were taking over as sleuths, and our alter egos were being demoted to second-class main characters.

All our characters come from real life with new names and most with composite traits from several people. The two of the non-composites are Paco and Molly. In describing my nameless retired Baltimore police detective the first go-round, I suddenly feel I’m describing someone I know from many years ago. As he starts rounding out, I begin to remember where and when.

It is in the port of Barcelona, Spain and the year is 1957. We are both dinner guests aboard a U.S Navy ship in the harbor. He is Inspector Garcia Garcia Garcia (yeah, it’s for real) of the Barcelona policia, a local goodwill liaison. He is in his mid-forties, short, solidly built, and is nattily attired in a colorful sport coat, tie, and saddle shoes. I am there as a global field engineer contracted to the Navy. Somewhere in the middle of dinner, the executive officer of the ship announces that the local American Council is having a reception, and all off-duty officers are invited. Between dessert and coffee we find there are only two diners left at the table, the inspector and myself. Those off duty are dressing for the occasion, and the remainder are returning to their shipboard responsibilities.

Moving to the wardroom sofa, I find the Inspector’s command of the English language to be excellent and his charm and friendliness genuine. I sit there spellbound, listening to his endless store of police anecdotes. His dark, bushy brows and full mustache flutter and leap to express the words coming from his mouth. I respond with questions and a showing of honest interest, which only spurs the raconteur on. We chat for nearly four hours before it is time for him to leave.

Inspector Garcia impresses me so much that a half-century later, I assign a Spanish name and title, Inspector Paco LeSoto, to my fictional policeman and complete him with more of the real man’s attributes.

Molly barges into Locks and Cream Cheese when Rosemary introduces her own psychoanalyst father as the fictional character Dr. Avi Kepple. Rosemary’s real father kept track of spouted malaprops coming from his housekeeper-cook with the intention of submitting them to Reader’s Digest. It’s Molly’s unique and skewed way of expressing herself with only a tenth-grade education. Sometime they are so apropos that one wonders whether some are intentional.

But Rosemary and I find his housekeeper, with her delicious dialogue, too good a character to miss out on, so we change her name to Molly and tag her malaprops “Mollyprops.” Molly Mesta’s last name is a tribute to Perle Mesta, the famous Washington, D.C. hostess. Molly’s beach-ball figure, waddle walk, honey curls, and good-natured, nosybody personality launch her into our mysteries. The romance between Paco and Molly starts when Cupid shoots Paco straight through the stomach with a tasty arrow dipped in “chocolate mousey.”

Rosemary and Larry Mild have published award-winning short stories and essays. Members of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Maryland Writers Association, the Milds divide their time between their homes in Maryland and Hawaii. Most of all, they treasure spending time with their five grandchildren in Hawaii and South Carolina’s horse country.

Book Giveaway

Rosemary and Larry Mild are giving away a signed copy of their book, Boston Scream Pie, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to their book tour page, http://rosemary-larry-mild.omnimystery.com/, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 2860, for your chance to win. Entries from Bookish Ruth will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on their book tour page next week.

Book Review: The Sea Chest by Toni Buzzeo & Mary GrandPre

2009-06-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

The Sea Chest
Author: Toni Buzzeo
Illustrator: Mary GrandPre
Publisher: Dial (2002)
Hardcover, 32 pages, $16.99
ISBN-10: 0803727038
ISBN-13: 978-0803727038

In this tender story inspired by a popular lighthouse legend, Toni Buzzeo gives the reader a timeless tale about the meaning of family and the unique bond shared by sisters.

As her great-great-niece sits close beside her, holding a worn photograph of a baby, Aunt Maita tells the young girl the story of her life at Sanctuary Island. When Aunt Maita was ten years old, she was a lonely only child living at a lighthouse in Maine. During a particularly violent winter storm, Maita and her parents stay up all night; her father tending the light while Maita and her mother watch and worry as a ship tries to make safe passage through the churning seas. Despite their best efforts, the ship is lost to the sea.

The next day, Maita and her father go down to the shoreline to search for sea glass. Instead of bits of colored glass, they find a bundle of mattresses that washed ashore from the ship that was lost in the night. Within the mattresses they find a wooden chest; within the chest they find a baby girl. Her parents last act was to bundle her in the sea chest and hope that their daughter would survive. Maita names the baby Seaborne, and her parents raise the girl as their own. Seaborne sleeps in the sea chest that protected her until she grows too large for it. As the years pass, Maita is delighted to have a sister to share with; she's no longer a lonely little girl wishing for a friend.

When Aunt Maita finishes her story, her young niece looks at the old sea chest, which is waiting to be used for a new occupant: "the tiny stranger my mama and papa have gone to fetch from so far across the wide Atlantic. To be my sister."

Beautifully illustrated by Mary GrandPre (best known for her work on the Harry Potter series), this lyrical story of adoption and sisterly love is not to be missed.

Rating: 10/10.

Buy The Sea Chest:
Powell's | Indiebound | Amazon

Bloggiesta: Final Thoughts

2009-06-21T11:16:00.007-04:00

Bloggiesta was perfectly timed for me. I'm house-sitting so I had a lot of free time this weekend and was able to get a lot accomplished. I hosted the Grade Your Blog Mini-Challenge and was absolutely overwhelmed by the participation. Many thanks to Natasha for a great challenge topic, and thank you to everyone who stopped in and took part in the challenge!

Here are my stats for Bloggiesta:
Day One: 9 Hours
Day Two: 11 Hours

Total Time: 20 Hours

Mini-Challenges I Completed:
The Book Lady's Blog - Clean Up Your Feed Reader
Emily's Reading Room - Google Alerts
Devourer of Books - Update a Key Post
Galley Smith - Creating Effective Anchor Text
(I did my own challenge, too, of course, but I don't think that counts!)

Accomplishments:

Finished formatting and published my Review Archive.
Added a contact form to my Contact Page.
Wrote and published an About Me page.
Formatted HTML for over 30 upcoming reviews.
Organized my Google Reader and removed over 20 feeds that haven't updated in the last six months.
Caught up on comments here at Bookish Ruth a little bit (I still have a lot of comments to attend to and I want to get around to comment on other blogs as well. I'll continue working on this over the next few days.)
Prepared four Quotable and four Wordless Wednesday posts in advance.
Wrote and scheduled two book reviews.
Updated my 100+ Book Challenge post.

I wish I could have participated in more of the mini-challenges and written more reviews, but I'm very happy with the progress I made. I thought my Bloggiesta was going to come to a screeching halt on Friday afternoon. I was diagnosed with shingles on Tuesday, and on Friday I was feverish and in a lot of pain. I took two long naps that day and the extra sleep made a big difference. I'm still not 100%, but I feel much better.

I really enjoyed being able to communicate with other participants on Twitter thanks to the #bloggiesta hash tag. I got a lot of great feedback from other bloggers throughout the challenge. I also enjoyed seeing what other bloggers were working on this weekend. I'll be undertaking several projects that other participants completed during Bloggiesta. I want to change to a three-column layout sometime soon, update more of my book challenge posts, fix my favicon so it shows up in Firefox again (It's showing in Internet Explorer but not FireFox), and re-write my Contact page with more details for authors and publishers.

Bloggiesta was a great experience, and something that I will definitely participate in again. I just hope the next one is a little longer. I got so many ideas from other bloggers that I wanted more time to implement them!

Bloggiesta: High Apple Pie in the Sky Hopes

2009-06-19T11:00:00.008-04:00

This weekend I'll be participating in Bloggiesta, a 48 hour blogging marathon hosted by Natasha of Maw Books. The purpose of this event is to catch up on all those little things you've been meaning to do around your blog, whether it's writing reviews, creating backup posts for rainy days, reorganizing your post tags, tweaking your blog's layout, etc. I'm not sure how much I'll be doing since I'm a little under the weather at the moment, but here are a few of the things that I'd like to focus on this weekend:

~~Finish formatting my review archive and publish it.~~ Done!
~~Add a contact form to my Contact page.~~ Done.
~~Make a separate About Me page.~~ Done.
Catch up on comments. Ongoing.
Format review posts in advance. Download cover images; copy and paste book information so that the HTML for the review is already in place when I sit down to write my review. (I do this on a regular basis, but need to catch up on it.) Done.
Review, review, review. I have a bit of a backlog of unwritten or partially written reviews. I'm house-sitting this weekend so I don't have access to all of my notes, but I have enough notes that I should be able to make significant progress.
~~Prepare and schedule future Quotable and Wordless Wednesday posts.~~ Done. I now have a month's worth of reserves for both features.

My official start time is Friday, June 19, 2009; 11 AM EST. I'll probably be working in 1-2 hour blocks throughout today and tomorrow.

Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Grade Your Blog

2009-06-19T08:00:00.008-04:00

Welcome to the Grade Your Blog Mini Challenge. As part of the Maw Books 48 hour blog improvement marathon, Bloggiesta, I'd like to introduce you to a great site that will help you build a better blog. Website Grader will give you a detailed report about your blog and all you need to do is enter your URL. Not familiar with Website Grader? Here's a description of the site:

Website Grader is a free SEO tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO [Search Engine Optimization], social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

I like to run my blog through Grader every few weeks. This site will give you an overall grade (Bookish Ruth is currently graded at 97.3 out of 100), show you your Google Page Rank (Mine is 4 of 10), tell you the last time Google crawled your site, show your Technorati rating and offer suggestions for how you can improve your search engine traffic. I added meta tags to my blog after my first report suggested that I do so, and have seen my search engine traffic improve drastically. (Edit: A lot of folks have asked about this, so here is a good explanation of how to create meta tags for Blogger. Here is a tutorial for meta tags for Wordpress.)

To participate in this challenge and be eligible for prizes:
1. Run your blog through Website Grader: http://website.grader.com/
2. Leave a comment on this post. Did anything in your report surprise you? What sort of improvements, if any, will you be making to your blog?
3. To be eligible for the Bloggiesta giveaways, please include an e-mail address with your comment.

Don't forget the other mini-challenges:

Beth from Beth Fish Reads – On lists and opinions.

Rebecca at The Book Lady’s Blog - Getting out from underneath the feed reader.

Jill at Fizzy Thoughts – Just when you thought the feed reader was halfway managed.

Emily from Emily’s Reading Room – Are you talking about me?

Deborah from Books, Movies, and Chinese Food – You have a blog? So tell me about it.

Lynn from Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile – Get listed.

Jen from Devourer of Books - Wow. I wrote that when? Let’s update.

Amy from My Friend Amy – I need a friend.

Trish from Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? – On favicons and gravatars. Huh?

Michelle from GalleySmith – Anchor text. You mean there’s a way this *should* be done?

Andrea from Book Blather – Authorities? What authorities?

Booking Through Thursday: Reading Niches

2009-06-11T22:33:00.011-04:00

This week's question:
There are certain types of books that I more or less assume all readers read. (Novels, for example.)

But then there are books that only YOU read. Instructional manuals for fly-fishing. How-to books for spinning yarn. How to cook the perfect souffle. Rebuilding car engines in three easy steps. Dog training for dummies. Rewiring your house without electrocuting yourself. Tips on how to build a NASCAR course in your backyard. Stuff like that.

What niche books do YOU read?

I do a fair amount of niche reading, and am always interested in the unusual titles that other bloggers read. My niche reading tends to fall into three categories:

Doctor Who
When The X-Files went off the air in 2000, I didn't think I would ever love another show that much. I was proven wrong in 2007 when a friend told me, "You've got to watch the new Doctor Who series. It's fantastic and you will love it." I watched Series 1 and was absolutely hooked by the third episode, "The Unquiet Dead", where the Doctor and Rose travel back in time and encounter Charles Dickens. And, should anyone wonder: My overall favorite episode is "Blink", but I love all of the episodes that involve historical figures. (Especially "The Unicorn and the Wasp" from Series 4, which centers around Agatha Christie. They worked 18 Agatha Christie titles into the dialogue of the episode.) For Christmas 2007, I received several Doctor Who novels and have since accumulated quite a collection of Doctor Who books. I've reviewed a few of them on Bookish Ruth, and plan to eventually have reviews of all of them here.

Sherlock Holmes
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of Bookish Ruth, but I do a lot of Sherlock Holmes-related reading. I was 14 when I first read one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and have been fascinated by all things Sherlockian ever since. Again, a large percentage of my bookshelves are populated by Sherlock Holmes-related books.

Lighthouses

I read a lot of books about lighthouses earlier this year to help prepare an annotated bibliography of lighthouse books for children. This was a very fun and rewarding project for me. Many of my reviews have already been posted here, but I still have several that need to be properly formatted and published to the blog. (Pictured at the right is Cape Neddick Nubble Light. I took this picture on a trip to Maine in 2005.)

And, while I wouldn't really call them niches, I also read a lot of Victorian literature (both books that were written during the Victorian Era and books that are set in that time period) and I love just about any book with a plucky female heroine.

Do you have a reading niche?

Mystery Read-A-Thon: Final Summary

2009-06-11T14:04:00.006-04:00

I took a bit of a break from blogging earlier this week while I recovered from the Mystery Read-A-Thon. It was a great experience, but very tiring. Even Gwen, my cat who stayed with me throughout the entire read-a-thon, was feeling it. The picture to the left is her falling asleep standing up during Hour 11 of the read-a-thon. She does this a lot, but it's usually at my computer desk just before I head to bed in the evenings.

Did you finish a book?
I finished two, Assassin by Patricia Finney and They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie. I came close to finishing a third, The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer. I also read about 100 pages of Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye.

How many pages did you read?
I ended up with a total of 585 pages, which was rather disappointing to me. I've read 700+ page books in an afternoon many, many times so I was surprised that I didn't at least hit 800 pages during the read-a-thon.

How did the reading go for you?
Honestly, I was surprised at how much my reading fluctuated with each book or even the same book. My lowest hourly total was 31 pages, while my highest hourly total was just under 150 pages. I think part of this was the books that I chose. Dust and Shadow was extremely engaging, but over three hours I had read just over 100 pages. I was also trying to take notes while reading this one, and I know that slowed me down a bit. After three hours, I set it aside and abandoned my note-taking. Assassin started out slowly, but once the book picked up my reading pace did as well. They Do It With Mirrors and The Case of The Cryptic Crinoline both went very quickly for me, and I rather wish I had started with those two.

Did you have any major disruptions?
I didn't have any major disruptions other than a 45 minute break for dinner and some time spent mediating spats between felines. While not exactly a disruption, the clock was definitely a distraction. I checked the clock on my laptop and cell phone rather obsessively, calculating how many pages I'd read so far that hour when I really should have been reading and not worrying about my time. For my next read-a-thon, I'm going to make sure that I do not have easy access to a clock!

Would you join in for another read-a-thon later this year?
Absolutely. I had a lot of fun with this one even if I came up a bit short of my goals. It was a great experience.

What else do you think about the read-a-thon?
I had a great time. I haven't read that much in a single day for a long time, and it was wonderful to just relax with a book and a cat curled up at my feet all day. I did get tired, especially around Hour 9. I rallied a bit for the last two hours of the read-a-thon, and those two hours were the best for me statistically.

TSS: Mystery Read-A-Thon Starts Now

2009-06-07T12:44:00.006-04:00

For the next twelve hours I'll be participating in the Mystery Read-A-Thon. In the image above you can see the books I have to choose from, listed from bottom to top:

Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye
The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline by Nancy Springer
The Last Nightingale by Anthony Flacco
The Diamond of Drury Lane by Julia Golding
The Lady Grace Mysteries: Assassin by Patricia Finney
They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie

I'll be happy if I get through three of these, but pleasantly surprised if I can exceed that. I'm a fairly fast reader but have never done a read-a-thon before so I'm not sure what to expect from myself. My official start time is 12:45 PM and I'll be reading until 12:45 AM.

I'll post updates every four hours here, and hourly on Twitter.

End of Hour 4 Update, 4:45 PM:
It does not feel like I've been reading for four hours. It's not unusual for me to read this long on a weekend afternoon, so it hasn't felt like much of a challenge yet. I've read 149 pages in a total reading time of 3 hours, 3o minutes.

End of Hour 8 Update, 8:45 PM:
I'm up to 385 pages total, with 236 pages in the past 3 hours, 15 minutes. I took a break from Dust and Shadow (I'm loving it too much to read it in a hurry; I really want to savor it) at the start of hour five and switched to Assassin by Patricia Finney, which I finished right before taking a break for dinner. At the moment I'm reading They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie. I'm starting to feel a bit tired now and have been taking more frequent breaks during the past hour.

Mystery Read-A-Thon: Introductory Post

2009-06-06T20:42:00.004-04:00

Many bloggers are participating in the 48 Hour Reading Challenge this weekend. I've never done a reading marathon before and thought that the 48 Hour Challenge might be a little too ambitious for me as a first read-a-thon. I also knew that I was going to be busy for most of the day today.

I've enjoyed cheering the participants on (and rather wished that I'd joined them), so when Vasilly mentioned that there was a 12 hour Mystery Read-A-Thon scheduled for tomorrow, I couldn't resist signing up. My favorite genre, a shorter time frame, and the fact that I have tomorrow completely free? Yeah, I'm there. I'll be starting the challenge tomorrow at 12:00 PM EST and finishing at 12:00 AM EST. I'll be posting periodic updates tomorrow, both here on the blog and on Twitter.

Kathrin, one of the organizers of the Mystery Read-A-Thon posted some interesting introductory questions:

What books do you want to read during this read-a-thon?
Since I'm also doing the 30 Books in 30 Days Challenge, I'll be picking mysteries from this list. I'll be starting with Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye, and I'll see what I'm in the mood for after that.

How many books do you hope to finish?
I would be really happy if I finished three or more books.

What (if any) breaks do you intend to take?
I'll probably take a few short breaks throughout the 12 hours, with a longer break for dinner. It's really going to depend on how things go tomorrow.

Do you generally read lots of mysteries and thrillers or are they one of the many genres you like?
I read a lot of different genres, but mystery is my overall favorite genre. I love puzzles and I always enjoy the challenge of trying to solve a case ahead of the characters in a book.

What are some of your favorite authors?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Laurie R. King, Agatha Christie, Nancy Springer, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Crichton, Elizabeth Peters.

If you could make us all read one mystery or thriller for this read-a-thon, which one would it be and why?
This is a tough question! I love Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and heartily recommend them. I'm also a big fan of the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King. (I'm quite tempted to re-read her newest book, The Language of Bees, during the read-a-thon even though I just read it last month. Is it time for the next book yet?!)

Do you prefer series or stand alones?
I will read both, but I'm probably more of a series reader. When I meet characters that I really like, I want to hang onto them.

Review of The Mystic Lighthouse Mysteries: The Mystery of the Dark Lighthouse

2009-06-05T21:10:00.001-04:00

The Mystic Lighthouse Mysteries: The Mystery of the Dark Lighthouse
Author: Laura E. Williams
Publisher: Scholastic (2002)
Paperback, 128 pages
ISBN-10: 0439217261
ISBN-13: 978-0439217262

Eleven-year-old twins Jen and Zeke live at the Mystic Lighthouse Bed and Breakfast with their Aunt Bee. As guests gather to celebrate the lighthouse's bicentennial, a storm causes a power outage.

After Jen and Zeke discover a young guest, Karen Mills, searching for something in the B&B, they're intrigued. Karen is related to Catherine Markham, the daughter of Mystic Lighthouse's first keeper. Karen has Catherine's diaries and is searching for secret passages that are mentioned in the diary. There are also rumors of a treasure hidden somewhere in the lighthouse and it quickly becomes apparent that each guest is searching for it. Can Jen, Zeke and Karen find it first?

The reader is encouraged to gather clues and solve the mystery along with the main characters. A blank suspect sheet like the one Jen and Zeke use in the story is provided for the reader. A fun and exciting story in a great setting.

Rating: 7/10.

Buy The Mystery of the Dark Lighthouse:
Powell's | Indiebound | Amazon

Book Giveaway & Interview with Mary Stanton, Author of Angel's Advocate

2009-06-04T06:00:00.003-04:00

Today I'm very pleased to welcome Mary Stanton, author of the newly published Angel's Advocate, to Bookish Ruth. Thank you Ms. Stanton for sharing your time with me and my readers!

This was my first time reading a paranormal cozy mystery and I have to admit that initially I was a bit skeptical. However, the magic of Beaufort & Company quickly won me over. What would you say to other mystery lovers who might be hesitant to pick up a paranormal cozy?

I was skeptical about writing it! When the idea for Beaufort & Company began to come together in my head, I thought of it as urban fantasy, and not as a paranormal cozy at all. I love great fantasy; Charles de Lint, James Blaylock; Emma Bull; Dan Simmons--these are all marvelous writers working in a great tradition, and I tried to follow in their footsteps. I hope I succeeded a little bit. But there are readers for whom urban fantasy doesn't work, either. So I guess I'd say: "There's lots of great books out there! If you don't like fantasy, there are other genres that you will love."

The world you have created for this series is so unique -- an interesting blend of Dante, Paradise Lost and Law & Order. What was your inspiration for Beaufort & Company?

I'm tickled you recognized the Dante; and I hadn't thought about Law&Order, but I'm a fan of the series, so a bit of that certainly must have crept in.

I did approach the whole notion of the Celestial Spheres and the Company of Angels in the traditional way of fantasy writers. I did what fantasy writers call 'world-building' which means you create a whole back story for the universe. This back story has to be coherent, logical, and as authentic as possible. So it took a lot of work. And I'm still adding to it.

I enjoyed the relationship between Bree and her sister, Antonia. They are both very strong characters with a genuine sisterly affection for one another. Can you talk a bit about developing their characters, especially in relation to each other?

I'm glad Bree and Tonia come across well. They are actually very easy to write. I have two sisters--neither one of them an aspiring actress--and I love them dearly. I think a lot of that sisterly cross-fire crept into Bree and Tonia's relationship. (And yes, I'm the oldest sister.)

Since Bree's client, Lindsey Chandler, is accused of stealing from a Girl Scout, I feel that I have to ask this question: Do you have a favorite type of Girl Scout cookie?

THE PEANUT BUTTER ONE! I love it.

Is it more challenging to write temporal characters like Bree and Lindsey or angelic characters such as Ron, Petru and Lavinia? What about canine characters like Sasha?

It's harder to write good guys. It's much easier to write bad guys. Truly good and saintly characters are to be much admired, but they are bor-r-r-ing. I have the most fun writing the sleazy lawyer, Payton the Rat, and his sleazy boss. In the 3rd Beaufort & Company, which I just turned in to Berkley, the easiest parts of the novel were when Beasley and Caldecott showed up. They are the lawyers for the Opposition. They make a brief appearance in ANGEL'S ADVOCATE.

As for Sasha--I began my career as a writer with a novel much like WATERSHIP DOWN, except the characters were horses instead of rabbits. Animals are much much much harder than people--unless you turn them into people in dog suits or horse suits or rabbit suits. Sasha is sort of in-between; he's more angelic than dog-like.

You have written two other mystery series as Claudia Bishop, the Hemlock Falls Mysteries and Dr. McKenzie Mysteries. How do you divide your writing time between multiple series?

Well, it's actually pretty hard. For three seasons of the year, we live in Upstate New York. We have a working goat farm (900 goats, 300 sheep) and although we have lots of help, my real life gets pretty hectic. So I set my working year up in three-month increments. I can usually get a first draft in three months, then I take a few weeks off, and rewrite. Then I take a few weeks off and start another novel.

In Angel's Advocate, Bree muses that reading detective novels might help her during her investigations. As an author, what would you recommend to her?

Now that's a really cool question! Hmmm. Probably Sue Grafton, SJ Rozan, Lee Child, and maybe all of Nero Wolfe. Those guys are great on how an investigation works. If your blog readers have more suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

What's in store for Bree next? Can you give us a teaser for the third book in the series, Avenging Angels?

I decided that Bree needed to know a lot more about the background of Beaufort & Company. So she learns more about the Celestial Spheres. And DEFENDING ANGELS, the first in the series, was a little thin on the mystery end. So I concentrated on writing the best mystery I could, with a nice twist at the end. I had a lot of fun with that.

Angel's Advocate Book Giveaway

Mary Stanton is giving away a signed copy of her book, Angel’s Advocate, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to Mary’s book tour page, http://mary-stanton.omnimystery.com/, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 7147, for your chance to win. Entries from Bookish Ruth will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on Mary’s book tour page next week.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the stops on Ms. Stanton's tour:

Musings of a Bookish Kitty | Mystery Reader Discussion | Book's Ahoy | Wendi's Book Corner | Mystery Books News | Allie's Musings | Shhh I'm Reading

Discussion: ARCs and Book Buying

2009-06-03T13:30:00.004-04:00

I recently received an ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. I loved the book so much that I decided to purchase a finished copy of the book as well. I realized that this is something that I do fairly often -- I can think of at least five books that I have bought finished copies of after reading an advance copy.

If you read an advance copy of a book and love it, do you buy a finished copy when it's available?

What do you do with the ARC if you purchase a finished copy? Do you keep it? Do you pass it on to a friend or another reviewer?

Have you ever NOT purchased a book that you normally would have because you received an ARC?

Wordless Wednesday: Stained Glass; Valley Forge, PA

2009-06-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

Stained Glass Panel
Washington Memorial Chapel
Valley Forge, PA

Book Review: Sirius, the Dog Star by Angeli Perrow

2009-06-02T22:23:00.000-04:00

Sirius, The Dog Star
Author: Angeli Perrow
Illustrator: Emily Harris
Publisher: Down East Books (2002)
Hardcover, 32 pages, $15.95
ISBN-10: 0892725451
ISBN-13: 978-0892725458

During the winter of 1897, young Nathan and his loyal Newfoundland dog, Sirius, are aboard the Goldhunter. The book begins with the young ship crewman pointing out the constellation that the dog was named for -- Sirius, the Dog Star.

When the Goldhunter strikes a ledge during a storm, the sailors abandon ship. After rowing for more than six hours, the men in the lifeboat are exhausted. As they approach Maine's Boon Island Light, Nathan asks Sirius to help. The strong Newfie takes the bow line and swims to the waiting lighthouse keeper, delivering his friend Nathan and his shipmates to safety.

This is another beautifully illustrated book by Angeli Perrow and Emily Harris. The storm scenes in particular are quite eye-catching. Sirius, the Dog Star will delight both dog lovers and lighthouse enthusiasts.

8/10

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Giveaway Winner

2009-06-01T21:56:00.003-04:00

Many thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway for The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Short Stories. The response was overwhelming! I really enjoyed reading what everyone's favorite Holmes stories are. It's nearly impossible for me to choose; "The Red-Headed League" is my sentimental favorite since it was my first exposure to Sherlock Holmes, but I also love "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" and "The Adventures of the Copper Beeches".

Anyway, back to business. The lucky winner of this beautiful set is Heather J. of Age 30+...A Lifetime of Books! I've already contacted Heather to confirm her address. Congratulations Heather, I hope you enjoy your set as much as I love mine!