12/16/11

I adore Neil Gaiman.  This love affair began with Sandman many many years ago and flourished into a deep respect for his storytelling abilities when it came not novels.  His style, is almost a modern fairy tale one, with grit, dirt, and reality.  You believe in these characters, even when they do the fantastical and you ache and hurt for them when they ache and hurt, or you loathe them when you are supposed to.


I enjoyed American Gods not just because of the context, or the representations that each character has, but because of Gaiman's simplistic and yet complex ability to tell a story and pull you in.
Honestly, I wouldn't start with this book.... Perhaps Neverwhere or Stardust, but you'd have to ease into American Gods once you are sure you like his writing, not all people will. 


My favorite Neil Gaiman book Anansi Boys.




What I am reading?


I downloaded a new history book on my nook color which has to do with things famous historic figures ate, who knows, may be good... it was 1.99  




This Day in History:


1653 – English Interregnum: The Protectorate – Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.

12/15/11

One of the first Anne Rice books I read, not counting Interview... amazing.

     I adore Anne Rice, and I can easily say she is my favorite author, now I do not like all of her books, I am not a big fan of her Christ books she did, just not my thing...but even her non-supernatural stuff is beautiful to me.  

I remember reading Interview with the Vampire as a child, yea I know...I'm special.  

The first time I picked it up was in an old used book shop that used to be on Davis Drive out here in Warner Robins, my Nana (most awesome) took me there to buy me some books and since I didn't really read a lot of kids books...I found myself with this used and beat up version of Interview, I remember it because it had real people on the cover and it was creepy.




So, after reading a good bit of the vampire chronicles and reading Cry to Heaven...which is one of the BEST Anne Rice books EVER written....

A novel about the Italian Castrati singers.... beautiful.

I picked up The Mummy.

This is the ONE book that Anne Rice doesn't have a sequel to that she SHOULD.... omg, its amazing.  If you have not read it, read it.... and if you like mummies, you will adore this.

Its wonderful, and Rice did a good bit of research on Egypt before she wrote it, its lovely.

“The Romans can not be condemned for the conquest of Egypt; we were conquered by time itself in the end. And all the wonders of this brave new century should draw me from my grief and yet I can not heal my heart; and so the mind suffers; the mind closes as if it were a flower without sun” Work has seriously cut into my reading time!  Damn the holidays, but I will say that Midnight Rising is starting to pick up and I am enjoying it, Horowitz has a great storytelling style.  

I did find a new book I wanted to read today...

OMG I MUST READ THIS

The Title alone makes me chuckle, its 22 dollar ebook price is typical for history books and I suspect I will purchase it with christmas gifts.


I know I am already pretty well versed in the history of England, but you know.... never can know enough.  ;)

12/14/11

Loved this book

Facing East from Indian Country

By: Daniel R. Richter

Harvard University Press / 2001

   This book tells the story of Westward expansion from the perspective of the Native Americans, its an amazing book, I read it for a Native American history course I took in college.

Had a great professor who specializes in the subject.

`De Soto's enslavement of thousands of Native men and women many of whom died under their burdens or were abandoned deep in enemy territory-- must have had a deep effect on communities already in demographic and political flux."

-p 34

What Am I Reading?

"aka, what is on my nook"

I'm still reading Midnight Rising, though a friend at work loaned me Beastly, its wonderfully terrible.... so much so, I cannot rip myself away.  :D

So since I don't have much of an update on what I am reading, I thought I would show you which bookshelf I am pulling from for my book of the day selections currently, as you can see...it will be quite a while before I switch shelves.

The first of 9 shelves.

Anyway, the Horowitz book is slower than expected, but maybe it will pick up.

12/13/11

Ok, I got a bit artsy with this one.

Damned Women : Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England

By: Elizabeth Reis

1999 Cornell University Press

Oh this book, what can I say about it, I loved it.  The professor that assigned this book has probably given me the most wonderful books of my college career to read, Grad school and PhD work will have a hard act to follow in the realm of just great books and engaging books to read.  This book, focusing on witch claims during the Puritan era is breathtaking and insightful with a stunning array of wonderful research.

It was one of those books I couldn't find anything wrong with... I liked it so much.

I understand that some may shy away from academic texts, but if you have the chance, I recommend this one.

Here is a link to the book, you can get it pretty cheap.

"Laity and magistrates, women and men alike shared the belief that the devil could intrude in various costumes and demand that his victims serve him."
p. 71




Finally completing We Need to Talk About Kevin, I decided to move on to non-fiction for my next read on the nook color.  I've started Tony Horowitz's Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War.  I'll preface this with the fact that I have a growing fascination with the Civil War, which is rather funny if you knew me oh say...three years ago, when I despised the subject.  Being southern and a historian in training... the assumption that you will love the Civil War and lament the loss to the evil yanks is an assumption that I loathe.  I don't hold a great deal of sympathy for the South... I don't agree with the constitutionality of secession, and in truth, I believe the entire war was a treasonous rebellion in defense of a disgusting practice that an entire region relied on instead of trying to move towards industrialization and the future.  So, for a long time, I did not read about, did not study, did not care about the Civil War.  College changed all that, and thankfully after having an amazing professor for a Civil War class, reading some awesome books and (regardless of how accurate Ken Burns can be) watching one of the best documentaries I have ever seen Ken Burn's Civil War, I have a new respect and fascination with the subject.  I particularly love the oddities of the war, or in this case...oddities before the war... John Brown.


So... This is what I am reading!
Midnight Rising

December 12th, 2011

I have a few new features today for my blog,  all related to bookish things or history so its all good.

First off... I'm going to start talking about what I am currently reading on top of the usual book of the day off my shelf and I have also decided to sometimes feature "On this day..." kind of a daily history thing because I am a nerd and I love history.

What I am reading now?

Well, what I finished reading at 8:30 this  morning?

We Need to Talk About Kevin 

By:  Lionel Shriver 

Link to the Book

This book is a psychological head rush and often difficult to read, but not in a bad way.  The novel, which is basically about the way in which a mother deals with her sociopath sixteen year old son after he commits a massacre at his high school is relevant, but chilling.  It is not mushy, it is not overwrought with emotion, and it doesn't pull any punches.  The main character, the mother, Eva, writes her husband Franklin in order to explain in detail the problem she always saw in her son...the problems he refused to see.  Eva is not always likable, she is pretentious, she is cold, almost surgical, and she had a detachment from the son who never wanted her and often played a long lasting psychological game that only seemingly ended after his massacre and the devastation it caused.  Eva looks down on most middle class Americans, big cars, and she makes a perfect antagonist at times...because even for those who  may hold the same ideals as she does....you dislike her because she is so pompous and full of herself and yet at the same time... she is miserable, she has settled for a life she didn't want and in return received a child who loved no one, and felt nothing...  It is a dark book and I enjoyed the read because Shriver pulls you into this life, this destroyed life that Eva now lives...  To me, it is a great deal more honest than some of the other things I have read relating to this subject, which in itself is pretty taboo.  The book is not for everyone... its harsh and cold and cruel. 

Book of the Day

Title: Restoration and Eighteenth Century Comedy (A Norton Critical Edition) 1997

I picked this one up at the friends of the library booksale about three years ago, for two dollars... I have a thing for Norton Critical Editions, I love them.

Yay, Comedy!

The text I probably like the most in the book is School for Scandal by Sheridan.  

December 11th, 2011

It's been a few days since my last post.  I often wonder if it matters if I don't post something or if I skip a few days, with so few followers, I wonder if a book of the day even matters when there is so much in cyberspace to occupy a person, but I enjoy the blog, it gives me something to do.  

Purchased in London, England 2011

There are days I wish we spent more time in England, maybe two weeks...maybe enough to spend an entire month, or just move there and live in a small flat, I could find a temp job somewhere...it's a dream.  I loved not only the buildings and the people and the history I was so familiar with that upon finding a place I read about I instantly felt akin to it.... but it was the smaller things... the tiny places to eat, the little shops with old books and fresh cheese, it was the variety, the mix of people, the everything.  

My fascination with the British extends to the wars they fought in and the Great War has always held with me a level  of reverence and interest.  I love not only reading about the little intricacies of battle or who caused what, ect... but I have a fascination with what that war in particular did to a people, a civilization that seemed burnt and soiled after the war.  

Poets especially, placed into words, the horror and disillusionment of that war.  I read their words and I wonder why on earth anyone would find it good to fight, to kill, to destroy... for whatever reason.  

Rupert Brooke is one of my favorite voices of the war, even though he died soon after it began, in 1915 of septicaemia.  If you have the priviledge of reading his pre-war words in comparison to the words he wrote during the war, its a vital look at what I think a war like that did to an entire generation of boys going off to be the heroes in a war that would only last until Christmas, as they always are.

Blow bugles, blow! They brought us, for our death,

Holiness, lacked so long, and love, and pain.

Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,

And pain his subjects  with a royal wage;

And Nobleness walks in our ways again;

And we have come into our heritage.

-The Dead 1915    p 21

December 6th 2011

Today I have spent the afternoon drinking tea and cleaning up the house, its one of those days.  I did have a lovely lunch with a friend and my awesome husband found me a stash of Twinings Christmas Tea at the local Wal-Mart after searching the entire city for it...

My book of the day today... on the top shelf of one of my 9 bookcases... is

One of Those Russian Novels
By: Kevin Cantwell

This is a signed edition, because the author is also an amazing professor I took once, and a really neat person.

October 2009, I picked it up at the release for the book, where he and some others read, which was awesome... it was a great night.

Modern poetry, with a very storytelling style, I like it.

You should pick it up if you can find it.

Publisher: What Books Press

December 5th, 2011

YES.. THIS is a TWILIGHT BOOK.


Now that we have that out of the way... lets get on with it.  
This is a small novella that talks about a character that is in the book Eclipse, which is probably my favorite out of the Twilight Saga books, yes I have read them... yes... all four.  No, I didn't hate them.  


Twilight is sappy teen love mush, because its written for teenage girls... and so I am not asking for anything else  but that... these books aren't in fiction by Steinbeck or Joyce, they are surrounded by other sappy teen love novels and no one can tell me that Sweet Valley High was any better.... everyone has their fluff reading so all the backlash against these books I think is just as silly as the books themselves can be at times.  Let people read what they want.... it is what it is.


That being said... Breaking Dawn was the most disappointing end to a series I have ever read in my life and if it wasn't so stupid laughable, I might have been angry I read it.




So, I read the Twilight books, I don't hate them.... myself and the millions of other women who read them are not morons... thanks.

December 4th 2011

First off, please excuse how beat up this book looks... lol, it was a used college school book, so just imagine the abuse it has seen.
This book was an assigned read in a Native American History class I took at Macon State College and probably the book I liked the most out of that class just because of the small story that really translated into a larger problem.  The struggle to make Native Americans adapt and change to be white, which made no sense, seeing as it was destroying a culture.  The book is touching, anger inducing, and very relevant I think when it comes to how often a dominant culture seeks to eradicate another culture just because it is different.  I liked the book a lot and I appreciate my professor for assigning it.




Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940
By: Brenda J. Child
Published by: University of Nebraska Press

December 2nd 2011

A surprising hit with me...get it, hit.

During my undergraduate studies at Macon State College, I took a great many history classes that just sounded cool, regardless if I needed them or not, this probably lengthened my years at MSC, but I didn't mind, I love that place.

Anyway, I took a sports history class and this was one of my favorites from the class, and also the next book on my shelf.  Now, unfortunately this does not reach my top five books of all time, but it is close... I'd say top 50, which is saying a lot if you saw the mountain of books I owned.

I never knew boxing was so interesting, I loved this book and thank Dr. Zimmerman for assigning it.  Its not just about boxing, and I recommending for anyone who likes good Non-fiction reads.

The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America

By: Elliot J. Gorn

Publisher: Cornell University Press

"Little more than a decade separated Morrissey's alleged complicity in the murder of William Poole and his election to congress.  Amidst the ethical laxity of Gilded Age business and politics, the elevation of a former bruiser seemed to guardians of propriety an especially telling sign of moral decline."  -p 127