Recommended by Darla D from Books and Other Thoughts – I knew I had to read this when she said “dinosaurs” and “Victorian”, and then she carried right on and said “street urchin” and “vicar’s daughter” and “clock-maker”, which is not totally unlike Ella saying “Warning, it’s very Gothic” about Blackbriar. I am leaving for a fantastic and glorious vacation in London (don’t go anywhere, London, I am coming back to you soon!), so I had collected all my books together to return to the library before I left (I know, right?). And still I could not return them until…
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Love this Booking Through Thursday question: What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time? Oh ever so many books. Mainly maybe The Chosen? And The Color Purple, and, oh, The Charioteer, and Watership Down. I can’t choose one. There are dozens of books that were such the most amazing experience ever the first time I read them – Fire and Hemlock was superb. Absolutely definitely The Far Pavilions and I Capture the Castle and Jane Eyre. Yes, Jane Eyre. If I had to choose one. I would choose Jane Eyre, my beautiful Jane…
Leave a CommentOkay, okay, okay. So I read A Cricket in Times Square (of course). And then I read the one about Tucker the Rat. But DID YOU KNOW that the same author also wrote a charming book about a boy whose father dies and he goes to live with his uptight aunt, and she tries to make him get rid of his dog, and he finds a genie called Abdullah? Well – yeah. It’s true! He finds a genie, and the genie falls in love with the maid-of-all-work, Rose, and the dog falls in love with the uptight aunt, and everything…
1 CommentI like it when it rains on a weekend that I don’t have any outside plans. This weekend, I curled up in my comfy chair and read Blackbriar. (Originally I opened up my blinds, too, so that I could see the rain, but there was THE HUGEST BUG EVER on the outside of my window, seriously, it was as big as a grown hummingbird, and it wouldn’t go away when I rapped on the window, so I closed the blinds again and just enjoyed the sounds of the rain.) Ella was right. It is indeed extremely Gothic. Fifteen-year-old Danny and…
4 CommentsI got books in the post from the fantastic Ella at Box of Books! Not only was this a lovely surprise, but it was all wrapped up in thick brown paper. I defy you to find a nicer packaging for books than thick brown paper. And what wonderful books to get in the mail! Changing Planes, a collection of stories by Ursula LeGuin in which a central character called Sita is able to go to different worlds. Gorgeous cover, and the illustrations in the book are wonderful – I’m looking forward to this! A book by William Sleator called Blackbriar…
8 CommentsI was just saying the other day that I never find good graphic novels to read by myself. So today I was at the library and I decided I was damn well going to learn how to be independent and find a good graphic novel all on my own. Yeah, and review it here, so other people would know about it too. Mother Come Home is a graphic novel about a seven-year-old boy called Thomas Tennant who loses his mother, and how he and his father deal (or don’t deal) with the loss. I said in my review of The…
3 CommentsA slim friendly book about elements that make children’s books appealing to kids. I read about it on Nymeth’s blog, and I of course had to go get it from the library straight away. I like reading books about books. Jerry Griswold mentions a number of things in books that appeal to little children – snugness (yessss!), scariness, smallness, lightness, and aliveness. I don’t think this is a comprehensive list, but I liked what he said about these five things. Especially the snug section – I loved reading about people who had found their own little places to go. There…
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