Space Station Mir

I'm participating again in Top Ten Tuesdays, there are so many great topics coming up. This week's Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish , is Top Ten Books I Want To Reread. This is easy for me, as I want to reread every book that I've ever really loved. I haven't been focusing on re-reading much lately, but I'll list the books that I would most like to re-read in the near future. 1. Emily's Climb and Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery I already talked about how the TV series sparked my interest in going back and re-reading the books, and I can always use some L.M. Montgomery to make me feel better. 2. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer I wanted to re-read these as soon as I read them, but I was too swamped with reading for school back then. Now, I have a new reason to re-read them-I'm taking the GRE Subject Test in English Literature fairly soon. 3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins I know I read it very recently, but ...

This weekend is a bonanza for book lovers in the Washington DC/Baltimore region. Three book festivals were/are going on this week and weekend. The Fall for the Book Festival , sponsored by George Mason University and The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD, among others, had events all over the DC area this week. I attended the event with Amy Tan on Tuesday. It was a long drive for me, but well worth it. She read from her new book, The Valley of Amazement . She spoke in the voice of her character, an aging courtesan speaking to a younger virgin courtesan that she is training. It was as if the character took over her body, she assumed a tone of instruction, "I may be old, but remember, when I was 19, I was one of the ten beauties of Shanghai..." She kept glancing significantly at the audience. The older courtesan warns the younger that if she does not want to "wear out her insides," she will learn a song for every suitor and how to play on the emotions of every ...

43. Brisingr by Christopher Paolini I have a lot of mixed feelings about the Inheritance Quartet (formerly Trilogy). On the one hand, there's something there. There are interesting characters, a classic fantasy plotline, and a clear interest in exploring fantastical cultures like those of Dwarves, Elves, and "Urgals," a less sinister stand-in for Orcs or Trolls. On the other hand, a lot of it is obviously derivative (of Tolkien in particular) and events feel contrived to an extreme degree. I read Eragon after the movie came out in 2006 and liked it enough to read Eldest . I thought Eldest was much better in terms of language and organization, and I enjoyed the inclusion of Roran's story and point of view. Then, Brisingr came out in 2008. I went to the store and bought the book the week it came out. I started reading. I put it down. And I haven't picked it up again until now. I got through about the first third of the book and it just wasn't holding my a...

This week's Book Blogger Hop question is: “As a book blogger, how do you introduce yourself in your profile?” My Answer: I like to stick to the essentials so that people know the important things, but don't have to spend forever reading my profile. I mention my credentials (I'm a BA in English), a couple interests I have outside of books (travel and friendship) and my favorite types of books, so readers will know what type of books I am likely to review. I really am all over the place, but if I focus anywhere it is on 16th Century Brit Lit, 19th Century Brit Lit, and Science Fiction/Fantasy. I think it's better overall to err on the side of less information than more, because if anyone wants more, they can ask and I'm happy to answer!

42. Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery Recently, I discovered on Netflix that Canadian TV had produced a television series of Emily of New Moon. I had gobbled up the Anne of Green Gables books as a child and when those were done, I turned next to the Emily trilogy. What a treat! If Anne was exquisite, Emily was divine. Anne and Emily are both aspiring child writers growing up on Prince Edward Island, but the Anne stories are really about Anne's adventures and friendships more than her writing. Not so with Emily. While there are still delightful childish adventures, Emily is very much a book and a trilogy about a writer coming of age. Some chapters are written entirely in Emily's voice, in her Jimmy-books, notebooks given to her by her cousin Jimmy in defiance of her tyrannical Aunt Elizabeth. We get to see some of her poems and hear about the stories she is writing. One can only imagine that the more subdued Emily is a closer portrayal of L.M. Montgomery's own devel...

I know, I've really been getting on the book-meme train here. I'm going to try out Top Ten Tuesdays from The Broke and the Bookish . This week's top ten is in honor of Book Blogger Appreciation week: Top Ten Books I Read Because of Another Blogger My Answer: I think quite a lot of books I've read or want to read are because of other bloggers, but I'm not as good at keeping track of where these recommendations come from. Some aren't necessarily from the blogger I was reading, but from someone else in the Comments section or a link I followed. So, I'm only listing books I definitely know I read because of another blogger. 1. The Believers by Zoe Heller I know I read this because of the review I read at a Commonplace Blog . 2. A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin I continued reading A Song of Ice and Fire after Biblibio assured me it gets better. While I found the style similar, it was enjoyable to get to know the ch...

I've been trying to read more book blogs lately and I ran across the Book Blog Hop. This looks like a great idea to me and it will be a good way to find new blogs every week. So here's the link for this week's Hop and this week's question is: “Many of us primarily read one genre of books, with others sprinkled in. If authors stopped writing that genre, what genre would you start reading? Or would you give up reading completely if you couldn’t read that genre anymore?” My Answer: I wouldn't say I primarily read one genre of books, unless you count a category as wide as "fiction." I definitely read way more fiction than nonfiction. Other than that though, I read contemporary fiction, literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, classics, fiction from different periods and cultures, and occasionally drama and poetry. Once in a while I read nonfiction on a topic of scientific or sociological interest, or a biography. The only book...

41. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld As you know, I've been looking forward to this one for a while, especially after I snagged it recently in a bargain bin. Sittenfeld's Prep was a book that made a big impression on me and made me vow never to be like her passive-aggressive protagonist, Lee Fiora. American Wife has a much more likable protagonist in Alice Blackwell,the fictional counterpart of Laura Bush. The novel chronicles Alice's life at four addresses, her childhood home in Riley, Wisconsin, her bachelorette pad in Madison when she works as a school librarian and meets husband-to-be Charlie Blackwell (fictional counterpart of George W. Bush), her home with Charlie and their daughter in a Milwaukee suburb when she considers leaving him, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when she's re-considering her choice to stay silent on issues where she disagrees with her husband the President. Like Prep , this novel is written in retrospect and often re-counts events out...

Take the Quiz here! I think perhaps I am most like Elinor, though I'd rather be an Elizabeth Bennet or an Anne Eliot. What Austenian heroine are you?