Blog Award: One Lovely Blog Award

Thank you to Jo at Once Upon a Bookcase for giving me the One Lovely Blog Award. I really appreciate it!

Rules:
Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

15 is quite a list but here goes...

1. A Bibliophile's Bookshelf
2. All About {n}
3. Library Queue
4. The Literate Housewife Review
5. Melissa's Bookshelf
6. Nomadreader
7. lucy was robbed
8. Terra Garden
9. the epic rat
10. Unmainstream Mom Reads
11. Wrighty's Reads
12. Peeking Between the Pages
13. Rhapsodyinbooks's Weblog
14. Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog
15. Cafe of Dreams

These are all fantastic blogs that I follow regularly. I hope you will take some time to check them out.

Benny & Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti

Title: Benny & Shrimp
Author: Katarina Mazetti
Translator: Sarah Death
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: July 2009
Format: Paperback, 209 pages
Age Group: Adult

Benny and Shrimp are two lonely adults who meet in the cemetery. He tends his parents' heavily decorated grave while she sits on a bench attempting to mourn her husband. Can the dairy farmer and the librarian make a life together when sparks start to fly? Or are their lives too far apart to bring them together for more than a short affair?

Benny & Shrimp was originally published in Sweden and has been an international hit. I can certainly see why. I greatly enjoyed this quirky tale of love between people with such different perspectives on life. One of the things that really made this book work for me was that the chapters alternated between being told by Benny and being told by Shrimp. This really lets the reader get the entire story instead of just one person's side. The chapters were also quite short which made Benny & Shrimp a fast read for me.

Although the characters' emotions run high, I did not feel them the way I have felt the level of emotion in other books. I felt more like an outside observer, rather than becoming overly engaged in the story. I think the observing really is the point though as the book examines one relationship in quite a detailed manner. The author has taken the story farther in a second book but I do not think that one has an English translation yet.

Have you read Benny & Shrimp? I would love to hear your thoughts on the book. Please leave a link if you have reviewed it on your blog. If you haven't read this one, would you like to?

Thank you to Caitlin, at FSB Associates, for sending me another wonderful book to review.

The Sunday Salon October 25, 2009

Last week actually turned out to be a pretty good reading week for me. I completed Armageddon's Children by Terry Brooks and then I read The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel in two days. It is really rare for me to get through a book that quickly these days but the format combined with my enjoyment of the story made it a quick read.

This week I'm hoping to read Benny & Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti, although I haven't started it yet. I would love to start it today but I think grocery shopping, laundry, and other household chores are going to take most of my day.

A recent post over at J. Kaye's Book Blog discussing writing book reviews has me thinking about my reviews and if the information that I am providing is meeting the needs of my readers. I would love some feedback - what do you like to see in book reviews? Is the information that I provide at the top of each review sufficient or would you like me to include the ISBN as well? I have been trying to write my own little book blurb - are those working or would you rather see the blurb from the back of the book or listed on Amazon? While I am not going to totally change how I write my reviews (because then it just wouldn't be MY review :-) ), I want my reviews to be as user-friendly as possible. Please let me know your thoughts on writing book reviews, I'd love to hear them!

The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel

Title: The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship
Authors: Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel
Publisher: Polhemus Press
Publication Date: October 15, 2009
Format: Hardcover, 363 pages
Age Group: Adult

Lilly and Valerie grow up as the best of friends until college when everything changes. Twenty-six years later, after the death of Valerie's mother, the two attempt to reconnect only to discover that time has not healed any of their wounds. When Lilly's father dies, will Lilly and Valerie finally make peace with their past or will a new secret destroy their friendship forever?

The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship is mainly told in emails and letters with lots of recipes included. I have never read a novel with this format before and I was pleasantly surprised by it. The letters provided insight into Lilly and Valerie as each of them told their side of the story. The authors did a great job channeling the strong emotions of both the main characters. When Lilly and Valerie attempt to reconnect after the death of Valerie's mother, I was shocked at how quickly they angered with each other and how fast they both started blaming what happened on anyone other than themselves. The letter format also made this book a fast read for me. I was able to read a few letters and then put the book down if I needed to do something else and it was easy to pick up right where I left off.

Lilly and Valerie were very different characters and I wonder if they would have remained friends for so long if their families were not closely tied together in other ways. The creation of the recipe club seemed to give them some common ground when they would have otherwise gone their separate ways. There are definitely some recipes shared by the characters that I want to try!

The third section of this novel threw me off for a little bit as the writing switched back to a more traditional narrative. In reading the letters between the girls, I felt like a part of their recipe club and that I actually knew each of them. The change in style felt like it pushed me back to the outside as a mere observer of the action. For me, the change in style also lessened the emotional impact of that section of the story, which is actually quite an important bit.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship and I am looking forward to trying out some of the recipes.

Thank you so much to Caitlin at FSB Associates for sending me an advance review copy of The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship.

Armageddon's Children by Terry Brooks

Title: Armageddon's Children
Author: Terry Brooks
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication Date: January 1, 2006
Format: Hardcover, 371 pages
Age Group: Adult
Series: The Genesis of Shannara (Book 1)

I have so many books in my personal library to read and it seems that I will never get enough time to finish them all. I cannot believe Armageddon's Children by Terry Brooks has been sitting on the shelf for so long and I just got to read it for the first time!

The first books of Terry Brooks that I ever read were the Kingdom of Landover books and from there I moved to the Shannara books. I have really enjoyed reading the various series set in Shannara over the years. Reading those stories, it was very easy to forget that Shannara takes place in the future after some catastrophic event nearly wipes out humans and technology. In the Word and the Void series and the Genesis of Shannara series, Brooks returns to the beginning of the Shannara story. When I first heard about the Word and the Void series I was actually not interested in reading it because it sounded so different from the Shannara books and I didn't realize that it was a related series. The Genesis of Shannara series bridges the gap between the Word and the Void series and the rest of the Shannara books.

Armageddon's Children is full of action from the very first sentence. Every main character is in danger and has a battle to fight just to survive much less accomplish the task they are destined to carry out. The demons and once-men control much of the world and take joy in slaughtering and enslaving humans. Much of the human population has taken refuge in compounds, although a few have taken their chances on the streets. Some have been permanently altered from exposure to unnatural toxins and radiation.

It is in this ruined world that two remaining Knights of the Word continue to fight against the Void in a futile effort to save mankind. A street kid named Hawk tries to keep his chosen family safe from the dangers that lurk around every corner even as he dreams of the day he can lead them to safety. Hidden away from the humans, the elves watch the destruction of the world and argue among themselves whether or not to even become involved in the battle.

Although it is not necessary to have read the Word and the Void series before reading Armageddon's Children, I believe it would be helpful. The events in that series lay the groundwork for the Genesis of Shannara trilogy and characters and events from that series are mentioned in this one.

Terry Brooks keeps the story moving at a fast pace and conveys the various emotions of each character strongly. With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, I'm eager to start on the next book in the series, The Elves of Cintra

2009 Reading Challenges

1st in a Series Challenge