December's Book of the Month

Hello Everyone! I chose the picture posted above because it reminds me of reading to my daughter Mareena when she was little. Every afternoon until she was about eight or nine years old, we would take one of her books that she wanted to read or that she was reading and we would curl up together on my big bed. 

We would spend an hour or so reading a chapter of her book, and then take a nap together. Her absolutely favorite author at that time was an English author named Enid Blyton. Ahh, nice memories...

My picks for 'Books of the Month' will be decidedly more adult these days, but they will be from almost any genre. December's Book of the Month is: 

Julian's House by Judith Hawkes

Published as: Julian's House in November 1989

Publisher: Ticknor and Fields

Birth Name: Judith Hawkes

Born: 1949 in Memphis, Tennessee

Canonical Name: Judith Hawkes

Pseudonyms: None

Julian's House by Judith Hawkes was the one hundred and seventh book that I read in 2012. I have had this book on my TBR bookshelf since December 6, 2012. It took me three days to read this book and it is definitely a keeper for me.  

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Anne Tyler - Ladder of Years

110. Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler (1995)
Length: 326 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Started: 21 December 2012
Finished: 29 December 2012
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 21 November 2008
Why do I have it? I like contemporary fiction and Anne Tyler as an author. I also have read and enjoyed several books by this author in the past. 

"Baltimore Woman Disappears During Family Vacation" declares the newspaper headline. Forty-year-old Cordelia Grinstead is last seen strolling along a Delaware beach, wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To her husband, Sam and three almost-grown children, she has vanished without trace or reason. However, for Delia, who feels like a tiny gnat buzzing around the edge of her own family, "walking away from it all" is not a premeditated act but an impulse that will lead her into a new, exciting and unencumbered life. 

In a nearby town, Delia reinvents herself - getting her first job, finding her first place, and buying her first business suit. She becomes a serious and independent-minded woman with no ties. However, soon after Delia begins her exciting, unencumbered life, fresh responsibilities inevitably accumulate.

I really enjoyed this story. It drew me in completely and I was curious to see how the story would eventually turn out for all the characters. I give this book an A+! and look forward to reading more books by Anne Tyler.

A+! - (96-100%)
 
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

May You All Have a Blessed Christmas!

Christmas MySpace Graphics

I have to be honest with you all, what with all the recent violence that has occurred in the past months, both Mareena and I have felt that Christmas sort of sneaked up on us this year. We both usually are filled with the holiday spirit for the entire month of December, but this year we were filled with intense sadness for all the families who lost loved ones in such horrible circumstances.

Added to that sadness, Mareena and I are both suffering terrible bouts of the flu. Because neither of us could sleep very well, we found ourselves up and about at 4:45 A. M. It was snowing rather heavily, but we were so incredibly happy to have a white Christmas - I don't believe that we had one last year - that we didn't really mind the snow falling.

We opened our gifts at about 5:30 A. M. Mareena asked if we could say a prayer for all the people that were killed in Connecticut and elsewhere before we opened our presents. We spent an hour opening our gifts and then went back to bed for a while. Between us, we received some really amazing gifts, and all in all we enjoyed a quiet Christmas together.

  Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Molly Cooper - Classic Mysteries: A Collection of Mind-Bending Masterpieces

109. Classic Mysteries: A Collection of Mind-Bending Masterpieces by Molly Cooper (1996)
Length: 128 pages
Genre: Short Story
Started: 17 December 2012
Finished: 20 December 2012
Where did it come from? From Bookmooch
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 12 December 2012
Why do I have it? I like short stories and Molly Cooper is a new author for me.

This is actually a collection of six contemporary mysteries compiled by Molly Cooper and featuring stories from such famous authors as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Anton Chekhov, Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe and others. I have to say that none of the short stories included in this book were particularly memorable to me - except perhaps the last story The Oblong Box by Edgar Allen Poe. 

This is a children's book that Mareena thought I might like to read, however it certainly wasn't what I was expecting. I give this book a B+! 

B+! - (89-85%)
 
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Nina Bawden - Kept in the Dark

108. Kept in the Dark by Nina Bawden (1982)
Length: 170 pages
Genre: Contemporary Mystery
Started: 15 December 2012
Finished: 17 December 2012
Where did it come from? From Bookmooch
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 12 December 2012
Why do I have it? I like contemporary mysteries and had read and enjoyed The Ice House by the same author in the past.

Clara, Bosie and Noel don't really like the idea of having to live with grandparents they've never met. But Dad is in the hospital, and Mom has to stay near him. The children have nowhere else to stay. To make matters even worse, Grandfather is almost always angry and Grandmother dresses as though she were still a young actress. 

But when their half-cousin David appears, Clara, Noel and Bosie think life will improve. Even though they have never actually heard of David, he is young and seems like fun. Then they begin to notice that David is different - strange. One moment he's nice, and the next he's a bully. He says he is a genius but he acts like a child. And Grandfather and Grandmother seem to be afraid of him. Before long, the children realize they are trapped. David is keeping them all prisoners!

Overall, I think that I really enjoyed this book. For a children's book, it had just the right amount of mystery and menace, and was extremely well-written as well. It was perhaps wrapped up rather too simply for me, but it still kept me very much engaged and interested to find out what happened next. I give this book an A! and will continue looking for more books by Nina Bawden to read.

A! - (90-95%)

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Judith Hawkes - Julian's House: A Novel

107. Julian's House: A Novel by Judith Hawkes (1989)
Length: 381 pages
Genre: Horror
Started: 11 December 2012
Finished: 15 December 2012
Where did it come from? From Paperback Swap
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 6 December 2012
Why do I have it? I like horror and I had read and enjoyed My Soul to Keep by the same author in the past.

Sally and David Curtiss knew that the old New England house that they had just moved into was rumored to be haunted. However, the newly wed couple of parapsychologists were not scared at all. They had bought the house willingly and planned on studying it in order to find any evidence of supernatural activity.

Sally and David have also planned to work on some recent problems in their marriage. Sally is a somewhat reluctant psychic, and David is secretly jealous of her abilities. He has never had any psychic experiences himself, but desperately wants to have such an experience.

All of the Curtiss' hi-tech equipment shows absolutely no sign of any supernatural activity, but David is still convinced that Sally senses something in the house. As the Curtiss' continue to research the the house's strange and mysterious history, they both begin to experience unusual dreams that reveal the Curtiss' hidden fears and desires.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. The horror built slowly but surely, and the book was very well-written in my opinion. I never actually figured out what form the haunting took. At times it seemed to me that it was primarily possession that was at work, and then it seemed that the house itself had developed a personality throughout the years that was an evil influence in itself.

If I did have one problem with the book, it was that I found that the ending was slightly rushed and a little bit of a let down for me. Overall though, I give Julian's House: A Novel by Judith Hawkes an A! I will definitely be keeping this book to read again at some point.

A! - (90-95%)

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Maeve Binchy - Echoes

106. Echoes by Maeve Binchy (1985)
Length: 494 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Started: 4 December 2012
Finished: 11 December 2012
Where did it come from? From a Library Book Sale
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 1 June 2008
Why do I have it? I love Maeve Binchy as an author and have read and enjoyed several books by this author in the past.

Clare and David - divided as children by a rigid social code that branded her as shanty Irish and he as gentry class...brought together as adults by a passion that couldn't be denied. It was a desire that knew no class, no barriers, only the urgent hunger of two people destined to love and ready to defy any convention used by a world determined to keep them apart.

Even at fifteen, David Power knew eleven-year-old Clare O'Brien's dearest wish, to win a school prize. But it was years before Dr. Power's cherished only son recognized in the huckster's daughter his own heart's desire. Here in Castlebay, perched precariously on the seaside cliffs, the lines between them were clearly drawn. 

Clare's only hope is to leave the town where time stopped, propelled by scholarships to Dublin, fueled by her own drive and brilliance, far from the insular, gossipy world of Castlebay and those held in its thrall...Angela O'Hara - beautiful, insolated, a teacher trapped in the convent school, who risks everything to help Clare escape...Gerry Doyle, the town charmer who finds in Clare the woman he vows to have at any price...Caroline Nolan, the beautiful, rich outsider who comes to plunder.

For Clare, that was before the wild freedom of Dublin, and love. And David. Before fate drove them back to Castlebay, and the past. 

I truly enjoyed this book, as I usually do with any book by Maeve Binchy that I read. Reading Maeve Binchy's books, even rereading some of them, as this particular book Echoes was for me, is almost like returning to familiar places and visiting old but very familiar friends. I read Echoes for the first time maybe a decade to fifteen years ago and enjoyed this book then as well. I give this book an A+! and have placed it on my keeper bookshelf to enjoy again at some point in the very near future! 

A+! - (96-100%)
   
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Judith Hawkes - My Soul to Keep

105. My Soul to Keep by Judith Hawkes (1996)
Length: 416 pages
Genre: Horror
Started: 30 November 2012
Finished: 3 December 2012
Where did it come from? From Bookmooch
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 9 October 2012
Why do I have it? I like horror and Judith Hawkes is a new author for me.

On a mountainside in Tennessee lies an abandoned quarry, flooded long ago by an underground river. There, in the gathering shadows of a winter twilight, something happened to nine-year-old Nan Lucas. Something that left her daredevil playmate, Tucker Wills, dead and young Nan's mind crippled, unable to recall the horror.

Now a trendy Manhattan fashion photographer, Nan Lucas returns to Tennessee twenty years later, seeking to recover from a collapsed marriage. In the old farmhouse inherited from her grandmother, she begins to reorder her priorities - among them, forming a more solid relationship with her young son, Stephen. Common sense tells her that the imaginary playmate who consumes so much of Stephen's time is only a normal invention for a little boy who has no companion his own age.

Yet Nan cannot ignore her mounting fears that the mysterious figure Stephen calls 'Woody' is both very real and very dangerous. Joining forces with an old mountain woman who is rumored to possess the gift of second sight, she struggles to save Stephen from the shadowy companion who seems to be compelling him toward destruction. Yet as hope and time runs out, Nan comes to realize that she must somehow pierce the veil of her forgotten past and reach into the dark recesses of her memory to rediscover what happened at the quarry, on the long-ago winter night that Tucker Wills died.

I must say that I absolutely loved this book. I thought that it was extremely scary - but it was the subtle, psychological type of horror that I really enjoy. Judith Hawkes is a new author to me, and My Soul to Keep is the first book of hers that I have read. I believe that Judith Hawkes has written at least two other books, and I have placed both of them on my Wish List. I give My Soul to Keep by Judith Hawkes an A+! 

A+! - (96-100%)
        
Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight

Reading Wrap-up For November at Moonshine and Rosefire

 

Hello everyone out there and I hope that you all had a terrific reading month for yourselves. I am known as Rosefire around the Internet and this is my new personal reading blog. I originally posted my reviews over at my daughter's blog, Emeraldfire's Bookmark but am now in the process of transferring them all over to my own blog. My daughter makes blogging look like so much fun that I thought that I would try it out for myself! :)

Anyway, I started out November with 643 unread books lying around the house and ended the month with 632 books unread. All the books that I acquired this month came from authors, Paperback Swap and Bookmooch.

Let me try to break down the influx for you:

Rereads
- The Manhood Ceremony by Ross Berliner
- Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons

Changes to the TBR pile

Read from my TBR pile (Yes! I am a reading machine :))
- Scrolls of Darkness by Paul Henry Johnson
- Nothing Lasts Forever by Sidney Sheldon
- Cold Kill: The True Story of a Murderous Love by Jack Olsen
- Black Coffee by Agatha Christie and Charles Osborne  
- The Goodbye Summer by Patricia Gaffney
- Sliver by Ira Levin
- Emma Hamilton by Norah Lofts 
- The Secret Hour by Luanne Rice
- Low Country by Anne Rivers Siddons

Added to my TBR pile (oh well, you win some and you lose some! Not too bad though, I suppose:))
- The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
- The Political Trial of Benjamin Franklin: A Prelude to the American Revolution by Kenneth Lawing Penegar
- The Captains' Airline: Pushing Back From the Brink by Art Samson
- Heartbreak Hotel by Anne Rivers Siddons

Taken off my TBR pile and sent to a new home (Yay! Happy Dance! :))
- Coroner by Thomas T. Noguchi, M. D. and Joseph DiMona
- Hannibal by Thomas Harris
- The Manhood Ceremony by Ross Berliner
- Spectre Nightmares and Visitations by Pamela K. Kinney
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- Scrolls of Darkness by Paul Henry Johnson
- Practical Fish Dishes by P3 Publishing
- Blood Memories by Barb Hendee
- Where River Turns to Sky by Gregg Kleiner

Well, there it is...the breakdown! All in all, a very good reading month for me. Here's a further breakdown:

Books Read: 11
Pages Read: 3,479
Grade Range: A+! to A!

So, there you go! The reading month that was November. I hope that you all had an equally good reading month; if not a little better. :) See you all next month! :)

Till we Meet Again, Glow Brightly as Moonlight