2011 Edgar Awards

At their annual awards banquet last night, The Mystery Writers of America announced the winners of the 2011 Edgar Awards. The award for Best Novel went to Steve Hamilton for The Lock Artist. Hamilton won out over the likes of Harlan Coben, Tana French, and Laura Lippman to take the top prize.

The award for Best First Novel went to Rogue Island by Bruce De Silva, and Best Paperback Original was awarded to Robert Goddard for Long Time Coming.

The Buddy Files: The Case of the Lost Boy by Dori Hillestad Butler won the award for Best Juvenile, and Best Young Adult went to Charlie Price for The Interrogation of Gabriel James.

You can see the complete list of nominees and winners on the awards website, TheEdgars.com.

Best Princess Books Ever?

With all the hoopla over the royal wedding today, I was inspired to go exploring for books about princesses. So I headed over to Library Thing and discovered that these are the books most often tagged with a "princess" tag:

1. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
2. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale
3. The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
4. Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
5. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
6. The Paper Bag Princess by Robert N. Munsch
7. Princess in the Spotlight by Meg Cabot
8. The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
9. Princess in Love by Meg Cabot
10. Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
11. Princess in Waiting by Meg Cabot
12. The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine
13. Princess in Training by Meg Cabot
14. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
15. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
16. The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye
17. The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
18. Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
19. Once Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris
20. Princess in Pink by Meg Cabot

I haven't read any of those - obviously my royal-reading quotient is dismally low. But I've been curious about The Tale of Despereaux, so maybe I'll add that one to my TBR pile for this year.

How about you? Are you a lover of princess stories? Do you have a favorite? Or do you prefer more of the "real world" in your reading matter?

Teaser Tuesdays: The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (II)

This week my teaser lines come from The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, by Elizabeth Stuckey-French. I've already teased from this book once before. But I put it aside to read other things, and now I'm finally finishing it up. This excerpt comes from page 21, and refers to Suzi, the teenager who's just made the acquaintance of the book's main character, "Nance" (the radioactive lady):

...she liked to live dangerously, and, okay, it was entertaining, she had to admit, watching her mother getting angrier and angrier while trying not to,...but she had to make sure her mother didn't get too angry, or it would quickly stop being funny and start being scary. Whew. It was hard work being thirteen.

Yes, I know it must be, although my teenage years are a very distant memory. I suppose I must have been thirteen once upon a time, but right now that's pretty hard to believe.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Musing Mondays: A Family of Readers?

Musing Mondays is hosted by MizB over at Should Be Reading. And this week's question is: "Do the members of your family read? Do you think it was passed down to you? (Or, if you want you can answer this: Who do you think influenced you as a reader?)"

I do come from a family of readers, at least on my mother's side of the family. My mother read a lot, and her mother read, too. So I think reading for pleasure was definitely in my genes. But even though reading was common in our clan (my cousins turned out to be readers, too), I remember being known as the family bookworm.

I suppose the biggest influence on my reading life was my mother. She always kept me well supplied with books. But my aunt (her little sister) was a great role model, too. She loved whodunits, and she passed that love down to me. Every time she saw me reading a book, she would say "Is that a mystery?" - in an almost accusing voice, as though she just couldn't imagine why anyone would be reading anything else.

Top Wish-Listed Books

This week Library Thing, the online subscription cataloging service, lists these titles as the books most often "wish-listed" by LT members:

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
3. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
5. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
7. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
8. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
9. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
10. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
11. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
12. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
13. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
14. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
15. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
16. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
17. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
18. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
19. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
20. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
21. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
22. Animal Farm by George Orwell
23. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
24. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
25. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

The titles in red are books I've read. Looks like I've done a little better here than I usually do with these lists - I've actually read eleven of the twenty-five. Not quite half, but getting there. I've got several of the others on my own "wish list." And there are a couple (Time Traveler's Wife; Life of Pi) that I've started and then abandoned. Well, maybe not abandoned - just moved them to the "on hold" list.

Booking Through Thursday: Cover

This week's question over at BTT: CAN you judge a book by its cover?

And the answer is....

Of course not. I'd like to think you can, but we all know it doesn't always work that way. But I'm a sucker for a pretty or well-designed cover, so I also like to keep pretending that it does.

Actually, when I think of some of the books I've read, I realize the best thing about them was the cover.

And, just for decoration, here's a shot of one book I bought mainly because of the cover. Haven't read it yet, but I know in my heart of hearts that no book can ever live up to this:

2011 Pulitzer Prizes Announced

The Pulitzer Prize winners for 2011 have been announced (yesterday?), and these were the winners in the letters/drama categories:

• Fiction: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Knopf)
• General nonfiction: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner)
• History: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (Norton)
• Biography: Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow (Penguin Press)
• Drama: Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
• Poetry: The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)

As usual, I haven't read any of the award winners, and I have to say none of them really look like anything I'm going to be rushing out to buy. But I might look for Jennifer Egan's book at the library - I've been a little curious about that one, if only for the title.

Teaser Tuesdays: Art and Madness

This week my teaser lines come from Anne Roiphe's new memoir Art and Madness. I've just started the book so I don't know that much about it, but I've enjoyed the bit I've read. Seems like it should be a quick read, which is what I need right now. In this snippet from page 43, the teenaged Anne is out on a date with an Andover boy she's only recently met.

My date and I had both read The Grapes of Wrath. I knew there was sex in the book but I wasn't entirely clear about who did what with whom. I did not confide this to my date.

The book's subtitle is "A Memoir of Lust Without Reason." So far, I haven't encountered any lust or madness, or even art for that matter. And as for Steinbeck's epic, I don't really remember it being particularly sex-filled. Sounds like I wasn't paying close enough attention.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Well, last week I actually managed to finish a book for a change! I've been in a real reading slump for the last couple of months. Actually, though, I've been doing a lot of reading - blogs, magazines, journals, etc. Just not a lot of books. Which is not good, because I've got a lot of books that I need to read and that I want to read. So I've really gotta mend my ways soonish.

Here's the rundown:

• Finished last week:
  The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead, by Paul Elwork. Enjoyed this one quite a lot, and will try to get a review up later today.
  
  
  
• Reading this week:
  The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, by Elizabeth Stuckey-French. Started this one a month or so ago, but put it aside. Getting back to it now, and loving it so far.
  
  
  Art and Madness, by Anne Roiphe. Roiphe's new memoir is my latest Early Reviewer book from Library Thing (although the book has been out for a month now), so I need to get it read pretty quick.
  
  
  
• Next up:
  Haven't figured this out yet, but possibly something for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. A little fantasy sounds really good right now.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. If you want to let the world know what books you're going to be reading this week, head on over to her blog and leave your link. It's also a great way to discover new books and new blogs.

Teaser Tuesdays: The Time Garden

This week my teaser lines come from The Time Garden, Edward Eager's 1958 fantasy for young readers. It's the follow-up to his Knight's Castle, and I just finished reading both of them for the first time.

In the book, cousins Ann, Roger, and Eliza have discovered a magic garden that allows them to travel around in time and space, meeting both real and literary figures. In this snippet, they're in Civil War-era Concord, Massachusetts, meeting up with the characters from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. And I should probably add that if you've never read Alcott's classic, or don't know much about it, this might be a bit of a spoiler.

...in the book Beth dies, and there isn't much you can do about people who die in books except hope their days were happy though numbered, and that it was worth it. As for Amy, neither Ann and Roger and Eliza nor anyone else has ever yet forgiven her for marrying Laurie in the end, when anyone could tell he was meant for Jo! (p.87, paperback edition)

Well, I'm not so sure about that. If Jo had married Laurie, there never would have been a Little Men, and as a child I loved that sequel even more than Little Women.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Booking Through Thursday: Visual

This week, BTT asks: "So … the books that you own (however many there may be) … do you display them proudly right there in plain sight for all the world to see? (At least the world that comes into your living room.)....Or do you keep them tucked away in your office or bedroom or library or closet or someplace less 'public?' "

We live in a relatively small space. We have many, many books (many, many, MANY!). It would be very difficult to keep them all hidden away. Even if we wanted to.

We have books "displayed" on shelves, in cabinets, in closets, on tables, on chairs, on the sofa, on the floor. We do have books hidden away in storage lockers, too - if we had more space in the apartment, those books would be "displayed" here, too.

Actually, there are so many books around here, sometimes I feel like the books are displaying me!

Teaser Tuesdays: Lost Things

Once again, I'm still reading the same books I was reading last week. Same old story. So for this week's teaser lines, I'm using a book that's on my list of possible reads for the Once Upon a Time Challenge - John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things.

This bit comes very early in the book. And the David mentioned is the book's twelve-year-old central character whose mother has just died (it's a teensy bit more than two lines - sorry):

...David's mother would often tell him that stories were alive....they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world....Stories wanted to be read...They wanted us to give them life. (p.3, paperback edition)

This book has been on my TBR list for quite a while, but I've been reluctant to start it because it's a long one and as we know, I hold the record for being the world's slowest reader.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's been a few weeks since I posted a Monday reading list. Must admit I was in something of a reading slump all during March. But spring always makes me want to read more - new beginnings and all that - and I think I'm starting to get back on track here in April.

• In the last few weeks, I've only finished one book, Henrietta Sees It Through by Joyce Dennys. Most of my time has been spent sorting through the junk in our closets and storage spaces (we're trying to get the condo in shape to sell a little later this year), and starting a brand new blog.
  
  
  
• This week, I'm reading The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead by Paul Elwork. I'm not very far along, but so far I'm enjoying it. Nice and spooky, but not terribly frightening up to now.
  
  
  
• Haven't decided yet what I'll read next. But I've got several ARCs I should have read already, including Prophecy by S.J. Parris, and Iron House by John Hart. So I have much to choose from. Too much, probably - I think that might be one of my biggest problems!
  
  
  

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. If you want to let the world know what books you're going to be reading this week, head on over to her blog and leave your link. It's also a great way to discover new books and new blogs.