Tony Time

OK, I'm not going to try to blog the Tonys or anything. But I am watching. And Angela Lansbury just won the award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. I'm so happy about that. I was pulling for Angela Lansbury. And she won for playing Madame Arcati in "Blithe Spirit," which makes me happy, too. I always wanted to play that role. Came close in high school, but got beat out by a girl named Peggy Jacobs who was a grade ahead of me and much weirder than I was, so a natural for the part. I played Ruth, a thankless task. Had to paint my entire body blue for the ghost scenes. Ah, the roar of the greasepaint!

OK, that's enough of that.

Oh, Liza Minnelli just won for something! That makes me happy, too. For some inexplicable reason.

Anyway, back to the show.

Friday Finds: 5 June 2009

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

Just two new finds this week. I think I may have first read about the Aldridge book in last week's New York Times Book Review. Not sure where I heard about the Waters.

The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes: The Art of Alan Aldridge. This one really takes me back. Alan Aldridge's book, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics was a favorite of mine back in the day. I remember spending hour upon hour just pouring over the artwork, picking out all the references. Great meditation material. Better than drugs.

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. A novel of psychological suspense. I've already got one of her other novels (Affinity) on my TBR list, and this one looks good, too.

Completed Challenge: Book Awards II

I've been putting off writing a wrap-up post for the Book Awards II Challenge, because I hadn't written reviews for all the books I read for the challenge. Well, I'm still working on that. But since the challenge ended June 1, I thought I should go ahead and say "that's that," even though I'll still be adding reviews over the next week or so.

I didn't have a set list when I began the challenge (see my original post); and I ended up reading several books that I hadn't thought about when I started out. Here's a list of what I read, with links to the reviews:

The Age of Innocence. Edith Wharton (Pulitzer Prize, 1921)
The Great Victorian Collection. Brian Moore (Governor General's Award, 1975)
Hotel du Lac. Anita Brookner (Man-Booker Prize, 1984)
The Master. Colm Tóibín (IMPAC Dublin Award, 2006)
The Way Through the Woods. Colin Dexter (Gold Dagger Award, 1992)
The Optimist's Daughter. Eudora Welty (Pulitzer Prize, 1973)
Ellen Foster. Kaye Gibbons (Sue Kaufman Prize, American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters, 1988)
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert C. O'Brien (Newbery Medal, 1972)
To Dance with the White Dog. Terry Kay (Outstanding Author of the Year, Southeastern Library Association, 1991)
Moon Tiger. Penelope Lively (Man-Booker Prize, 1987)

I'm a little reluctant to pick a "best book" from those – I enjoyed all of them very much. But The Age of Innocence is a book I'd been intending to read for many years, and it's turned out to be one of my all-time favorites – one I know I'll return to in the future.

This was a fun challenge – and one of my favorites. I want to thank Michelle at 1 More Chapter for hosting, and the many other participants for all those inspiring reviews. Now I just have to decide if I've got the nerve to sign up for Book Awards III.

Booking Through Thursday: Sticky

OK, first of all, I have to say I really don't like this sort of question. I prefer the kind you can ruminate on a bit. But this week's BTT topic asks us to do some quick thinking:

This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

And I guess if I'm going to play the game, I should follow the rules. So here are fifteen books that will "stick with me" forever. They're not necessarily my fifteen favorite books – just fifteen that made a significant impression. Many of them are books I read as a child – those early reading experiences are always some of the most enduring, I guess. Most of them I've read more than once. Oh, and I've listed them in alphabetical order – I couldn't possibly rank them in any other way.

• Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Lewis Carroll (I can't separate these two)
• Brave New World. Aldous Huxley
• The Catcher in the Rye. J.D. Salinger
• The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. Will Cuppy
• Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain
• Little Women. Louisa May Alcott
• Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry
• Orlando. Virginia Woolf
• Please Don't Eat the Daisies. Jean Kerr
• Rebecca. Daphne DuMaurier
• The Ship That Flew. Hilda Lewis
• Some Tame Gazelle. Barbara Pym
• Tales of Edgar Allan Poe
• The Turn of the Screw. Henry James
• Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte

Given another fifteen minutes, I could come up with fifteen more. In fact, I have a whole blog post about many of the books that will "always stick" with me – my "top ten" list. Since I wrote it a couple of years ago, I've read several more books that could be added to the list. Maybe it's time for the revised edition.

Tuesday Thingers: Twittering (A Day Late)

Yes, I know it's not Tuesday anymore. Well, not around here anyway. So I guess I'm a Wednesday Thinger this week. And the topic was:

Do you Tweet? If so, what do you like best about Twitter? What do you like the least? Do you have any Twitter applications or extras that you use frequently (TweetDeck, TwitterFeed, etc)? Do you belong to any of the Twitter groups on LT?

Actually, I don't tweet. I do have a Twitter account, but I don't tweet. I've got a lot of people and publishers that I'm following, but I don't tweet. Every now and then, I'll take a look at my Twitter account just to see what's going on, but I think I've only posted about three or four tweets in the whole time I've been there.

I think Twitter is a really interesting social phenomenon. But it just makes me feel inadequate and inactive. So many people doing so many interesting things, and also having the time and skill to tweet about it at the same time!

I sort of stopped all my Twitter / Facebook / MySpace activity when I realized I was reduced to posting things like "Joy is going to take a nap now." If you can't come up with anything more interesting than that, you really don't need to be broadcasting updates all over the internet.

Tuesday Thingers is hosted by Wendi of Wendi's Book Corner. If you'd like to see more or participate yourself, head on over to her blog and leave a comment.

Teaser Tuesdays: Dear Old Mom

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizB17 at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or participate yourself, head on over to her blog. And these are the rules: Grab your current read; Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given! Please avoid spoilers!

This week I thought I'd offer up a short snippet from the book I just finished reading – Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. This is the book's narrator, Claudia, talking about her mother (Gordon is her brother):

She had no opinions and she loved no one, was merely fond of a few people, including I suppose Gordon and myself. She acquired a Highland terrier which had been trained to roll over on its back at the command 'Die for your country!'; apparently Mother did not find this disturbing. [p. 21]

Okey dokey. Good book, although Claudia herself is a little hard to take at times. I'm working on a review which I hope to get posted later today, after I've done some blog hopping to read all those other teasers!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading This Week?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading This Week? is a weekly event hosted by J. Kaye of J. Kaye's Book Blog, "to list the books completed last week, the books currently being reading, and the books to finish this week."

Last week, I finished four books:

• Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
• To Dance with the White Dog by Terry Kay
• The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

This week, I'll be starting two books for the various reading challenges I'm involved in:

• Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand
• The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And I'm still making my way through a couple I started earlier this month:

• Dance of Death by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• Stone's Fall by Iain Pears

All of my current reads are fairly long books, so I expect to be sticking with them for a while. Also have a few more reviews I need to write in order to wrap-up the Book Awards II Challenge which ends today. That should be enough to keep me busy and out of mischief all week, wouldn't you think?