Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult was chosen as a filler when it took longer to set up our voting than we expected.

I had my mail held while I was away in Chicago last week.
Today, when the mail was delivered, I had the most wonderful little mound of parcels some of which included books (of course).

I received two BookCrossing books:

• Among the Belivers: An Islamic Journey by V.S. Naipaul
• What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin

50. The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen by Mitali Perkins
49. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
48. A Mortal Glamour by Chelsea Quinn Yarbo
47. River Secrets by Shannon Hale
46. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
45. Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith
44. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

I recently read Jodi Picoult's most recent novel, Nineteen Minutes.

Note: This blog post does not contain any spoilers, but it also doesn't include my full reaction to the book. If you'd like to read it all, check out my BookCrossing journal entry.

It's that time of the month again. My book club met today and we discussed Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Richard Mayhew is a young businessman with a good heart and a dull job. When he stops one day to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk, his life is forever altered, for he finds himself propelled into an alternate reality that exists in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations below the city. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.

It seems like I've been waiting forever to finalize and post this list, but the wheels of democracy turn slowly...

In any case, it looks like we have a nice variety of books on the schedule and I'm looking forward to discussing them.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
To be discussed: February 27, 2008

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
To be discussed: March 26, 2008

Room with a View by E.M. Forster
To be discussed: April 23, 2008

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
To be discussed: May 28, 2008

Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

I picked up Truth and Beauty and Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face around the same time after hearing that they were both fantastic books and should be read together. I read Autobiography of a Face in February (see this post), but only just got around to reading Truth and Beauty this month.

This month my book club tackled its first classic,
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

I don't think I'd ever read A Room with a View before (the only Forster I remember reading is A Passage to India). I knew we'd have a good discussion, though, especially after I saw the new film adaption that aired on PBS earlier this month.*

We did indeed have a nice discussion. We talked about the novel as well as the 1985 and 2007 films. We discussed Forster himself, the subtleties and class distinctions in the novel, our feelings about the various characters, the proper pronunciation of "Beebe", and the novel's possible connection to Howards End among other things.

Heather/errantdreams tagged me for a meme today. I'll answer some of the questions, but I'm also going to create a few of my own to keep the meme on topic for the blog.

What are five places where you have lived?
In order: Ossining, NY; Uelsen, Germany; Chicago, IL; Athens, Greece; Ann Arbor, Michigan

What are five jobs you have had?
Babysitter, Lifeguard, Shoe salesperson, Intern, Archivist

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order)

- Work on a Digital Library Collection proposal
- Pick out some finding aids for Isadore to encode tomorrow
- Read Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett
- Research Louis Kahn
- Work on the J.J. catalog

Five books I've most recently completed:
- The Bride Stripped Bare, Anonymous
- The Illustrated Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte/Dame Darcy
- Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Sally Lockhart Trilogy by Philip Pullman
I recently read Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart trilogy: The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, and The Tiger in the Well. The Tin Princess is a related title; I have it on Mt. TBR. Set in Victorian England, the books tell the story of Sally and her various adventures as an independent woman. Chock full of mystery, they offer murder, kidnapping, and an occasionally happy interlude.

I received a lovely bunch of books over the past few days. In fact, I feel like I'm swimming in knitting books - not that that's a bad thing ;)

Some wishlist books for Christmas:

• Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles by Jeanette Winterson (I've been trying to collect all the books in The Myths series);
• The Best of Interweave Knits: Our Favorite Designs from the First Ten Years (I think I'm going to use some of my Christmas money to get a subscription to Interweave Knits);

Today may be Google's 9th birthday, but September 27th was mine long before.

I haven't received all my presents yet, but I have gotten a few books so far.

• Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or Why Can't Anybody Spell? by Vivian Cook
• Firestorm by Rachel Caine, the fifth book in the Weather Warden series (now I have a great excuse to buy books 2-4)
• Piratica by Tanith Lee

I was looking forward to this month's book club discussion. Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair was on the agenda and I knew that most of my book club members hadn't been exposed to Fforde or Thursday Next before. The Eyre Affair is the first book in one of my favorite series and I was wondering how everyone would react to Fforde.

My initial reaction to The Eyre Affair:
"I'd heard great things about this series and I was not disappointed. I loved the literary references, the crazy 'history,' and the all-round zaniness of the book. Not to mention the dodos!" (journal entry 10).

Two more birthday books arrived in the mail yesterday:

- Go to Sleep, Russell the Sheep by Rob Scotton
I happened across this book by accident and put it on my wishlist because it was just too cute.

- Domiknitrix: Whip Your Knitting Into Shape by Jennifer Stafford
Very cool book. There's a hat in here that I really want to knit.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Last month's book club selection was Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. I actually didn't finish the book in time for our discussion on Wednesday (I only finished yesterday), but I was rereading and remembered enough that I wasn't going to worry about spoilers.

We had a full and lively discussion on the book, hitting on topics like
- who is the blind assassin referred to in the title
- how would we have reacted to the book if we were older and had lived through more of the time period described in the book
- who was responsible for Laura's death and way
- the fairy tale aspects of the book (this came from one of those sets of discussion questions put out by publishers and we completely disagreed with the question-author about the story being at all fairy tale-like)

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos... do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–-if any-–do you have in your library?

I can't say exactly how many since I don't have all my books cataloged in LibraryThing yet.

Let's see... I have style guides, Struck & White and Chicago (yes, I bought the new edition as soon as it came out) as well as APA (required for grad school) and MLA.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth.

Needing a book to read this evening, I plucked Speak off my BookCrossing bookcase (yes, I have a bookcase dedicated to BookCrossing books) almost at random. But, oh am I glad I did. What a wonderful, compelling book. After reading it, I can assure you that Speak deserves any award that it has received.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks' debut novel (she has since written March and People of the Book) follows two years in the life of a small English village (Eyam, Derbyshire). When an infected bolt of cloth carries the "seeds" of plague to Eyam in 1665, a visionary young minister convinces the villagers to quarantine themselves. In an effort to stop the spread of the contagion, the villagers sacrifice themselves and as the death toll begins to mount mistrust rears its ugly head.

The novel's narrator is a young widow named Anna Frith, one of the plague survivors. Anna is sympathetic and relatable despite the 300+ year time difference between readers and herself. Year of Wonders is the story of her village and its trials, but it is also the tale of her own self-awakening.

It's probably quite obvious that I haven't been getting a lot of serious (read: assigned) reading done lately. I've been a bit of an escapist and I've been drowning myself in quick, untaxing reads many of them series books. So here's a look at what I've been reading lately.

Maggie Sefton's Knitting Mysteries.
So far I've read the first three: Knit One, Kill Two, Needled to Death, and A Deadly Yarn. The fourth book in the series, A Killer Stitch, is next on my list (I'm going to start it right after I publish this post).

The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards

I've had The Secrets of a Fire King on my wishlist pretty much ever since I read The Memory Keeper's Daughter (read my post). Now that I've read it, I'm wondering why I didn't try to get my hands on a copy sooner. I loved the varied settings of the stories, Edwards' vivid descriptions, and her sympathetic characters. In this collection, Edwards is subtle and strong. Her words are mesmerizing. And, while there were some stories that I cared less for than others, there were none that I wanted to write off (which is rare in a collection, I think).

So, yesterday after work I got wrangled into going to the Scholastic warehouse sale. I didn't want to go. Last time I went I spent lots of money and our place is overflowing with books as it is. But, I did end up going and I was actually very good. I only bought five books (strangely enough they had computer games, though, and I ended up buying three of those for Russell).

The Artemis Fowl Files by Eoin Colfer.
I've actually read this book (a library copy), but I picked it up in order to complete our collection of Artemis Fowl books.

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale.

I've been really hard to please lately, so I guess that's why I'm so backlogged with my real reviews. So, here's my critical look at some of the books I've read recently.

Glass Houses by Rachel Caine

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga seems to be getting a good deal of press lately. I was introduced to the books by a friend before I'd heard any of the hype.

I read New Moon and Eclipse just this week, though I'd read Twilight in September.

Twilight has a very different feeling than the other books in the series so far. Maybe that's because Meyer didn't set out to write a series. In any case, when I read Twilight I liked the relationship between Bella and Edward, its slow build-up and all the difficulties inherent in it, but wasn't crazy about the violent, action-packed ending of the book. I had no strong feelings about the series, but I knew I'd read the other books when my friend got around to loaning them to me.

What's your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody "knows" those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, "Huh? Never heard of it?"

The Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman

I recently read the first three books in this superb series: City of Masks, City of Stars, and City of Flowers.

The series opener, City of Masks, is the story of fifteen-year-old Lucien Mulholland whose father gives him a beautiful journal to help him survive his chemotherapy treatments. When Lucien falls asleep holding the book, he travels to Bellezza, a Venice-like city located in a fantastical version 16th Century Italy. In Bellezza he becomes Luciano and learns that he is part of the brotherhood of the stravagante, wanderers between two worlds dedicated to protecting the separation of and balance between the worlds.

The Illustrated Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë’s sweeping Victorian romance is reborn through the striking illustrations of the inimitable Dame Darcy.

This month my book club will be discussing Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. What a perfect excuse to read The Illustrated Jane Eyre, which I've had on Mt. TBR since September 2006, and that's exactly what I did this weekend.

First of all, I should say that I'm pretty sure I'd never read Jane Eyre before. I thought I had, way back in high school, but now I think I'd only read Wuthering Heights (by younger sister Emily).

Right now I'm taking part in a series swap on BookObsessed.com. This is like a normal swap (explained in the swap FAQ), but with an offering of three books from a series (preferably the first three books in the series).

I'm offering Colin Cotterill's Dr. Siri Paiboun Mysteries:
1. The Coroner's Lunch (2004)
2. Thirty-Three Teeth (2005)
3. Disco for the Departed (2006)