Good Reads

Whose First Book Is Being Released April 10th?

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

It’s Ame Dyckman! Boy + Bot is Ame’s first picture book, published by Alfred A. Knopf and illustrated by well known children’s book illustrator, Dan Yaccarino! It’s being released Tuesday, April 10th, and Ame has been beyond busy getting ready for the launch. She and her husband just finished creating her first book trailer – and it’s appearing on the Watch. Connect. Read blog, along with Ame and Dan Yaccarino interviewing one another, or you can view the trailer alone below.

When I asked Ame why it wasn’t on her own web site or blog, she told me she had been inundated with over 200 tweets in the last 24 hours and was just trying to keep up!  She has already appeared on a couple other blogs and will be on another tomorrow, plus she is in the process of setting up a Facebook page for herself AND another for Boy + Bot. Wow. Go, Ame!! (So … is this what we aspiring-to-be-published authors and illustrators have to look forward to? I’m exhausted already!)

As for Boy + Bot, it’s bound to be a hit with very young readers, and is a story of friendship between a boy and his red robot, the discovery of how they’re alike and how they’re different, and can they make their  friendship work when it hits a snag? You’ll have to buy the book and find out, but in the meantime, you can check out the trailer right here.

Congratulations, Ame!

The Package Arrived — It’s Books!

/ still a dreamer

Surprise! It’s books! Hardcover, too!

With the annual Hunterdon County Library Book Sale just around the corner, (details here, if you want to go – you won’t be sorry), and with a decent size stash still waiting to be read, I almost … that’s almost, but not totally … don’t feel entitled to purchase brand new books. But alas, it is one of two indulgences I’ve allowed myself in this life, (the other being music), and so the books arrived. If you are reading this post currently, you will see them to the right. If you visit this blog regularly, you will note there are always two books there – one a novel, be it adult, YA or MG, and the other a book of an enlightening, metaphysical/spiritual nature. And so goes my reading. Picture books go too fast to even warrant a spot, but I may write about them here.

How to Save A Life kept popping up at me from different places and sounded terrific, so I got it. More on that when I read it. And then, while flipping channels last week, I came to a halt on Wayne Dyer and a PBS special, Wishes Fulfilled, also the title of the book. He is so on the money, and who doesn’t want their highest good manifested? So I’m starting on that, too.

But first, a word on Click. While waiting for said package to arrive, I felt drawn to read this again. It is a continuing story told chapter by chapter by different authors from the USA and the UK, each highly accomplished. It’s a great concept with each new chapter a revelation that could only result in the story being told this way. It starts off with Linda Sue Park, and then continues Chapter 2* with David Almond, one of my favorite authors. His chapter was so amazing and magical, I could have stopped right there. But I’m more than halfway through and want to enjoy the rest before I start my new choice.

In addition to these wonderful authors bringing the tale of Grandpa Gee, photographer and worldwide traveler, his family and those he encounters in his journeys to life, they have also contributed their book sale proceeds from Click to Amnesty International to save a few lives themselves.

*Here is a quote from Chapter 2 of Click by David Almond:

“I’m Annie Lumsden, and I live with my mum in a house above the jetsam line on Stupor Beach. I’m thirteen years old and growing fast. I have hair that drifts like seaweed when I swim. I have eyes that shine like rock pools. My ears are like scallop shells. The ripples on my skin are like the ripples on the sand when the tide has turned back again. At night I gleam and glow like sea beneath the stars and moon. Thoughts dart and dance inside like little minnows in the shallows. They race and flash like mackerel farther out. My wonderings roll in the deep like sails. Dreams dive each night into the dark like dolphins do and break out happy and free into the morning light. These are the things I know about myself and that I see when I look in the rock pools at myself.”    — David Almond

On Finishing A Book

/ still a dreamer

Are you a book finisher? By that I mean, once into a novel, even if it isn’t fabulous or totally grabbing your interest, are you the person that will finish the book, always hoping it will get better?

Now I’m not talking about reading the first 10 pages and putting it down when you realize this isn’t for me or this isn’t the time for me to read this book. I mean when you’re well into the book, having read the premise on the book jacket or elsewhere and you truly believe that this should be a great novel. Or it’s by an author you really like.

Well, I’m a book finisher. Sometimes I plod along, absolutely sure the story will suddenly take a turn for the better. Much of the time it doesn’t, or it gets really good in the last 2 chapters. (Happily, I don’t choose books like this very often.) But sometimes I am rewarded for my pushing through a slow beginning and what seems to be a meandering first third to half of the book. Such is the case with Angel Landing by Alice Hoffman.

I find Alice Hoffman to be a brilliant writer, and she’s one of my favorite authors. That’s why I picked up this book last year at the library sale. But I must tell you, this one was slow going for me. At first. The initial unfolding of the relationship between Natalie and Carter, which was clearly lacking, didn’t intrigue me; nor did Natalie’s lack of interest and lack of proficiency in being a social worker; nor did the issue of a nuclear power plant in a north shore Long Island town. Carter’s group, Soft Skies, protests the plant and its inherent dangers, which explodes soon thereafter. Even when Michael Finn, a complex protagonist who may be the cause of the explosion, and perhaps the most interesting character, enters the picture, I was still not sucked in as I usually am by Hoffman’s novels.

But somewhere along the line, Alice Hoffman works her magic, and these ordinary people become increasingly 3-dimensional, and their pain and insecurities and the directions of their lives start to matter. Natalie’s Aunt Minnie is an endearing character, soon appreciated for both her genuine compassion for the people in the nursing home where she works and for her straight forward, common sense attitude towards life. Michael Finn, battling a lonely and painful past, soon draws us in. And then there is Michael Finn’s alcoholic and abusive father, Danny Finn.

So yes, I plodded a bit through the first third or so of this novel, not believing that Alice Hoffman would let me down. And she didn’t. On this one, I’m glad I’m a book finisher. Are you?

Water, Water Everywhere and Not A Drop to Drink

/ still a dreamer / 4 Comments

Forgive me if I’ve misquoted that; it’s only a lead-in anyway … to books, books, and not a page to read. But that wouldn’t be true. I’ve got plenty of books to read. I just can’t seem to figure out what I want to read.

Do you go through periods like this? You want to read a good book, but it seems no matter which one you pick up, its not the right one for right now? That’s where I am. Restless Reader. I’ve turned back to my selection of yet-to-be-read books from last Spring’s book sale and perused other bookshelves and nothing is jumping out at me. I want the book that reaches out, grabs me and sucks me in with fast moving prose and a faster moving storyline. And, of course, it must be very well written. One of the books that comes to mind like that was White Oleander. I need one of those.

So I grabbed this book, Ghosts by John Banville, as the jacket flap reminds me of why I picked it up in the first place. Who can’t get into a good ghost story? We shall see.

And I now have a backup plan. If this isn’t the one, I’m heading over to my local library and getting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Just saw that in the movies and it was one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. The book can only be better, right? But for now, I’m pinning my hopes on Ghosts.

 

A Way with Words – Heart Songs

/ still a dreamer

I’m wondering if E. Annie Proulx is an acquired taste. She is unique among authors I’ve read for any number of reasons, perhaps most importantly … does she have a way with words!

I first met Ms. Proulx when I read The Shipping News, and found her style engrossing, challenging to read, and simply like no other. I most recently picked up her collection of short fiction, Heart Songs. She writes about people we average Americans rarely, if ever, see, in this case the longtime residents of rural New England, whose lives and lifestyles are coming into sharp collisions with wealthier newcomers embracing the “country life.” In this regard, reading about the people in these short stories was something akin to watching the movie Winter’s Bone, i.e., seeing for the first time how a segment of Americans live, people of whom we generally have no knowledge. It’s fascinating, sometimes disturbing and frightening, sometimes heartbreaking. Yet Proulx is not asking for pity or judgment for her characters. They are who they are; she is simply telling their stories.

But oh! her way with words … “Often his razor tongue stropped itself on the faults and flaws of his dead parents …”; “The corpse of a less-wise raven lay beneath a bush like a patch of melted tar. The fox rolled in the carcass, grinding his shoulders into it. He got up, shook himself and continued his tour, a black feather in the fur of his shoulder like a dart placed by a picador.“; ” … his face dark as a smoked ham, eyes like bird’s eyes, orange and inhuman.”

Whose writing could fail to be enlightened by an author whose use of words is so intense, lyrical, and magnificently descriptive. If, in each thing we read, we hope to not only gain from the enjoyment of the story itself but also some wonderful addition to our own skills as writers, then E. Annie Proulx’s Heart Songs speaks volumes on how to say what we mean. And how to say it with an incomparable richness.