I had a good haul from the library today. I ran out to do errands this morning, which include PO, bank, Dollar Store, Grocery Store, and library. I go out once per week. It is because I am so bare bones on my budget the gas in the car is just about the only personal expenditure I have wiggle room on. So I don't hop in the car and zoom off at will. In summer I go out once per week and this really saves a lot on gas!
I got The Big Year:A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik. It is a recommendation that fellow blogger and wonderful artist Beth Stone made over at Beth Stone Studio. Her recommendation was actually of the movie that the book was made into. She said that "It's a pretty low-key movie about birding starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. With that trio, you'd think it would be a slap-stick comedy, but it's really not. It has a few "chuckle" spots, but overall, it's just a mellow, feel-good movie about birdwatching." Beth is a Christian woman and it's good to hear that there is a nice, clean movie out there. I'm looking forward to reading the book and then finding the movie to watch. And you all know how I feel about birds already. Love them!
I also checked out Incendiary: A Novel by Chris Cleave. The blurb states- "Living hand to mouth in London's East End, the unnamed mother's life is shattered when her policeman husband (part of a bomb disposal unit) and four-year-old son are killed in the stadium stands" by an al-Qaeda terrorist attack. Throughout the book she reveals the desperate sadness of a broken heart and a working-class life blown apart. So it's a light summer read, then.
In the pile is The Darlings by Cristina Alger, "A sophisticated page-turner about a wealthy New York family embroiled in a financial scandal with cataclysmic consequences." Here is almost the whole reason I picked up the book. At the end of a hyper-hyperbolic synopsis, the last lines goes like this- "The Darlings offers an irresistible glimpse into the highest echelons of New York society-a world seldom seen by outsiders-and a fast-paced thriller of epic proportions." It is a debut novel "of epic proportions!" Quite a feat for a debut novelist to manage those heights right off the bat. I mean, it's epic as in the world's best and longest selling book, the Bible. Or of the world's most famous and one of the longest epic books, War and Peace. Or the world's most romantic epically sweeping book, Dr Zhivago. Or a true epic as defined by Webster's dictionary, "a long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds" ... like Homer's Odyssey! Therefore, since The Darlings is a book of epic proportions, as august as the aforementioned, I have GOT TO READ THIS book about the rich guy in New York!
And because I didn't like the new Sherlock Holmes book House of Silk all that much and I am STILL WAITING for the 6th novel in the Barker and Llewellyn detective series (hear that Will Thomas?) I checked out another gritty Victorian whodunit, The Poe Shadow. "Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe’s."
The guy must have done a good job, because Poe is renowned now. I crack myself up. All sarcasm aside, Poe did have a terrible reputation when he died and his death was of very mysterious circumstances, the likes of which are not known today.
Last, I got a non-fiction book called Art Explained. Because, well, sometimes I need someone to explain art to me.
What book has your bookmark in it these days?
1 comment:
Hey, thanks for the links! I'm going to have to read "The Big Year" too - although the movie is great by itself. I guess it's based on the guys in the book, but the details have been changed. I definitely need to check it out though. I just started a book called _At Home_ by Bill Bryson, and so far, it's really interesting. It's a history of how our homes came to be what they are today, but he covers pretty much everything from the Black Plague to the Industrial Revolution. It's completely fascinating. He's writing from a secular perspective, so of course, you have to take some of it with a grain of salt (for instance, his comments about the "Stone Age"), but so far, I'm really enjoying it.
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