Book Embargo

Ah, Tammy Pierce. How I love you. I don’t love that new books aren’t coming out 5 a year, but as an adult, I must deal.

yeah, I’ve lived that.

I do love that she also loved Impossible by Nancy Werlin. It was a beautiful novel and its use of “Scarborogh Fair,” WOW. I don’t know any young adults who have read it, just other staff from my shop, but yeah, everyone should read it.

Just a general, “make sure you have read some Tamora Pierce lately” blog post, with some fabulous Impossible thrown in for variety.

Happy Monday!

Tags: books, fiction, garfunkle, hardcover, impossible, nancy werlin, paperback, pierce, scarborough fair, simon, tamora pierce, tortall, werlin, young adult

So, read Breaking Dawn this weekend! Stephenie Meyer really knows how to draw you in. Everyone was amazed at how fast I read that book, but I could NOT put it down.

Out of the four Twilights, I would not say this is my favorite… and I did not like the name choices in it (if you have read it, you understand), BUT I did like the story. There were twists and turns I could not and did not even GUESS or think about.

My problem. Where was the violence? People have been saying that there was excessive violence… but except for one gory scene (which was violent, but not in the same way the end of Eclipse was violent), yeah… not a lot. At the end especially I was expecting more violence, and was a little surprised the way it turned out.

Unlike some others, I did REALLY like this book. I thought that the ending was sweet, the little things that happened, the big things that happened, Bella’s discoveries about herself and I loved the side-tracking and preparation she made. No where NEAR enough Alice though.

That is actually my only problem with the Meyer books. The plot lines get so exciting that you don’t get to kick back and hang out with the Cullens, or with Jake and Seth and Leah. Yeah I know BELLA gets to, but I want to TOO! So that is my opinion of Breaking Dawn.

I loved it, it was a great story, and if you want to be psycho mean, please stay away! But if you haven’t read this story YET (and you should of course), eventual comments may have spoilers. The discovery is as much fun as the destination.

Tags: bella cullen, bella swan, Book, breaking dawn, cullen, eclipse, edward cullen, hardcover, hybrids, jacob black, meyer, new moon, release, shape shifters, stephenie meyer, stepheniemeyer.com, twilight, vampire, werewolves

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle that EVERYONE has been raving about, really is worth it. David Wroblewski has written an AMAZING debut novel. It is the story of a boy and his family, and the dogs that they raise, and it is so much more than that.

Some one-two liners about how amazing it is:

A CLASSIC IN THE MAKING… The scope of this book, its psychological insight and lyrical mastery, make it one of the best novels of the year, and a perfect, comforting joy of a book for summer. — O Magazine, July 2008

The most enchanting debut novel of the summer… this is a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana…. Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down. — Janet Maslin, New York Times

Nothing quite compares to my experience of reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. This debut…. is one of the most stunning, elegant books I have ever read…. what can deservedly be called a great American novel. — Lisa Jennifer Selzman, Houston Chronicle

I am completely smitten…. The most hauntingly impressive debut I’ve read all year…. Edgar might be silent, but his story will echo with readers for a long time. — Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor

It’s the must-read of the summer… — People Magazine

The Great American Novel is something like a unicorn – rare and wonderful…. Yet every few years or so, we trip across some semblance of one…. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle… [will] leave you crying for more…. — Elle Magazine, June 2008

Grand and unforgettable. — Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World (cover review)

The best book I’ve read in a long time. It is a class apart—a 570-page literary novel that has as much emotional punch as anything I have ever read. — Michael Fraser, Publishers Weekly “Galley Talk”

And Sawtelle’s first and biggest supporter is Stephen King. He has done a great review:

“I flat-out loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Dog-lovers in particular will be riveted by this story, because the canine world has never been explored with such imagination or emotional resonance. Yet in the end, this isn’t a novel about dogs or heartland America — although it is a deeply American work of literature. It’s a novel about the human heart, and the mysteries that live there, understood but impossible to articulate. Yet in the person of Edgar Sawtelle, a mute boy who takes three of his dogs on a brave and dangerous odyssey, Wroblewski does articulate them, and splendidly. I closed the book with that regret readers feel only after experiencing the best stories: It’s over, you think, and I won’t read another one this good for a long, long time.
In truth, there has never been a book quite like The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I thought of Hamlet when I was reading it (of course… and in this version, Ophelia turns out to be a dog named Almondine), and Watership Down, and The Night of the Hunter, and The Life of Pi — but halfway through, I put all comparisons aside and let it just be itself.
I’m pretty sure this book is going to be a bestseller, but unlike some, it deserves to be. It’s also going to be the subject of a great many reading groups, and when the members take up Edgar, I think they will be apt to stick to the book and forget the neighborhood gossip.
Wonderful, mysterious, long and satisfying: readers who pick up this novel are going to enter a richer world. I envy them the trip. I don’t reread many books, because life is too short. I will be rereading this one.”

— Stephen King, author of Duma Key

Here is the NY Times article
Another review from the Chicago Tribune
Another from the International Herald, which is part of the Global NYT

And the creme-de-la-creme… The New Yorker…

I might just name my next dog Almondine, because if my dog is anything like her… I would count myself blessed. You only have to read to like this book. You don’t have to love dogs or Minnesota. Just give it a try, completely worth it.

Tags: breeding, david wroblewski, debut novel, dogs, edgar sawtelle, fiction, hardcover, new yorker, nytimes, sawtelle, stephen king, summer pick, wroblewski

I just finished Tethered by Amy MacKinnon. It was phenomenal. Truly phenomenal. I took an extra break so I could read more. I did not even log into my WiiFit because I was reading. Beautiful and heart-wrenching, and yeah, go read it right now!

The book description from the Random House webpage:

Clara Marsh is an undertaker who doesn’t believe in God. She spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their last baths and bidding them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. Her carefully structured life shifts when she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlor, desperate for a friend.

It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between the stead-fast existence of loneliness and the perils of binding one’s life to another.
About the Author

AMY MacKINNON is a former congressional aide whose commentaries have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, the Seattle Times, and on National Public Radio and This American Life. This is her first novel.

Available August 12th 2008 in Hardcover, and it will definitely be on my staff pick shelf. Worth the money to buy in hardcover. Definitely worth it

Tags: amy mackinnon, Book, child abuse, fiction, hardcover, mackinnon, mortuary, random house, tethered, under taker

First Marisa De Los Santos wowed us all with Love Walked In. In 2006, my manager deemed it the best book of the year.

I think that Marisa outdid herself with the sequel, Belong to Me.

It was beyond delightful. It has been a while since I have read Love Walked In, but I think I liked it more. I felt that there was even more depth to the Cornelia character. I loved how she solved problems, and I loved how accurate everything felt. De Los Santos writes about situations, and as I read it, I think… “wow, that is how I would react!”
It is a good feeling.

So go read it, and re-read Love Walked In again. It is a beautiful story.

Tags: belong to me, cornelia brown, de los santos, fiction, hardcover, love walked in, marisa de los santos, old movies, paperback

Ah, the joys of a great fantasy series.

Isn’t that a pretty shelf?
I have read the first three in the series. Starting with Wayfarer Redemption as an ADVANCE before the hardcover came out, and then waiting every year for the next two. I stalled between three and four and have yet to read the last three in the series. But I have them!

From Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of Dairy Queen,

The Wayfarer Redemption

Sara Douglass, et al. Grownup fantasy that kept me up until 4 AM on more than one occasion. Best to acquire the trilogy all at once, just to be safe. She continues after book #3, but you don’t need to.

So, that doesn’t say too many positive things on the last set, but either way, read the first one, AT LEAST. They are a great time and all are now available in paperback (at your local independent bookshop of course!).

Tags: catherine gilbert murdock, crusader, enchanter, fantasy, hardcover, paperback, pilgrim, sara douglass, science fiction, sinner, starman, tor, wayfarer redemption

A synopsis from LoveReading.co.uk

1867, Canada - As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man’s cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson’s Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime, or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a forgotten Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation and humour into a panoramic historical romance, an exhilarating thriller, a keen murder mystery and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, one of the books of the year.

A Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly,

The frigid isolation of European immigrants living on the 19th-century Canadian frontier is the setting for British author Penney’s haunting debut. Seventeen-year-old Francis Ross disappears the same day his mother discovers the scalped body of his friend, fur trader Laurent Jammet, in a neighboring cabin. The murder brings newcomers to the small settlement, from inexperienced Hudson Bay Company representative Donald Moody to elderly eccentric Thomas Sturrock, who arrives searching for a mysterious archeological fragment once in Jammet’s possession. Other than Francis, no real suspects emerge until half-Indian trapper William Parker is caught searching the dead man’s house. Parker escapes and joins with Francis’s mother to track Francis north, a journey that produces a deep if unlikely bond between them. Only when the pair reaches a distant Scandinavian settlement do both characters and reader begin to understand Francis, who arrived there days before them. Penney’s absorbing, quietly convincing narrative illuminates the characters, each a kind of outcast, through whose complex viewpoints this dense, many-layered story is told. (July)

And lastly, from Powell’s Books, the comment is what got me.

Rarely has a suspense thriller trod the path that Stef Penney has taken. Even as one waits with bated breath to find the killer, one gets sucked into yet another aspect of the novel — the dynamics of human relationships against the bleak picture of cold isolation! The reader’s prerogative to judge and condemn is taken away as the story unfolds to reveal the vulnerabilities of the human heart. Moments of intense sadness are overlaid by the immediate concerns of survival. This is one of those books that leave you feeling the end has no business to arrive so soon.

Now, my opinions:

All that said, it was a good book. All of the points that each of those sites bring up is accurate, and they do not mention that there are a few moments where you have to stop and say, “wow, I did not think we were going THERE.” I was not as enthralled as others who have read it. I LIKE HAPPY CHARACTERS! 1867 Canada does not lend itself to happy characters. But it was still a good book, definitely worthy of the read and it comes out in paperback on May 4th 2008. Look for it in your local independent bookshop then!

Tags: 1867, canada, fiction, fur, fur trade, furs, hardcover, murder, novel, paperback, penney, scalping, stef penney, tenderness of wolves.

I just finished this book tonight. Chancey of the Maury River is a great elementary novel, similar to Black Beauty. It is a book from the horse’s point of view. Chancey is a luckier beast than Beauty, and only has two homes in his life, but there is a period between his homes when he gets no care and ends up in pretty bad shape. His luck changes when he heads off to his second home, where he gets the care he needs, more much more importantly than that, he gets Claire. She is the girl that he was meant to be with, and their story was a joy to read.

The description from the Candlewick website,

On the night that Chancey is born, a “fire star” gallops across the sky, a signal that a great horse has entered the world. But it will take many years of slights and hardships before the orphaned albino will believe that the prophecy is truly meant for him. First he must find a home at the Maury River Stables and a girl named Claire who needs him as much as he needs her. Then, when his aching joints and impending blindness bring an end to their training together, he must start a new chapter as a therapeutic horse, healing people with wounds both visible and unseen. In the manner of a latter-day Black Beauty, Chancey’s observant voice narrates this absorbing story, filled with fascinating details of life at the stable and keen insight into equine instinct, human emotion, and the ineffable bond that connects them both.
Told through a horse’s eyes, here is the entrancing tale of an Appaloosa who finds a chance to renew his trust, and of the humans he helps to restore.

I will be bringing this book over to my stable for my instructor and all our riding students to read. They will all enjoy it, I am sure. Look for it on the shelf of your local independent bookshop in May of 2008.

Tags: abuse, animals, black beauty, Book, chancey, chancey of the maury river, claire, elementary, gigig amateau, hardcover, horse, juvenile literature

So I said there was no title but there was a date for the newest Paolini. Well now there is a title and the date was moved!

Welcome BRISINGER on September 20th (a Saturday) in 2008.

See you then!

Tags: 10/20/08, brisinger, christopher paolini, eldest, embargo, eragon, hardcover, inheritance, knopf, paolini, release date, september 20 2008

Light of the Moon is Luanne Rice’s newest novel. It takes place mostly in France, but our main female character is from Connecticut. I have never read anything by Luanne Rice before, and I enjoyed this experience. At our bookstore we have, what we call, “Calgon-Take-Me-Away” reading. This is definitely in that catergory. It is the story of a woman who goes to France, to visit the white horses of the Camargue.

The story begins with a vacationing woman being swept off her feet, literally. Beyond the entertainment value of this story, I believe that this book could help someone deal with grief in a way that books found in the grieving section never could. The death of Susannah’s mother, and the loss of Sari’s mother ties together in a way that could help people accept the grieving process. While some loss is dealt with though time like Susannah with her mother, other forms can be even more scarring. The manner in which Sari loses her mother, with the pain of the following accident, keeps her trapped in the grief of her five year old self, even though eight years have passed.

If you feel like reading a classic or a literary tome, this will not fit the bill. If you feel like being swept away by other people’s problems (in France no less), then check out Light of the Moon. It was a delightful story, but if you are anything like me, find the tissues BEFORE YOU START. It will make everything much easier. Look for this new novel at your local independent bookshop now!

Tags: books, camargue, connecticut, fiction, france, genre, grief, hardcover, horses, light of the moon, luanne rice, mother, rice, romance, white horses