Unabridged Chick

Title:The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story
Author: Theodora Goss

Genre: Fiction (Contemporary / Academics / Romance / Medieval Literature)
Publisher/Publication Date: Quirk Books (1/17/2012)
Source: The publisher

Rating: Loved -- I was immediately taken with the book and the story within!
Did I finish?: Yes, in a snap!
One-sentence summary: The story of two lovers, told from the view point of each lover.

Do I like the cover?: Love it -- both the box cover and the covers for each story.

I'm reminded of...: Nick Bantock, Holly Phillips, Catherynne M. Valente

First line: Brendan saw her before she saw him, a girl about his own age, wearing a gray cardigan, faded jeans, and sneakers. from 'Brendan's Story'

Do... I love everything about the physical design of this book?: YES. This is the kind of book you'd see in a totally awesome dreamy historical or fantasy movie, where everyone wears the clothes I wish I could wear, and finds awesome artifacts I wish existed in m…

Title:Graveminder
Author: Melissa Marr

Genre: Fiction (Supernatural / Romance / Undead)
Publisher/Publication Date: William Morrow Paperbacks (1/17/2012)
Source:TLC Book Tours

Rating: Okay.
Did I finish?: I did, but just barely.
One-sentence summary: Twenty-something Rebekkah learns she's destined to mind the dead and keep them in their graves, and she fights with the obligation and implications of the job.

Do I like the cover?: No -- I loathe it. This is supposed to be Marr's debut in to adult fiction, and I feel like this cover places it squarely in YA fic. I vastly prefer the hardcover version.

I'm reminded of...: Kelley Armstrong, Lauren Groff

First line: Maylene put one hand atop the stone for support; pulling herself up from the soil got harder every year.

Did... I stay up until after midnight in order to finish this?: YES. The world-building was great, and I wanted to know more.

Did... I love the 'scrapbook' included at the end of the novel?: YES. I'm a big fa…

Seen both at Mailbox Monday -- hosted in January at At Home With Books -- and The Story Siren, my Mailbox Monday/In My Mailbox. I'm a bit zombie-ish today for some reason -- maybe a cold, or still shaking off West Coast jet lag -- so I plan to spend my day lost in a book (or two). Thankfully, I got many delicious new arrivals this week -- choices, choices! What did you get?

For Review




Sonoma Rose by Jennifer Chiaverini
Harem by Colin Falconer
Faith: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh
Gillespie and I by Jane Harris
Women and Their Gardens: A History from the Elizabethan Era to Today by Catherine Horwood
The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn
The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
The Technologists: A Novel by Matthew Pearl

I had two giveaways end last week but jet lag wiped me out so much I didn't get around to announcing them. (Sorry!) Finally, ta-da, some winners!!

The winner of All the Flowers in Shanghai is ... Na!

The winners of Island of Wings are ... Zibilee, Patti, and Karen G.! (As of 1/18, third winner is Ruth!)

The winners have been emailed. If you didn't win, check out my current giveaways. At the moment, only one, but starting next week I've got a million or so coming!

Last week was my second blogiversary! I began my blog in January of 2010 (but back dated items to make it seem meatier) but I can't believe it's been two years already! I swear, I feel like I just started blogging. Thanks to all of you for visiting and commenting and making this such a lovely experience!

I'm back from my long holiday in California and I'm so missing my brother and his family. And that glorious, glorious sunshine. Le sigh.  Boston isn't making it any easier, being all icy and rainy and generally gross.

This weekend, I'm reading From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant by Alex Gilvarry.  It's amazing so far -- fun, funny, biting, breezy and meaty.  I'm super excited to snuggle in and read -- that's the only perk of this yucky weather!  What are you reading this weekend?

My first read for 2012 was Rashad Harrison's deliciously fantastic Our Man in the Dark, a noir-ish mystery-ish thriller set during the Civil Rights era. I loved everything about this book -- the setting, the characters, the ambiance, the fantastic writing -- and so it was a huge treat to get to interview Mr. Harrison. Read on to learn more about his writing, his book, and what he does when he's not writing! (And seriously, get Our Man in the Dark!)

What was the plot of your very first piece of fiction?

A young boy discovers an old book in a forgotten section of a library. The book is magical: it can turn the reader’s fears into reality.

I was seven, and it was published in the Prairie View Elementary school newspaper. Other masterpieces soon followed, like “The Dinosaur Gets a Toothache,” and “Santa Quits His Job.”

Do you have any writing rituals or routines?

My typical writing session begins with a bit of structured procrastination (Internet, piano, reading). Then I speak al…

Title:The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner
Author: Sandra Newman

Genre: Non-Fiction (Literary History / Literary Analysis / Western European Literature / Humor)
Publisher/Publication Date: Gotham (1/3/2012)
Source:TLC Book Tours

Rating: Liked a whole heck of a lot -- loved at moments!
Did I finish?: I did!
One-sentence summary: A thousand or so years of Western literature, summarized and ranked -- amusingly! -- in about 280 pages.

Do I like the cover?: I do -- it's playful and fun, like the book.

First line: In the 1920s, educators like Mortimer Adler started the Great Books programs, while imprints like Everyman's Library made the classics available to everyone at reasonable prices.

Did... I laugh so much on my subway ride that I tried to stifle my laughter, but kept sniggering so much a woman offered me a cough drop?: YES. Newman's humor is like mine -- geeky, sarcastic, feminist -- and so she and I were on the same page about…

Seen both at Mailbox Monday -- hosted in January at At Home With Books -- and The Story Siren, my Mailbox Monday/In My Mailbox, post-vacation edition. Thankfully I came home to some books which helped soften the sting of being away from California, the pool, my brother, and my adorable niece and nephew.


For Review




At the Mercy of the Queen: A Novel of Anne Boleyn by Anne Clinard Barnhill
Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh
All Her Father's Guns by James Warner
See What I See by Gloria Whelan

Title:Our Man in the Dark
Author: Rashad Harrison

Genre: Fiction (Historical / 1960s / Southern US / Civil Rights Movement / Historical Figure Fictionalized / Government Conspiracy)
Publisher/Publication Date: Atria Books (11/15/2011)
Source:TLC Book Tours

Rating: Loooved. Fabu way to kick off 2012!
Did I finish?: Yes -- I couldn't stop myself!
One-sentence summary: Set in 1963, an accountant with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes an FBI informant in an effort to prove his patriotism and improve his own life, and ends up in gr
Reading Challenges:Historical Fiction

Do I like the cover?: Love it -- it fits the mood of the story perfectly!

I'm reminded of...: Lawrence Block, Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley

First line: Night has come, and so have the shadows that once pulled me in against my will.

Did... I keep thinking about this book every time I had to stop reading and be all sociable with my family?: YES. Thankfully I love them, so I only resented them a little bit that I had to st…

This was my first year really committing to reading challenges, and I discovered, as with so much else in my life, my eyes are bigger than my belly.  Or in this case, my aspirations are greater than my time.  Despite the breakneck reading I did this year, I didn't focus much on hitting my reading challenge goals, which means I only completed six of my sixteen 2011 reading challenges.  Oops!  I'm scaling back for 2012.  Here's the quick-and-dirty of how I did for 2011:

British Books (12 books)
Success! Read 20 books.

Criminal Plots (6 books)
Failed! Missed by two.

Eastern European (4 books)
Failed! Only read two of four. Additionally, I've sorted of started hating on this challenge because 'map of Eastern Europe' has become, like, my second biggest source of traffic to this blog. Boo.

E-books (12 books)
Success! Read 12, which surprised me, as I thought for sure I'd double that. I guess I don't use my e-reader as much as I thought! (Shh, don't tell …

Even though my foray into the 2011 Europa Challenge was a bit of a fail -- I only read one book, and I didn't even review it! -- I'm doing it again because I really love Europa Editions and want to gobble them up. This time, for the 2012 Europa Challenge, I'm going to limit myself to Ristretto Level (2 Europas). Hopefully I can manage that!

Possibilities include these; any you think I absolutely must read?

Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Laurence Cossé, An Accident in August: A Novel
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, The Most Beautiful Book in the World: Eight Novellas

Since my e-reader is one of my of my most beloved possessions, it's a no-brainer for me to do the E-Book Reading Challenge again. I'm going to aim for DVD - 25 ebooks which is a bit ambitious considering I only read 12 e-books in 2011. (I have about three hundred books in my e-reader, I just am not reading them...like the rest of my TBR!). However, I hope to get a jump on my e-book reading since I'm on vacation for two weeks this winter and I don't want to lug around a badrillion hard copies -- now my e-reader is especially handy!

Read

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott, Molly Make-Believe
Nancy Bilyeau, The Crown
Alex Bledsoe, Wake of the Bloody Angel
Tina Connolly, Ironskin
Lawrence Durrell, Judith
Tan Twang Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists
Sara Foster, Beneath the Shadows
D. B. Jackson, Thieftaker
Ryan David Jahn, The Dispatcher
Sarah Jio, Blackberry Winter
Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son
Suzanne Joinson, A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar
Giles Kristian, Blood…