Johnny Appleseed by Jane Yolen

by Carol6 Comments
Johnny Appleseed by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Jim Burke (Suggested reading level: Grades 2-4) Today is usually Fairy Tale Friday, but Tif is taking the day off for the holiday with the discussion of Rainbow-Walker postponed until next week. Rainbow-Walker is the story of Johnny Appleseed, and I happened to run across this book at the library, so I thought I'd go ahead and talk about the real Johnny Appleseed today, saving the legend for next week. Yolen does a wonderful job of telling the true story of Johnny Appleseed, or John Chapman, who was born in Massachusetts in September of 1774.  I knew the story of Johnny Appleseed, that he was an actual man who did plant apple trees across the US, but that's really not the whole story. Johnny learned to read and write before, at age 14, he went to work for a local farmer, working in the fields and orchards. He takes off west in his early twenties. I didn't...
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Romance Reading Challenge

by Carol6 Comments
I completed the Romance Reading Challenge a little while ago, but forgot to mention it. Here's the list of books I read. I think my favorite was probably Cotillion by Georgette Heyer. Fired Up by Jayne Ann Krentz Rion by Susan Kearney To Sin with a Scoundrel by Cara Elliott Cotillion by Georgette Heyer Montana Legacy by R. C. Ryan Flirting with Forever by Gwyn Cready And a quick update on my other challenges. Read Ohio: 1/5 100+ Reading : 61/100 A to Z : 35/52 Speculative Fiction: 4/6 Thriller and Suspense: 8/12 Wilkie Collins: 1/2 Women Unbound: 3/5 Chunkster: 0/4 I'm also participating in Operation Actually Read Bible. I'm not reading in any order but here's the number of books I've read. Old Testament: 10/39 New Testament: 7/27...
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Proust’s Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini

by Carol4 Comments
Proust's Overcoat: The True Story of One Man's Passion for All Things Proust by Lorenza Foschini, translated by Eric Karpeles I have to admit that I knew nothing about Proust before reading this short quirky book, but that in no way affected my enjoyment of the story. It might have actually enhances, since every bit of information was new to me. Jacques Guérin was at the head of a successful perfume company, but his true passion was collecting: books, art, photographs, letters, and other sundries. Among all of the artists and authors he collected, he identified most deeply with Marcel Proust. Guérin cultivated relationships with Proust's family and acquaintances, collecting all of Proust's manuscripts, furniture and personal items that he could, a collection crowned by Proust's overcoat, which Proust had worn every day and used as a blanket while writing in bed at night. Through Foschini's telling of Guérin's story, we also learn a lot about Proust, about his personal life, his...
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Up in the Hills

by Carol11 Comments
Some of the folks up here were smarter than anybody he had met at the college, and they read everything they could find, so that they salted their conversations with phrases from Milton, Homer, and Shakespeare. So why were they content to remain here? He wasn't sure, but if he had to put a name to his hunch, he might have called it shyness or, more precisely, since it was not fear, a disinclination to involve themselves in the machinations of society. (pg. 36, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers by Sharyn McCrumb, ARC) I've only started this book, but so far I like how it gives the different views on Appalachian people. The out of town press think of the locals as hillbillies, uneducated moonshine drinkers. The local man, who is trying to work his way up in the newspaper business realizes that the people who choose to live in the mountains do it for their own reason, they're not to stupid...
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The Adventure of the “Gloria Scott” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

by Carol6 Comments
"The Adventure of the 'Gloria Scott'" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I don't know why, but every so often I just need a Sherlock Holmes fix, so this week I read "The Adventure of the 'Gloria Scott'" which first appeared in The Strand Magazine and was included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, published December 1893. I'm sure I've read this before, but it's not one that stuck in my memory, although it was Holmes' first case. Holmes finally decides to tell Watson about the first case he was involved in, while he was in college. "You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?" he asked. "He was the only friend I made during the two years I was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my...
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