Carol's Notebook – Page 664

Don’t Call Me a Crook! by Bob Moore

July 20, 2009 by Carol5 Comments

Don't Call Me a Crook!: A Scotsman's Tale of World Travel, Whisky and Crime by Bob Moore It is a pity there are getting to be so many places that I can never go back to, but all the same, I do not think it is much fun a man being respectable all his life. Thus begins Don't Call Me a Crook!, a memoir of a 1920s youth thoroughly, noisily and lawlessly lived. Bob Moore, a Glaswegian, was a marine engine, occasional building superintendent and ramblin' man. "I have been round the world seven times, and I have been shipwrecked three times, and I have spent £100,000," Moore boasts. In Don't Call Me a Crook he recounts pitched battles with Chinese bandits, life in gangster-infested Chicago, and decadent orgies aboard a millionaire's yacht. It's a hardboiled-noir memoir. It's picaresque, perverse, and darkly funny. A tribute to one man's triumph over the law, morals and sobriety, it's a lost confession that will be crowned...

Mailbox Monday

July 20, 2009July 20, 2009 by Carol8 Comments

Thanks to Marcia at The Printed Page for hosting Mailbox Monday. My mailbox was pretty full this week, thanks in part to wins at Drey's Library and Jo-Jo Loves to Read! I don't know where I'm going to find the time to read all these great books. A Darkness Forged in Fire by Chris Evans Konowa Swiftdragon, once commander of the Calahrian Empire’s renowned Iron Elves, is now a disgraced ex-soldier. Though elvish, Konowa is more comfortable with metal and fire than with nature and, like all the Iron Elves, was marked at birth for an ill-omened destiny by the malevolent Shadow Monarch. When a prophetic Red Star falls, awakening lost magic, Konowa is recalled to find it with a new regiment of Iron Elves—except this bunch is the dregs of the military and not even elves. Their journey is plagued by monsters and an unforeseen rebellion, but the worst is to come. The Shadow Monarch’s play for the Star is a ruse...

Audiobook Giveaway: Any Minute by Joyce Meyer

July 17, 2009 by Carol26 Comments

Any Minute by Joyce Meyer (abridged audiobook) Sarah Harper is driven, pursuing happiness in all the wrong places. She wants to do good and not hurt the people she loves, including her son, Mitchell, and her husband, Joe. But her drive to succeed overrides all else. It's not until she faces a chance encounter with heaven and spends time with the grandmother who prayed for her every day when she was a little girl that she begins to see how her own mother's bitterness created a hole in Sarah's life--a hole she has been trying to overcome for as long as she can remember. For the first time, Sarah sees that God created her for a special purpose. When Sarah returns to her own life, she is a woman with a mission. And the unsuspecting world around her will never be the same again. The Giveaway: Thanks to Hachette Book Group, I've got three audiobook copies of Any Minute to giveaway. To enter, just leave...

Winners!

July 16, 2009July 16, 2009 by Carol4 Comments

Congratulations to the winners of the audiobook, The Juror by George Dawes Green! Janet F Jake Lsewhere Dawn M. Also I've got a new winner for My Forbidden Desire by Carolyn Jewel, since one of my originial winners already got her hands on a copy. chey I'll be e-mailing you shortly. I just need your addresses, so I can pass them on to Hachette Book Group. Thanks!...

Wondrous Words Wednesday

July 15, 2009 by Carol1 Comment

I ran across a few new-to-me words this week. These two are from Don't Call Me a Crook! by Bob Moore. They were actually defined in the footnotes, which was kind of nice. haversack- satchel. " We took two electic torches and some gin and a haversack" flivver- a low-priced, little, and often old car. "gangsters drove into the place in a flivver that had two machine guns mounted on it" The other two are from Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts. allée- a walkway lined with trees or tall shrubs. "The ancient live oaks that formed the allée dripped with water and moss" spark- to engage in courtship; woo. "And since you're sparking me, you can call me Miss Odette." Any new words for you this week? Play along at Bermudaonion's Weblog....

Teaser Tuesday

July 14, 2009 by Carol4 Comments

Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from...that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given. Please avoid spoilers! My teaser: She didn't breathe easy until she was out of the house. He wasn't going to be as simple to handle as she'd assumed. -pg. 105, Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along....