Size 14 is Not Fat Either by Meg Cabot (the sequel to Size 12 is Not Fat), like the first book, takes place in a dorm at New York College. Heather Wells, a former pop star, returns as an assistant dorm, I mean residence hall, director and amateur sleuth when a girl's head is found in the dorm's kitchen. Heather is a likeable character because she is not perfect. She was a teen pop star who is now "washed up" and battling with her self-image.
Heather becomes involved in the investigation because it seems like the police are not following up on important clues. At the same time, she has to deal with the attentions of her ex-fiance, his brother's (who is also Heather's landlord) lack of attentions, her jail-bird father's return, and, oh yeah, a murderer who is getting a little too close for comfort.
4.28.2007
4.26.2007
Gatsby's Girl
Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston is a fictional portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald's muse, Ginevra. Ginevra is a sixteen year-old spoiled debutante who meets a nineteen year-old Fitzgerald at a party thrown by mutual friends. After this one meeting, the two correspond frequently, sending multiple page letters to each other.
Ginevra convinces herself that she is in love with Fitzgerald because she is in love with the idea of being in love. By the time Fitzgerald comes to visit her in the summer, Ginevra is ready to move on to the next romantic figure. She unceremoniously dumps Fitzgerald with "supreme boredom and indifference."
The next half of the book traces Ginevra's loveless marriage to the man for whom she dumped Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, the author's career has taken off. He suddenly is well-known and widely published. Ginevra secretly reads all of his stories looking for portrayals of herself in the female characters like Daisy Buchanan, Isabelle Borge and Josephine Perry.
This book is a good complement (or alternative) to The Great Gatsby. It captured the spirit of the times and gives you insight into why Fitzgerald's characters were written the way they were.
Ginevra convinces herself that she is in love with Fitzgerald because she is in love with the idea of being in love. By the time Fitzgerald comes to visit her in the summer, Ginevra is ready to move on to the next romantic figure. She unceremoniously dumps Fitzgerald with "supreme boredom and indifference."
The next half of the book traces Ginevra's loveless marriage to the man for whom she dumped Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, the author's career has taken off. He suddenly is well-known and widely published. Ginevra secretly reads all of his stories looking for portrayals of herself in the female characters like Daisy Buchanan, Isabelle Borge and Josephine Perry.
This book is a good complement (or alternative) to The Great Gatsby. It captured the spirit of the times and gives you insight into why Fitzgerald's characters were written the way they were.
Presidential Candidates Books
Ricklibrarian has compiled a list of books published by the 2008 presidential candidates. This list was compiled in January 2007 so some candidates may have been added to the list and others may have dropped out of the race. There are some very interesting titles on the list.
Blog Guidelines
Guidelines for the Library Book Nook Blog
1. To participate in any discussion, leave a comment at the end of a "post" or blog entry. Most posts are books reviews. They provide the content of the blog and are published in reverse chronological order. In a comment, you respond to a review by
2. All comments will be reviewed by the weblog administrator prior to publication. Inappropriate comments will be deleted.
3. In order to protect your privacy, please refrain from including such personally identifiable information as telephone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses or photographs in your comments. This blog does allow anonymous comments.
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7. Do not use profane, obscene, or otherwise offensive language.
8. Please be respectful of other contributors. The posting of deliberately hostile or insulting messages ("flaming") will not be tolerated.
9. The purpose of this blog is to discuss books, therefore, please do not promote any product or service or any non-library event (examples include self-published and commercial books; poetry readings and other public programs; and editing, tutoring and other professional services).
10. If you consistently fail to follow these guidelines, your comments will be blocked by the blog administrator.
Special thanks to Memphis Reads for these blog guidelines.
1. To participate in any discussion, leave a comment at the end of a "post" or blog entry. Most posts are books reviews. They provide the content of the blog and are published in reverse chronological order. In a comment, you respond to a review by
- sharing your thoughts about a book,
- offering points for discussion,
- providing links to other resources, or
- suggesting similar titles or authors.
2. All comments will be reviewed by the weblog administrator prior to publication. Inappropriate comments will be deleted.
3. In order to protect your privacy, please refrain from including such personally identifiable information as telephone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses or photographs in your comments. This blog does allow anonymous comments.
4. Please limit your comments to text only. Any text, artwork or photographs that may be under copyright should not be submitted. Include a source for quotations (author and/or title). A full "academic" citations is not necessary.
7. Do not use profane, obscene, or otherwise offensive language.
8. Please be respectful of other contributors. The posting of deliberately hostile or insulting messages ("flaming") will not be tolerated.
9. The purpose of this blog is to discuss books, therefore, please do not promote any product or service or any non-library event (examples include self-published and commercial books; poetry readings and other public programs; and editing, tutoring and other professional services).
10. If you consistently fail to follow these guidelines, your comments will be blocked by the blog administrator.
Special thanks to Memphis Reads for these blog guidelines.
4.21.2007
The Bookman's Promise
Cliff Janeway, former homicide detective and current bookman, returns in the third book written by John Dunning of the Cliff Janeway series, The Bookman's Promise. Since he quit the police and opened his own book shop, Janeway has become the “book cop,” the guy people go to when they need book mysteries solved. In this novel, Janeway is embroiled in a mystery about Richard Francis Burton, a nineteenth century explorer, Burton
The Professor and the Madman
The Professor and the Madman focused on two men who were strongly involved in the editing of the OED: James Murray (the professor) and Dr. William Chester Minor (the madman). The vast undertaking of creating the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) simply amazed me. Before 1857 (when the idea was first suggested), there was no all-encompassing English dictionary. Or at least, not a dictionary like we think of today. The OED editors set out to catalog, define, provide illustrative quotations, and track the word's history through written history from its first use until the current day. Every. Single. Word. Wow.
They had thousands of volunteers read through books, write down words (any words), illustrative quotations, where the quotation was found, page number, and send in the slip of paper to the Scriptorium that Murray had set up in Oxford. The Scriptorium might sound impressive but really it was just a corrugated metal structure full of paper. Can you even imagine the scraps of paper everywhere? How would anything ever get done or even found?
Dr. Minor is introduced as a madman from the very beginning of the book. A madman but also an intellectual. He was an American doctor who served in the Civil War. Apparently, his paranoia was sparked and/or became more pronounced after an experience during the Wilderness where he had to brand an Irish soldier as punishment for desertion. After that, he felt that the Irish everywhere were after him in revenge. He also complained of being followed and being forced to perform "lewd acts" every night by persons unknown. A while after the end of the war, Minor left America for England. He was imprisoned in Broadmore, a lunatic asylum there, when he murdered a man in London. (Minor thought the man was going to attack him.)
While in Broadmore, Minor had an extraordinary amount of special privileges. He had a pention from the U.S. Army and was a doctor like those taking care of him so Minor was housed in the nice part of Broadmore. He had the use of two rooms, one of which served as a library and the other which was his bedroom, where he painted and played his flute. The library was quite impressive because he collected rare works and anything else that caught his interest. Minor hired one of the other inmates to clean his rooms and perform small tasks. Sounds pretty nice, huh? He still had the slight problem of thinking people were breaking into his room at night and poisoning him or forcing him to perform those lewd acts.
Ten years after he was first imprisoned, Minor came across Murray's plea for volunteer readers. He wrote to Murray offering his services and got down to reading. Minor's approach to the task was completely different than that of the other volunteers. He would read a book through writing down each word that caught his attention and page number where it was found. He wrote the words down so that they would be in alphabetical order, leaving space for words he would find as he read. Once he finished one book, Minor would go on to the next. Because he wasn't sending in submissions to the editors in Oxford, they thought he had gotten bored with the project.
Once Minor thought he had come up with enough words, he wrote to Murray asking him if they were having any difficulty with any word. When Murray responded that "art" was vexing them, Minor immediately responded with quotation, volume number, and page number. After that, Murray and his workers would send any word "problems" to Minor and he would immediately respond with a correct response. Because Minor had his word lists minutely indexed, it took him no time at all to find a correct quotation. As the author says, other volunteers might have sent in more quotations but Minor's were worth their weight in gold. The editors knew they didn't need to double-check his work.
It was very interesting to watch the friendship between Minor and Murray develop. They corresponded for years and Murray visited Minor frequently in Broadmore. I also found it fascinating to learn more about the editing of the massive dictionary.
The only problem I had with the book was that the author, Simon Winchester, did not have a bibliography in the back of the book. True, he mentioned other books people could read to learn more and talked about some of the books he read. But, to a historian like me, that is not good enough. I want to see all of the documents he used. The letters, the journals, the books, the interviews. Everything. Still, I greatly enjoyed the work and would recommend it.
They had thousands of volunteers read through books, write down words (any words), illustrative quotations, where the quotation was found, page number, and send in the slip of paper to the Scriptorium that Murray had set up in Oxford. The Scriptorium might sound impressive but really it was just a corrugated metal structure full of paper. Can you even imagine the scraps of paper everywhere? How would anything ever get done or even found?
Dr. Minor is introduced as a madman from the very beginning of the book. A madman but also an intellectual. He was an American doctor who served in the Civil War. Apparently, his paranoia was sparked and/or became more pronounced after an experience during the Wilderness where he had to brand an Irish soldier as punishment for desertion. After that, he felt that the Irish everywhere were after him in revenge. He also complained of being followed and being forced to perform "lewd acts" every night by persons unknown. A while after the end of the war, Minor left America for England. He was imprisoned in Broadmore, a lunatic asylum there, when he murdered a man in London. (Minor thought the man was going to attack him.)
While in Broadmore, Minor had an extraordinary amount of special privileges. He had a pention from the U.S. Army and was a doctor like those taking care of him so Minor was housed in the nice part of Broadmore. He had the use of two rooms, one of which served as a library and the other which was his bedroom, where he painted and played his flute. The library was quite impressive because he collected rare works and anything else that caught his interest. Minor hired one of the other inmates to clean his rooms and perform small tasks. Sounds pretty nice, huh? He still had the slight problem of thinking people were breaking into his room at night and poisoning him or forcing him to perform those lewd acts.
Ten years after he was first imprisoned, Minor came across Murray's plea for volunteer readers. He wrote to Murray offering his services and got down to reading. Minor's approach to the task was completely different than that of the other volunteers. He would read a book through writing down each word that caught his attention and page number where it was found. He wrote the words down so that they would be in alphabetical order, leaving space for words he would find as he read. Once he finished one book, Minor would go on to the next. Because he wasn't sending in submissions to the editors in Oxford, they thought he had gotten bored with the project.
Once Minor thought he had come up with enough words, he wrote to Murray asking him if they were having any difficulty with any word. When Murray responded that "art" was vexing them, Minor immediately responded with quotation, volume number, and page number. After that, Murray and his workers would send any word "problems" to Minor and he would immediately respond with a correct response. Because Minor had his word lists minutely indexed, it took him no time at all to find a correct quotation. As the author says, other volunteers might have sent in more quotations but Minor's were worth their weight in gold. The editors knew they didn't need to double-check his work.
It was very interesting to watch the friendship between Minor and Murray develop. They corresponded for years and Murray visited Minor frequently in Broadmore. I also found it fascinating to learn more about the editing of the massive dictionary.
The only problem I had with the book was that the author, Simon Winchester, did not have a bibliography in the back of the book. True, he mentioned other books people could read to learn more and talked about some of the books he read. But, to a historian like me, that is not good enough. I want to see all of the documents he used. The letters, the journals, the books, the interviews. Everything. Still, I greatly enjoyed the work and would recommend it.
4.20.2007
List of Categories
This is a list of the categories. These phrases are the controlled vocab for this blog. Additions to the list will be considered but need to be cleared before their use. This list will not show up on the sidebar of the blog until one of these phrases is used as a tag (label). Users can then click on the labels to find the postings with those tags. Multiple tags can be used to describe a posting.
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Staff Pick
Suspense/Thriller
True Crime
Western
Audiobook
Author
Biography/Memoir
Book Club
Chicklit
Classics
Cookbook
Fantasy
General
Graphic Novel
Historical Fiction
Holiday
Horror
Humor
Inspirational
Library News
Library Events
Mystery
New Book
Nonfiction
Politics
Romance
Science Fiction
Staff Pick
Suspense/Thriller
True Crime
Western
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Welcome to our new blog!
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