book beginnings on Friday: Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Posted on October 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Everyone’s been talking about this one for the last several months, and I knew I wanted to read it. The idea of a female Huck Finn (while threatening to prejudice my reading of the book…) was too much to resist. I’m glad I finally got around to it. Here is the beginning:

The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane’s heart. She rowed upstream to see wood ducks, canvasbacks, and ospreys and to search for tiger salamanders in the ferns. She drifted downstream to find painted turtles sunning on fallen trees and to count the herons in the heronry beside the Murrayville cemetery.

That first sentence is something special, isn’t it? It really captures one of the main themes of the book: that for Margo, the river is LIFE.

I’m enjoying this book very much, and moving through it quickly; you can expect a review in the next few days. For now I’ll say this: it’s beautiful and moving, but also stark and disturbing. Bad things happen. I wasn’t quite prepared for this, although I suppose it’s in keeping with the Huck Finn allegory – his story, too, had its disturbing moments, despite the seeming calm of coming-of-age-on-the-river.

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Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson by Amanda Smith

Posted on October 6, 2011 by pagesofjulia

The exhaustive–but not exhausting–biography of a complicated and difficult woman, heiress to a newspaper dynasty and a fascinating and controversial figure.

Amanda Smith’s (Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy) exhaustively researched biography of Cissy Patterson begins several decades before her birth, with her grandfather Joseph Medill and his creation of the Chicago Tribune. The extended family of Medills, Pattersons and McCormicks would be newspaper royalty for several generations; but perhaps none cut a stranger figure than Cissy.

Eleanor Medill Patterson, known as Cissy, led was born in 1881 into a fractious, influential newspaper family and married a dissolute Polish count who turned out to be broke and who kidnapped their daughter, Felicia. With great effort and the interventions of powerful political figures from around the world, she regained her daughter and divorced. The countess then had a series of unsatisfying relationships and grew estranged from Felicia; published two acclaimed novels; and married a Jewish man despite her apparent anti-Semitism and eventual sympathy with the Nazi cause in World War II. Late in life, she began a newspaper career as journalist, editor and, finally, publisher and owner of the enormously successful Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, which she created out of two failing papers. When she died in 1948, alcoholic, vindictive and erratic Cissy left a fortune, including ownership of the Times-Herald, whose disposition was held up by court battles sparked by conflicting wills and accusations of her insanity.

Called “perhaps the most powerful” and the “most hated” woman in America in the 1940s, Cissy’s fascinating and curious life is examined here in detail. But this lengthy book is never boring, because its subject is such an outrageously flamboyant and historically significant figure.

This review originally ran in the September 20, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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Another list of the top 100 books

Posted on October 5, 2011 by pagesofjulia

We all love a good list, don’t we? I think what I love most is how they’re all different. This latest comes from World Book Night in the UK, and is compiled from a list that we – you and I – have all contributed of our top ten books that we’d like to share with others. Weighted for frequency, the list they’ve received is available at the link above – and, I’ve reproduced it here, with my usual indications as to whether I’ve read them or not. Feel free to weigh in.

I’m amused to note that my have-read-it stats fall off sharply as the list goes on; I’ve read 7 of the top 10, 10 of the top 20, and only 3 of the bottom 20.

How many have you read? Do you agree or strongly disagree with any of these? I certainly see a lot of my favorites (see my list of 100) on there, and also some I strongly disliked (ahem Cormac McCarthy).

Bold = I’ve read it (or if it’s linked to my review… I’ve read it)
Italicized = I’ve started the book, but never finished
neither = I haven’t picked it up.
New indicator: **for those that are definitely on my list (even before this list).

1    To Kill a Mockingbird    Harper Lee
2    Pride and Prejudice    Jane Austen
3    The Book Thief    Markus Zusak
4    Jane Eyre    Charlotte Bronte
5    The Time Traveler’s Wife    Audrey Niffenegger
6    The Lord of the Rings    J. R. R. Tolkien
7    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy    Douglas Adams
8    Wuthering Heights    Emily Bronte
9    Rebecca    Daphne Du Maurier
10    The Kite Runner    Khaled Hosseini
11    American Gods    Neil Gaiman
12    A Thousand Splendid Suns    Khaled Hosseini
13    Harry Potter Adult Hardback Boxed Set    J. K. Rowling
14    **The Shadow of the Wind    Carlos Ruiz Zafon
15    The Hobbit    J. R. R. Tolkien
16    One Day    David Nicholls
17    Birdsong    Sebastian Faulks
18    The Help    Kathryn Stockett
19    Nineteen Eighty-Four    George Orwell
20    Good Omens    Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
21    The Notebook    Nicholas Sparks
22    The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo    Stieg Larsson
23    The Handmaid’s Tale    Margaret Atwood
24    The Great Gatsby    F. Scott Fitzgerald
25    Little Women    Louisa M. Alcott
26    Memoirs of a Geisha    Arthur Golden
27    The Lovely Bones    Alice Sebold
28    Atonement    Ian McEwan
29    Room    Emma Donoghue
30    Catch-22    Joseph Heller
31    We Need to Talk About Kevin    Lionel Shriver
32    His Dark Materials    Philip Pullman
33    Captain Corelli’s Mandolin    Louis De Bernieres
34    The Island    Victoria Hislop
35    Neverwhere    Neil Gaiman
36    The Poisonwood Bible    Barbara Kingsolver
37    The Catcher in the Rye    J. D. Salinger
38    Chocolat    Joanne Harris
39    Never Let Me Go    Kazuo Ishiguro
40    The Five People You Meet in Heaven    Mitch Albom
41    One Hundred Years of Solitude    Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42    Animal Farm    George Orwell
43    The Pillars of the Earth    Ken Follett
44    The Eyre Affair    Jasper Fforde
45    Tess of the D’Urbervilles    Thomas Hardy
46    Charlie and the Chocolate Factory    Roald Dahl
47    **I Capture the Castle    Dodie Smith
48    The Wasp Factory    Iain Banks
49    Life of Pi    Yann Martel
50    The Road    Cormac McCarthy
51    Great Expectations    Charles Dickens
52    Dracula    Bram Stoker
53    The Secret History    Donna Tartt
54    Small Island    Andrea Levy
55    The Secret Garden    Frances Hodgson Burnett
56    Lord of the Flies    William Golding
57    Persuasion    Jane Austen
58    A Prayer for Owen Meany    John Irving
59    Notes from a Small Island    Bill Bryson
60    **Watership Down    Richard Adams
61    Night Watch    Terry Pratchett
62    Brave New World    Aldous Huxley
63    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time    Mark Haddon
64    Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell    Susanna Clarke
65    The Color Purple    Alice Walker
66    My Sister’s Keeper    Jodi Picoult
67    The Stand    Stephen King
68    Cloud Atlas    David Mitchell
69    The Master and Margarita    Mikhail Bulgakov
70    Anna Karenina    Leo Tolstoy
71    Cold Comfort Farm    Stella Gibbons
72    Frankenstein    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
73    The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society    Mary Ann Shaffer
74    The Picture of Dorian Gray    Oscar Wilde
75    Gone with the Wind    Margaret Mitchell
76    The Graveyard Book    Neil Gaiman
77    The Woman in White    Wilkie Collins
78    The Princess Bride    William Goldman
79    A Suitable Boy    Vikram Seth
80    Perfume    Patrick Suskind
81    The Count of Monte Cristo    Alexandre Dumas
82    The God of Small Things    Arundhati Roy
83    Middlemarch    George Eliot
84    Dune    Frank Herbert
85    Wolf Hall    Hilary Mantel
86    Stardust    Neil Gaiman
87    Lolita    Vladimir Nabokov
88    Midnight’s Children    Salman Rushdie
89    Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone    J. K. Rowling
90    Shantaram    Gregory David Roberts
91    The Remains of the Day    Kazuo Ishiguro
92    Possession: A Romance    A. S. Byatt
93    Tales of the City    Armistead Maupin
94    Kafka on the Shore    Haruki Murakami
95    The Magus    John Fowles
96    The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas    John Boyne
97    A Fine Balance    Rohinton Mistry
98    Alias Grace    Margaret Atwood
99    Norwegian Wood    Haruki Murakami
100   The Wind-up Bird Chronicle    Haruki Murakami

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Happy Blogoversary to ME!

Posted on October 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Hey y’all! I just wanted to say… it’s been a year since I started blogging here, and I’ve had a ball. I’ve read & reviewed some 100-odd books, and written over 400 posts. I have had many friendly visitors and commenters and encouragers! And I’ve learned a great deal. So here I am, a year in, and… I’m going to keep doing this. 🙂 Thank you so much for stopping by, for commenting, for reading, and for being out there. Fellow bloggers, you have set such examples for me and helped me become a better blogger myself. Meme hosts, thanks for including me! Good times! Here’s to another year!

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Teaser Tuesdays: Without Fail by Lee Child

Posted on October 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Yet another Lee Child! Yes! In this one, Reacher is hired to try to assassinate the vice-president of the USA. You know, as a sort of security audit; not for real. But is somebody out there trying the same thing – for real? (My first reaction to this is, the vice-president? Really? Do they get assassinated?) Here’s your teaser:

The guy on the right took his hands out of his pockets. He had the same neuralgic pain in his knuckles, or else a couple more rolls of quarters. Reacher smiled. He liked rolls of quarters. Good old-fashioned technology. And they implied the absence of firearms. Nobody clutches rolls of coins if they’ve got a gun in their pocket.

Yes, I used more sentences than prescribed, but wasn’t it worth it?

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HemingWay of the Day: in Town & Country (I know, weird, huh?)

Posted on October 3, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Well, unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available on the interwebs at all. You have to go find a physical print copy of the September issue of Town & Country magazine to read these articles. But keep your eyes open for one, because it might be worth it! There are two Hemingway-related articles: the first is available in part (and with some lovely pictures) at Mariel Hemingway’s blog – that’s Papa’s granddaughter. It basically catches us up with the current generation: Mariel, a successful Hollywood actor, and the fate of her two sisters who haven’t done as well; and then Mariel’s daughters, Dree and Langley. Town & Country’s focus is clearly on the beautiful people (Mariel and Langley; Dree is only mentioned) and the beautiful house: the Hemingway estate in Ketchum, Idaho. Yes, that’s where Papa died. The short story is, these beautiful ladies seem to have overcome their family legacy of depression, angst, and suicide. Good for them.

The second article is even more worthwhile, though. It contains an excerpt from Paul Hendrickson’s new book, Hemingway’s Boat, which you may have noticed I am mad for (main review here). I don’t have any kind of electronic version of it. 😦 Sorry. If you see a Town & Country (September issue – with the younger Hemingway women on the cover, at right), check it out. Or better yet, go get a copy of the recently published Hemingway’s Boat! (You will get much more Papa that way.)

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The Coldest Fear by Rick Reed

Posted on October 2, 2011 by pagesofjulia

A fast-paced crime thriller involving a serial killer; likable, witty detectives; and a mess of body parts.

Rick Reed, former police detective and author of the true crime Blood Trail, brings back Detective Jack Murphy from his first novel The Cruelest Cut in this suspenseful ride. A woman’s body is found mutilated and missing parts in a bathtub at the Marriot in Evansville, Indiana; mere hours later, Jack is looking at her right hand, arranged alongside the similarly abused body of a young mother in the projects. The bodies stack up quickly as Jack and his partner struggle to keep up with their own investigation. A local newspaper reporter scoops them at every turn, and his source just might be their serial killer. They’re taken out to a small town with a two-man police department, and then an FBI profiler is brought in, as the case quickly spins into mammoth proportions and spans jurisdictions.

Reed lends his professional expertise to this thriller in which the vantage point shifts from Jack’s criminal investigation to the perspective of the killer, providing a unique reading experience. The murderer remains nameless, but we get glimpses into what drives him and what makes him hesitate. When his identity is finally revealed, the shock is not lessened, but the journey gets an interesting twist from the shifting viewpoint.

Reed’s second crime thriller delivers with fast-paced suspense, twists and turns, the humor of several witty detectives and that rarity of fiction, a likeable FBI agent. Gruesome serial killings are balanced by banter, the sweet if harried relationship between Jack and his parole officer girlfriend, and an ending with a note of hope.

This review originally ran in the September 16, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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Challenge Update: Where Are You Reading?

Posted on October 1, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Well, you might recall from my last challenge update that I COMPLETED (yay!) two of the three challenges I took on for 2011, and with months to spare, too. Now that the year is drawing nearer to its close, it’s time to concentrate on the last and most difficult one: Where Are You Reading? Sheila at One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books has assigned this one. My job is to read a book set in each of the 50 states, plus bonus points for foreign locations. (Take a look at my map to see where I’ve been.)

So. At this point I’ve completed 24 of the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia!), and it’s time to start picking and choosing those remaining. They are:

  • Alabama
  • Alaska
  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • Delaware
  • Hawaii
  • Idaho
  • Kentucky
  • Louisiana
  • Maryland
  • Mississippi
  • Montana
  • Nevada
  • New Hampshire
  • North Carolina
  • North Dakota
  • Ohio
  • Oklahoma
  • Pennsylvania
  • Rhode Island
  • Tennessee
  • Utah
  • Vermont
  • Virginia
  • West Virginia
  • Wisconsin

Here we are, kids: I need your help! Please to recommend me some books! Do you have a book (or an author of several books) who writes in one of these states that you can recommend to me? I would greatly appreciate it. For example, if you were looking for Louisiana I would GUSH over James Lee Burke to you. But Virginia? Beats me. Help a girl out!

Do you think I’m going to make it?

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Virtual Read-Out: The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Posted on September 30, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Today I’m “reading out” from Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel The Awakening, in honor of Banned Books Week. [Learn more about the Virtual Read-Out.] Sources vary as to the banning of this book, but ALA does list it on their list of banned classics. Its themes include the struggle of women to escape society’s intentions for us; the main character comes to hold some very unpopular views about the place of marriage, love, and childrearing in her own life. Here is my video read-out!

Thanks, Husband, for playing videographer. 🙂

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book beginnings on Friday: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Posted on September 30, 2011 by pagesofjulia



Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I really enjoyed this classic with The Reputation. I actually had not intended for it to coincide so neatly with Banned Books Week, but it sure did! The back of my B&N edition claims that while it was “quickly banned in England and the United States as pornographic, [it is] sexually tame by today’s standards.” I have to say that it makes my eyes widen here and there, though! I’m not offended; I find it fascinating stuff. But I wouldn’t call it entirely tame. Just tame relative to the 1920’s, is all.

Enough, already. Here’s your beginning:

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habits, to have new little hopes.

Rather obviously, the tragedy referred to is the first World War, which left England missing the bulk of an entire generation of men, those left behind largely broken and scarred. This fact is centrally important to the action of the book; Lady Chatterley’s husband is lame and impotent as a result of the war, her marital options drastically limited by it. Everyone’s life is irrevocably effected by the missing men.

My review of Lady Chatterley’s Lover posted a few days ago, here.

What are you all reading this weekend?

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