I Don't Live Here Anymore... Babbette Has Moved

If you haven't changed the address in your reader, your missing out! Just a few of the books I've reviewed since moving to Lit&Leisure...

Remarkable Creatures
A Spot of Bother
Little Bee
Last Night on Twisted River
The Virgin Suicides

..... and, a post about visiting with Harper Lee!!! Yes! The real, live author of To Kill a Mockingbird!

So, don't delay - go there now! I've been missing you. (And fix the link in your reader.) :-)

Redirecting My Readers

This will be the last post on Babbette's Book Blog.... as you know it. If you use a reader to access BBB, please replace the current web address with www.literatureandleisure.com.

Yes - I hinted at it earlier this month, and it was a bit easier than I thought it would be, so, I'm starting a (soft) launch of Lit&leisure. The site is not completely finished (you'll see faded boxes where there may one day be ads but will more than likely be pictures I choose), but it is close enough, and currently I'm in a quandary about where to post my posts! I've already realized that the comments on my posts since my first import are not showing up on the posts. (They show up on the widget on my sidebar, though. If anyone knows what I'm missing, please let me know.)

I'm very excited about the new site. It will allow (read encourage) me to post about cooking and photography, two other loves.

Take a stroll around and let me know what you think!

Finally, a 2010 Wrap Up

While I've said I'm not going to participate in any challenges for 2011, I don't want to leave any loose ends hanging for 2010 & so here's a short wrap up from the challenges.

First, the TBR Challenge: I had three non-book bloggers join me in this, and one of them did quite well! Personally, I only read nine of the 12 from the list of 24 from my TBR pile. One thing I realized is how much my taste can change during a year. Some of the books on this list hold no interest for me now, so I had no motivation to pick them up. Some are still books that I want to read, so we'll see when I get to them.

As for my friends, Tiff rocked her list, reading 17 of the 24. Bunny had a low year for reading altogether and finished having read three on her list. (In her defense, she started a new job in 2010 that she is awesome at!) Stacie had a similar experience as I did. She had a great year of reading, but found her tastes changing so that she only tackled seven on her list.

I love the Theme Quest Challenge. It made me think about the books that I read in a different way, and perhaps some of the themes that could be pulled from them that weren't readily apparent. The theme I choose - the power of the written word - showed up in the power of Scripture as with the Bible and People of the Book, the influence of classical reading as in Elegance of the Hedgehog and Reading Lolita in Tehran, or even the ramblings of psychopaths, as with The Hour I First Believed. Time traveling characters wrote hints to their future selves in My Name is Memory that help them fulfill their desired destiny. In Founding Brothers, it was letters as well as those written words the were the foundation of our country that showed their stature. Thank you, Stacey, from Unruly Reader for your challenge!

The 2010 Published Challenge was no problem with the number of ARCs I received - it was just a matter of which gained my attention!

While I stopped keeping track, Challenge 24, the goal to limit book purchases to 24 in one year, wasn't too hard to keep either. I didn't count books I received from Paperback Book Swap or ARC (since I wasn't purchasing them) and both of these sources served to feed my addiction quite well.

My own challenge - Mixology - which is more of a goal setting structure than a real challenge - served its purpose in encouraging me to seek out award winning authors who were new to me. I found several who I will certainly pick up again.

And that, my dear readers, is a wrap for 2010!

Book Review :: Beach Music

Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides is one of my all-time favorite books and movies. I love the setting, the characters and their relationships, the dab of mental illness. I love Conroy's language and descriptions of the sun rising over the salt-water marsh. I love the sorrow and heartbreak from tragedy that created broken characters and guilty victims. I want to reread it just thinking about it.

Not so for Beach Music. Here's the short take. It was too long - the 500+ pages could have easily been cut to 300. I felt he tried to repeat many of the things he got right in Prince of Tides. He hates his father, is conflicted over his mother - maybe even has a little of the Oedipus thing going. He loves the south, and wants (maybe needs?) to prove his southern-ness.

I could never figure out what Beach Music was really about. In his attempt to be all things to all people, as a reader, I never knew what to pay attention to. I actually think that within Beach Music, Conroy has three separate novels. One's a holocaust story that includes a broken marriage over a daughter / wife's suicide; another is about Mother and her sons; and the last is about fathers and sons and the relationships that men forge with peers to fill the gaps left in the familial ones.

Even within these three stories, there is some that could be left out. I read recently where a writer said that writing is like packing a backpack for a long hike. If it isn't absolutely necessary, don't include it.

With Beach Music, Conroy packed a mighty heavy backpack. 

2011... One Month In

Hey, folks (if anyone's out there)... Yes, it is one month in to 2011, and I'm just now posting for the first time. Some personal issues have taken my attention away from, well, anything that didn't pertain to sustaining basic necessities of life, and blogging didn't make the grade. But I'm back now. I can't promise how frequent or regular, but I'll do what I can.

So, on to my goals of 2011.

1. No challenges. I enjoyed the couple that I participated in last year. They encouraged me to think about subtle connections among the books I read (theme challenge), to refrain from buying a book every time I walked into a bookstore (24 challenge), and to seek out new-to-me, award-winning authors. These are all good things. But this year, I'm taking a different approach to reading. You'll see.

2. Guilt-free blogging. I've done a good job so far this year. Ignore the blog, and don't feel guilty about it. I started this blog to force myself write more. It has done that. But my real goal is to work on my personal creative writing, and to do that, I'll have to blog less.

3. Re-brand the blog. I know this is going to seem counter to #2, but I want to re-brand the blog to include more of my two other hobbies - cooking and photography. I have some ideas, I've purchased a couple of domains, I just need the time to make it happen. 

4. Be more selective about my reading. Related to my desire to work more on my personal creative writing, I want to spend more time reading the quality of literature I aspire to write, which will probably mean that I read fewer books total. I also inundated myself with ARCs. I want to live up to as many of those commitments as I can, so while I won't say I'm not going to accept any ARCs this year, I know that I'll be more selective.

Farewell to 2010

While 2010 hasn't shaped up to be as wonderful for the blog, it has been a great year for me personally. My reading and this blog have suffered during the last four months as my husband and I lived in my brother's basement, waiting out the construction of our new home. But, I now sit in my new office, in our new home, to type and reflect on this year. Totally worth it!

I'm going to save my "what I'll do for 2011"'s for tomorrow, so for today I'll share with you my "best of's" for 2010.

Top Five Reads from 2010:

Cutting for Stone: I have yet to meet anyone who hasn't loved this book. My book club read it, and I attended a book discussion with a group of female physicians who also loved it. It was interesting to be a part of their discussion - and they were interested in if "non-physicians" appreciated it. Among some of the interesting tidbits I learned from the physicians were characters who were named after notable clinicians related to the medical story. 

The Outcast and Fingersmith: Everything that I love about the dark and weird. These were both "new to me authors" that I'll be reading more of.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog: I loved the characters, and I love when I feel challenged by a book; the vocabulary of this one certainly did that. 

The Handmaid's Tale and A Prayer for Owen Meany: (ok, top 6!) These are author's I've read before, but who demonstrated why I return to them in very moving narratives. 

Top Five ARC's for 2010

While I definitely have more ARC's on my shelves than I can handle, I enjoyed some really good new releases this year. My top picks for what were for me ARC's:

Fireworks over Toccoa: This is one of my favorites of the year, as much for the experience as the story. I've really enjoyed my interactions with Jeffrey Stepakoff, and his wife. I look forward to reading more of both!

My Name is Memory and Captivity: Both encourage their readers to suspend disbelief, but in wonderfully entertaining ways.  

The Distant Hours: A classic gothic tale that had me mentally reviewing my notes from my literature class on the genre. 

The Wife's Tale: My first read of the year and still the main character stays with me. 

Top Five Audio Books for 2010:

People of the Book

Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy

The Graveyard Book

On Chisel Beach

The Hour I First Believed

Book Review :: Fingersmith

You know that feel of wanting to devour a book? Of wanting to put off everything – work, sleep, food – in order to just have a few more minutes to read a few more pages? This was what Sarah Water’s Fingersmith was to me.

It is edgy Victorian. A darker version of a British Annie. A novel for a female Dickins. And, it is delightful.

Seventeen year old Susan Trinder has been raised in a house of thieves by Mrs. Sucksby, who often takes in orphans. Unlike other orphans, Sue has been doted on her whole life. When Mr. Rivers, or the Gentleman as Sue knows the frequent visitor, arrives at the house late one evening, the story begins – or so Sue says.

Mr. Rivers has met a young girl in the country (Maud Lilly) who lives with her bachelor uncle and is heir to a fortune if only she can catch a husband. For a mere three thousand pounds, Sue agrees to pass herself off as a potential maid to the young girl in order to help Mr. Rivers win her heart. Once the marriage has been consummated, Sue will further help Mr. Rivers have Maud committed to an asylum so that he is free to live with his lavish wealth. Sue can return home in time for her eighteenth birthday.

Once Mr. Rivers' plot is in action, the narrative twists begin. There are several major turns and many minor ones; so many that perhaps one criticism might be that the reader is at times unsure of what to trust. However, this didn’t both me. The primary characters – Sue and Maud, who each have a turn as narrator – are so well developed, such round creatures, that the twists only served to create more facets for them. 

Short listed for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize, Fingersmith has made me a fan of Sarah Waters.

Book Review :: A Prayer for Owen Meany

This year I've been contemplating my approach to reading as a means of getting better as a writer. There are a few novelists who have risen to the top in my personal opinion poll, and I'm thinking about setting goals around reading everything that they've written. If he wasn't so prolific, John Irving would be one of them, and A Prayer for Owen Meany is a prime example of his quality as a writer.

A Prayer for Owen Meany has been around for a while. It is the story of John Wheelwright and his friend, Owen Meany, who believes he is an instrument of God. The story is told alternating between present day and non sequential narratives of their childhood growing up. For those who may have seen the movie Simon Birch, that is based on the first part of this book.

I would venture to guess that of those who have read this book, Owen Meany would make a top 10 list of memorable characters. If his physical description isn't enough (extremely petite with translucent skin), the ALL CAPS representation of his voice to illustrate a abnormally loud, high-pitch squeal is. (Initially, I thought this would be annoying and disruptive, but I adjusted, and it wasn't.)

Owen lives life focused on his death - an event he has had visions of and actually writes about in a journal that the narrator, John, reads after Owen dies. This permeates a theme of fate versus free will throughout, which is furthered by other religious topics of Christ-figures and virgin births.

While this may sound heavy - and at times it is - John Irving is funny. Laugh out loud funny. In a story where a stuffed armadillo and a human size mannequin play significant parts in their symbolism, how could a reader not smile? But, there is also much that is sweet and tender in these two boys as they strive to grow up, learn where they came from and where they are going, and what they mean to one another.