Since this is my first blogging attempt, I thought I'd make a list of authors I'd recommend. Most of them are mystery or suspense writers whose books I've read for the mystery discussion group I attend at Borders.
"If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs."
Yikes! That's right. That's the title that won London's Diagram Prize for the oddest title of the year.
Massachusetts' first black governor, Deval Patrick, is writing a memoir that will be published by Broadway Books in 2010.
Not much to choose from between these two series for teen girls.
Both are filled with shallow, one-dimensional characters intent on keeping their place in their group of "so-called" friends.
Her other books include "Sullivan's Island" and "The Land of Mango Sunsets."
Kids can vote for their favorites among the 25 finalists in The Children’s Book Council's Children’s Choice Book Awards program.
The program was created to provide young readers with an opportunity to voice their opinions about the books being written for them and to help develop a reading list that will motivate children to read.
Children can cast their votes for their favorite books, author and illustrator at www.BookWeekOnline.com until May 4.
The Children’s Choice Book Award winners will be announced live at the Children’s Choice Book Award gala on May 13 in New York City as part of Children’s Book Week (May 12-18), the oldest national literacy event in the United States.
Have you just finished reading a book you couldn't put down, or one that kept putting you to sleep?
We want to hear about it, good or bad.
Send your book review to gfogal@ydr.com and we will post it here.
‘Goosebumps,’ the children’s horror series by R.L. Stine will be reborn this spring with a new series of 12 stories called ‘Goosebumps HorrorLand.’
To read about the new books and their author, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/books/25stin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Urban lit tells gritty stories about street life
By JOSEPH MALDONADO
For the Daily Record/Sunday News
Authors have their own ideas of what makes a good story, but a common goal is to write what they know. Shannon Holmes has known some hard times and it shows in his novels, which are part of a quickly growing genre known as street lit.
These gritty stories feature characters that, on the surface, are seriously flawed, desperate, self-degrading and oftentimes, very violent.
“I like to paint my characters into a tight corner, just to see how they will react,” said Holmes, who lives in The Bronx, New York.
While my husband watches basketball on television, my nose is in a book.
But now I’ve discovered that we literary types can get hyped with a March Madness of our own.
A student's view of comics and a professor's view of graphic novels will be the last two programs in Dillsburg Library's "Comics From the Classics to the Graphix" series.
"Up, Down, and Around," written by Pennsylvania author Katherine Ayres and illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott, has been named this year's selection for the third annual Pennsylvania One Book, Every Young Child early literacy program.
York's Otterbein United Methodist Church has announced the publication of CrossWords, a new literary journal for Christian writers. The first edition of CrossWords contains the prose and poetry of more than 30 Central Pennsylvania writers.
"The Great Man" by Kate Christensen was named winner of the 2008 PEN/ Faulkner Award for Fiction.
So in the land of splitting a book into two movies — see "The Hobbit" — the producers of "Harry Potter" are apparently the latest to go that route.
The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the seventh and final installment of the boy wizard's adventures, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," will be two films.
York County poet Rebecca Gonzalez has published her first book of poetry. "Sonata for Rain" sells for $10. For details and ordering information, visit www.irisgpress.org.
I've recently read two books related to the Battle of Thermopylae, one fiction, one non-fiction. Thermopylae was the battle in 480 B.C. in which 300 picked Spartans and a few thousand allies held a mountain pass for three days against the Persian army, which numbered in the millions or the hundreds of thousands, depending on whose account you believe.
Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire" is a novelization of the battle through the eyes of Xeones, a Spartan helot -- a type of serf, some of whom served the Spartiate warriors in battle.
“Tree of Smoke” by Denis Johnson
Start with the opening, where on the day John F. Kennedy is assassinated, a young American sailor in the Philippines goes into the jungle and shoots a beautiful monkey, but he doesn’t know why, and then he is horrified to watch it die.
I decided to skip ahead. It didn’t get prettier.
Following in the footsteps of James Frey and Laura Albert, yet another writer has admitted her memoir is just a bit of creative writing.
Margaret Seltzer says her book, "Love and Consequences,'" was made up.
Read more by clicking here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/books/05fake.html?th&emc=th
Jodi Picoult's "My Sister's Keeper" sat on my bookshelf for a few months before I picked it up.
My sister read it first, then lent it to my mother, who gave it to me. The three of us don't always mesh in terms of book tastes, but the concept was intriguing, so I gave it a shot.
The novel's main character, 13-year-old Anna, was conceived to help her older sister Kate, who suffers from leukemia. Just after Anna was born, cells from her umbilical cord were donated to Kate to help her recover. As they grow up, Kate is in and out of hospitals battling her illness, and so is Anna, who donates blood, bone marrow and whatever else her sister needs.
Then, Kate needs a kidney.
I did it again Friday night.
I wanted to stay faithful. But the temptation was too much.
