JUNE BUG

Fill in the Gaps Project

"June Bug" by Chris Fabry
Product Description(Amazon.com)
June Bug believed everything her daddy told her. That is, until she walked into Wal-Mart and saw her face on a list of missing children. The discovery begins a quest for the truth about her father, the mother he rarely speaks about, and ultimately herself. A modern interpretation of Les Miserables, the story follows a dilapidated RV rambling cross-country with June Bug and her father, a man running from a haunted past. Forces beyond their control draw them back to Dogwood, West Virginia, down a winding path that will change their lives forever.
# Paperback: 336 pages
# Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (July 9, 2009)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1414319568
# ISBN-13: 978-1414319568

MY THOUGHTS: This was a very good book. I loved all the characters. Following June Bugs story to find herself was very enjoyable. As June Bug hunts for all the info she can find, she is also searching for her roots. Where did she come from? Who is her mother? Does she have brothers and sisters?

CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC - Review

"Confederates in the Attic" by Tony Horwitz



This book has been on my list of TBR books for ages. I love reading about history, especially the Civil War. I don't really know what the fascination is with the period, but I've always loved reading about it since I was a young girl. Mr. Horwitz did a remarkable job with this book. I found out lots of things I didn't know and lots of things I did know, but needed a refresher on it. Many people think the Civil War was about Slavery. It wasn't. It was about states rights. As Horwitz takes you through the south and you hear what everyone there thinks about the Civil War and some keep it alive and some don't care one way or the other. But some take it to extreme. If you like to read about the Civil War you should really read this book. I highly recommend it. You can see my full review at my book blog, Just Books.

REVIEW - MARLEY & ME

MY THOUGHTS: I went into this book knowing full well what was going to happen. But I really enjoyed reading about the Grogan family and all their misadventures with Marley. How could you not love him. He enjoyed life to the fullest, a bit energetic, true, but happy most of the time. I think my favorite "Marley" story is him getting kicked out of Obedience school. And then going back and trying it again and getting is degree and eating it! Whatever you say about Marley he truly loved his family and they loved him very deeply even with all his so called "problems". Now on to the movie. Which I'm sure I'll need some tissues to see this one. You can see my full review at my place, Just Books.

REVIEW - THE SUMMONING

"The Summoning" by Kelley Armstrong



MY THOUGHTS: This is a new author for me. I read about this book at someone's blog and it sounded really good, so I put it on my TBR list. It is really a good book. It's also a series of books. The Awakening, The Reckoning, The Gathering(2011) are the ones in the series. The Gathering is due out in 2011. Chloe starts seeing strange things and freaks out in school. They sent her to a house for disturbed teens. But something isn't right. Chloe finds out about all the different kids there and their "special" powers. Then all hell breaks loose. Chloe, Rae, Derek, and Simmon are on the run. And do they get caught? Does Chloe find her "special" power and how to use it? You'll have to read the book to find out the answers to these questions. You can view my full review at my place, Just Books.

Richard Adams/WATERSHIP DOWN

A "fantasy classic," first published in 1972, about a group of rabbits who set out against all odds to start a new warren. The main character, Hazel, finds himself leader of the group against all odds, and is guided in his decisions by his brother, Fiver, who has a supernatural ability to dream the future.

Watership Down made my Gaps list for a couple reasons--first, it had made a lot of "best of the 20th century" kinds of lists, second, because my mother, who has a very low tolerance for literary nonsense, expressed great surprise and sadness when she found out I hadn't read it. "It's very good," she promised. My baby sister, when she saw I was reading the book, shouted "Hazel-rah!" at which point I learned she had read it in fifth grade (while I had somehow missed it).

I sat down to lunch with a literary agent whom I was meeting for the first time, and when she saw the book in my hands, she said, "Silflay hraka!" I hadn't gotten to that part yet, so she explained, "That means 'eat s**t' in rabbit! When we read it in elementary school, we thought it was so cool we could swear in rabbit, since the teachers couldn't punish us." At this point I realized I had missed out on an entire piece of our English language cultural fabric by not having read it, and became very glad I was getting around to it now.

I spent a week reading this one--it inspired savoring--and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Like, blind enjoyment--it wasn't any work to read at all, despite the many bettering and literary themes. It required suspending disbelief--when I first encountered "lapine," the rabbit language, my thought was, "Seriously? Rabbits don't talk!"--but it is satisfyingly easy to get over these humps. And while this book is, I guess, "fantasy" literature, Adams is also gruelingly observant of rabbit biology, natural phenomena, and the world of the downs in which they live. It's really ... real, and very easy to get lost in.

Like I said, I enjoyed reading it, in a pretty unqualified way. It's a great story. I do think there are a couple barriers to pure enjoyment, and I feel obliged to mention them here, if only in passing: the first is gender roles stereotyping, although one might write this off to faithful animal behavior observation. The other is racial/ethnic stereotyping, which comes in a little bit in the "dialect" rendering of non-rabbit speech throughout the book. I personally think the book would have been a little improved without the dialect inclusions, but in 1972 perhaps this was not as much of a concern.

So, another Gaps goal accomplished! Pip pip.

REVIEW - HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY

"Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger
Product Description(Amazon.com)
Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year-old sisters with an intense attachment to each other. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions for this inheritance: that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the girls’ aunt Elspeth and their mother, Edie.
The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, and other luminaries are buried. Julia and Valentina become involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth’s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including—perhaps—their aunt.
# Paperback: 406 pages
# Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition (September 29, 2010)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1439169012
# ISBN-13: 978-1439169018

MY THOUGHTS: This is my book clubs choice for September. I have wanted to read this book and I'm really glad I did. It was a very good book. I really liked all the characters. I really liked Martin a lot. I could feel for him. Does he get to leave his apartment? Does Robert get his Thesis done on Highgate Cemetery? As Julia and Valentina move to London they seem to grow apart. Valentina wants to be separate from Julia. With the help of their Aunt Elspeth's ghost they think of something that seems so impossible. But does it work? Will Valentina get her wish and be separate from Julia? You'll have to read the book to find out the outcome of this very interesting book.

REVIEW - THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

This book has been on my TBR list for the longest time. It was well worth waiting for. I love the main character, Christopher. He's very funny at times. some of the math stuff I didn't get, but it was amazing all the same. When Christopher is trying to get to London and his mother, I got so frustrated with the people. I wanted to shout at them to leave him alone. It's frustrating enough for a "normal" person to travel but to be Autistic and trying to travel on your own would be an awful experience. The worst part is the LIE his father tells him. What LIE is that? You'll have to read the book to find out. It's a really awesome book!

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

"The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame

Mole, Water Rat, Badger, and the mischievous Toad live a quiet life on the banks of the River Thames with the rest of their animal friends. But Toad tends to get into trouble, and his passion for cars eventually results in his being caught and kept a helpless prisoner in the remotest dungeon of the best-guarded castle in all the land. Dressed as a washerwoman—and with some help from his friends—Toad manages to escape the castle and begins his journey home to Toad Hall.


MY THOUGHTS: This is a great book for all those little minds. They can see all the wonderful animals and the places they live. The illustrations are beautifully done and very colorful. Little minds can imagine where Mr. Mole, Mr. Rat, Mr. Toad and all the animals live an play. This would be a great book to read to your little ones.

The Original Tricky Dick

The radio show This American Life had a show about Origin Stories this week, and they began with the myth of the garage as the founding place for all software giants. No matter how bogus, the myths survive because they make better stories.

Ever try to explain the big bang to a five-year-old? Four of five sentences into it you realize how appealing it is to just say, “And on the sixth day, …”

Or, if you’re a former music major like me, how much do you love the movie Amadeus even though you know it’s a load of bullpuckey?

All this is a lead-in to tell you I read Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592).

For some odd cosmic reason I had picked up Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (1951). It was calling to me off a library shelf and I answered the call. It’s great fun.* A detective is laid up and gets interested in a picture of Richard III, deciding that the man looks nothing at all like a murderer. From that point on he interviews everyone who comes in his room as a hostile witness. What surfaces is what we already know but often forget: all history is written by the victors, or at the very least with an agenda.

That aside, Shakespeare’s Richard III is well worth while. But not really for the story. It’s almost like Shakespeare knew the story is a leaky vessel and plugged it with and exquistely evil character, presenting Richard’s ominous pre-revealings of the events about to unfold.

The fun in the text is not at all in “what’s going to happen?” but in “how is he going to do this?”

I’m guessing it’s the kind of play you watch not for the drama, but for the acting.

*So much fun that I read Tey's The Singing Sands soon after. If you're going to read Tey, stick with Daughter of Time.

Review Canterbury Tales

CANTERBURY TALES by GEOFFERY CHAUCER

This book took more time than usual and you will understand why when you read it.Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a classic and very solid one at that.It is a beautiful piece of literature I must say.Its poetry and prose combined together.

Canterbury Tales is a set of stories told by pilgrims going to visit the shrine of Thomas Backet , a saint in Canterbury. Rest of the review can be found here. Though I had read this book a few days back. I had totally forgotten that its on my Fill In The Gap list :)

Review -Lady Susan

I am a Jane Austen Fan and a solid one at that, having read most of her books not once but many times.Lady Susan ,was one book that somehow didn't make up to my book shelf until recently.I saw a review on one of the blogs and promptly checked it out from my local library.I knew from the other reviews that it was one of the later published works of the author and it was in form of letters but didn't realise that it would be so different from rest of her works.By different ,I mean ,the protagonist,Lady Susan..She is not the usual strong minded but lovable characters Jane creates .Lady Susan is very beautiful no doubt ,but also selfish(seriously) and cunning .A combination, we don't usually attribute to heroines,not to Austen heroines at the least.But this one is!!

The main plot revolves around Lady Susan's attempts to find herself a good match ,within a short period of the death of her husband and also some one really rich for her teenage daughter , who hates this idea. To fulfill this task, she lands at the house of her brother, Mr Vernon , even though she hasn't been totally nice to him or his wife in the past.She uses her talents to accomplish her task to the fullest and that really makes it fun to read.Best part is when Mrs Vernon's brother falls for her even after knowing about her not so nice past history.And not to forget she has an affair with a much married man. The book is in form of letters written by the central characters, unfolding the story in a really nice manner.Certain moral issues are dealt with as is usual with any Austen book and the theme of younger men for older women also comes up in this one.

Not a long winding novel like the rest of her works but a quick read. Funny,rather interesting work of an author the literary world loves so much.I would recommend it to any classics or Austen fan.