Monday, August 29, 2011

Found: A Daughter's Journey Home--#49 finished

This is a followup kind of memoir/autobiography by Tatum O'Neal after The Paper Life from a few years back. Not too bad explaining her addictions and an arrest of trying to purchase drugs. How she has tried to rebuild her life with her children and her father. Also about the new show they have a reality/documentary type thing, where the cameras are on her and her father and their getting back together. It is on Oprah's network and I saw it a month ago or so and watched about 15 minutes of it, not too exciting. Oh well, the book is okay, nothing too great.

I will be mailing it off later this week or next, once I finish another WL book or when one on my bookshelf is requested. I think there were 54 WL for it still. Still working on those other two, The Emperor's Tomb and Bluebirds.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

The White Queen--#48 finished

This is the first in a series of three books by Phillippa Gregory about England in the mid to late 1400s during the War of the Roses. The main focus in this book is obviously the White Queen a young widow of great beauty that seduces the next King of England and becomes his queen. She has several children with him including 2 sons that become heirs that disappear. It is a true story that the author has taken and written up a plausible story about. Obviously there is just not enough information on this time period to get all of the details but she has pieced together a very believable story and a very interesting one as well. I do have the 2nd book in the series already, The Red Queen and the 3rd book is coming out later this year. I will continue this series as well as check out other books by this author. Very good stuff.

I will be posting it on PBS, I think there are 80 some WL for it. I will probably wait until I get a 2nd book to mail out with it so might be a few days or week yet before it goes. I am still reading The Emperor's Tomb, it kind of got shoved into the background while I finished DW & now The White Queen. I am also reading Found another memoir/autobiographical book by Tatum O'Neal. I also have a 3rd book of short stories Bluebirds Croon in Choir or something like that. I will probably stick with these 3 for a couple days to get a little farther along with them before starting something else.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

DW: A Lifetime Going Around in Circles--#47 finished

Darrell Waltrip was my favorite race car driver when I was growing up basically because of his name. I really didn't watch much racing on TV simply because there wasn't much on, only the big races. I guess I never really knew that he was that good of a racer until more recently and of course I know he is an announcer on Fox for NASCAR. His book is pretty good and he is a pretty interesting person with good stories. It basically ended when his racing days ended but mentioned he was a Fox announcer now but doesn't go into any of the announcing though. Good easy read, it is nice to read something a little different and this was it. After slogging through The Passage for so long this was a refreshing quick read.

I have posted it on PBS but there are like 23 copies ahead of it so I doubt it will be moving anytime soon if ever. I am still reading The White Queen, just got under 100 pages to go. Also still reading The Emperor's Tomb and just started a short story book Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir. I might look for a 4th book tonight but not sure yet.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The Passage--#46 finished

Well it took a long time to get this book finished. I might need to check back but I think I started it in late June, after our vacation. Obviously I could not really get into this book especially the beginning. It was only the last week or so that I really hit reading it and finished the last 300 pages or so. The beginning was slow and the middle slow and finally when it comes together at the end after 766 pages, the end is not clean. You can figure out or at least guess at how things continued but there is no real answer in the book. Too me after putting that much time in I would like to have a cleaner finish. Oh well maybe a 2nd book is planned and something had to be left open or maybe it is just the writer's style, this was the first book of his that I read.

This is a vampire book, but not at all like a more traditional vampire book or the more Twilight modern vampires. It is kind of a futuristic vision of what if vampires were created. It is a very creative idea and story. The role of God played by a little girl still doesn't make much sense. She was ordained for this position early on but yet the vampires ruled earth for 90 or 100 years before she found help to step in and stop it. While she kind of had God like abilities, it was also that she wasn't self aware of what her role or self was. The scene in the zoo before the vampires let loose or even before she was given the virus, showed the animals knew something about her but without the virus why was that. Again if she was ordained as God or Gold like, then why wasn't she more self aware. Her character didn't make much sense to me.

Oh well, lots to like in the book, especially if you are a vampire fan. It is long and for me was even longer than expected. Liked the story even if in many parts it just took too long to get where it was going. If there is a continuation of this story, I think I would be interested in that but I really doubt that is the case.

I will be posting it on PBS, there were over 600 WL for it last I checked so moving it should not be a problem. I am still reading The White Queen and The Emperor's Tomb. I have also just started DW, Darrell Waltrip's autobiography. I might look to start a fourth book as well but probably not tonight.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Death of a Department Head--#45 finished

A mystery of a murder of a female department head of an English dept at Austin U, basically U of Texas. A little too much academician and lesbianism but those were also what the whole story revolved around. I guess just too much for my tastes in general but a good mystery overall. The female characters were hard to distinguish apart early in the book, names similar in the sense they were not typical names and lots of similar characteristics of the characters. Seems like the book was also pushing an agenda of diversity along with the mystery. Diversity of race, gender and sexual preference all played parts, this is probably not surprising because I am guessing this is still a major issue at most universities. I know it was 20 plus years ago when I was in college, finding qualified minority candidates for professor positions was something it seemed universities were really looking for. I just thought it a little surprising in this book since this department had 2 lesbians, 3 for 4 females, a Latino male and 2 white male professors--maybe more in dept but that was all that were really brought up. Other than lacking a black professor it seems the dept was already very diverse. The black female candidate had sterling credentials so hiring her should be a no brainer but of course that was one of the main undercurrents to the murder mystery going on. The other candidate was a white female lesbian dating the dept chairperson, which really seems like a conflict of interest of major proportions that never got mentioned, which I also thought was interesting. Oh well overall an okay to good read.

I have posted it on PBS, it is the 2nd copy on the system. There had been no copies on the system until just 2 or 3 days ago, I was hoping it would be the only copy so it might move sooner. I have a feeling it might be sitting for a long time but who knows I have been surprised before about what moves.

I am still reading The Passage and have gotten past 400 pages read and moving steadily. I have also started The White Queen and only around 50 pages in. Not sure if I will start a 3rd book tonight or wait a day or two. I will probably sit in my reading room and look around at what I should read next & then decide. This was my 5th straight book of under 300 pages, I have stuck to shorter books since I have been reading The Passage which has taken just far too long for me to get through.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Boy A--#44 finished

This is a really good book. It is kind of tough in parts, tough life for the kid and the story isn't all laid out in order so it forces the reader to wonder what is really going on & what type of people the characters really are. This is not a simple page turner and it did take some time for me to really get into it. I had started it weeks ago but other books kept getting pushed in front of it for my reading time. Finally just this past weekend I focused on it & am glad now that I kept it up. It is a very good book and I will be looking for other books by this author.

It is on 9 WL at PBS so I will be posting it & sending it off at some point but will probably wait till I get a request for something else first. No need to run to the post office for only one book at this point. By the way I have worked my credits down to 33, I have ordered a bunch of books lately and still have 3 on the way. I think around 20 is probably best so still have some work to do.

I have read some more of The Passage and am through the first part and into the second and looks like final part. I think I am only around 250 pages though so long long way to go. I have also started Death of a Department Chair and will be looking to start another book yet tonight.