December 31, 2009 – New Year’s Eve Blue Moon

Tonight there will be a “blue moon,” which is the name for the second full moon in a month. (The first full moon this month was December 2nd and the second will be tonight, on December 31.) The name does not refer to the moon’s color but reflects the rarity of the event and gives [...]

Comparison of Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset and Dooms Day Book by Connie Willis

Dooms Day Book by Connie Willis, the fabulous winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Science Fiction, provides, in my opinion, an equal if not superior depiction of the Middle Ages to the trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, which won the Nobel Prize in 1928. For a summary of Kristin Lavransdatter, check my posts on [...]

Review of Kristin Lavransdatter, Volume III: The Cross, by Sigrid Undset and translated by Tiina Nunnally

I signed up for the Kristin Lavransdatter Readalong, sponsored by Richard of Caravana de Recuerdos and Emily from Evening All Afternoon. As Emily pointed out, “we’ll be reading the Tina Nunnally translation, which won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize in 2001 and apparently restored a number of the more experimental passages, which had been excised from [...]

Moby Dick Mondays – Week 7

Ti of the blog Book Chatter is sponsoring a challenge/readalong to read the classic Moby Dick. On Mondays, we’ll be posting about our progress. I am listening to the unabridged audiodisks for this book. When we left off last week, Ishmael was digressing on all manner of topics, and Captain Ahab was yet to be [...]

Sunday Salon – New Year’s Resolutions

Once again it’s that time of year again to make New Year’s Resolutions which, to me, are like reading challenges: the fear of failure generally prevents me from taking the plunge. Nevertheless, I have at least one commitment I’ll be making, and that’s yet another start-up of the month-long Game On Diet on January 4. [...]

Review of Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

The Shelf Discovery Challenge is sponsored by Booking Mama. Participants must select and read at least six books mentioned in Lizzie Skurnick’s SHELF DISCOVERY: THE TEEN CLASSICS WE NEVER STOPPED READING. After each book is read, the participants write a “book report” so they can share their thoughts with others. This challenge is so fun [...]

Merry Christmas!

(See more of the lovely art work of Neva Davis here.)

Christmas Luminarias or Farolitos

In the Southwest, we light up many places with farolitos (the word luminaria is more commonly used even though the correct word is farolito (Spanish for “little light”) – technically, a luminaria is a bonfire. However, as is the common practice, I will use them interchangeably.) Farolitos are made from brown paper bags weighted down [...]

Review of An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris

This is book three of the Harper Connelly mystery series. Harper Connelly, aged 24, was struck by lightning when she was 15, and ever since then, has been able to sense the location of dead people by the “buzz” they emit and also determine the cause of death (but not who killed them). Consequently, she [...]

Review of The Paper Bag Christmas by Kevin Alan Milne

This is definitely the best of the Christmas books I have read. The day after Thanksgiving, two young boys, 9-year-old Molar (his father is a dentist) and 11-year-old Aaron are taken by their parents – reluctantly – to see Santa Claus at the mall. Santa Claus turns out to be Dr. Christopher K. Ringle, a [...]