Monday, April 30, 2012

It's Monday! What are you reading?


It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila @ Book Journey where you can share what you are reading each week. Be sure to visit Book Journey to link up if want to join in! 

I am well and truly back into the swing of things at work, hence the lack of reading and posts! :( No worry though, this week I am aiming to make up for it. 

I am going to put Cutting for Stone down and come back to it later - only because I find it hard to read two pretty heavily themed books at the one time as I am also still reading All That I Am by Anna Funder. Instead of Cutting For Stone, I'm going to read The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag because I have been hanging out to read some more Flavia!!! If you haven't read any of the Flavia de Luce series, then you should!! lol :)

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Quote it Saturday!

Hosted by Freda's Voice

I have had a difficult week and find myself taking a step back from life to remember what is important to me and who I am. The universe has a way of helping you along when you are struggling and it took me to this beautiful quote by Audrey Hepburn. Hope you like it to.




"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."

~Audrey Hepburn 1929 – 1993 ~
British Actress and Humanitarian

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Teaser Tuesday - All That I Am By Anna Funder


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share 2 “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
This weeks Teaser Tuesday comes from All That I Am By Anna Funder. I love it when you come across observations in a book that really resonate with you. This weeks teaser was one of those moments for me...

"Children are the only people who can see adults from inside their lives, permitted to observe every small thing, as if their forming minds are incapable of judging what they see, or as if it does not lodge there, somewhere, permanently." (p. 40)

Here is the book description from Amazon if you are interested.

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight.  United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country.  Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the greate playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London.  Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret.  But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.
Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days is Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Quote it Saturday - Children

Hosted by Freda's Voice

I am going back to work on Monday and can't wait to see the beautiful kids in my class after their holiday, so this week I thought I'd quote about children. The passage by Kahil Gibrahn is one of my favourites. If you haven't read his work in 'The Prophet', try and get yourself a copy, it is simply beautiful.

A child can ask a thousand questions that the wisest man cannot answer. 
Jacob Abbott 1803 - 1879



We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body. 
                     Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 - 1882



Your children are not your children,
they are the sons and daughters of 
life's longing for itself.

They come through you
but not from you.
And though they are with you
yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love
but not your thoughts
for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies
but not their soul,
for their soul belongs in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit
not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite
and he bends you with his might
that his arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness,
for even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so he loves also the bow that is stable.
Kahlil Gibran 1884 - 1931



Friday, April 20, 2012

The Friday 56 - Wide Sargasso Sea By Jean Rhys


The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda over at Freda's Voice. The rules are simple:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you. (I cheat sometimes and put a little more than a sentence!)
*Post it.
*Add your post URL to the Link.
Today's Friday 56 comes from another of my favourite reads titled 'Wide Sargasso Sea' By Jean Rhys which was written as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre although it does also stand on it's own. Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Bertha Mason, who was Mr Rochester's first wife, the madwoman in the attic of Thornfield Hall. Jean Rhys uses such beautiful, sensory descriptive language and this was one of the things I loved most about Wide Sargasso Sea. 

"Christophine cried bitterly but I could not. I prayed, but the words fell to the ground meaning nothing." (p. 55/56)

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Tune in Tuesday


Tune in Tuesday - Obadiah Parker

Tune in Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Ginger from GReads  that showcases music by posting a song on your blog in order to help spread the love of music! My song this week is from Obadiah Parker whose voice is just so cool! This is his cover of Hey Ya which I love! Hope you like :) 



PS Sorry I am a day late ...eeek! 

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Teaser Tuesday - The Earth Hums in B Flat

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share 2 “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Well, here is my teaser for this week....taken from The Earth Hums in B Flat By Mari Strachan.

"'If you're clever you'll get on in this old world,' says Tada. 'No-one will think Gwennie's clever if she goes around saying she can fly and dead animals are resurrected,' said Mam. 'I think it wants me to help it,' I say. 'I think it wants a decent burial. Like we gave Siani Nanti.' (p. 56)

Monday, April 16, 2012

It's Monday! What are you reading?


It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila @ Book Journey where you can share what you are reading each week. Be sure to visit Book Journey to link up if want to join in! 


Well, before I talk about what I am reading this week, let me just say that I finished The Fault in Our Stars By John Green on Saturday and oh my goodness what an amazing read...just, wow! So raw, honest and heart wrenching....you have to read it. Review will be here soon :)  This week though, I am excited to be starting Cutting for Stone By Abraham Verghese and The Earth Hums in B Flat By Mari Strachan. 


Cutting for Stone By Abraham Verghese is one that I have wanted to start reading all year! Here is the book description from Amazon:


A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel—an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.
An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

The Earth Hums in B Flat By Mari Strachan is one that has been on my TBR pile forever and is also part of my Mount TBR challenge...yay!! Here is the book description from Amazon:
The Earth Hums in B Flatis a story of dark family secrets unraveled by the shrewd insight of twelve-year-old Gwenni Morgan, a child with an irrepressible spirit living in a Welsh village that is reluctantly entering the modern age. From the small bed that she shares with her sister at night she flies up into the starry sky above her village and looks down on the lives of its inhabitants. And when the family that she babysits for is rocked by the sudden, unexplainable disappearance of their patriarch, Gwenni is determined to solve the mystery of Ifan Evan’s whereabouts. Turning amateur detective, she is unaware that the trail will lead her closer to home than she ever imagined.
Told with a breathtaking, irresistible blend of freshness and wisdom, the voice that sixty-two-year-old Welsh debut novelist Mari Strachan has created with Gwenni is vibrant, charming, and full of heart. An unforgettable character, Gwenni’s unique way of seeing the world lends her the ability to make the ordinary extraordinary. A magical novel about the trials of youth, familial duty, and understanding,The Earth Hums in B Flatwill transport you to another time and place.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Quote it Saturday - Cats

Hosted by Freda's Voice



A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
~Ernest Hemingway 1899 – 1961~
Author and Journalist




If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow, but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
~Mark Twain 1835 – 1910~ 
Author and Humourist



I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
~Hippolyte Taine 1828 – 1893~
French Critic and Historian

Friday, April 13, 2012

The Friday 56

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda over at Freda's Voice. The rules are simple:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you. (I cheat sometimes and put a little more than a sentence!)
*Post it.
*Add your post URL to the Link.

Today's Friday 56 comes from a great book that I read a couple of years ago called 'The Poisonwood Bible' By Barbara Kingsolver. It was one of those books that sat on my TBR pile for ages and ages, but then once I finally read it I couldn't put it down and could not believe that I had let such a wonderful book sit on that pile for so long! lol :)

"The River Kwilu is not like the River Jordan, chilly and wide. It is a lazy, rolling river as warm as bathwater, where the crocodiles are said to roll around like logs. No milk and honey on the other side, either, but just more stinking jungle laying low in the haze, as far, far away as the memory of picnics in Georgia." (p.56)


In a Library By Emily Dickinson

I love Emily Dickinson's poetry so much and was reading some this afternoon when I came across this bookish themed poem that I hadn't seen before! How had I never seen it before???!!!  Anyway, hope you like it!

IN A LIBRARY.

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,

His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.

His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;

What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;

When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,

He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.

His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Review: The Snow Child By Eowyn Ivey


Title: The Snow Child
Author: Eowyn Ivey
Published: Headline Review 2012
No. Pages: 432
Themes: Life, love, belief
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 5 stars
The Snow Child was one of the most beautifully written and paced stories I have read in a really long time! I was so very surprised by how much I loved it because it wasn’t a novel I had heard anything about prior to picking it up at the bookshop and to be honest, it was the beautiful cover art that initially sucked me in!
The Snow Child is based on the Russian fairytale Snegurochka which is about an old man and woman, unable to have a child of their own, who build a snow child that magically comes to life. In Ivey’s novel, the magical is masterfully weaved into the reality of a couple’s struggle through life after the loss of their own child, and you find yourself lost in a story that is ultimately very real and heartwrenching. The descriptive language is simply beautiful and the characters are so well developed that by the end of the novel you feel as though you have watched them grow throughout their entire lifetime. I don’t want to spoil the story, so I am not going to tell you anymore, but I truly recommend this book to you because you will love it!

Cat Thursday

Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Enjoy! This fun meme is hosted by The True Book Addict. Go over to her site to join in the fun.


....oh, you wanted to use the computer?...sorry the computers taken, it is my personal heater....ohh you wanted to do some gardening??.....sorry plant pots taken too, it is my personal sun bed.....ohhh you wanted to go to bed???, sorry the pillows taken also, it is my personal mattress!! LOL :)


Does anyone else out there living with a beloved four legged friend have a similar problem to me??

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Tune in Tuesday - Microwave Jenny

Tune in Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Ginger from GReads  that showcases music by posting a song on your blog in order to help spread the love of music!
Here is a song from a band I have just fallen in love with after a recommendation from one of my beautiful friends! They are called 'Microwave Jenny' and are an Australian duo. This song is called 'Stuck on the Moon'.



Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Teaser Tuesday


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share 2 “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Well, here is my teaser for this week....taken from Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children By Ransom Riggs.

"I thought about how my grandfather's family had been taken from him, and how because of that my dad grew up feeling like he didn't have a dad, and now I had acute stress and nightmares and was sitting alone in a falling-down house and crying hot, stupid tears all over my shirt. All because of a seventy-year-old hurt that had somehow been passed down to me like some poisonous heirloom, and monsters I couldn't fight because they were all dead, beyond killing or punishing or any kind of reckoning." (p. 104)

Monday, April 9, 2012

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila @ Book Journey where you can share what you are reading each week. Be sure to visit Book Journey to link up if want to join in! 

This week I am going to read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which has been sitting on my shelf for a few months now. I am curious about this book, I don't really know what to expect - perhaps that is a good thing! 

I am also reading The Fault in Our Stars By John Green. I got my copy last week and have been looking forward to this book because everybody I have spoken to loves it.

I am extremely excited to get started on Catching Fire By Suzanne Collins, which is the second book in The Hunger Games Trilogy. Yes, I know I have been a bit slow to get into this series but I kept avoiding it for some reason - probably all the hype which usually makes me run the other way!! But, I can truly say that I am glad I finally read The Hunger Games as it did live up to its reputation and I have to finish the series now!

And finally I am finishing off The Snow Child By Eowyn Ivey which I have really enjoyed reading, even more than I thought I would!! I will try and post a review this week.

What are you reading this week? I love checking out everybody else's books each Monday! Make sure you join in It's Monday! What are you Reading? by linking up with Sheila over @ Book Journey.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

The Art of Racing in the Rain By Garth Stein


Title: The Art of Racing in the Rain
Author: Garth Stein
Published: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd
No. Pages: 336
Themes: Love, life, loss
Genre: Fiction
Rating: ★★★★☆

The Art of Racing in the Rain is the story of a family’s journey through life told through the eyes of their beloved dog Enzo. Stein’s personification of Enzo throughout this novel brings a beautiful innocence to the telling of a story that is both heartwarming and heartwrenching.
Enzo is used to having his owner Denny all to himself, but when he marries Eve, Enzo has to adjust to sharing the time and attention he is accustomed to. As Denny and Eve’s lives unfold, and they welcome their daughter Zoe into the world, Enzo comes to love them all dearly, so when tragedy strikes and all their lives are turned upside down, Enzo’s unconditional love helps them through. At times you will cry, but at others you will catch yourself laughing out loud. I think everybody will enjoy this book, but particularly so if you love animals or have a pet of your own! Stein’s reflections on life, love and loss are made all the more poignant by the telling of this family’s story through the childlike innocence of Enzo’s eyes. Here is a trailer from YouTube: