Fertile Plots

Jane Austen and zombies on film

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:08:00 +0000

This seems like a bad idea. Apparently Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is going to be made into a movie.

Of course, I also thought that making a movie out of a Disneyland ride was a bad idea, so what do I know?

Camp Halfblood

noreply@blogger.com (crossons) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:15:00 +0000

Calling all Percy Jackson fans... you too can attend Camp Halfblood!

JJ would give anything to go to this camp. Too bad it's in San Antonio......

YA fairy books

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:54:00 +0000

The NY Times included their special section on children's books in the Sunday review this weekend. I was especially taken with this article that looked at the spate of fairy-themed YA books, many of which we (well, I) have read recently without really noticing that it seems to be a trend.

Facelift for Classics

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:50:00 +0000

I saw them! All three of them towering on the book table at Costco the other night. This is the only place I could find all three of the novels with their newly released covers by Harper Collins. You have to hand it to their marketing department, the books look lovely. If this doesn't get Twilight fans checking out some good, classic stories, I don't know what will!

Seasonal gifts

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:07:00 +0000

I ran across this article this summer and kept meaning to get back to it and share it with all of you. I was intrigued by the idea of the story of how whichever book came into your life. I do remember quite vividly the way in which I acquired certain books, whether they were gifts or purchased with my hard-earned babysitting money. I got my first Nancy Drew as a Christmas gift from a family I babysat--it took me about a year to read it, because I thought it looked too scary! I thought my parents were completely bereft of book ideas the year they gave me The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. Yet, my dad's efforts later, from Danielle Steel to a Mrs. Pollifax mystery, were always so touching. And do you think I can get rid of that Danielle Steel? Of course not! Countless garage sales or used book sale piles have come and gone and every time I see that book on my shelf, I know I can't give it away just yet.

Now, with the holidays fast approaching, I am once again thinking about that most perfect of gifts--books. I want to be the one. The one who finds that perfect book for one of the kids in our lives that they just can't believe I knew about. Always willing to take suggestions of course, but some years, I will go on a hometown kick, and try to challenge myself to finding Minnesota titles and authors that are just right for each recipient. Other years, I stick to classics or bestseller lists. This year, with the release of Catching Fire, I think there is a sixth grader in need of The Hunger Games. And for his brother, I think it's time he learns of Smekday. The girls always seem easier, once I figure out at about what level they can read, I'm off and running!

National Book Awards

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:05:00 +0000

I saw a piece in today's Strib about this year's National Book Award finalists. Of course, we're happy to see a couple of MN connections, but I was pleased to see a Carleton connection with the inclusion of TJ Stiles. I knew him via my Carletonian days and even checked out his Jesse James book a few years ago when I saw it in the Voice. I bet we can all guess where his interest in that figure may have begun!

I'm always surprised by some of these lists, there are so many titles I don't really know. In fiction, I only know of two titles very well and in the young adult literature, I only recognize a couple of the authors, not the works. It's humbling, because between libraries, bookstores, print sources, you guys, goodreads etc, I feel like I have a pretty wide area in which to pull my reading choices!

Art imitates life

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:27:00 +0000

After the premiere of Castle the other night, I went to the ABC website, because I thought EW had mentioned different authors than Connelly and the ubiquitous Cannell that showed up at the poker table. I was right and wrong, I think I had remembered a mention of Patterson from the first season. However, imagine my surprise when I learned you can read chapters of the new Nikki Heat novel, Heat Wave for free at ABC.com. They have 7 chapters ready to go!
Being the inquisitive sort, I followed the information about purchasing said book and discovered it will be released next week! (Amazon was cheaper than the ABC link, of course!) What a great marketing crossover tool for the folks at ABC and Castle.
Now, if I could just figure out if NF will be going out doing author signings as Richard Castle. Maybe he'd sign J's Dr. Horrible DVD too...

Pumpkin Harvest

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:11:00 +0000

I should've mentioned that we (that is, Eric) harvested our pumpkins a couple of weeks ago. He grew them in our "other garden" - we have a plot at a community garden where there's more sun than in our yard, but the soil is worse and there are no deer fences. They wound around the tomatoes and along the sides of the plot and did pretty well, but then the vines were dying off and some of the pumpkins looked like they might rot, so he harvested the lot of them and put them in the garage. A few were pretty greenish but turned more orange in the cool of the garage, and I cut up and cooked the ones that looked soft. There were a dozen; I've been trying to cook and puree them a few at a time so I don't go crazy on pumpkin production. I've found that cutting them into chunks and steaming is the easiest, though I need to strain out some of the liquid.

Besides having pumpkin puree in the freezer, I baked several batches of pumpkin-chip muffins, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin-chip loaves, and the long-awaited pumpkin pie...but I forgot the sugar in the pie. Aaauggghhh! I've never done that before. Luckily it tastes fine if you sprinkle A LOT of sugar on top.

Ridiculously overqualified

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:00:00 +0000

I'm really enjoying The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, with its combination of Darwin and coming-of-age story. I was curious about the author, so I flipped to the back flap. We've discussed the tendency to list entertaining or sometimes cutesy jobs that authors have held before being published, but this is a whole different category:

"Jacqueline Kelly was born in New Zealand and raised in western Canada. She now makes her home with her husband and various cats and dogs in Austin and Fentress, Texas. She is a practicing physician and lawyer. This is her first novel."

And I thought that *I* was busy!

Dan Brown

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:40:00 +0000

Just heard some incredible numbers about Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol. It had an initial print run of over 5 million books and on Tuesday, the release day, over one million were sold. Wow. I just thought it was interesting.

Borrowing Posts

noreply@blogger.com (crossons) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:45:00 +0000

The Hobbled Runner has been snapping pictures of my garden for me. I think I'll just send you all over there to see the pictures...

Rain garden: I'm still obsessed with my rain garden - and had to extend it this year. (See photo) I had bigger plans, but there are too many tree roots in the area. So, it's just a small addition. Planted more Northern Blue Flag Iris, Culver's Root, Blue Lobelia and Goat's Beard.

Anuals: Other post is of the annual section of the garden. Some of my favorite plants are "volunteers" - things I didn't plant, or planted years ago that keep self-seeding - sometimes quite far from the original plant! Guess I better not enter the contest to identify the plants, but happy to let you know what any of them are.

Fun part is wondering what will come back next year!

Did we read the same book?

noreply@blogger.com (Doc Jen) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:11:00 +0000

I was reading my latest Entertainment Weekly the other day and I was excited to see that the lead review in the book section was for Catching Fire, Suzanne Collin's sequel to The Hunger Games. However, I barely got a paragraph into Jennifer Reese's review when I found myself muttering, "WTF!" Here's the opening paragraph of the review:

Last year, Suzanne Collins published The Hunger Games, the first in a projected young-adult trilogy about Katniss Everdeen, a heroic adolescent girl who crushed on a sexy hunter. In between romantic daydreams, Katniss shot strange beasts, dodged force fields, and battled murderous zombie werewolves — usually while wearing fabulous glitzy outfits.

Huh? Did Jennifer Reese read the same book that I did last fall? I remember The Hunger Games as a young adult novel about a dystopian future where every year young people are choosen at random to fight to the death. One of the opening scenes involves the heroine, Katniss, stealing into a forbidden area to hunt food for her family. The reason Katniss ends up in the games in the first place is because her 12-year-old sister is initially chosen and Kat knows there is no way she will survive. I don't remember a lot of romantic daydreams and though I vaguely remember that they tarted up the contestants before the battle began--all for the television ratings--I don't think any of those contestants wore those clothes onto the battlefield. Yeah . . . battlefield . . . fight to the death . . . not exactly the stuff of adolescent yearning . . .

In critiquing the second book, Reese notes that Collin's novel lacks the "erotic energy" of the Twilight series. Double huh? I think Twilight captures the adolecent yearning for all-consuming love (in all its scary passiveness) like no other series but it's so chaste that most folks (okay, maybe just me) kind of lost interest by book 2 and started rooting for the werewolf, Jacob, because he seemed so vibrant, alive, and well . . . real.

And I guess that's what makes me the most annoyed at Reese's review . . . the fact that she misses the essential "realness" of The Hunger Games-so real that I stayed up until 3:00 am reading it the day I bought it (and had to grumpily face a long day of work on three hours of sleep). It felt real like The Handmaiden's Tale felt real . . . like World War Z felt real . . . a scary future that has just enough of the present in it to stop your breath.

The fact that Reese misses this aspect of the novel suggests that she didn't read The Hunger Games very carefully. Actually, the general "comment" consensus after her review online is that she didn't actually read the first novel at all. Either way, it casts a lot of doubt on her review of the sequel. Also, my thought is if you wear your Twilght sunglasses to every young adult novel, you might miss a lot as many a librarian and middle school teacher hastened to point out.

For a good time, read the review and chuckle and then read the comments. With only one exception that I saw this morning, almost every single responder felt like I did. Did you read the first book? Do all young adult novels have to follow the Twilight formula (big yawn!)? My favorite response was from a sixteen-year-old, who used craptastic as an adjective and reminded Reese that Twilight was really a rip-off of a vampire series in the 90's. Go girl!

So, I look forward to reading Catching Fire soon and entering a fictional world that is far more vivid and real than Jennifer Reese's review.

Summer Readin', Had Me a Blast...

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:29:00 +0000

Summer readin', it happened so fast...

We're lucky here; school doesn't start for another week, so I can remain on summer schedule a little longer while semesters have already started at many schools across the country. As always at times of transition, I tend to look back and look ahead and think about what I've done and what hasn't gotten done. So this is an ideal time to think about our summer reading trends and best-of lists, right?

I've read a whole bunch of YA sequels in the last month or so; by far the best was The Immortal Fire, Anne Ursu's final book in the Cronus Chronicles. Great blend of Greek mythology, contemporary teens, and snarky humor. In a similar category: Rick Riordan's The Last Olympian, also an excellent conclusion to a series.

I feel like I read a whole lot of books that I thought were just okay but not particularly memorable. Standouts, though, are People of the Book (Geraldine Brooks), Sorcery and Cecelia (and sequels, by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer), and The Latehomecomer (Kao Kalia Yang).

Booby prize goes to Heavenly (Jennifer Laurens), which will go down in history as one of the most-maligned books I've ever read.

Carleton in the news

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:10:00 +0000

I recently learned through JNJ that Patricia Wrede (author of those deliciously long titled books she's been reading lately) went to Carleton. She had found her through the Voice, in one of those articles about alums. Well, imagine my surprise this weekend, when not one, but two more alums, both YA authors, were highlighted in the Star Tribune.

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/53172657.html

Guess I'll have more titles to add to the always evolving to-be-read pile!

John Hughes

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:13:00 +0000

It's always sad when someone dies so relatively young. And I have been interested to read about what may have been a two-way disenchantment with the business.

On to the polls. Have you guys noticed the lack of Sixteen Candles making the cut?? What's up with that?? I would have voted for it. But C. reminded me about how The Breakfast Club really introduced us to more of those young actors who made up much of the Brat pack of the 80's.
Certainly have some good memories of his hits.

...and again!

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Okay, I'm a little embarrassed now...I won my third GoodReads "first reads" book. This one is Heavenly by Jennifer Laurens. There were 20 copies being given out - it must have increased the odds.

Looking ahead, there are some other books coming up on the list that I'm really excited about, including an ARC of the sequel to The Hunger Games and the new Margaret Atwood book. I was interested to see that it's not at all just unknown authors trying to drum up publicity.

Julie & Julia

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:38:00 +0000

A little off topic, but there is an article in today's NY Times about the filming of "Julie and Julia," specifically about the food styling involved in it. I found this interesting because there was an article a long time ago - 15 years? More? - in Harper's (I think) that deconstructed a food photo shoot. Ever since then, I find myself staring at the food in both print and film, wondering how much of it is real.

Nikolski: A Review

noreply@blogger.com (Doc Jen) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:03:00 +0000

Since I got a free copy of Nikolski from the publisher, I thought I would publish my review here as well as on Goodreads. I apologize for those who have to read this twice.

Nikolski: A Novel by Nicolas Dickner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed this novel though I find it difficult to neatly summarize. It's three different stories about three different people--an unnamed male narrator who works in a used bookstore, a young man who leaves his mother and their vagrant lifestyle to go to university, and Joyce, a young woman who flees her small town in search of a long-lost relative (and modern day pirate), who ends up becoming a tech pirate herself. All three characters spend time in Montreal, have an absent parent, become fixated with travel, cartography, and/or pirates.

These three characters are also connected in other ways though only the reader realizes it and that makes their brief interactions all the more poignant. The writing, in translation, is both beautiful and engaging and I'm tempted to read this over again at some point to think more about how its parts relate.

View all my reviews >>

Did you know this and not tell me??

noreply@blogger.com (crossons) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:27:00 +0000

According to the Guardian (via the Star Tribune books editor), "Final Anne of Green Gables book reveals dark surprises." Did you all know this but no one told me??? This could be as earthshattering as Harry Potter 8!! Full article...

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:50:00 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Sensibility-Monsters-Jane-Austen/dp/1594744424/ref=sr _1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247780928&sr=8-1

Oh my.

I just don't know what could be next. But I'm a little surprised they didn't go with Persuasion for the sea monsters, what with all that travelling to Bath and that nasty sea wall. I bet Wentworth could handle those sea monsters.

i won again!

noreply@blogger.com (julienj) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:06:00 +0000

Last night I went through the First Reads list of giveaways, figuring that there were a whole bunch that had a June 30/ July 1 giveaway date.

I checked my e-mail this morning, and I won another one! This one is After You, by Julie Buxbaum. I know nothing about this book...hope it's good.

What did you get for High School Graduation?

noreply@blogger.com (crossons) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:49:00 +0000

So, what did you buy with your high school graduation money? I'm rather embarrassed to admit, but I bought a Walkman. Pretty cool for 1983, huh? It served me well at Carleton.... especially late at night.

So here's an amusing BBC article about the Walkman 30 years later...

Hobbled Runner beats me to it

noreply@blogger.com (crossons) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:17:00 +0000

Once again, the Hobbled Runner beats me to a post. Granted, he took this picture, so I guess he can post it first!

It's true... there are tomatoes growing right by my roses. And I did go a bit crazy and have way too many tomato plants. So, these are in pots out in front.

Any good answers to his question of why the edible stuff has to be in back??

They do come in threes, don't they?

JHolden955@gmail.com (holdenj) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:16:00 +0000

What a week. Granted, Ed McMahon was old, Farrah had a terminal illness and there's already talk of Anna Nicole similarites with Michael Jackson's death, but still, to lose so many of our childhood icons at once.

I remember feeling so grown-up when I would stay up and watch Johnny Carson when I was babysitting. (it was that or Dick Cavett, no cable around there in those days!). I may not have always understood their joking in my younger years, but there was always something comforting about seeing Ed and Johnny spar.

And Farrah, gee, she married the six-million dollar man, remember? And I sure wasn't a big poster buyer or anything, but you couldn't doubt the power of those Angels, even though she was only one for a year. And I lived in Texas back then. Her influence on hair in those years was legendary.

Oh, I think we all have already missed the little boy Jackson was. But during my French class trip to France senior year, the biggest homesick moment came while hearing "Billie Jean" over the speakers at Les Halles while shopping. He was definitely a worldwide sensation at that time.

I Won, I Won!!!

noreply@blogger.com (crossons) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:23:00 +0000

I think the karma from my fertile plots buddies has rubbed off -- I won a Firstreads book from Goodreads today! I have entered in the past - probably 5 or 6 times, but never won. Just went after Julie won and entered again -- and won! So I attribute it all to you!

Book will be interesting: An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town. Given the fact that Julie won a YA book, and I won a, what, historical travel something or other type book, there must be some sort of formula they look at..... ok, so I did "enter" to win this book, but still.... curious!

Will let you know how it is!