Happy Thanksgiving

Thanks for good books, good friends, and good discussions! Hope you all had enough pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream.

Jane Austen & Baseball

You have to sit through some other fun "tip of my hat/wag of my finger" items to get to Jane Austen's connection with baseball but it's worth the wait:





Enjoy.

Happy Birthday, Jen!

I hope you have wild and crazy plans ready for the weekend, or maybe just a wonderful stack of books and a never-ending pot of coffee!

The Most Dangerous Game

I just read The Hunger Games, in which the heroine is forced to participate in a fight-to-the-death competition. A group of 24 starts; only one can survive, and win. In that totalitarian world, all citizens are required to watch the entire broadcast, and rich patrons can donate gifts that can aid the contestants' survival.

On Monday I saw a review for a new reality TV series, Cha$e. 10 contestants must avoid a band of hunters for an hour, all the while getting updated by cellphone and perhaps receiving tools that can buy them some safety. Somewhat disturbing premise, right after reading the book, though at least viewing is optional for us.

Well, I'll be...

I was fascinated by an author's proposal to give away her first book on the eve (well, two week window) of her next novel's debut. I know JNJ and I have both read The Reincarnationist, but it seems now may be the time for anyone else to follow, as you could read it for free!

http://www.mjrose.com/books/reincarnationist_free.asp

It turns out you can follow the instructions to either download it free to your computer or Kindle until Oct31. What a great marketing idea--and very twenty-first century.

Too current

I guess I shouldn't find this so jarring, but twice in the last few weeks I've been surprised by finding something that seemed overly current in the books I was reading, though on reflection neither was particularly new.

First was the advance reading copy of Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath. Before each chapter is an epigraph; they come from various sources, and one was from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Okay, okay, after my first feeling of surprise I realized that it has been more than 10 years (!) since the first in the series came out.

But then, on the first page of It Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley, there is a reference to Stephenie Meyer. Twilight was published in 2005, so it's hardly brand-new either, but it still seemed a jolt. Maybe it was the thought that these works are becoming (or have already become) so much a part of the cultural fabric. Or maybe they seemed more current because the last book in each series was published more recently? I'll have to ruminate upon this.

What page # are you on?

Is it just me or does the page # tracking feature on Goodreads seem a little Big Brother-y? Do you really want to know that I am on page 114 of Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice? If so, please also realize that I will probably stay on that same page for a long while because I've been lured away by other more escapist fare.

I think I'm on page 53 of Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith. However, should I change that number tomorrow when I'm on page 73 . . . or page 54? If I read 100 pages, am I a "good" reader or was I just procrastinating a whole lot?

Just asking.

I guess I love making lists but I'm not so big on counting.