January 2009 in a Nut Shell

January was a month with lots of snow and much nesting for me. I managed to read (19) books in January so I am pretty thrilled. Even better was the fact, I enjoyed most of what I read. Through the books I read, I visited places in India, Bangladesh, Tahiti, China, and Libya. I also saw some more of the United States: Wisconsin, New York, Massachusetts, Texas and Ohio

By Title:

1. Madness: My Bipolar Life; Hornbacher - 4/5
2. Outliers; Gladwell - 4/5 - (audio)
   
3. The Book of Bright Ideas; Kring - 5/5
4. Frangipani; Vaite - 4/5
5. Breadfruit; Vaite - 4/5
6. A Golden Year; Anam - 4.5/5 (audio)
   
7. Kiss; Dekker - 4.5/5
8. Never Tell a Lie; Ephron - 4/5
9. The Four Agreements; Ruiz - 5/5
10. The Wednesday Wars; Schmidt - 4.5/5 (audio)
    
11. Calling Mr Lonely Hearts; Benedict - 4/5
12. Women of the Silk; Tsukiyama - 4.5/5
13. Beat the Reaper; Josh Bazell - 4.5/5
14. The Space Between Us; Umrigar - 4.5/5
15. In the Country of Men; Matar - 3.5/5 (audio)
16. Epilogue: A Memoir; Roiphe - 3/5
17. Julius Winsome; Donovan - 5/5
18. Carry me Home; Sandra Kring - 4/5 (audio)
19. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County; Baker - 5/5

Favorite Books in January:

• The Book of Bright Ideas - Sandra Kring
• Julius Winsome: A Novel; Gerard Donovan
  
• The Little Giant of Aberdeen County; Tiffany Baker

Challenge Progress - 2009:

• Total Books Read in 2009 - 19
• 100+ Books Challenge for 2009 - 19/100
• New Authors Challenge for 2009 - 16/50
  
• A - Z Challenge for 2009 - 13/26
  
• Support Your Local Library for 2009 - 10/50
• Read Your Own Books for 2009 - 9/100
• Winter Reading Challenge 2008/2009 - 12/13
• Audio Book Challenge 2009 - 5/12
• 2009 Pub Challenge - 4/9
• In Their Shoes 2009 - 2/4
• John Steinbeck Mini Challenge - 0/2

How did you enjoy your month?

19 - The Little Giant of Aberdeen County; Tiffany Baker

I absolutely loved The Little Giant of Aberdeen County. An amazing debut for Tiffany Baker.

The story begins when Lily Plaice was pregnant with her second child in 1953 , and covers the span of about 40 years. Everyone in her small town in Aberdeen County, New York, suspected that Lily was going to deliver a huge baby, but when delivery day arrived, no one was prepared for exactly how huge the baby girl that they named Truly would be. The baby was so big, that Lily died giving birth to her.

The father, a barber who drank beer for breakfast, was not prepared to take care of Truly and her older sister Serena. There were no birthday parties, no Christmas tree, and only hand me down clothes. He blamed Truly for his troubles and for the death of his wife.

Little Truly continues to grow huge because of a pituitary gland deformity, and she becomes the subject of constant laughter and abuse because of her size. She must wear men's shirts as nothing fits her. Her father even tells little Truly "no wonder Lily died pushing you out. Hell, you'd block a barn door". Her teacher on her first day of school, tells five-year-old Truly "You're a Little Giant". Truly describes the differences between her appearance and her sister's appearance by saying: "The two of us were as opposite as sewage and spring water".
Truly is resilient, making the best of a bad situations, and she often finds comfort at her mother's grave. When the girl's father dies unexpectedly, the girls are separated. Pretty Serena Jane is sent to be raised by a wealthy family, and Truly goes to live on a farm with a poor family.

Serena is popular, and has a lot going for her. She eventually marries Bob Bob Morgan a doctor who came from a family of doctors. It is actually believed that during the Civil War, the first Robert Morgan married the town witch, who healed the sick, and was said to have hid her spell book before she died, but no one had been able to find it. Serena gives birth to a son Bobbie. Unhappy in her loveless marriage she disappears, and Truly is told that she her sister has died.
Doctor Bob Bob gets Truly to move in with him to cook and clean for him and her eight-year-old nephew Bobbie. Bob Bob is cruel and always taunting her about her size. However when Truly begins to play with various herbs and finds she has the ability to heal illness with herbs and other secrets hidden within the folds of the Morgan family magical quilt. She eventually unearths old secrets, and is determined to seek revenge on Bob Bob who tormented her.

Truly, the narrator of this story is one tough cookie. She makes a wonderful narrator who just seems to take what bad breaks life throws at her, and she finds happiness and love in unexpected places. The writing style of this book was magical, and the contrasting themes worked so well in this story for me. There were several twists in this story as well. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County was totally enjoyable and is highly recommended. I will be watching for more books by this author.

RATING - 5/5 - COMPLETED - 1/31/09
WHERE FROM: Library

One Book Meme

Taken from Eva's Blog

One book you’re currently reading: The Little Giant of Aberdeen County; Tiffany Baker
One book that changed your life: Nancy Drew - made me fall in love with books
One book you’d want on a deserted island: Pillars of the Earth; Follet (can't seem to get to that one here)
One book you’ve read more than once: Silas Marner
One book you’ve never been able to finish: War and Peace
One book that made you laugh: One For the Money; Janet Evanovich
One book that made you cry: The Kite Runner; Khaled Hosseini
One book you keep rereading: I almost never reread a book, but it might be Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; Lisa See (loved that book)
One book you’ve been meaning to read: Bel Canto; Ann Patchett
One book you believe everyone should read: A Separate Peace; John Knowles

Finally,
Grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the 5th sentence.
"Just stay there, please. I'm going to measure you".

Feel free to play along.

Library Loot for January 30th, 2009

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by A Striped Armchair and Out of the Blue that encourages Bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

This weeks haul:

1. Little Giant of Aderdeen County; Tiffany Baker (40 pages to go---excellent)
2. The Sweet In Between; Sheri Reynolds
   
3. The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard; Erin McGraw
4. Thank You for All Things; Sandra Kring
5. If Today Be Sweet; Thrity Umrigar
6. Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing; Fogarty
7. Pavilion of Women; Pearl Buck

#1 - I'm loving it and will finish it tonight.
#2 - Love books about dysfunction people/families
#3 - Just sounded great and has good reviews
#4 - Read 2 books by this author this month and both were excellent.
#5 - Read one book this month by this author and loved writing style.
#6 - Always feel I need help here; this book is amazing!
#7 - Time for a good classic; this one may fit the bill.

How was your week?

18 - Carry Me Home; Sandra Kring

I fell in love with my #3 Book for 2009 : Sandra Kring's, The Book of Bright Ideas, so I decided to give her debut novel, Carry Me Home a try. I was not disappointed in the story, however, the reader of this audio book was not that good, especially when it came to the female voices.

The story takes place in the 1940's in Rural Wisconsin. Earl Gunderman (AKA Earwig) is sixteen years old and mentally challenged as a result of a high fever when he was younger. What he lacks in intelligence, is compensated for by his acute insight to the world around him. He is closely protected by his older brother Jimmy. He watches his brother fall in love with a beautiful girl, and then enlist in the military and soon afterwards he sees Jimmy go off to war.

Earl/Earwig gets a job at the local bowling alley, and tries to understand all that is happening around him. When Jimmy returns from the war, he is not the same. Earl now feels it is his job to watch out for his older brother.

This was a wonderful story, and hard to believe it was a debut novel. The characters : Earwig, Jimmy, Floyd and Eva Leigh were extremely well developed. It was a great story about the love of family and friends, and the painful aftermath of war.

I plan to read a third Sandra Kring book very soon. I hope you will read this book. I recommend that you avoid the audio version. I think the print version would have even been more memorable for me.

RATING - 4/5 COMPLETED - 1/29/09
Where From: Library

Waiting on Wednesday - The Housekeeper and the Professor

This book looks really good to me. It will be released on February 3, 2009.

The Housekeeper and the Professor
By: Yoko Ogawa


About the Book (from Amazon)

He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem--ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.

She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.

What book are you waiting for that will be released soon?

Tuesday Teasers - January 27, 2009

Tuesday Teasers is hosted by Should Be Reading.




TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!

My teasers are from - The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker - which I started this morning.

"Technically speaking, I guess you could say I killed Robert Morgan, but I did it only because he insisted on it, and because death had clearly already gotten its mealy hands on him, and because I knew the very act of asking must have made him madder than hell."

"Look at me, " he'd cackle from the foul nest of covers on his bed, "and then take a look at you."