2009 BLG Challenges

In 2009 we will be hosting a few different challenges and they are all optional and self moderated, meant for fun and your own enjoyment.  You can take part if you choose and if not that is quite alright as well.

Our first challenge is the TBR challenge.  You picked 12 books you would like to attempt to remove from MT TBR along with 12 alternates because our moods change.  The only rule is that the books have to be a part of your TBR prior to January 1, 2009.  This is a great way to make room for new books to find homes on your TBR without overflowing your house.

The series “catch up” challenge.  The “challenge” is to try and “catch up” with as many of your current series reads as possible before 12/31/09.

The “Eye Spy” Challenge is part of a game we play here every once in a while and I thought it could be a fun twist on an old game and a new challenge.  Every month there will be a chosen word.  The “challenge” is to read a book with that word in the title.  This could be fun being paired with the TBR Challenge and potentially the Series “catch up” as well.

Also, there is the A – Z challenge, reading books by authors whose last name begins with each letter of the alphabet.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

ISBN:  9781594480003

Publisher:  Penguin

Rating:  A+

I don’t quite know why I have kept this book on my shelf for so long, the only reason I can come up with is that I am an idiot.  Honestly I wasn’t sure if I would love it as much as everyone seemed to because it’s so far out of my comfort zone and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to appreciate it.  I haven’t even finished reading it yet and I am compelled to talk about what I know so far and that is that this book is beautifully written and I was instantly connected to Amir and Hassan.  It takes a gift to bring so many people together and obviously Hosseini is blessed with this gift.

I just closed the back cover on this hauntingly beautiful book and all I can think to say is Wow.  There truly are no words perfect enough to describe how this book can affect the reader.  Following Amir on his path to self discovery and redemption was a road that forked in unexpected places and showed there are beautiful moments even at the ugliest of times.  Although Hosseini wrote about very difficult subject matter, he wrote it with a deep sense of dignity and honor that although it broke my heart to read, I think it was written with such honesty it lent beauty to the beast.

I fell in love with Hosseini’s writing within the first 50 pages.  His cadence and ability to paint his words brought this world to my front door and made me ache for the boy Amir was and made me proud of the man he became.  All of us crave acceptance from our parents and can remember a time when we felt like Amir and although his life is very different from mine, I was able to feel everything as he did.  I know that I may have closed the book, but the story and the characters from The Kite Runner will be etched into my heart forever.

There is more I wish I could say,  but truly all I can do is thank Khaled Hosseini for bringing me such a poignant tale of childhood, guilt, hope, and forgiveness.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

ISBN:  9781579126223

Publisher:  Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Inc

Rating:  A

I’ve been craving a good mystery and on my first attempt was completely unsuccessful.  I didn’t really know what “type” of mystery I was in the mood for, just that I was definitely wanting more substantial than a love story so I decided to go back to my mysteries reading roots and I picked up The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, the Grand Dame of Mystery.  It always amazes me that her writing never feels dated, the way they were written will keep many readers addicted forever.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles is the first in the Hercule Poirot series.  This odd little detective always makes me smile because he is a bit quirky and always right.  When Emily Inglethorp is poisoned in a locked room, Hercule Poirot is called in to investigate by the family.  Everyone had a motive to murder the poor heiress and Christie has the knack for making readers follow where ever she leads you.  There are numerous times throughout the book that I found myself having the AHA I know who did it moments, only to be thwarted by her underhandedness.  She threads her story so seamlessly that when all was revealed I just had to sit back and think HUH! how’d I miss THAT.

I am just as enamored with Agatha Christie now as I was when I first started reading her.  I’ve learned to appreciate the class and elegance in which she writes her mysteries now as an adult that I could have ever understood when I was younger.   I’ve been hesitant to pick up this book that I got for Christmas in 2006 because I was afraid that I would be disappointed in the mystery, I am glad to say that my assumption was wrong and has me hankering for another installment.  I do also have to say that after closing the book on Hercule Poirot and The Mysterious Affair at Styles it opened up another book The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini because although I’ve heard nothing but great things about that story,  I’ve always been a little intimidated by the book.  I was afraid I wouldn’t find the beauty within the pages that so many others have seen.   However, after being angry with myself for waiting so long to read another Agatha Christie, I decided it was high time to travel into the world of The Kite Runner.

The Eye of Jade: A Mei Wang Mystery by Diane Wei Liang

ISBN:  9781416549550

Publisher:  Simon & Schuster  Adult Publishing Group

Rating:  C

What started out as a promising new mystery series quickly degraded into something more along the lines of a family saga rather than a mystery.

While the writing was clean and easy, I felt like the author dumbed down the story quit a bit so that it would enjoyable for non native Chinese to enjoy the story as well.  However, I picked this book to read because it took place in Beijing and I wanted to be transported there along with the characters.  I liked that author tried to infuse some of her own life experiences into the story, but every experience seemed to be glossed over and almost seemed to be peripheral to the character.

The mystery portion seemed to be the smallest part of the story, there truly wasn’t a lot of investigation and it was very A + B = C.  No red herrings, no twists, it was pretty black and white and quite boring.  I was looking to sink my teeth into a meaty mystery that would have me begging to the turn the page.  However, what I got was a so-so plot without a true mystery to be found.

I was disappointed because I have read The Da Vinci Code, The Historian and many other intellectual mysteries, which is what I was anticipating when I picked up The Eye of Jade, however I couldn’t have been more disappointed.

I suggest if you want to read this you borrow it from your library, so that you can return it without remorse.

BookLoversGroup Best of 2008 List

I have spent sometime looking into all the big magazines top books of 2008 lists and I really can’t believe some of the books that are on that list.  They are probably all really great and I would appreciate all of them, but they aren’t what I would typically pick up at any given bookstore.

Since I’ve been running my yahoo book group since 2003 I decided On our 5th Year we would do a BLG Best of List and I am thrilled with the turn out so far.  Our best of list are books that we have read this year, not necessarily published this year.

I will publish the list here and on our site after January 1, 2009.  I am just so excited to see all the books we love most being recognized by our reading family.

6 Rainier Drive by Debbie Macomber

ISBN:  9780778323341

Publisher:  Mira

Rating: A

I have to start out by saying I have read more in this past week than I have in the last month.  I am incredibly grateful to have caught the reading bug again.

6 Rainier Drive is the sixth book in Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove series.  I am usually adament about not burning out on a series especially when I am capable of reading them all at once.  I have burnt myself out on a few authors that I now wish I could read again.  However I just finished reading 50 Harbor Street a few days ago and Macomber had a cliffhanger and I just HAD to know what happened because I had to know “whodunit”.  It turns out that I was right all along and as I closed the chapter of 6 Rainier Drive I couldn’t feel more triumphant.  There are times when you know what is going to happen before it does and sometimes it can make you so mad that you wasted 300 pages hoping for a different ending, but not me with this one.  I wanted to be right, I wanted to think that I knew that coastal town of Cedar Cove and the people who live there.  Macomber has written amazingly lifelike characters that I was able to “see” into the heart of the matter and make my assumption on what I knew as a reader.  I love authors that can do that.

However, I will say that there are some continuity issues in this one to the point that I had to email the publisher because it distracted me from the story so that is truly only the negative thing I can say.  I read some reviews on Barnes and Noble because I was dying to know if my theory was correct and I had seen some people complain about this book, but all I have to say is that I didn’t get the vibe from this book that those people did.  With each new visit to Cedar Cove I fall more in love with the characters and the town, and I look forward to meeting up with them again at 74 Seaside Avenue.

50 Harbor Street by Debbie Macomber

ISBN:  9780778322085

Publisher:  Harlequin

Rating:  A

From the coastal town of Cedar Cove Washington Debbie Macomber takes me to a place I wish I could call home.   I have fallen in love with this series with it’s inception 16 Lighthouse Road and my love of these books only increases with each new installment.  I’ve been trying to pace myself by only reading 1 book ever couple of months, but that just isn’t working for me at this moment.  Macomber has the gift of killing me with the cliffhanger ending and I am glad that I will be able to read through 8 Sandpiper Way and A Cedar Cove Christmas without driving myself crazy.

Although I knew a lot about what was going on in Cedar Cove before Macomber planned the big reveal I never felt that I was let down by what I had known.  It was written so that I felt like I was a part of the book and not just a third party reading it which allowed me the feeling of contentment and not boredom.

It is truly difficult for me to write a review of this book because I feel that the series as a whole is so intertwined that it never feels like a book ends because the next book in the series picks up where the previous one ends.

I did feel that there were too many new character introductions in this installment.  I felt the book overflowed with so many new characters that I felt I was missing out on some of the older cherished characters.  50 Harbor Street was a culmination of stories and wasn’t focused on just one character or group of characters.  There were mulitple storylines threaded through this book, but I felt like the author made the transition from one chapter to the next seamlessly.

I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next in Cedar Cove, so I had to pick up 6 Rainier Drive the minute I finished 50 Harbor Street. I hope you come visit Cedar Cove and fall in love with the scenery and the characters as much as I have.

Safe Harbor by Christine Feehan

ISBN: 9780515143188

Publisher:  Penguin Group USA

Rating:  A-

Hannah Drake and Jonas Harrington were destined to be together.  Readers of this series by Christine Feehan have known that from the beginning, but what I didn’t expect was the extent of emotion Feehan was able to convey in this story. 

When I began to read SAFE HARBOR I was having issues remembering the details of the previous 4 installments, which I think was more my fault than the author’s.  It had been too long between novels for me to recall all the finer details of the previous stories.  However, Feehan has a remarkable website which was able to remind me of the details I was missing when I first picked up SAFE HARBOR.  Once I was able to revisit Sea Haven I couldn’t put down this book.  Hannah and Jonas’ story was the one I had always been looking forward to, their’s is the story that hooked me from the beginning and I am so glad that I didn’t have to wait until the end to witness their love. 

SAFE HARBOR filled the pages with such high energy and high octane emotion it made it impossible to put down.  There are moments in this book that Feehan is able to communicate with true emotion, to the point of transcending the fiction in the story and touching the heart of me as a reader.  There have been very few books that can make me cry with true emotion and I can now add SAFE HARBOR to that honored list.  Feehan writes the relationships between these characters with an honesty that envelops even readers without the bonds of sisterhood to pull from.  The relationships between the Drake Sisters is the type of relationship I hope all sisters have, one of family, hope and friendship along with the bonds of blood.

I look forward to Joley and Ilya’s story in Turbulent Sea.