You’re lucky to be reading this. I almost never got this article written. You see, I’ve been worthless the past few days. My house is a pit. I haven’t done hardly any writing. I’m neglecting my husband and kids. I’m barely eating or sleeping, and I can’t be bothered with checking e-mail. Why am I doing this? Do I have an illness? No. My daughter got me addicted to the Twilight series of books and I can’t stop reading until I’m through the entire series.

I realize I’m coming late to a party that, seemingly, everyone has been to. Some of you already know the powerful allure Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romance/thrillers hold over unsuspecting readers. I was aware that the books were out there, I mean, I’d seen the endcap displays at Barnes and Noble and heard the hyperbolic comparisons to other successful series and dismissed them. Anymore, every publisher who prints a sci-fi/fantasy book shouts out blurbs from unheard of critics who claim, “Best thing since Harry Potter.”

Continue Reading

Popularity: 7% [?]

Next time you raise a glass of fine wine or cognac to your lips, stop and thank…a Texan.
 
Released in April 2008, Grape Man of Texas: Thomas Volney Munson & the Origins of American Viticulture, by Sherrie S. McLeRoy and Roy E. Renfro, Jr., Ph.D., is a newly expaned edition of the award-wining biography.  The first edition received several enthusiastic accolades, including the “Best Wine History Book in the World for 2004” awarded by Gourmand International, who dubbed it “a very important book for wine history.”  
 

Continue Reading

Popularity: 12% [?]

A coworker first told me about The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss in November of 2007.  And I began reading it right around Thanksgiving; however, that was also during a time when I was having a lot of difficulty focusing on any book.  I had 3 or 4 or maybe even 5 or 6 lying around my house that I'd started and just never got quite interested enough to finish.  And this one got added to that pile.
 
I finally finished reading it in March of this year.  It's definitely a book that makes you think, and I've been thinking about it and what it advocates ever since I finished it.  Ferriss introduces the idea of the New Rich. 

Continue Reading

Popularity: 13% [?]

More and more often it seems that my book selections are recommendations from friends.  I guess I don’t spend enough time skulking around the shelves at Half Price or Barnes & Noble anymore.  At least I know that I can trust my friends to know what I like, and although I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl by Laurie Notaro isn’t quite as fabulous as Outlander, it was still pretty entertaining.

To be fair, I Love Everybody isn’t really in the same realm as Outlander.  Notaro writes from her own experiences and is extremely self-deprecating.  She’s a woman after my own heart.  Every time I picked up the 226 pages of sometimes painful honesty, I couldn’t help but sing a few bars from I Hate Everyone by Get Set Go.  Even though the main title is I Love Everybody, Notaro actually kind of hates everyone, so I thought the song was fitting. Continue Reading

Popularity: 11% [?]

I have never thought of myself, by any means, as a fashionista. However, I do like to keep up with what the latest styles, trends and “it” whatevers are. I never identified with one style icon, but rather took aspects from different women in the fashion and entertainment world that stood out to me. As I have matured, so have my fashion and style sense. I know how to coordinate outfits, add accessories, match shoes and even offer my opinion to whoever will listen; but I am not a professional.

Rachel Zoe, the famous celebrity stylist is. I made a recent trip to my local library and stumbled across her book, Style A to Zoe: The Art of Fashion, Beauty & Everything Glamour, purely by accident. The colour of the cover did not jump out at me, but the words “Style A to Zoe” did. I inquisitively picked up the book, leafed though the pages, and saw that it was more than just your regular picture book of celebrities.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 33% [?]

Walker Percy is supposed to be a "Southern" writer and he is so in many ways. But still there is more Kafka and Kierkegaard in him than Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, especially in this first novel that won him the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962.
 
"The Moviegoer" is the story of Binx Bolling, a well-to-do stock broker down in New Orleans with nothing much to worry about – at the surface. He is a well-educated, well-mannered 30 year old single man who enjoys going to the movies and serial-dating his secretaries. Continue Reading

Popularity: 4% [?]

A Multitude of Sins (2002), by Richard Ford 

Some writers have been an acquired taste for me. When I first read them it took me a while to slash my way through their impenetrable styles and enter the fragrant garden on the other side. Faulkner is one. Raymond Carver is another.  
 
Yet while reading some others I felt at home from the get go. Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford is one such writer. The critically acclaimed master of the unforgettable "The Sportswriter" and "Independence Day" comes up in spades in "Multitude of Sins" (2002), a collection of sensitive short stories each equipped with a powerful search light that probes far down into the uncomfortable recesses of our souls.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 2% [?]

When my friend recommended the Outlander to me through email, I thought, "Cool, maybe I'll get around to looking for it the next time I don't have anything to read."  Then when I saw her over the holidays, I asked her to refresh my memory on the book that she had recommended.  She lit up like she was on fire, and I knew immediately that I had to get this book ASAP.

I'm over fifteen years late in my adoration of the novel by Diana Gabaldon, but in my defense, when the book came out in 1991, I was only 10 years old, and although I was advanced for my age, I don't think I was quite that advanced.

When I found a copy at Half Price Books, it was in the romance novel section, but my friend assured me Continue Reading

Popularity: 3% [?]