More than 5,000 ancient coins found in a Buckinghamshire field are an "unprecedented" find, the county's keeper of archaeology has said.
A member of the Weekend Wanderers Metal Detecting Club discovered the 11th Century coins buried in a field near Aylesbury four days before Christmas.
Brett Thorn from Bucks County Museum said it was the largest hoard of Saxon coins ever found in the county and the second largest in the UK.
"It just doesn't happen," he said.
Paul Coleman, from Southampton, was taking part in a dig in the Padbury area on 21 December when he found the coins from the late Anglo Saxon, early Norman period, depicting the heads of kings Ethelred the Unready and Canute.
"I saw one shiny disk," he told BBC News. "It was reflecting in the sky and I immediately knew it was a coin, you just know. So I bent down to pick the coin up and as I could focus down in the hole I could see lots of circular shapes behind it. Club spokesman Peter Welch said the coins, which were buried in a lead bucket, had "looked almost uncirculated, like they were straight from a mint".
Mr Thorn said the find was "massive" and the largest find of Saxon coins since 1840 when about 7,000 were unearthed in Cuerdale, near Preston in Lancashire.
'Very significant'
"I was absolutely astounded," he said. "To give an idea of scale, people normally find between five and 20 [Saxon] coins. We have about 4,000 Roman coins in the Bucks County Museum and only 30 Saxon ones, so it is very significant both nationally and for the county, it is just unprecedented."
The coins, which feature at least two kings, will be cleaned and examined by the British Museum to establish which mint they came from.
"Until they are cleaned and dated [to find the oldest] we can't begin to find out why they were collected or why they were carefully wrapped and very definitely hidden," said Mr Thorn.
A coroner must rule if they are "treasure" under the Treasure Act.
Mr Thorn could not comment on their estimated value but said if the museum decided, in conjunction with the British Museum, to acquire them "it would be a major fundraising effort".
The largest UK hoard of Anglo Saxon treasure was about 1,600 items, including helmet parts and processional crosses.
It was found in a Staffordshire field in July 2009 and valued at £3.285m.
Source: BBC News Website [January 03, 2015]
Georgia Walker is a busy single mom that juggles running a knitting store in Manhattan with raising a 13 year old biracial daughter. Several of her patrons decide to start a knitting club, called "The Friday Night Knitting Club." The members of this club share much more than knitting patterns and technique. They share their lives, their pain, their triumphs!
When I picked up this book, I thought it was going to be one of those happy, lovey, chick lit type books. But it's so much more than that. I grew to love the characters, they became a part of my life. I'm truly going to miss them!
It’s been five years since we met the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club. Dakota is now an eighteen year old NYU student, working part time at her mother’s yarn shop, Walker & Daughter. She aspires to become a pastry chef, but everyone seems to remind her of her duty to her mom’s shop. Darwin and her husband Dan, after trying for many years, are expecting twins. Lucie has really taken off as a video producer, while trying to be a single mom to her hyperactive 5 year old, Ginger. Anita, the mentor of the group, decides its time she do what she wants to do in life, and not rely on what her family thinks is best. Catherine has a successful wine/antique shop, and KC goes back to work at a firm that once dismissed her, but this time she’s their legal counsel!
Reading KNIT TWO was like coming home again. The first few chapters were very difficult; I missed Georgia (who passed away from cancer at the end of FNKC) tremendously. Apparently so did the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club. They all relied on Georgia so much, and they were just now coming to terms with how to survive without her. I cried tears of sympathy for dear Dakota. Everyone thought they knew what was best for her, but weren’t listening to what she wanted. The strength of the women in this group is quite amazing. They have all overcome so much. And while they started as a knitting club, they evolved into so much more.
I can’t help but be reminded of my book club, Pageturners, after reading KNIT TWO. We formed around 6 years ago. We started out as strangers that were only connected by books, but now we’re wonderful friends who are connected by so much more. We’ve been together through births of children and grandchildren, deaths of loved ones, weddings, and so much more. And we are so privileged to be able to “chat” with the author about the book this evening! I’ve never been able to talk directly with an author about their work, so this is definitely an honor! I’ll be sure to report back to you about the chat!
I finally picked up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
because it was the September selection for the Drunk Literature Book Club. I apparently had more luck than Rebecca though because I actually finished it. I must agree with her, crime fiction is not really my cup of tea, but I was strangely in the mood to give some a try. Maybe it's because a lot of my friends and some of my favorite podcasts have been talking so excitedly about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that I felt like I was missing out on something. The story is about a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who is offered a large sum of money by the wealthy Henrik Vanger to find out what happened to Vanger's favorite niece many years before. Blomkvist takes the challenge, mostly because he thinks it will give him so power in the middle of the libel case he is a part of. Blomkvist gets some help from investigator Lisbeth Salander along the way. Lisbeth is young, incredibly intelligent, and deeply misunderstood.
One of my favorite aspects of this book that I don't think gets discussed very much is the portrayal of violence against women. There are moments in the book where Lisbeth is raped or put in the position of sexual submission, and other moments later in the book where you find out several other stories about women who were treated violently. And these things are by no means only present in the book. Things like this happen all the time in the real world, and just like no one does anything about them in the book, most people don't do much about it in the real world either. I think Stieg Larsson did a great job of portraying the after effects of sexual violence against women in this novel.
While I really enjoyed that aspect of the book I found the first half painful to get through. I was expecting a page turner, something I really needed at the beginning of the semester, and what I got was much denser than I expected. I also didn't like the repetition, sometimes you would learn something and then ten pages later you would have to learn it again. He probably did this so the reader didn't have to think about it and could just keep reading without having to search in their brains for what the plot, but I always find this device rather insulting. The second half of the book was quite thrilling, but I thought the ending was a little dull. So overall I wasn't as excited as I thought I would be, which is why...
I'm giving this book a C.
For October the Drunk Literature Book Club selection is biographies. Any biography you want-- you should join in if you can!
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
Ok, I love everything Jane Austen, so when Stephanie at Stephanie's Written Word announced that she was starting an Austen Challenge, I had to sign up!
Here are the rules:
The Everything Austen Challenge will run for six months (July 1, 2009 – January 1, 2010)! All you need to do is pick out what six Austen-themed things you want to finish to complete the challenge.
I LOVE the flexibility of this challenge! You can read Austen's books, Austen-themed books, or watch Austen movies! How easy is this!?
Since I've read all of Austen's books, and viewed most of the movies, I'm picking Austen-ish books to read, and more recent Austen-ish movies.
Here's my list:
Books
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
by Sean Grahame-Smith
Mr. Darcy, Vampyre
by Amanda Grange
The Jane Austen Book Club
by Karen Joy Fowler
Movies
Pride & Prejudice
The Jane Austen Book Club
Becoming Jane
I'm really excited about this one! Talk about easy-peasy! Interested, head over to Stephanie's Written Word and sign up...go on...do it!
This is a weekly event to list the books completed last week, the books currently being reading, and the books to be finish this week. It was created by J.Kaye's Book Blog, so stop by and join in!
Books Completed Last Week:
It was a slow reading week for me. I think I'm still playing catch up after all the reading I did during the Read-a-thon.
Follow Me: A Novel
by Joanna Scott
The Lost Hours
by Karen White
Books to Read this Week:
by Kristin Hannah (book club pick, almost finished!)
by Ted Dekker (amazing book. I'm about 100 pages in, just need to find the time to read it!)
by James Patterson
by Lily Koppel
(a book I've had for some time, just now able to fit it in my schedule)
by Keith Donohue (audiobook-I'm about three disks in and I LOVE IT. It's just as amazing, if not more than, The Stolen Child)
So, tell me...what are you reading this week?
I was a high school journalist, and when I started college I thought journalism was the path for me. It was amazing to me that even though I only did journalism in high school I could still relate to the woes of the many characters in The Imperfectionists
by Tom Rachman. I've always been of the opinion that the newspaper isn't dying, it's just reforming. But what does that really mean? The death of an international English newspaper based in Rome is one thing all of the characters in this book face, journalists or not, but they're also dealing with their own personal problems. Like the death of people around them, the loss of love, and the feeling that they should be doing something better with their lives.
The cover of this book says it is a novel, but I would say it's really more like a series of character sketches- which I loved! I'll be honest, sometimes I get kind of bored in a novel and I wonder who some of the characters actually are. I tend to read passages that go on for pages and never really realize who is talking. Since the other book I'm reading right now (The Passage) makes me do this The Imperfectionists was the perfect break from that.
Every twenty or so pages we are introduced to a new character that either writes for the newspaper or is related to it in some way. There are ex-boyfriends of writers and girlfriends of writers and freelance journalists who basically don't write anymore. Even though that might seem like there is no linearity, there really is. Characters walk in and out of other people's stories just like people do in real life. Not all of the characters are connected and, let's face it, not all people are related in real life. I got lost learning about these people, it felt like I was reading a diary and learning the most intimate secrets of their lives. Rachman has an awesome way of writing as well, it felt like I was watching these people through a window. I think it's the way he begins the sections, my favorite one was Arthur: "Arthur's cubicle used to be near the watercooler, but the bosses tired of having to chat with him each time they got thirsty. So the watercooler stayed and he was moved. Now his desk is in a distant corner, as far from the locus of power as possible but nearer the cupboard of pens, which is a consolation" (29). Rachman gives just the right amount of information for me to become interested in Arthur's life, get a sense of who Arthur is and how he connects to the people around him, and the way Arthur moves through his life.
So obviously I thought the writing was top notch. And the dialogue was fantastic as well, one of my favorite exchanges happens between Hardy and her not so perfect boyfriend:
"Can you do that again?"
"What?"
"That thing you did before."
"Calling you Hardy?"
"No, the thing you did after that. The thing you just did."
"What thing?"
"She kisses him. "That thing. Keep doing it please.
Activities shift into the bedroom. (64)
The was not only laugh out loud funny, it was also realistic and sweet. I felt so many things reading this passage and I just wanted to keep reading. That was the thing for me about The Imperfectionists, I would sit down just to read one section and I ended up reading five. I just couldn't put it down. It wasn't that it was suspenseful or the story was just so good, but Rachman really made me want to get to know these people, and by the end of the novel I felt like I had just gotten back from a trip to Rome where I met some amazing journalists.
This is one of my favorite books of 2010 and so of course I'm giving it an A!
I also read this as part of the Drunk Literature Book Club. This was our first selection and as part of the club we're supposed to post a photograph of what we were drinking and/or eating while we were reading this book. I found this to be a great morning read so instead of having either of the suggested drinks I had some orange juice and toast.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
Thanks to Anna at Hachette Books, I have an amazing selection of audiobooks to give away!
I have three copies each of the following titles:
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE (Unabridged)
By James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, read by Dallas Roberts and Bobby Cannavale
Detective Bennett realizes he has just hours to save New York from the greatest disaster in its history. From the #1 bestselling author who introduced readers to Alex Cross and the Women's Murder Club-comes the continuation of his newest, electrifying series.
Available in CD and Digital Download formats.
Also available in hardcover and e-book.
DROOD (Abridged)
By Dan Simmons, read by Simon Prebble
DROOD explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, DROOD.
Available in CD and Digital Download formats.
Also available in hardcover and e-book.
Listen to the excerpts:
Excerpt No. 1, Excerpt No. 2, Excerpt No. 3, and Excerpt No. 4.
Get an OpenBook™ Widget for your site.
Listen to an excerpt.
Listen to the Podcast.
MAX (Unabridged)
By James Patterson, read by Jill Apple
Comfortable in their new safe house, Max and the rest of the Flock finally begin to feel optimistic about their newly-gained freedom. Then the Machine Geeks appear--part machine, part human, totally destructive. They are in the service of an ominous Mr. Chu, who has his eyes on the Flock and their unique abilities. And if he can't have them, he'll make sure nobody else can either!
Available in CD and Digital Download formats.
Also available in hardcover, hardcover in a large print, and e-book.
Listen to an excerpt.
WOMEN'S MURDER CLUB
James Patterson and Maxine Paetro, read by Jeremy Piven, Suzanne Toren, Carolyn McCormick, and Melissa Leo"Now, for the first time, the first three books in this series are available in an audio box set that will delight fans of the series, as well as anyone intrigued by thrilling mystery stories that feature strong women characters..."
RULES:
Contest will end Saturday, April 18. Winner will be announced on this blog.
It's Monday! What Are You Reading This Week? This is a weekly event to list the books completed last week, the books currently being reading, and the books to be finish this week. It was created by J.Kaye's Book Blog, so stop by and join in!
Books Completed Last Week:
Another busy week. It was Teacher Appreciation Week and I'm a part of the PTO for my son's school, so my evenings were spent preparing things for the festivities. Therefore, not much reading was done :( This week I will have to play a bit of catch up!
The Nine Lessons: A Novel of Love, Fatherhood, and Second Chances by Kevin Alan Milne. Click here for my review.
Books to Read this Week:
One Deadly Sin by Annie Solomon (check back later this week...there's a giveway!!)
I'm still plugging away at Angels of Destruction: A Novel by Keith Donohue. I'm listening to the audiobook, and it's absolutely fabulous. I have two CDs before I finish. I don't want the story to ever end.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. (Book Club pick) Believe it or not, I'm one of the few people on this planet that hasn't read this book yet!
The 8th Confession (The Women's Murder Club) by James Patterson
Cemetary Dance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
The Way Home by George Pelecanos
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Unseen by Alexandra Sokoloff
Looks like I definitely have a busy week ahead of me! So, tell me, what are you reading this week?
Thanks to Anna over at Hachette, I have two great audio books to give away! I have three copies of each audio book available.
THE SURVIVORS CLUB (Unabridged)
By Ben Sherwood, read by the author
In the tradition of Freakonomics and The Tipping Point, THE SURVIVORS CLUB reveals the hidden side of survival by combining astonishing true stories, gripping scientific research, and the author's adventures inside the U.S. military's elite survival schools and the government's airplane crash evacuation course.
THE TERROR (Abridged)
By Dan Simmons, read by Simon Vance
"Dan Simmons writes with the salty grace and precision of Patrick O'Brian. But in piling supernatural nightmare upon historical nightmare, layering mystery upon mystery, he has produced a turbocharged vision of popular doom." -Men's Journal
The rules:
Today's Memory Monday post is a bit different from the norm. Rather than taking a specific reading memory, in spirit of Just Contemporary month, I want to spotlight some Contemporary reads for kids that I think could really draw them in and introduce them to the awesomeness that is Contemporary Lit at a young age. And next week, I'm going to list some of my favorite older YA Contemps to pull in those more reluctant/hesitant older readers.:)
Many of these are books that I have mentioned before, some of them even have entire Memory Monday posts already (they are linked). But this is a reference-type list so that all these awesome Contemps for kids are in one place. (There are many more books that fully deserve to be on this list, but I had to have some limits...)
First is Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. This is an older book, and it's actually set even farther back than that. It's never specifically mentioned in a timeline, but I get the feeling that the book takes place somewhere between the 30s and 50s. So while it's not actually Contemporary, it is Realistic fiction and it's the book that changed what reading meant for me. This was the first book that really hit me and taught me that there was more to reading than just a fun story, or words on a page. I had always loved books, but this book is what really taught me what it means to read.
Willo Davis Roberts is another great writer who really appeals to kids. I devoured her books. She made me believe that I could be amazing. The young kids in her stories were always the heroes and the most frightfully amazing things happened to them. It sparked my imagination and I had wildly exciting day dreams and my barbies had the most interesting lives, partly because of these books. (My mom was also terrified that I'd manage to get myself kidnapped because I believed so strongly in these kids, and just knew that I could handle it myself). But she fanned my love of reading and I don't know any kids that don't love to hear about how much smarter kids are than adults... :)
The Babysitter's Club by Ann M. Martin is a series I inhaled. I used to check out 15-20 of these books at a time and have them all back to the library within two weeks, usually faster. They were exciting and real and I so wanted to have my own babysitters club, once I was old enough to babysit. (I started reading them in 2nd grade, so...) The girls in these stories weren't perfect. They lied, fought, made mistakes, and there were always consequences. But they learned from them within their short little stories and became better babysitters, better friends and better people because of them, and I know that some of the lessons I learned in these books helped shape the person I am.
Sharon Creech so totally deserves a place on this list as well. Her stories are about growing up, facing challenges, accepting new experiences and just learning from life. They are told with that frank honesty of a childhood with that raw emotion of true knowledge of life. I can't even begin to describe how strongly I loved Sharon Creech, and still do, actually. Hers are stories that never get old.
Although I didn't read as much of them as my peers did, Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary are both great Contemporary writers. Beverly with her Ramona series and Judy with those Fudge books speak to that younger kid and seem able to use an age appropriate writing style to justify and validate what these kids are going through before they really have the words to explain it themselves.
If the kid in your life is able to handle more mature topics in their stories, I cannot recommend Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman saga enough. I know that I have talked about these books before, but they were a hugely important part of my growing up and formative reading years. I think these books helped me to understand the difference between putting on a brave/false front and true strength. Dicey had to be strong for her siblings. She had to grow up faster than any child ever should and even though I was her age or younger when reading these books, I was so incredibly proud of her.
Maniac Magee by Jerri Spinelli has an element of myth or fantasy to it even though nothing magical or fantastical happens. But the title character of the story has that sort of impact on people, even though he's young. There is much that a kid can learn from this story, but it is also a wonderful story, wonderfully told that will appeal to all sorts of kids, interested in all sorts of reading.
Sonya Sones writes in free verse and, if I'm remembering right, she was my first verse novelist. Her books are geared more in the tween spot, I believe, for those who are no longer children, but still not quite into their teens (11-14 or so). Because of the verse, the books read quickly but the stories lose none of their emotion or depth because of the sparsity of the writing. An easy read for those reluctant to pick up a book but still phenomenal stories.
Shiloh and Hatchet are both well written stories that appeal to younger kids, boys especially. Shiloh is about loving a dog and learning to protect creatures weaker than ourselves (and it's a dog book where the dog doesn't die!!) and Hatchet is a story of wilderness survival and strength.
Betsy Byars writes some fun MG Contemporary and she was my 10 year old brothers very favorite author for a long time (his personal favorite was The Cybil War) and both Andrew Clements and Gordon Korman write some really fun stories as well (I especially loved No Talked and No More Dead Dogs respectively).
Rules by Cynthia Lord is about a young girl whose brother is autistic and she struggles with appearances a lot throughout the novel. But it's a wonderfully sweet story that I absolutely adored. Very deserving of its Newbery Honor.
E.L. Konigsburg writes some very real characters, even if they aren't in very real situations. Like the characters in her Mixed Up Files who end up running away from home and spending the night in a museum (among other things). But her books, especially The View from Saturday were amazing reading experiences for me.
I could go on and on. There are so many wonderful books out there, so much amazing Contemporary for kids. Do you have any favorites? Books that made you love Contemporary as a kid? Contemps that kids you know love? Let me know!! Leave a comment letting me know if you've read any of the books I've listed and/or if you know of any I've missed!
About the author:
They had her at hello. From her first moments in Charleston and Savannah, and on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, novelist Karen While was in love. Was it the history, the architecture, the sound of the sea, the light, the traditions, the people, the lore? Check all of the above. Add Karen’s storytelling talent, her endless curiosity about relationships and emotions, and her sensitivity to the rhythms of the south, and it seems inevitable that this mix of passions would find its way into her work.
Known for award winning novels such as Learning to Breathe, the recently announced Southern Independent Bookseller Association’s 2009 Book of the Year Award nomination for The House on Tradd Street, and for the highly praised The Memory of Water, Karen has already shared the coastal Lowcountry and Charleston with readers. Spanning eighty years, Karen’s new book, THE LOST HOURS, now takes them to Savannah and its environs. There a shared scrapbook and a necklace of charms unleash buried memories, opening the door to the secret lives of three women, their experiences, and the friendships that remain entwined even beyond the grave, and whose grandchildren are determined to solve the mysteries of their past.
Karen, so often inspired in her writing by architecture and history, has set much of THE LOST HOURS at Asphodel Meadows, a home and property inspired by the English Regency styled house at Hermitage Plantation along the Savannah River, and at her protagonist’s “Savannah gray brick” home in Monterey Square, one of the twenty-one squares that still exist in the city.
Italian and French by ancestry, a southerner and a storyteller by birth, Karen has lived in many different places. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she has also lived in Texas, New Jersey, Louisiana, Georgia, Venezuela and England, where she attended the American School in London. She returned to the states for college and graduated from New Orleans’ Tulane University. Hailing from a family with roots firmly set in Mississippi (the Delta and Biloxi), Karen notes that “searching for home brings me to the south again and again.”
Always, Karen credits her maternal grandmother Grace Bianca, to whom she’s dedicated THE LOST HOURS, with inspiring and teaching her through the stories she shared for so many years. Karen also notes the amount of time she spent listening as adults visited in her grandmother’s Mississippi kitchen, telling stories and gossiping while she played under the table. She says it started her on the road to telling her own tales. The deal was sealed in the seventh grade when she skipped school and read Gone With The Wind. She knew—just knew—she was destined to grow up to be either Scarlet O’Hara or a writer.
Karen’s work has appeared on the South East Independent Booksellers best sellers list. Her novel The Memory of Water, was WXIA-TV’s Atlanta & Company Book Club Selection. Her work has been reviewed in Southern Living, Atlanta Magazine and by Fresh Fiction, among many others, and has been adopted by numerous independent booksellers for book club recommendations and as featured titles in their stores. This past year her 2007 novel Learning to Breathe received several honors, notably the National Readers’ Choice Award.
In addition to THE LOST HOURS, Karen White’s books include The House on Tradd Street, The Memory of Water, Learning to Breathe, Pieces of the Heart and The Color of Light. She lives in the Atlanta metro area with her family where she is putting the finishing touches on her next novel The Girl on Legare Street.
You can visit Karen White's website at http://www.karen-white.com/.
Pump Up Your Book Promotion
“We take books to the virtual level!”
http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/
My Review:
When Piper was six years old, she helped her grandfather bury a box given to her by her grandmother. This box is forgotten until, after her grandparents death, she seeks answers regarding her families history that no one is able to answer. Piper retrieves the box, and inside she finds aged scrapbook pages, a faded newspaper article about an infant that was found dead, and a gold charm neckace. In a search of her grandmother's home she also finds a secret room containing a baby crib. After reading several of the scrapbook pages, she becomes determined to track down a woman that was very close to her grandmother, mentioned as being one of her closest friends as a child. Yet, her grandmother has never mentioned her name. Her grandmother suffered from Alzheimers, and Piper experiences a great deal of remorse at not knowing or discovering more about her grandmother while she was still alive. He vows to stop at nothing to find out more about her grandmother's past. She soon discovers that there is a past that has remained hidden for some time, and individuals that want it to remain this way.
THE LOST HOURS takes the reader on a trip through several generations. It highlights the importance of family, and taking the time to know and maintain ties to older generations. It grabs and takes hold of your heart from the very beginning. You become a character in the book, you experience the things the characters experience. It takes hold of your emotions like very few books do. I treasure the time I spent reading this book, and regret the moment when I read the last few pages.
This book really hit home for me. My grandmother has been experiencing bouts of dementia for the past several years. Oftentimes she doesn't remember her husband and often has flashbacks of her childhood. She's not the Grandma I remember as a child, and I regret not taking the time to learn more about her life. I hope I still get the opportunity to do so, if not with my grandmother, then with the other members of my family.
Book Description:
For nearly a decade, Ecstasy kingpin Oded Tuito was the mastermind behind a drug ring that used strippers and ultra-Orthodox teenagers to mule millions of pills from Holland to the party triangle—Los Angeles, New York, and Miami. CHEMICAL COWBOYS: The DEA’s Secret Mission to Hunt Down a Notorious Ecstasy Kingpin is the thrilling, never-before-told success story of the groundbreaking undercover investigations that led to the toppling of a billion-dollar Ecstasy trafficking network, starting in 1995 when New York DEA Agent Robert Gagne infiltrated club land to uncover a thriving drug scene supported by two cultures: pill-popping club kids and Israeli dealers. Gagne’s obsessive mission to make Ecstasy a priority for the DEA and to take down Tuito’s network met with unexpected professional and personal challenges that almost crippled his own family. Woven into the narrative are the stories of Tuito’s underlings, who struggled with addiction as they ran from the law, and the compelling experiences of a veteran Israeli police officer who aided Gagne while chasing after his own target—a violent Mob boss who saw the riches to be made in Ecstasy and began to import his own pills and turf warfare to the U.S.
My review:
Although this is a non-fiction book, it doesn't read like one. Sweetingham's extensive research into the world of drug trafficking is very eye-opening. The detail she goes in to detail both sides of the drug trade are stellar. The reader learns a great deal about the DEA as well as the hidden aspects of the Ecstacy trade. While I don't read a lot of non-fiction, the first few chapters grabbed me and took hold. The detail on the characters lives is very insightful. This was a very entertaining and educational read. With Father's Day coming up in a few days, I can't think of a better book to buy as a gift.
About the Author:Check out the author's Web site: http://www.lisasweetingham.com/
It's Monday! What Are You Reading This Week?
This is a weekly event to list the books completed last week, the books currently being reading, and the books to be finish this week. It was created by J.Kaye's Book Blog, so stop by and join in!
Books Completed Last Week:
Sunday is typically my reading day. However, yesterday I got a cleaning bug and did a mega cleaning of my office, including my desk and one of my many bookshelves.
BoneMan's Daughters
by Ted Dekker (review will be posted this week)
Reunion by Therese Fowler
Speak
by Laurie Halse Anderson (powerful book. Review will post this week)
Currently Reading:
The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal (P.S.)
by Lilly Koppel
Firefly Lane
by Kristin Hannah (reread for book club discussion this week)
Angels of Destruction: A Novel
by Keith Donohue (almost finished, don't want it to end!)
Books to Read This Week:
The Nine Lessons: A Novel of Love, Fatherhood, and Second Chances
by Kevin Alan Milne
The 8th Confession (The Women's Murder Club)
by James Patterson
What are you reading this week?
A year of waiting was well worth it!
San Francisco Detective Lindsay Boxer and her friends in the Women's Murder Club join up once again to help solve a case of arsons in a series of wealthy neighborhoods. Several innocent people are murdered and the only evidence left behind is a book with a latin inscription at each of the crime scenes.
At the same time, Lindsay is working on a case of a missing former governor's son. He was last seen entering the house of a known prostitute. A tip is discovered, but ultimately falls through leaving Lindsay, her partner Rich Conklin, and good friend and member of the Women's Murder Club, ADA Yuki Castellano desperately scrambling for more leads.
In true Patterson style, 7th Heaven is full of twists, turns, and surprises.
Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
is about, as you might have guessed, a young girl named Margaret. She has recently moved from her home in New York to a suburb in New Jersey because her parents want to be around nature. They want to mow! But her parents find out they cannot mow, amongst other things.
Upon her arrival in New Jersey Margaret makes friends with Nancy who suggests that Margaret not wear socks on the first day of school. Margaret desperately wants to be cool, so she does not wear socks against her mothers wishes. This results in several blisters and the realization that all the other girls are wearing socks anyway. Through Nancy Margaret meets Gretchen and Janie. The four girls form a club and discuss which boys (or boy, really) are the cutest, getting their periods, and their families. Nancy is kind of terrifying because she comes up with all the rules so everything that is said in the club is not exactly true, like who the cutest boy is for example. Everything must be Nancy approved.
In the midst of all the boys, periods, and busts, Margaret is also dealing with questions of religion. Her mother is Christian and her father is Jewish, so they do not practice any religion in their household. Margaret prays secretly but when she attends temple with her grandmother and church with her friends she realizes that she doesn't really know anything about religion. And that it might be kind of boring and silly.
I really enjoyed this book. I thought I hadn't read it before, but once I started I recognized the story, so I must have read it. As I mentioned on here during the readathon, I actually related to Margaret's teach, Mr. Benedict, more than anyone else in the novel. He is only 24-years-old and just graduated from college. He is completely nervous on his first day as a teacher and the kids in the class all want to play tricks on him. Blume is a genius because his character is actually fairly well developed and made the book enjoyable for me, not that Margaret isn't enough.
I read this for Booking Mama's Shelf Discovery Challenge.
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My boyfriend and I have this thing we do every week, we make lists and compare them. Top ten places we most want to live, top five jobs we most want to have, etc. Last week it was our top five favorite books from childhood. Since both of us read a lot more chapter books as children we decided that we would only talk about chapter books.
My List
I was totally obsessed with reading as a kid and I still am, and some things never change. After all, I'm still wearing converse and skirts.
What Writing Ten Novels in Nine Years Has Taught Me
1) I’ve learned that I only have 2 hands. Writing a book takes as long as it takes, regardless of how long my editor or agent may think it should actually take me; I believe they have learned to deal with this. I will not drive back to school to deliver a forgotten book or PE bag. My children have learned to deal with it. I thought I’d be on the NYT list after my first book. I’ve learned to deal with it. I can only work as hard or as fast as my two hands will allow me. This will only change if I somehow manage to clone myself. I’m still learning how to deal with that.
2) I’ve learned that frozen vegetables are OK, regardless of what my mother thinks. Same goes for ordering gifts online and making cakes out of a box.
3) I’ve learned that there will be times when I will see my gift as a blessing and adore every word that flies from my fingertips. There will also be times when I will view this very same gift with derision, calling every word drivel, and every page a waste of a good tree. From this, I’ve learned that writing is a lot like the stock market: there will always be ups and downs, and you have to be in it for the long haul to be able to reap any benefits.
4) I’ve learned that crying is a good thing. If I’m doing that while writing an emotional scene, then I’m doing it right. Laughing is good, too, as long as it’s supposed to be funny.
5) I’ve learned that sitting with bad posture for extended lengths of time while absorbed in writing a novel can seriously damage your back. And the prospect of having needles inserted into spine to relieve pain can actually be a welcome thought.
6) I’ve learned that there are mean people out there; people who apparently have nothing better to do than write inane or bad reviews on Amazon or elsewhere; I’ve also learned that they are wonderful and generous people out there who take the time to write and let me know how much they’ve enjoyed my books; I’ve learned that good friends, fans and family are a nice buffer between me and the mean people and to try and spend more time with them. Voodoo dolls help, too.
7) I’ve learned that grocery shopping is overrated. My ability to concentrate on the manuscript at hand is indirectly proportional to how stocked my pantry is. Procrastinating by snacking is one of my favorite activities. So is shopping online. My husband is threatening to enroll me in a three-step program for the latter. I simply tell him that I don’t have time—I’m too busy procrastinating and shopping!
8) I’ve learned that my writing is not a hobby. It’s a calling and something I feel compelled to do. If I ever devote this kind of time, money and energy to a hobby, I want somebody to shoot me or have me committed.
9) I’ve learned that summer vacation is as much for me as it is for my children if not more so. I’ve learned that they live in a veritable country club for most of the year (with a personal maid, chauffeur, chef, social planner and personal secretary) and that she needs a break. I’ve learned to turn a deaf ear to their plea for lounging by the pool all day and put them to work. My daughter will be updating my database for my mailing list this summer and my son will become more acquainted with the washing machine and vacuum cleaner. There will also be the nirvana of all mothers: Summer Camp.
10) I’ve learned that the word ‘no’ is actually a word I can become comfortable with saying. I can almost say that I have at times enjoyed the feeling of it rolling off my tongue.
11) I have learned that no matter how many times it happens, I’m always touched by the kind words in a fan letter.
12) I’ve learned that despite good sales, good reviews, kind fan mail and awards, there will still be times when I look down at the page I’ve just written and say to myself, “this sucks.”
13) I’ve learned that with every novel, I’ve learned something new. Gained more confidence. Gotten better. Found new ways to express myself or tell a story. But it has never, ever become easier. Like my father used to tell me, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.
14) I’ve learned that despite all the ups and downs, there is nothing in my life that I would change. Except, maybe, the size of my hips and the annoying habit my family has of needing to be fed every day.
15) I’ve learned that blogging on a virtual tour is hard work! Trying to say something new and different for each blog leads one to make a list of lessons learned in the hopes that she might enlighten others and even maybe be a little bit entertaining.
Thank you, Karen! Check back tomorrow for my review of Karen's latest novel, The Lost Hours.
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