Reading Challenge: Read Your Name

This year I will be joining the Read Your Name Challenge.  I am Laurie (obviously), and I'll be reading a book that starts with each letter of my name.  U is definitely going to be the hard one.  

So, I'll be searching for an "L" book come January. Suggestions welcome!

Want to sign up for this challenge? Click on the image!

Reading Challenge: TBR Pile

I have a dirty little (big) secret. I have a huge TBR pile. Fifteen hundred books huge. Yes, they are all in my house. Yes, They take up waaaay too much room. Yes, I need to get through them. In aid of that, I will be joining the 2012 TBR Pile Reading Challenge. The challenge is basically just to read my own books that have been sitting around my house.

I can choose from multiple challenge levels, but I've decided to go for the top level and attempt to read 41-50 books from my own TBR.

Interested in signing up?  Click on the image!

Reading Challenge: Tea and Books

I love both.  This challenge involves settling down with a cup of tea to read massive tomes- more than 700 hundred pages.  I have several of these on my stack, so I'm going to sign up.  I'm choosing the lowest level, which is two books.  I'm not sure if I'll make it through more than that, but I really want to clear a couple of these off my TBR.  

Interested in signing up? Click on the image!

Review: Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

By CeeCee Honeycutt's twelth year mental illness has taken her mother's life. Camille Honeycutt has developed a reputation for wandering the streets in old prom dresses, and one of these walks ends with her hit by a truck. CeeCee is taken in by a distant aunt and moved to Savannah. In Savannah CeeCee finds an entirely new life, including stable guardians and adults who show her love for the first time.

This is a very southern story. It is also a feel-good story. CeeCee is a child desperately in need of love. In the heat of the Savannah summer, she finds that love. I enjoyed this book, but I did have some quibbles. The treatment of racism in late-1960s Georgia is a bit too pat, and the resolution to racial problems a bit too neat. Oletta seems entirely too happy to spend nearly all of her time away from her own family. Racism is fairly minimal, and the only racist characters are the "bad" ones. The easy resolution of the one racist episode belies belief. Still, this book certainly has its charms, and CeeCee is a very likable character.

Beth Hoffman, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt (Penguin, 2010) ISBN: 0143118579

Review: Singing Songs

This is a book about child abuse. Anna and her siblings are abused by their father in every way: physically, emotionally, and sexually. Her brothers are not allowed to sleep in the house, and all of the children attend school only sporadically. The family continues to move to rural areas to avoid contact with the authorities. Anna's mother is not as guilty of abuse, but she is certainly guilty of neglect and failure to protect her children.

The book is narrated in Anna's voice, and it is quite believable. Through Anna's experience we can see how an abused child struggles to sort out what is right and wrong. Hers is a world in which the wrong has become normative. It is a startling reminder of how easy it is to hide a family's darkest secrets. It was shocking to me just how easily Anna's parents avoided schools, doctors, social workers, and anyone else who might interfere. Anna is a charming and believable narrator. It is hard not to feel for her plight.

 Meg Tilley, Singing Songs (Plume 1995) ISBN: 0452271657 

Review: Poirot Investigates

I don't think this about all of Christie's Poirot episodes, but this collection reminded me very much of Sherlock Holmes. It might be the short story format, it might be the use of Hastings as narrator, or it might be Hastings's Watson-style toadying. It's probably also Poirot's insistence on the simplicity of the solution, based on logic and reasoning. In novel-length works Poirot's style is usually to gather all of the suspects and offer a dramatic revelation of the culprit. In these short stories Poirot engages in setting traps and capturing criminals red-handed. Again, this is much more like Holmes than Poirot. In each of these cases Poirot is the only one with any focus. All of the other characters, including Hastings, are led astray by incorrect assumptions. I had the same reaction to Poirot short stories as I did to Miss Marple stories- they're a bit of fun, but I prefer the novel-length works.

Agatha Christie, Poirot Investigates (William Morrow, 2011, orig. 1924) ISBN: 0062074008 

Reading Challenge: Victorian Challenge

I've completed several Victorian reading challenges in the past, and am going to sign up for this one in 2012.  When I do Victorian reading challenge I usually read books actually written during the period.  I suspect I'll read some Dickens and some Sherlock Holmes, and probably a few female authors too.  I'm hoping to get through approximately 5-6 books, but the minimum requirement is only two, and I think I can definitely manage that.

Interested in signing up?  Click on the image!