Tag: Books

Favorites Friday: Newbery Medal Winners

On By cherylmahoneyIn Favorites Friday2 Comments

I’m on my second year reading Newbery Medal winners, reviewing as I can, but I’ve never done a best-of reflection on Newbery Medal books.  Here’s a round-up of favorites–some I read before this challenge, others read in the last couple years.  In no particular order…

  1. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
  2. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz
  3. The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
  4. The Giver by Lois Lowry
  5. Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
  6. Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt
  7. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
  8. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsberg
  9. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
  10. Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Bank

What are your favorites among the Newbery winners?  (Not sure? Find the complete list here!)  Maybe you’ll give me an idea for what I should read next.

Blog Hop: Favorite Things

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop1 Comment

book-blogger-hop-finalToday’s Book Blogger Hop question is: What is the most fun part/aspect of being a book blogger?

You know sometimes you read a book or watch a movie and you just have lots of FEELINGS about it?  And then you want to explore why, and discuss every aspect of why you loved it, or (sometimes even more) why you hated it, or why you almost loved it but somehow it just didn’t quite come together–and then it all circles around in your brain and you feel super passionate about it and you just want to share all this feeling and insight and analysis somewhere…

Or maybe that’s just me.  But having a somewhere to put all of that–yeah, that’s my favorite part of being a book blogger.  When I’m so angry with the end of Heartless, or I want to gush about the mad wonderfulness of the final Fairyland book, or I’m just so delighted to find a Star Wars reference in a fairy tale retelling…well, I do tell my friends “in real life,” but I like that I can type it up and put it out into the world too.

Other book bloggers, what’s your favorite part? 🙂

Book Review: The 5 Love Languages

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews3 Comments

Carrying on my reading of psychological and spiritual reading (because they feel related in my mind), I picked up The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman.  It’s not quite either spiritual or psychological (maybe the latter sort of) but it seems to fit into the same general area.  I read one of the sub-versions of this book (there are several) years ago, and I like the concept immensely.  In fact, I liked the book immensely–for 11 of 12 chapters.  Let’s explore, shall we?

Almost everyone I’ve talked to had some familiarity with this book or at least its concept, so maybe you do too–but essentially, Chapman unpacks the ways we give and receive love, or perhaps we perceive it.  There are five essential categories, or languages, used to express love: affirming words, quality time, gift giving, acts of service, and positive touch.  People generally resonate most with one of these, their “native language,” and feel most loved when love is expressed in that language.

At the risk of overusing the word, I love this concept.  Of course I love the idea of taking something as amorphous as expressing love and making it actionable, practical and specific.  That’s kind of how my brain works.  It’s like the difference between “do good” and “volunteer at a food closet.”  “Do good” is a philosophy, while the latter is something you can go out to do tomorrow.  Similarly, being conscious of and acting upon the love languages is an immediate and specific action within a relationship. Continue reading “Book Review: The 5 Love Languages” →

Blog Hop: One (Wo)man’s Trash…

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop3 Comments

book-blogger-hop-finalToday’s Book Blogger Hop question is: What do you do with books you no longer want? Do you donate them? Do you take them to a half-price bookstore? Does a friend or family member benefit?

This doesn’t happen very often to me, because I only buy books I believe will “wear well,” as my good friend L. M. Montgomery once said.  The vast majority of the books I read come from the library, so the ones I buy I expect to keep for the long-term; I fully expect that a good percentage of my books will someday (in fifty or sixty years, you know) be sorted out by my heirs.

But sometimes books don’t have quite that staying power, and a book that I loved for a season no longer seems like one I want to give shelf space to.  And I guess it happens often enough because I do have a policy around it–all unwanted books are donated to the library.  I take so many out, it seems only fair to put some back in.

My favorite book cycle is when I buy a book at the library warehouse sale (because at a dollar each, sometimes I do buy those unread), read it and then donate it back to the library.

What do you do with no-longer-wanted books?  I don’t read digital books myself, but do you find the arrival of ebooks is affecting this question, or impacting how often you have books to discard?

Book Review: Heartstone

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, ReviewsLeave a comment

I’ve rarely heard a better premise than Pride and Prejudice retold with dragons.  So I guess it’s not that shocking that Heartstone by Elle Katharine White couldn’t quite live up to hopes.  I enjoyed it–someone else might love it–but I didn’t quite love the book as much as I loved the concept.

Heartstone centers around Aliza Bentaine and her sisters, living in a faux-England where magical creatures abound, some friendly, many not.  A band of Riders comes to their small village to fight the horde of gryphons plaguing the area, and among them are the charming Brysney, who swiftly falls for Aliza’s sister Anjey, and the arrogant Daired and his dragon.  And we all kind of know where this is going, right?

That knowing-where-it’s-going may be why I didn’t love this book as much as I hoped to.  Every character and most plot elements exist in a one-to-one relation to Austen’s original book.  There’s some fun in seeing how White re-imagined Austen’s plotline in this new, monster-ridden world…but it was never quite innovative enough to really capture me.  I mean, it is clever that Anjey gets swiped by a gryphon rather than catching a cold.  But it still seemed like we lost too much without gaining enough to compensate. Continue reading “Book Review: Heartstone” →