Mailbox Monday October 17, 2011

In October Mailbox Monday is being hosted by Savvy Verse & Wit.




I ordered this book a couple of weeks ago - I couldn't find it locally so ordered from Book Depository. Relic is the first book in the Pendergast series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. If you're a fan of thrillers, I highly recommend these books.

Review: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn

I’m a closet foodie and I love to cook and bake, but after working all day I don’t have the energy. After reading this book I realized I’m far from alone.

For The Kitchen Counter Cooking School project, author Kathleen Flinn recruited nine volunteers who needed help. Each had something that needed improvement - they were cooking unhealthy food, buying take-out and resorting to what they thought would be the fastest and most convenient method of food preparation. All the volunteers were women and I could relate to all of them to some degree.

At the start of the book, the author introduces each volunteer by describing a visit to their homes and in particular their kitchens. There were issues with outdated food, too much food as well as content. Food labels were looked at, cooking methods discussed and even storage issues confronted. Each woman was surprised when a spotlight was pointed at their fridge and cupboards. Sometimes it takes an outsider to say, yep, storing 15 boxes of pre-made pasta dinners at this cost doesn’t make sense when you can make something yourself for a fraction of the price, is much healthier and doesn’t take nearly as much time as you’d think if you know what you’re doing. The author rented a kitchen and once a week the volunteers learned how to do exactly that.

The book is divided into parts and each describes a food product or group and how best to prepare it. The volunteers were given the tools and instructions and were encouraged to experiment. Their delight in discovering that they could produce healthy and attractive dishes was evident. I like how the self-esteem of a person can be raised just by learning a method of cooking they previously thought had been impossible to master. At the end of the book, I enjoyed seeing how each volunteer benefited from what they’d learned during the lessons.

Each chapter ends with the recipes that are taught in the class. I found the chapter on meat to be especially instructive and after reading about how many hormones and antibiotics are fed to livestock, I want to learn how to cook more vegetarian dishes!

People may dislike cooking or simply don’t cook for various reasons. Perhaps they were never taught properly, or as children they were shooed out of the kitchen. Maybe their spouses like doing it more than themselves. Whatever the reason, I recommend this book. It shows how anyone can learn to prepare nutritious and cost-effective meals even if they’ve always thought the task a daunting one. The recipes are simple and fast and there’s something for everyone in The Kitchen Counter Cooking School.

Click here to watch the book trailer and here is where you can find bios of the volunteer participants.

Tuesday Teaser: A Single Shot by Matthew F. Jones

Tuesday Teasers is hosted by Should Be Reading. The rules are as follows:


Grab your current read and let the book fall open to a random page. Share two sentences from somewhere on that page and the title of the book that you’re getting the teaser from. Please avoid spoilers! Read the official Tuesday Teaser Rules.




My teaser is taken from A Single Shot by Mtthew F. Jones. From page 165:

Past the two-foot space between the edge of the screen door and the outer wall, he tentatively places a foot into the darkened house, which smells like the molasses earlier flavoring his fingers, varied manures, and gunpowder's pungent smoke. Though he can't see much of it, the room has the eerie sense of being alive.

Mailbox Monday October 10, 2011

In October Mailbox Monday is being hosted by Savvy Verse & Wit.






Last week I received The Orphan of Awkward Falls by Keith Grades. From the back cover:

Thirteen-year-old Josephine is not exactly thrilled to move to Awkward Falls, a town known only for its sauerkraut and its insane asylum, but she can't resist snooping around the dilapidated mansion next door. She finds more than she bargains for when she is captured by the strange characters who live there: an ancient automaton who serves as a butler, a cat patched together with a few odd parts, and a boy genius named Thaddeus. Meanwhile, Fetid Stenchley, the most feared patient in the Asylum for the Dangerously Insane, has escaped and there is only one thing on his mind...revenge. Unfortunately for Thaddeus and Josephine, he's headed their way, and his arrival will reveal more than a few secrets about Thaddeus's mysterious past. Can these unlikely friends stop Stenchley and save Thaddeus from his greatest fear - the orphanage - before it is too late?

Mailbox Monday September 26, 2011

In September Mailbox Monday is being hosted by Amused by Books.






Although I didn't receive any books in the mail last week, I was the lucky recipient of four books from my friend Tina of Bookshipper. She gave me:

The Price of Silence by Kate Wilhelm, L. A. Mental by Neil McMahon, We All Fall Down by Michael Harvey and Flash and Bones by Kathy Reichs.

Thanks, Tina!

Rules of Civility GIVEAWAY!

Not too long ago I enjoyed and reviewed Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. This book is on my top ten favorites list. Referenced throughout the novel are George Washington's rules and the entire list is printed in the back of book. The rules are bits of insightful wisdom that I know I could benefit from revisiting. Here are some examples:

Taken from George Washington’s Rules of Civility:

● (1st) Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.

● (12th) Shake not the head, Feet, or Legs rowl not the Eys lift not one eyebrow higher than the other wry not the mouth, and bedew no mans face with your Spittle, by approaching too near him when you Speak.

● (50th) Be not hasty to beleive flying Reports to the Disparagement of any.

Even though the language is a bit dated, they still resonate with me. However, another list has been provided to me from the good folks at Penguin that are more contemporary and very apropos:

New RULES to Live By Today:

● Let electronic communication not be used when discussing serious matters. Though you were to use a surfeit of emoticons, they would not aid your success. Such electronic methods include (but are not exhausted by) G-chat, IM, Twitter, e-mail, and Facebook.

● Do not neglect to send thank you notes when someone has done you a kindness.

● Upon public transportation, do not make a pretense that you are unaware of the elderly patron, the person with a cane/crutches, or the profoundly pregnant woman standing nearby. If you be of able body, it is right for you to relinquish your seat.

● In all shared partnerships each party should strive to accomplish 75% of the toil and maintenance thereof. Thus does one ensure a happy life.

● No sidewalks are to be found wide enough that three persons are able to perambulate side-by-side-by-side. Be conscious of your surroundings.

I'm very pleased to announce a giveaway of a signed copy of this book to my readers. All you need to do is leave a comment with your own 'rule of civility' as well as your email address. The winner will be chosen using random.org. Deadline is October 30th. I guarantee you won't regret spending time with this awesome book! Good luck!

Review: Fiendish Deeds by P. J. Bracegirdle

I don’t review a lot of middle grade books but if something looks particularly good and is in a genre that I would normally enjoy in adult literature then I am drawn to it. Fiendish Deeds by P. J. Bracegirdle, the first book in the The Joy of Spooking trilogy, (the others are Unearthly Asylum and Sinister Scenes) could easily pass as a younger version of the type of novel I really like.

First there’s a strong female character. She’s plucky, resilient and smart. Check, check and check. She’s not perfect. Check. She’s a bit quirky. Excellent! This means she’s not the same as every other pre-teen protagonist populating the books coveted by young readers. In fact, I was surprised to find out that the author is male since he has written the female character, Joy Wells, with great perception into the mind set of a twelve-year-old girl that is completely convincing.

Another plus for Fiendish Deeds is the story. It’s full of adventure and great action. It’s got the page-turning factor in spades. And even though this is middle grade, it’s still got over 200 pages – so the story has a chance to play out well. It’s got depth.

So, this novel for young readers has everything going for it. But for adults, there’s more. What kept me thoroughly entertained is the humour. Fiendish Deeds is imaginatively funny! It’s got whimsy (a confused bullfrog who thinks it’s a bulldog and so runs around in circles and barks), plenty of allusions to Edgar Allen Poe and the sort of quirkiness that I love to come across unexpectedly when reading.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the author of this great new series lives in my home town. Fans new and old are invited to a launch party for the final book in the Spooking trilogy, Sinister Scenes, on Saturday, September 17th from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. at Shaika Café, 5526 Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal, QC. Copies of all three books in the series will be available at the party. To find out more about the Joy of Spooking trilogy head on over to P. J. Bracegirdle’s website or facebook page.

Tuesday Teaser:

Tuesday Teasers is hosted by Should Be Reading. The rules are as follows:


Grab your current read and let the book fall open to a random page. Share two sentences from somewhere on that page and the title of the book that you’re getting the teaser from. Please avoid spoilers! Read the official Tuesday Teaser Rules.




My teaser is from Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. From page 42:

He'd known that Pendergast and Esterhazy had hunted at Kilchurn before, of course-Esterhazy had mentioned as much in one of the interrogation sessions-but the fact that Grant had taken them out and could vouch for Esterhazy's being an excellent shot was news to him. Esterhazy had always played down his skill.

Mailbox Monday September 5, 2011

In August Mailbox Monday is being hosted by Leah at Amused by Books. Head on over to Leah's blog to add your link!




Last week I received Kitchen Counter Cooking School" by Kathleen Flinn. The description of this book reads:

THE KITCHEN COUNTER COOKING SCHOOL is essentially “What Not to Wear” meets Michael Pollan. Inspired by a supermarket encounter with a woman loading up on processed foods, Le Cordon Blue graduate, and author of The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry, Kathleen Flinn decided to use her recent culinary training to help a group of nine culinary novitiates find their inner cook. These students invited Kathleen into their kitchens where she took inventory of each person’s refrigerator, cabinets and eating habits. After kitchen “makeovers” and a series of basic lessons where they learned to wield knives, trust their taste and improve their food choices, the women found a common missing ingredient—confidence. In this new book, Flinn follows these women’s journeys and includes practical, healthy tips to boost readers’ culinary confidence, strategies to get the most from their grocery dollar and simple recipes to get readers cooking.

Review: Flashback by Dan Simmons

Every now and again I get the urge to pick up a science fiction novel – especially if it’s been recommended by my husband or it’s written by an author I like. I can’t say enough good things about Simmon’s previous books, Drood and The Black Hills, both of which are very different books from Flashback. Happily I was not disappointed with this new novel.

Ingesting the substance called flashback allows the user to relive personal events in their past as many times as they have enough drug for. The protagonist, Nick Bottom, is an ex-detective with a nasty flashback habit and uses the drug to revisit times spent with his now dead wife, Dara. When he’s called upon to solve the murder of a government official’s son, Nick’s main concern is how much flashback the case’s fee will buy him. It turns out that the case has much more going on than Nick is lead to believe.

When I first started reading about flashback and its affects I thought it was too unbelievable. How could a drug exist that could take someone into their past to relive their best memories? But the more I read, the more I came around to thinking it could happen. The way the author presents the drug and how it’s used started to make perfect sense. The world in the not-too-distant future as described by Dan Simmons is a changed one and I could easily see how so many people would want to escape from the present into their much happier pasts.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s one thrilling ride after another. But it’s also a chilling example of what could happen to our world if economies, politics and cultures take a huge downswing in their evolutions. There were a couple of spots that I couldn’t understand very well – an explanation of how the economy ended up as it did and parts of the political situation were a bit difficult for me to envision but overall this did not detract from my enjoyment of the story.

This is another Dan Simmons book that I highly recommend. I’d even go so far as to say that Flashback would make an excellent choice, though maybe a bit of a departure, for book clubs. Though it is set 30 or 40 years into the future, there are many issues touched on that would be relevant to today’s world.