The Reader's Room

Feb 8

Read around the World: Canada

We are starting off our book tour of the world in Canada. Here are some fun facts about Canada (feel free to add your own facts in the comments section):

The name Canada comes from the word ‘Kanata’ which means settlement or village in the language of the indigenous St Lawrence Iroquoians.
It is the second largest country in the world by area, but has the fourth lowest population density. It has the longest coastline of any country in the world.
Winter temperatures can drop below -40C in some parts of the country. The lowest record temperature in Canada was -63C (-81F) on Feb 3rd, 1957 in Snag Yukon.
Famous Canadian authors include Lucy Maud Montomory (Anne of Green Gables), Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Stephen Leacock, Pierre Berton, Robertson Davies, Douglas Copeland, Alistair MacLead, Farley Mowat, Yann Martel, Carol Shields, and Michael Ondaantje.
It has a literacy rate of over 99%

Book Selected: Surfacing by Margaret Atwood Read more

Feb 6

Welcome to a new recurring post! My Life in Books is a chance for you to get to know us a little better as readers. Posts will be dedicated to books, poems, nursery rhymes, magazines, short stories, authors, and more that have contributed in some meaningful way to who we both are as readers today. We’ll start at the beginning with literature that impacted us as young children and continue through to present day. Although we often rate books similarly, we have different reasons for liking/disliking books and we have different preferences in terms of genre. Jen’s favorite genres include literary fiction, historical fiction, & fantasy. Bookworm’s favorite genre is dystopian fiction. We both are trying to work our way through the 1001 Books to Read list.

We also want to know about you. So each time we post, we hope you will let us know what sorts of things contributed to your current reading interests.

What are your favorite genres?

Coming soon… Book Worm will start us off with a nursery rhyme that she loved as a child. Start thinking about which nursery rhymes you remember from your childhood so you can share your reading memories with us.

Feb 4

1001 Book Review Faces in the Water Janet Frame

“I was now an established citizen with little hope of returning across the frontier; I was in the crazy world, separated now by more than locked doors and barred windows from the people who called themselves sane.’

When Janet Frame’s doctor suggested that she write about her traumatic experiences in mental institutions in order to free herself from them, the result was Faces in the Water, a powerful and poignant novel.
Read more

Feb 3

2 Comments

To Kill a Mocking Bird

Apologies for the late post but I couldn’t go a whole day and ignore what is perhaps some of the biggest book news in a long time. I have very few 5 star reads on my shelf because I’m very picky about books and I’m stingy with my 5 star ratings. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee gets one of my elusive 5 star ratings. I’ve read the book multiple times and reread the book again last year and loved it again.

So, Harper Lee’s publisher just announced that they will be publishing a sequel to the famous book. The sequel takes place 20 years after the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. Read the full story on the New York Times here. Sequels always make me nervous especially when the original was so fabulous.

What do you think? Will you be reading it?

Feb 1

24 Comments

Love it or Hate it: Atonement

Have you ever noticed how some books seem to drive a wedge between people? You check the reviews and find almost no middle-of-the-road ratings. Instead people either seem to love it or hate it. Well, welcome to the new Love it or Hate it post category! Each month, we’ll pick one book to review. Two contributors will battle it out to convince you to pick it up or throw it out. Our February book is Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Special thanks to guest contributor Nicole R for writing one of the points of view this month!

Make sure to read to the end and cast your vote. And to celebrate our first Love it or Hate it category we are giving away a gently used copy of the book to one randomly selected person who writes in with a comment saying “I want it.” Read more

Jan 30

4 Comments

Books to Movies in 2015

Before we became parents, my husband and I used to go to see movies every weekend. Now I mostly binge watch netflix episodes of Orange is the New Black. This year quite a few movie adaptations of books are coming out. Here are 10 book to movies coming out in 2015, ranked by order in which I’d like to see them (most to least appealing).
Read more

Jan 28

3 Comments

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore By Robin Sloan

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Published: Oct 2012
Reviewed by: Jen
★★★
After losing his job in web design, Clay Jannon accepts a position as a clerk for the overnight shift at a 24-hour bookstore. He soon discovers that not all is what it seems in the bookstore. Discovering one clue after another, Jannon gets pulled into an adventure with secret societies, hipsters, and the search for a mystery hidden within books. The adventure is one that highlights the conflict between new technologies (ebooks, etc) and the old (print books).

I sometimes feel like I’m the odd person out when I read certain books. This book gets amazing reviews almost across the board. The New York Times writes that it is “eminently enjoyable, full of warmth and intelligence.” NPR writes, “One of the most thoughtful and fun reading experiences you’re likely to have this year.” That was not my experience. Okay, so I read much of this book while struggling with the flu and wasn’t really in the mindset for having fun. However, I had read almost 120 pages before I started to feel terrible and I was bored out of my mind for most of those pages. So what were my issues?

Upcoming Content

Upcoming content:
We’ve finally gotten organized and are posting a list of what will be our regular content for this blog. We know you don’t want your inboxes cluttered with posts so the plan is to post approximately 2-3 times a week. Check out our regular segments below and let us know if there’s anything else you’d like to read about here. Recurring content will be tagged by title of the segment to make it easier for you to search content.

Love it or Hate it!
Scheduled Post: 1st of every month

Have you ever noticed how some books seem to drive a wedge between people? You check the reviews and find almost no middle-of-the-road ratings. Instead people either seem to love it or hate it. Well, welcome to the new Love it or Hate it post category! Each month, we’ll pick one book to review. Two contributors will battle it out to convince you to pick it up or throw it out.

You, the reader will be able to vote on whether you loved or hated the book or, if you haven’t yet read the book, whether you feel driven to pick it up and read it lock it away in the dusty “never to be read” shelves.

Coming soon, on February 1, 2015: Atonement by Ian McEwan. And, for our very first Love it or Hate it, the first person to comment on that post with a “I want it” will win a used (but in mint condition) copy of the book.

Twitter for Book Lovers

I have to admit that I’m a lousy twitter user. I barely tweet or retweet anything and sometimes months will pass before I even look at my account. But as I sit at home semi-delirious watching Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang for the millionth time (my 4 year old’s favorite movie and my husband and I are both too sick fight the screen time battle), I’ve decided to take a look at it again.

There are a lot of great twitter accounts for book lovers. Below are a few that I like.

National Readathon: Jan 24th Noon-4pm

Tomorrow is National Readathon day. Do you plan to participate? Sponsored by a variety sites with multiple locations across the U.S. participating. Lots of venues are participating and you can find locations listed at Goodreads, National Book Foundation, or Penguin books. Penguin has a nice search list by state of Readathon activites. Read more about it here.