Reading Room: The Hunger Games



I bought this over the weekend and started reading it just two short days ago… and I’m hooked! This book is pretty gripping considering how simply it’s written. I like the characters and I want to see them succeed. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m not going to talk about the plot. Just go pick up a copy, if you haven’t already, and give it chance. It is good stuff.

On a side note: Does anyone besides me have that “now that I’m older, I don’t read as much as I used to” anxiety? Or is that just me. When I cracked open this book, I felt what like what that first gulp of water tastes like after you haven’t had one for a while. Quenching. Got to get to the library/bookstore more.

Sorry for late posting! Going to try to hit it earlier tomorrow… See you all then!

Reading Room: The Illumination

The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier.

Kevin Brockheimer’s book details the emotional and physical wounds that are highlighted by a phenomena dubbed “The Illumination”. In the world he’s created, every wound shines with varying shapes and intensities of light dependent on the injury’s severity.

The book is broken up into six parts, each part from the viewpoint of a character that has come into contact with a journal from the first section if the book. In the first section a woman accidentally cuts herself while opening a box from her ex-husband containing her alimony check. When she gets to the hospital, her thumb starts glowing with light, which she assumes is a hallucination from the drugs she’s been given. It turns out that everyone in the world is experiencing these illuminated wounds. When she’s readmitted a little while later with complication arising from her initial visit, she makes the acquaintance of a womb dying from injuries sustained in a car crash. The woman assumes her husband, who was driving the car, is dead and bequeaths the journal she kept of his mash notes to her during their marriage to the woman that cut herself. From here every character comes into contact with the book. The dead accident victim’s husband. The neighbor boy who believes the book is wounded and steals it from the husband.

Each section is filled with precise little details about people’s daily lives and the ways in which we inflict pain on each other. I’m finding this book both haunting and beautiful in equal measure and can’t recommend it enough.

Reading Room: The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

I picked this up from the science fiction and fantasy paperback shelf at the library. It’s been sitting in a stack in the dining room while I’ve been reading (lately slogging) through Russell Kirkpatrick’s In the Earth Abides the Flame. I decided to ditch the latter for the moment and give this book, by Mark Hodder, a go.

I have only read a few pages but the writing is solid but easy to follow and the premise of a steampunk type escapade appeals to my love of adventure. Of note to me while reading the famous author blurb in the inside cover: Michael Moorcock (he’s famous for his Immortal Champion books) waxes poetic about his great a story this debut novel is. We’ll see. Still, that’s a hefty rec.

I hope your Thursday was fifty flavors of awesome! I’ll catch you tomorrow. 🙂

Coffee and Books.

One of my private dreams (not so private anymore, eh?) is to open a small, elegant coffeehouse/reading room. Someplace comfortable and quiet that provides a great place to spend time with friends or to hang out with dear literary friends. (You know you’re on a first name basis with Lizzy, Emma, and Jane… Miss Eyre, I mean.)

If I had to pick the look I’d be going for in this dream space this would be it:

One of the many cozy lounge areas in the J.K. Place Hotels – via Lonny Magazine Oct/Nov 2010 (pg. 156).

I love the restraint here; everything is neutral, soothing, understated. The furniture looks soft and inviting, the decor is minimal, functional, and blends in with its surroundings. Even the lighting is low key!

Yeah, I’d probably have to copy this beautiful space wholesale for my dream cafe! What do you think? Could you see this look in a cafe or restaurant? How about your dining room? I’d love to know!

Reading Room: Sisters Red

I first saw this book when I was still in Seattle, working at the book warehouse. Its shelf location was right on the outside edge of a shelf which was a popular cart parking spot. Every time I parked there I stopped and picked it up and read the jacket. The cover is a showstopper! I literally couldn’t look away from it whenever I saw it.

The other day I was in one of those big box stores looking for the ReadyMade 100. I couldn’t find it so I decided to see what books were on offer and Sisters Red was there for only $7! I scooped it (along with the June 2011 House Beautiful… see this post for my favorite from that).

The opening scene is just as heartstopping as the cover, setting up a world in which werewolves, or Fenris, are terrifyingly real. The sisters of the title live with their grandmother, Oma March, in a house on a small town dirt road. When a stranger comes up the road one day their lives are changed forever.

Sisters Red follows in the tradition of updating a familiar tale (in this case, Little Red Riding Hood) with a modern sensibility. I don’t want to be one of those people who gives the whole plot away, so I’ll stop there… but I can’t recommend this book enough even though I’m only halfway through with it. If you like darker fantasy like Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely or even the last two books of the Twilight series – you’ll enjoy this read.

Happy Saturday reading (or playing)!