How to Find a Good Book to Read

Generic I know. But I have had many people come up to me regarding my book reviews and ask me, “How do you select your books?” I also have people come up to me to “review” my review or say that the book that was reviewed “wouldn’t interest me at all” or “I send all of your book reviews to my sister. She loves them!” I appreciate all of your comments. I do take them in to consideration. But, back to how do I select the books I want to read. Well, I know my tastes but that happens to be splattered among the genres. About the only books I don’t like are fantasy, science fiction, and heavy historically detailed tomes. Usually I begin with getting emails from numerous web sites. I know. Will I get hacked etc.? Well, the ones I use are well documented sites. I use primarily  four different types of sites. One is from book sellers, the other from book reviewers, the third from “collection sites” and the fourth from the authors/publishing houses. For example, I get two emails from Amazon.com. I now have two Kindles (one for me and one for my hubby). I got tired of lugging books all over Timbuktu. So, you can tell Amazon to send you emails only for certain genres. For me, it’s murder/ mystery, award winners, and what’s new on Kindle. You can do the same for Barnes and Nobles and many other book sellers.  Read more...

10 Best Books for Book Clubs

I subscribe to an email alert from Readinggroupguides.com.  They had a contest for all of their email readers as to what were the top 10 best books for book clubs over the last 10 years.  Here's the list they came up with and I am proud to say that my book group, Bibliochix, has read 9 of the 10.  We weren't into the Eat, Pray, Love stuff.

Overall Top 10 (By votes)


1.The Help by Kathryn Stockett: A spirited debut that explores the Civil Rights movement through the relationships between a young white woman and two black maids. http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_h/the_help1.asp 

2.Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen: An elderly man reflects on his younger years as the veterinarian for a travelling circus during the Great Depression, and the many relationships he formed with man and beast alike. http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/water_for_elephants1.asp   read more...

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

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I was just in New York City during the 10th anniversary of 9/11.  For the remembrance of the day, two huge light columns blazed into the night sky to replicate the twin towers.  In  Let the Great World Spin,  the twin towers are in their infancy.  They are looked upon by the critics as "the largest aluminum siding job in the history of the world."  That is until the French acrobat, Philippe Petit, strung 210 feet of braided cable from tower to tower 110 stories up.  Then he walked across.  As McCann tells us, Petit, "was pureness moving..He was inside and outside his body at the same time, indulging in what it meant to belong to the air." (In an eerie "premonition", while Petit is walking between the towers, someone from below takes a picture of a jetliner crossing in back of him which looks as if the plane is flying into the tower.)  The tight rope walk of Petit is the fulcrum of this novel.  It is, in a way,  a novel of six degrees of separation.  It really reminds me of the movie Crash.  It is a novel that brings back unpleasant memories for NYC and the times...the raging debate over the Vietnam war, the resignation of Nixon, the decaying of a great city ridden with crime and trash, and the burgeoning of drug use. Read more...