Woman in red coat times two

Here are two more exact matches: The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum and A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin. I’m not sure I like the added image bubbles on the second cover!

Thank you to Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books for pointing out these lookalikes!

Wondrous Words Wednesday (July 15)

Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog hosts this weekly meme in which she asks us to share new words we’ve come across in our reading. Feel free to join in the fun.

All my words this week are from The Condition by Jennifer Haigh (which is not a tough read, despite what these words make it sound like!).

Apoptosis – “Manning was a leader in the hot new field of apoptosis; he’d been an early proponent of the theory that, under specific conditions, cells committed suicide . . .” (p. 46).

Apoptosis means “the death of cells which occurs as a normal and controlled part of an organism’s growth or development.”*

Oncogeneticist/oncogene – “He was a traditional oncogeneticist; he’d made his reputation by discovering a specific oncogene, XNR, and its role in tumor-cell signaling” (p. 46).

I had a hard time finding a definition for oncogeneticist (or at least a definition that made sense to me!). However, according to WordNet, an oncogene is “a gene that disposes normal cells to change into cancerous tumor cells.” I presume an oncogeneticist is a geneticist who studies oncogenes...

Picayune – “Hanging over his shoulder, she had instructed him endlessly: so persnickety, so picayune, that he had lost his temper” (p. 89).

This is another one of those words I feel I should know (I’ve certainly come across it before), but I wasn’t sure of its definition. Picayune means “contemptible, petty, insignificant.”

Nulliparous – “No, because Turner females are nulliparous” (p. 164).

According to Wikipedia, nulliparous means “that has not given birth.”

Cichlid – “A school of bright cichlids engulfed them” (p. 202).

A cichlid is “any tropical freshwater fish of the family Cichlidae, especially the kind kept in aquariums.” According to Wikipedia, “there are at least 1300 scientifically described species [in the Cichlidae family], making it one of the largest vertebrate families.” Tilapia is a cichlid.

Dinoflagellate – “The water was speckled with dinoflagellates, tiny particles of iridescent green” (p. 205).

A dinoflagellate is “a unicellular aquatic organism with two flagella, of a group variously classes as algae and protozoa.” Of course, I then had to look up flagellum (plural: flagella), which is “a long lash-like appendage found especially on microscopic organisms.”

Comorbidity – “And there is comorbidity with ADHD” (p. 232).

According to Wikipedia, comorbidity means “the presence of one or more disorders (or diseases) in addition to a primary disease or disorder.”

Onion snow – “. . . far, far away from Gatwick, where an onion snow was falling on his mean little house” (p. 260).

According to Dictionary.com, onion snow is “a snowfall in late spring; the last snow of the season.” This is a term used mostly in Pennsylvania, apparently.

What new words have you discovered lately? Share your Wondrous Words on Kathy’s blog.

*Unless otherwise noted, all definitions are from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2004).

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

Teaser Tuesday (July 14)

Should Be Reading hosts the Teaser Tuesdays weekly event.

My modified rules are as follows:

Grab your current read. Pick two or three “teaser” sentences more or less at random from the book, anywhere on the page. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your teaser from… that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given! (Please avoid spoilers!) (Read the official Teaser Tuesday rules.)

My teaser:


“Paulette blinked. She was often blindsided by how acerbic her sister could be, how in the middle of a pleasant conversation Martine could deliver a zinger that stopped her cold: the backhanded compliment, the ripe apple with the razor inside” (p. 5).

This is from The Condition by Jennifer Haigh.

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

Mailbox Monday (July 13)

I received two books in the mail this week, both giveaway wins: The Host by Stephenie Meyer, which I won from Dar at Peeking Between the Pages (courtesy of Hachette) and The Condition by Jennifer Haigh, which I won from Gayle at Everyday I Write the Book (courtesy of Harper Collins). I wasn’t a big fan of Twilight (I gave up on the series after the first book), but I’m looking forward to reading The Host. However, I think The Condition might just be a perfect summer read!

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Marcia’s blog, The Printed Page.

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

The Local News by Miriam Gershow (a review)

The Local News by Miriam Gershow is the story of 15-year-old Lydia Pasternak whose older brother Danny has disappeared. While Danny was athletic and popular (and not particularly bright), Lydia is smart and most definitely not popular, at least not until Danny disappears. I started this book with some trepidation: for one thing, I was feeling a bit tired of the “missing person” plot; for another, I had read Tara’s review at Books and Cooks, which she concluded by saying: “So, The Local News was not really for me, but if you’re interested in the story it’s certainly well done.” Although I wasn’t that interested in the setup, in the end I’m very glad I read the book because it’s less about Danny’s disappearance than it is about Lydia’s experience of high school.

More specifically, Gershow perfectly captures the crazy changeable nature of high school where it is possible, from one day to the next, to go from superfreak to member of the in-crowd and where friendships are sometime dictated more by circumstance and proximity than by shared interests or genuine connection. Only very occasionally did I feel like Gershow missed the mark, as, for example, when Lydia has this thought: “This grandiose treatment, the stuff of only the most ambitious and helpful of suicide ideations, only elevated the situation to the realm of [the] surreal”* (p. 272). Although this was undoubtedly the thought of adult Lydia rather than her teenage self, the language used completely pulled me out of this fairly intense moment.

Now here’s the weird part. I read the end of this book in a teashop after our next-to-last blogger meet-up. A song came on that made me jump up and ask the waitress what it was. It turned out she’d started playing the soundtrack to the movie Le peuple migrateur (Winged Migration in English)—and so the whole soundtrack played in the background as I finished the book.† As I listened and read, I had the weirdest sensation, as if a space had opened up in my chest from throat to heart. And I felt like I knew Lydia from the inside out: I became her. I recently read an interview with poet Peter Levitt, who said: “There is no experience of ‘writer’ and ‘writing’ as distinct or separate entities, no subject and object. That duality collapses and there is just the activity itself.” Something similar happened to me in that teashop: there was no me separate from the story I was reading. In a guest post at Everyday I Write the Book, Gershow said, “Over and over, I try to write my way back into that experience [of high school] and out the other side of it.” For the me that briefly became Lydia, I think she succeeded.

*Note that this quote comes from an ARC and therefore may have been changed for final printing.
†Needless to say, I listened to “To Be by Your Side” by Nick Cave, the first song on this soundtrack, over and over as I wrote this review.

Read other reviews of this book at these blogs:
Age 30+ ... A Lifetime of Books
a lovely shore breeze
Becky’s Book Reviews
Book Club Classics
Bookopolis
Books and Cooks
Books on the Brain
Boston Bibliophile
Caribousmom
Every Day I Write the Book
Lit and Life

For interviews with the author, visit these blogs:
Becky’s Book Reviews
Manic Mommies Book Club
Paper Fort
Worducopia

For guest posts by the author, visit these blogs:
Books on the Brain
Caribousmom
Every Day I Write the Book

Thank you to Spiegel & Grau for sending me this book to review.


This is the ninth book I review for the New Authors Challenge.



_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

Friday Finds (July 10)

What great books have you added to your wish list this week? Share your Friday Finds at Should Be Reading.


Here are the books that made it onto my wish list this week:

I mentioned Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice in a “similar covers” post, but had no idea what the novel was about until I read her guest post at 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started. Jacquelyn Mitchard called it a “fresh, free-rein novel about mothers’ secrets and children’s sorrows,” which sounds great to me! (I’m a sucker for books about secrets.)

Rebecca at Lost in Books writes a great series called “Take Me Away,” in which she features books that focus on a specific country or culture. A couple of weeks ago, she did Kenya, which is when I came across Desire by Lindsay Ahl—“a dense, dreamlike novel,” according to author Susann Cokal.

I’m not sure where I first saw Lies My Mother Never Told Me by Kaylie Jones, but the title alone was enough to pique my interest!

I spotted Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor on the Fantastic Fiction site. Although I didn’t enjoy The Mermaid Chair or The Dance of the Dissident Daughter as much as The Secret Life of Bees, I still want to read this one.

Rebecca Walker was recently interviewed at Feminist Review, which is where I heard about One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk about Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love (which Walker edited). Although this book is saddled with a mouthful of a title and an uninspired cover, it sounds fascinating. You can also read a review of it at In These Times.

Finally, Rose City Reader mentioned The Ice Chorus by Sarah Stonich in her Mailbox Monday post this week.

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

More awards!

A couple more awards came my way in June and July, and it’s about time I posted about them...

Many thanks again to Ladybug from Escape in a Book, Vanessa from Today’s Adventure and Linda Ellen from Bambi Reads, who all awarded me the Proximidade Award in June. I really appreciate it!

This award invests and believes in proximity—nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this clever-written text into the body of their award.

It’s always hard to decide who to give awards to as there are so many great blogs out there... I’m going to pass on this award to eight relatively new-to-me bloggers:

Brittany at Deckled Edges
Eva at A Striped Armchair
Meghan at Medieval Bookworm
Nymeth at things mean a lot
Sassy Brit at Alternative-Read.com
Scrap girl at Serendipity
Staci at Life in the Thumb
Tiina at A Book Blog of One’s Own

Thank you to Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books, who awarded me the Kreativ Blogger Award. To accept this award, bloggers are asked to make a list of seven favourite things and then pass on the award to seven other bloggers.

First, seven things I love:

1. dark chocolate with ginger
2. Häagen Dazs Mayan chocolate ice cream
3. naps
4. the Atlantic Ocean
5. lychee martinis
6. Gosford Park
7. raclette

I want to pass on this award to seven creative bloggers who have great blog designs:

Anastasia at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog
Iliana at bookgirl’s nightstand
Natalie at Book, Line and Sinker
Jessica at Books Love Jessica Marie
Jenners at Find Your Next Book Here
J. T. Oldfield at Bibliofreak
Kay at The Infinite Shelf

I’m really tired of my blog’s generic look and I’m pining for three columns, buttons at the top of the page and a unique look... Until I can figure out how to do that (or pay someone to do it for me), I visit these blogs and drool (and of course they have great content too)!

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

Obscuring women’s faces

Here is a series of covers in which the cover model’s face is obscured either by a “tear” in the cover or by a photograph or frame in front of her face.

The books pictured are: Whacked by Jules Asner and Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy (with thanks to Jenners at Find Your Next Book Here for pointing this pair out); Leftovers by Heather Waldorf and The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell (these two are uncannily similar despite the fact that one’s a photo and the other is a drawing); and Lying on the Couch by Irvin D. Yalom and Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.

I’m not the only one to have noticed this phenomenon: check out the “See No Evil” post at Jacket Whys.

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

Wondrous Words Wednesday (July 8)

Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog hosts this weekly meme in which she asks us to share new words we’ve come across in our reading. Feel free to join in the fun.

These words are from The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell:

Mnandi knife – “‘This one’s a beaut—it’s a mnandi knife with giraffe bone inlay’” (p. 4).

I couldn’t find a definition of mnandi knife, but from what I can gather from this site, it’s a type of pocket knife. Mnandi is a Zulu word, which means “very nice,” “delicious,” “handsome” or “admirable,” depending on which website you consult!

Hassock – “Karyn and I shared the hassock” (p. 22).

A hassock is “a thick firm cushion used to rest the feet on or, especially in church, to kneel on; an ottoman.”*

Redonkulous – “‘This is redonkulous!’” (p. 192).

According to the Urban Dictionary, redonkulous means “significantly more absurd than ridiculous to an almost impossible extreme; without possibility of serious consideration.” (Who knew I’d even find a definition for this ridiculous word?)

These next words are from Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg.

Panzer – “. . . the German panzers managed to overwhelm their well-armored Russian counterparts” (p. 250).

Panzers (plural) are “armoured troops”; panzer also refers to “an armoured vehicle, especially a tank.” I know I should have known this, but I didn’t so I had to look it up!

Narcosynthesis – “‘Psychotherapy and narcosynthesis have been used with good results,’ the 313th commanding officer commented in his quarterly report” (pp. 304-305).

According to Dictionary.com, narcosynthesis is “a treatment for psychiatric disturbances that uses narcotics.”

Ruffing and finessing – “. . . for Mom, it’s another way to be close, although that’s not something that crosses my mind, not even for an instant, as she instructs me on counting cards and the finer points of ruffing and finessing” (p. 320).

To ruff means to “trump at cards,” while to finesse in bridge (which is what they are playing) is to “attempt to win a trick with a card that is not the highest held.”

What new words have you discovered lately? Share your Wondrous Words on Kathy’s blog.

*Unless otherwise noted, all definitions are from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2004).

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin

What’s on Your Desk Wednesday?

What’s on Your Desk Wednesday? is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Sassy Brit at Alternative-Read.com.

You can do one of two things or both!

Grab a camera and take a photo of your desk! Or anywhere you stack your books/TBR pile. And no tidying! Add this photo to your blog.Tag at least 5 people! Come back here and leave a link back to your photo in the Mr. Linky.

List at least 5 BOOKISH things on your desk (your TBR pile or books you haven’t shelved.) List at least 5 NON-BOOKISH things (some of some of the more unusual items on your desk/table). Tag at least 5 people to do the same. Come back here and leave your link, so we can come and visit your blog. Or add your answers in the comments if you don’t have a blog.

Given the state of my desk, I wasn’t about to take a photo of the whole thing, just a choice pile (and the cat)! So here are my answers...

First, the bookish things include:

1. Stack of books awaiting review (see pics below)
2. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (up next, maybe)
3. Canadian Oxford Dictionary (used for Wondrous Words Wednesday post)
4. Old issue of Shambhala Sun
5. Incomplete drafts of several reviews

Front view of pile (click on photo to enlarge)

Side view of pile (click on photo to enlarge)

Non-bookish things include:

1. Wallet (I just bought my ticket to fly to Halifax next month!)
   
2. Roll of toilet paper (we don’t buy tissues)
   
3. Mug warmer (super practical in the winter; not so useful now)
   
4. Guinness pint glass (last used for juice; I don’t drink beer!)
   
5. Cairo cat (briefly, as pictured below)

Cairo on my desk (click on photo to enlarge)

Finally, I tag the following folks (if you feel inclined to participate):

1. Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books
   
2. Donna at BookBound
3. Linda Ellen at Bambi Reads
   
4. Lucy at Enchanted by Josephine
   
5. Tina at Bookshipper

Thanks for tagging me, Sassy Brit!

_____________________________________________________

Don’t forget my giveaways:
Katherine’s Wish and The Etruscan by Linda Lappin