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Showing posts from March, 2011

[Teaser Tuesdays] Still Alice

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Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two "teaser" sentences from that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
* Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

I am currently reading Still Alice by Lisa Genova and for this week’s teaser I chose this opening paragraph:

Even then, more than a year earlier, there were neurons in her head, not far from her ears, that were being strangled to death, too quietly for her to hear them. Some would argue that things were going to be insidiously wrong that the neurons themselves initiated events that would lead to their own destruction. Whether it was molecular murder or cellular suicide, they were unable to warn her of what was happening before they died.
I love…
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[Review] Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

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Title: Water for Elephants: A Novel(This link goes to Amazon) Author: Sara Gruen Page: 414 pages Genre: Historical Fiction
Subjects: Circus Performers, Elephants - Training, Love Stories, Social Conditions (1933 - 1945) First Published: 2006


Orphaned, penniless, Jacob Jankowski jumps a freight train in the dark, and in that instant, transforms his future. By morning, he’s landed a job with the Flying Squadron of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. By nightfall, he’s in love. In an America made colorless by prohibition and the Depression, the circus is a refuge of sequins and sensuality. But behind the glamour lies a darker world, where both animals and men are dispensable. Where falling in love is the most dangerous act of all… - Synopsis from book cover
I know this book was very popular when it came out a few years ago but I did not as much as give it a thought about reading it. I guess I was turned off by the title and wasn’t really enthusiastic about the circus id…
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[Teaser Tuesdays] Water For Elephants

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Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: * Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two "teaser" sentences from that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
* Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

‘So, do you want to have breakfast in the dining room this morning, or would you like me to bring you something here?’ she asks, wrapping the cuff around my arm and inflating it.
‘I don’t want breakfast'.’
‘Come now, Mr Jankowski,’ she says, pressing a stethoscope to the inside of my elbow and watching the gauge. ‘You’ve got to keep your strength up.’
I try to catch side of her name tag. ‘What for? So I can run a marathon?’
- Page 81, Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
Ha ha. What a character =)
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[Review] When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewaldt

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Title: When We Were Strangers: A Novel(This link goes to Amazon) Author: Pamela Schoenewaldt Page: 310 pages Genre: Historical Fiction
Subject: Italians - United States, Immigrants, Dressmakers, Chicago (Illinois), Women First Published: 2011

Too poor and too plain to marry, and unwilling to burden what family she has left, twenty-year-old Irma Vitale sees no choice but to flee her Italian mountain village. Risking rough passage across the Atlantic and the dangers facing a single woman in an unfamiliar land, Irma boldly pursues a new life sewing dresses for gentlewomen. Swept up in the crowded streets of nineteenth-century America, Irma finds not only workshop servitude and miserable wages but also seeds of friendship in the raw immigrant quarters. When her determination to find a place for herself leads at last to a Chicago shop, Irma blossoms from the guidance of an austere Alsatian dressmaker, sewing fabrics and patterns more beautiful than she’d ever imagined. Then tragedy strike…
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[Review] The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

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Title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society(This link goes to Amazon) Author: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows Page: 300 pages Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Subject: Book Club, Guernsey (Channel Islands) - German Occupation, Epistolary Fiction First Published: 2008



January 1946: Writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation and of a society as extraordinary as its name.
- Synopsis from book cover
OK, I may have spoken too soon when I said in my Teaser Tuesdays post that I was having so much fun reading this book. The truth is I had only just started reading a couple of pages at that point of writing the post and the idea of an epistolary novel seemed rather refreshing to me.
But you know what they say that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Well, that’s what I felt with this novel as I progressed thr…
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Theme Thursday [4]-Crockery/Utensil

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Theme Thursdays, created by Kavyen @ Reading Between Pages is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:
A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s) Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate” This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

My participation this week is from When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewaldt.



My father’s spoon knocked the wooden trencher. “Well,” said Zia finally, “what did this letter say?” - page 7
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[Teaser Tuesdays] The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

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Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: * Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two "teaser" sentences from that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
* Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!
Just started reading Guernsey (I’m so lazy to type the full name, it’s so long!!) and am having so much fun!! I never read anything like it before … but enough on that … I’m saving any comments for the review later =)
Here’s the teaser:
I know you were at the roast pig dinner that led to the founding of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – but how did Mrs. Maugery come to have the pig in the first place? How does one hide a pig?
- Page 76, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
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Mailbox Monday [3]

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Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia @ The Printed Page, and hosted by Laura @ I’m Booking It for the month of March.
Here are the books that came into my shelves these past few weeks:

Day After Night by Anita Diamant – Recently read. Based on a true incident in August 1945 about four women trying to escape from Atlit internment camp run by British military in Haifa. Read review here.




When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewaldt – A story set in the 19th century about a poor girl named Irma who escaped her Italian village to work as a servant in America with the hope to achieve her dream of making dresses for gentlewomen.





The Atonement by Ian McEwan– A book that I believe don’t need an introduction. I have seen the movie and loved it, so I just had to read this =)





The Eight by Katherine Neville – Here’s the prequel to The Fire, which I read earlier this month. Read review for The Fire.






Interlock by Abdullah Hussain – Support the local writers. Here’s a book by Malaysia’s own National La…
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[Review] The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

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Title: The Secret Scripture: A Novel(This link goes to Amazon) Author: Sebastian Barry Page: 312 pages Genre: Literary Fiction
Subject: Sligo (Ireland), Social Conditions (1922 - 1973), Physician and Patient First Published: 2008



Nearing her hundredth birthday, and still living in the mental hospital where she was committed as a young woman, Roseanne looks back on the tragedies and passions of her life through her secret journals. Growing up in rural Ireland in the 1930s, her adolescence is marked by civil war and a turbulent family life. When she marries Tom McNulty, she believes she has found love and security – only for a terrible misunderstanding, born of prejudice and deception, to threaten her fragile happiness.
- Synopsis from book cover I am going to jump the gun and say it right here and now that I just fell in love with this book! This is the sort of book that takes me in right from the very first paragraph, made me lose all sense of time and my sense of surrounding. I was reading…
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[Review] Day After Night by Anita Diamant

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Title: Day After Night: A Novel (This link goes to Amazon) Author: Anita Diamant Page: 294 pages Genre: Historical Fiction
Subject: Women Fiction, Jewish Refugees, Palestine, World War II (1939 - 1945), Holocaust Survivors First Published: 2009


Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for “illegal” immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp who survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to hope, the four of them find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country. Diamant’s triumphant novel is an unforgettable sto…
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Theme Thursday [3]–Vehicle

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Theme Thursdays, created by Kavyen @ Reading Between Pages is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:
A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s) Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate” This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.


My participation this week will be from Day After Night by Anita Diamant. I’ve just started this book, so not much to choose from for this week’s theme… There’s something about trains but that sentence I think sounds a little too mor…
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[Review] Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie

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Title: Hallowe'en Party(This link goes to Amazon) Author: Agatha Christie Page: 336 pages Genre: Vintage Crime
Subject: Hercule Poirot, Cozy Mysteries First Published: 1969



Mystery writer Ariadne Oliver has been invited to a Hallowe'en party at Woodleigh Common. One of the other guests is an adolescent girl known for telling tall tales of murder and intrigue -- and for being generally unpleasant. But when the girl, Joyce, is found drowned in an apple-bobbing tub, Mrs. Oliver wonders after the fictional nature of the girl's claim that she had once witnessed a murder. Which of the party guests wanted to keep her quiet is a question for Ariadne's friend Hercule Poirot. But unmasking a killer this Hallowe'en is not going to be easy -- for there isn't a soul in Woodleigh who believes the late little storyteller was actually murdered.
- Synopsis from Goodreads
When a thirteen-year-old girl confesses that she had once witnessed a murder, would you believe her?
Of course, n…
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[Teaser Tuesdays] Hallowe’en Party

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Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: * Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two "teaser" sentences from that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
* Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!
I have just finished Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie this morning. Still struggling to find time to write the review… I hate when that happens because I really want it to get done before I start a new book! Right now I’m stealing a few minutes of my time at work to construct one … ha ha hope I don’t get caught by my boss!!
Michael Garfield laughed.
‘Go on home to your police friends and leave me here in my local paradise. Get thee beyond me, Satan.’
- Page 276 , Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie
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[Review] The Fire by Katherine Neville

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Title: The Fire: A Novel(This link goes to Amazon)
Author: Katherine Neville Series: Montglane Service #2 Page: 536 pages Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Historical Fiction
Subject: Quests, Puzzles, Chess Sets, Family Secrets, Code and Cipher First Published: 2008


2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with the chessmen the secrets of the power that comes with possessing them. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing – and that the Game has begun again.

1822, Albania: Haidee, the young daughter of a powerful Ottoman ruler, embarks on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania and deliver it into the hands of the one man who might be able to save it. Haidee’s journey brings forth chilling revelations that burn thr…
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Theme Thursday [2]–Furniture

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Theme Thursdays, created by Kavyen @ Reading Between Pages is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:
A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s) Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”This will give us a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand different writing styles and descriptive approaches adopted by authors.

My participation this week will be from The Fire by Katherine Neville. This is something that I would not usually read, but so far I’m enjoying it (though the pace is a little bit slow with the historical facts and all).

“As you’ve said…
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[Review] As The Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer

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Title: As the Crow Flies(This link goes to Amazon)
Author: Jeffrey Archer Page: 696 pages Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Subject: Business, Love Stories, Rivalry, Feud, Revenge, War First Published: 1991



If your dream is big enough, not even your enemies can stop you … Charlie Trumper’s earliest memory is of hearing his grandfather’s sales patter from behind his costermonger’s barrow. When Grandpa Charlie dies, young Charlie wants nothing more than to follow in his footsteps – his burning ambition is to own a shop that will sell everything: “The Biggest Barrow in the World.” 
Charlie’s progress from the teeming streets of Whitechapel to the elegance of Chelsea Terrace is only a few miles as the crow flies. But in Jeffrey Archer’s expert hands it becomes an epic journey through the triumphs and disasters of the century, as Charlie follows a thread of love, ambition and revenge to fulfill the dream his grandfather inspired.
- Synopsis from book cover
As The Crow Flies follows the life of Charlie …
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[Teaser Tuesdays] As The Crow Flies

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Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: * Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two "teaser" sentences from that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! You don't want to ruin the book for others!
* Share the title and author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!
This book is by one of my favorite authors, Mr. Jeffrey Archer.

‘How did it all go?’ were the first words Daphne uttered as she entered the drawing room, a little surprised to find her friend sitting in the dark. ‘A disaster.’ ‘So it’s all over?’ ‘No, not exactly,’ said Becky. ‘In fact, I have a feeling Guy proposed to me.’ ‘But did you accept?’ asked Daphne. ‘I rather think I did.’ ‘And what do you intend to do about India?’
- page 126, As The Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer
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