The Hound of the Baskervilles

I'm a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes (Watson, too!), and with the upcoming movie I just couldn't resist re-reading one my favourite books, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Here's a short summary of the book (taken from Amazon.com):

The curse of the Baskervilles began in the 17th Century, when Sir Hugo swore he would give his soul to possess the beautiful daughter of a yeoman. He captured her, but she escaped. He saddled his horse and chased the girl over the moors until she dropped dead from exhaustion . . . and then a black hell-hound appeared, with eyes like fire, and ripped out Hugo's throat.

Now, years later, the Hound has returned. Already it has caused the death of Hugo's descendant, Sir Charles Baskerville. Can Sherlock Holmes stop the curse before it claims Henry Baskerville, the heir of Sir Charles?

It's a wonderful gothic tale! Dark and mysterious cries from the moors, a monster hound on the lose, an escaped prisoner, a butler that is hidding a secret, candlelight signals, foggy nights, and a beautiful woman who know more than she is telling.

It was just what I needed. It was a perfect book to read during a lazy afternoon.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (5/5) Mystery; Published: George Newnes (1902); 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (60); Celebrate The Author (5); Spring Reading Thing (6); Keeper Shelf;

What's On Your Nightstand?

It's the fourth Tuesday of the month, and it's time for What's On Your Nightstand? which is hosted by the lovely ladies of 5 Minutes for Books.

Let's take a look at my nightstand, shall we?













What's on your nightstand? Join the fun here!

Additions to Mount TBR

I just had to stop by the UBS this morning. Here's what came home with me:

MIA No More

After a series of problems with my computer, and a bad case of food poisoning that made me visit the hospital for three days... I'm back!

While I was MIA I read:

Promises In Death by J.D. Robb (4.5/5) Romantic Suspense; Alternate Future; Published: G.P. Putnam's Sons (09); Series: # 30, Eve Dallas; 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (55); 2009 Support Your Local Library (50);

Getting What You Want by Kathy Love (3/5) Contemporary Romance; Published: Kensington Publishing Corp. (04); New Author; Series: # 1, The Stepp Sisters; 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (56);

The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver (4.5/5) Mystery Thriller; Published: A Signet Book (1997); New Author; Series: # 1, Rhyme & Sachs; 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (57); Keeper Shelf;

Blame It on Paris by Jennifer Greene (3/5) Contemporary Romance; Published: HQN (2008); 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (58);

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (5/5) Classic Literature; Published: Chapman and Hall (1855); 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (59); 18th & 19th Century Women Writers' Reading Challenge (5); Romance Reading Challenge (5); Spring Reading Thing (4); Keeper Shelf;

To Kill A Mockingbird

There are several books that I read in high school that I still consider favourites: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Pearl by John Steinbeck, Othello by William Shakespeare, Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (just to name a few). But the one that started it all (Grade 9 English - thank you Mr Bedford!) was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. That book opened my heart...It's the first book that I remember brought tears to my eyes. I had an emotional connection to it.

It was like visiting an old friend. I laughed and cried, and cried some more, but at the end I had a huge smile on my face. Scout tells the story so beautifully through the eyes of a child that sees more than what adults think. To grow up in such a time must have been a wondrous experience, you have the simplicity of life, but also the ugliness of social and racial injustice. But somehow this little girl has the ability to see the good in people and situations, and has no qualms about it. She is my favourite character of the book. And Boo rocks!

And after so many years, I happy to say that I still have that connection to To Kill A Mickingbird.

I hate to admit this nut this is one book I don't have in my collection, but that will soon be remedied. It's on the shopping list.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (5/5) Classic Fiction; Published: J.B. Lippincott & Co. (7/1960); Pulitzer Prize Winner (1961); 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (54); 2009 Support Your Local Library (49); Book Awards II (6); Spring Reading Thing 2009 (4); Celebrate The Author (4);

Chester

My kids love to read. And they love having books read to them. They each have their own tastes but occasionally I'm able to find a book that they both love. And it happens that I love Chester by Melanie Watt just as much as my children do.

Chester is cat that wants to be in his owner's next book. Melanie Watt is the author of Scaredy Squirrel series, but she is now trying to write a book on a mouse, but Chester has is own ideas. With his red marker, Chester helps Melanie out.

The story and the pictures are funny and endearing, and couldn't help laughing out loud along with my kids. Since getting this book we've read it several times a day, and I'm pretty sure that it will be on the keeper shelf for a very long time.

The book is the winner of the 2009 Blue Spruce Award in Ontario.

Chester by Melanie Watt (5/5) Children's Book; Young Readers (4-7); Published: Kids Can Press (2007); Young Readers Challenge (3); Keeper Shelf;

What On Your Nightstand?

It's the fourth Tuesday of the month, and it's time for What's On Your Nightstand? which is hosted by the lovely ladies of 5 Minutes for Books.

The number of books on my nightstand are increasing, but I'm sad to say that most books that were there last month are still unread. Let's take a look at my nightstand, shall we?

I'm currently reading To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Promises in Death by JD Robb.

And I also have:

The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil - I'm a knitter, and I can't resist reading books about fellow knitters.

The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver - Okay, I have to admit that I watched the movie years ago, and I enjoyed it. But I didn't realize it was based on a novel by Jeffery Deaver and it was part of a series. Yep, I had a D'uh moment at the UBS when I found the book.

The Book of Love by Kathleen McGowan - I read the first book of the Magdalene Line series, The Expected One, and loved it.

The Duchess by Amanda Foreman - This book has been on nightstand for a long time...I really should read this one soon.

Love Mercy by Earlene Fowler - I love Fowler's Benni Harper series, and I also read Saddlemaker's Wife. I wonder what this one will be like.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell - Another book that's been on the nightstand for a while.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - This will be a re-read. I've read a couple of times already, the first time I loved it and the second I wasn't all that impressed with the book. But I've heard so many good things about the series, that I'm giving it another try.

Someone Like You by Cathy Kelly - Yep, another book that's been on the nightstand for a few months.

Things I Want My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble - I actually read a review of this book at 5 Minutes for Books and couldn't resist picking it up for a try.

Love In Bloom

Hope Walker survived early breast cancer at just thirty-years-old, but a mastectomy left her with a lot of scarring—and some serious fears about dating. Hope owns Changing Seasons, Heart Lake’s most popular flower shop. When it comes to love and relationships, she’s able to work magic through her expert flower arranging…for everyone but herself. Then one day a handsome contractor starts coming into her shop, but Hope knows he’d rather have a whole woman than someone like her.

When Hope stakes a plot of ground at Heart Lake’s community garden, she finds that a woman can grow all sorts of things there: flowers, herbs, vegetables and even friendship. As she gets to know the two women who share neighboring plots, they discover that they can learn a lot from each other—not just about gardening, but about life. And Hope realizes that in order to live life to the fullest, sometimes you have to take a chance on love.

I'm a sucker for a friendship themed story, and throw in a cancer survivor and I'm a watering pot. I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a light, conforting read that uplifted my mood.

The women come together in a community garden. And while they're tending their gardens they develop a deep friendship. And that friendship helped and gave insight to their personal issues: an overworked daughter whose is loosing contact with her children, an out of work husband that doesn't believe in himself, and living with scars of cancer. I enjoyed the characters and each of their own stories, and how it was tied in all together. My only complaint is that I found the last few chapters to be rushed, it didn't have the flow that the rest of the book had.

Love in Bloom by Sheila Roberts (4/5) General Fiction; Published: St. Martin's Griffin (4/2009); New Author; 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (53); 2009 Support Your Local Library (48); 2009 Pub Challenge (16);

The Hour I First Believed

Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times).

In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.

When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.

The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

When was the last time you devoured a book? Really devoured a book...Every little spare time you can find you pick it up and lose yourself in the story.

It's such a beautifully written story that you just don't want it to end. It is a large book but the way it flows makes it seem short, at the end, I wanted more.

It's definitely a tear jerker. Sad, but hopeful. It's a book about grief and despair, and being hopeful that eventually everything that get better. It's a story about individuals that have their own demons and how they deal with them.

I highly recommend The Hour I First Believed.

The Hour I First Beleived by Wally Lamb (4.5/5) General Fiction; Published: Harper (2008); 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (52); 2009 Support Your Local Library (47); Chunkster Challenge (4);

Dewey

I must have been the only person in North America that hadn't heard about this cat before. I'm serious, even my husband knew about Dewey. Ah well...I'm a cat lover and I couldn't resist reading the book.

Here's the blurb:

How much of an impact can an animal have? How many lives can one cat touch? How is it possible for an abandoned kitten to transform a small library, save a classic American town, and eventually become famous around the world? You can't even begin to answer those questions until you hear the charming story of Dewey Readmore Books, the beloved library cat of Spencer, Iowa.

Dewey's story starts in the worst possible way. Only a few weeks old, on the coldest night of the year, he was stuffed into the returned book slot at the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director, Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next nineteen years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility, (for a cat) and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most.

As his fame grew from town to town, then state to state, and finally, amazingly, worldwide, Dewey became more than just a friend; he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming town pulling its way slowly back from the greatest crisis in its long history.

In all honesty I was expecting something different. I was expecting a book on a cat and his antics. But instead I got book about a small town in Iowa. If I had known that at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have picked this book.

I enjoyed reading about Dewey, but I could have done without all the town problems and personal issues that went about. I do understand that Dewey brought happiness in those bleak times, but I felt that it was more a story about the town, and the author. There were chapters that I wondered where was Dewey...ah.

Bottom line I found the book boring.

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter (2.5/5) Non-fiction; Memoir; Published: Grand Central Publishing (8/2008); 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (51); 2009 Support Your Local Library (46);

The Mysteries of Udolpho

"Her present life appeared like a dream of a distempered imagination or like one of those frightful fictions, in which wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Reflection brought only regret, and anticipation terror."

Such is the state of mind of Ann Radcliffe's orphaned heroine Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself imprisoned in her her evil guardian Count Montoni's gloomy medieval fortress in the remote Apennines. Terror is the order of the day inside the walls of Udolpho, as Emily struggles against Montoni's rapacious schemes and the threat of her own psychological disintegration.

A bestseller in its day and a potent influence on Sade, Poe, and other writers, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) is Radcliffe's classic work of Gothic fiction. With its dream-like plot and hallucinatory of its characters' psychological states, the novel remains a profound and fascinating challenge to modern readers.

Well, it was a definite challenge. For me, at least.

I struggled with it all along. But I kept on reading, even though I found the writing to be flowery, it had a kind of poetry that kept me going. In all honesty I think the first hundred pages aren't needed - just my opinion - it just drags on and on.

But once it gets to the Gothic parts, it definitely turns around. It's more exciting and scary. And I think that's what appealed to me. I like dark and sinister stories, and I'm not afraid to admit that there were times that I was terrified along with Emily.

At the beginning I found Emily to be a naive heroine, but she grew on me throughout the book. Even if she cried one too many times...I couldn't understand her feelings for Vallancourt, I found him dull. I actually enjoyed Montoni, his crazy evil antics, he was entertaining, let's face it if he wasn't in the story, there wouldn't be one.

Will I read again? No, it's a one time deal. But I am glad that I read it.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (3/5) Classic Literature; Gothic Romance; Published: G. G. and J. Robinson (1794); 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (50); 2009 Support Your Local Library (44); 18th & 19th Century Women Writers' Reading Challenge (4); Spring Reading Thing Challenge (3); Chunkster Challenge (3);

Veil of Midnight

Bound by blood, addicted to danger, they'll enter the darkest—and most erotic—place of all.

A warrior trained in bullets and blades, Renata cannot be bested by any man—vampire or mortal. But her most powerful weapon is her extraordinary psychic ability—a gift both rare and deadly. Now a stranger threatens her hard-won independence—a golden-haired vampire who lures her into a realm of darkness…and pleasure beyond imagining.

A combat-loving adrenaline junkie, Nikolai dispenses his own justice to enemies of the Breed—and his latest quarry is a ruthless assassin. One woman stands in his way: the seductive, cool-as-ice bodyguard, Renata. But Renata’s powers are put to the test when a loved one, a child, is threatened and she’s forced to turn to Niko for help. As the two join forces, as desire fans the flames of a deeper hunger, Renata’s life is under siege by a man who offers the exquisite pleasure of a blood bond—and a passion that could save or doom them both forever.…

When you think it can't get even better...it does.

I just love strong warrior females, and Renata can definitely kick ass. But she knows when she needs help. She surprised on how kind, considerate and decent Nikolai is...well considering the other vampires she was dealing with it's not a surprise. They come together to save Mira, a child that has an amazing ability and who is saught after by an evil Gen One vampire.

I was sitting on the edge of my seat throughout the book. There were twists and more twists, and just when I thought I had it figured out there was another one. Loved! I liked that it was unpredectable. I loved seeing some of the older characters, but also the introduction of the new ones, like Hunter. Can't wait to hear more about him. And there's also Andreas Reichen, he was in this story as well...and I'm not complaining. I believe the next book of the series, Ashes of Midnight is his.

Veil of Midnight by Lara Adrian (4.5/5) Romance; Paranormal: Vampire; Published: Dell (1/2009); Series: # 5, Midnight Breed; 2009 100 + Reading Challenge (49); 2009 Support Your Local Library (43); 2009 Pub Challenge (15);