With all the hype around Fifty Shades of Grey, I confess I snickered seeing Shelf Awareness report The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the #2 bestselling book in May at abebooks.com. There sits Gatsby, sandwiched between Fifty Shades of Grey, at #1 and Fifty Shades Darker at #3!

Star Trek FAQ: Everything Left to Know about the First Voyages of the Starship Enterprise by Mark Clark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a delightful compendium. Although I bought it for a friend's birthday, I couldn't resist dipping into it!

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Treasures at the Museum by Deborra Richardson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Aunt Imani takes Brittany and Peter on a visit to the Smithsonian Archives. This is sweet and simple introduction to the concept of museums and archives best suited as an additional resource for teachers taking a K to 3rd class to the Smithsonian. The setting is particular to Washington, D.C. and the questions at the back of the book are educational. Viewed courtesy of Elevator Group and netgalley.com



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The Dressmaker: A Novel by Kate Alcott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This engaging novel explores the aftermath of the Titanic disaster through the eyes of Tess, an aspiring dressmaker, who makes the crossing as a maid to famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon. Although the sinking is a dramatic event in the story, the focus here is on Tess, her attraction to both a young sailor and a Chicago millionaire on the Titanic, and how she will forge a new life in New York. Alcott concentrates on the effect of the sinking and the subsequent investigation on the survivors and challenges readers to consider what they would have done if aboard the Titanic. There is a sly humor to some of the name dropping amid the glitzy fashion world of Lady Duff Gordon. Alcott's research shows as she deftly weaves historical facts and actual figures like the Astors, Molly Brown, Edith Wharton, Isadora Duncan, and Bruce Ismay, head of the White Star Line, into her fiction. A thoroughly enjoyable read and timely, with 100th anniversary of the Titanic coming up in April. [digital ARC= Thanks to Random House and NetGalley!]



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Fine Cooking Appetizers
By: Editors of Fine Cooking Magazine
The Taunton Press, 2010

The editors of Fine Cooking magazine have compiled a terrific selection of appetizer recipes that are easy to understand, offer a variety of cold and hot selections, and are generously illustrated with mouth-watering photographs.

Fine Cooking Appetizers will not only inspire your next party, it is also a great choice as a holiday or special occasion gift.

If Rocks Could Sing: A Discovered Alphabet by Leslie McGuirk

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"A is for addition"..."g is for ghosts"...."T is for Toast." McGuirk spent over ten years collecting rocks that resemble letters of the alphabet as well as the accompanying objects that comprise her alphabet. While mixing lower and upper case letters would confuse young ones looking to reinforce their letter knowledge, this is a clever and imaginative alphabet book that inspires one's powers of observation.



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The House Baba Built: An Artist's Childhood in China by Ed Young

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This episodic journey into Ed Young's childhood memories will probably have more appeal to older kids familiar with his picture books or adults. The mixed media of the page design is fascinating in itself. Great to pair with Allen Say's DRAWING FROM MEMORY, another view into the development of a children's literature author/illustrator.



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Fun video of Elvis Costello on Sesame Street:

Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers by Pendred Noyce

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Noyce has created a delightful pair of characters who, bored with the lack of entertainment at their Aunt's house on a rainy day, explore a barn and find themselves in a magical world where the balance of language and numbers has become unhinged. Ivan and Daphne are set on a mission to find Lexicon's lost children who have been lured away by dancing lights in the sky. Along the way the survive a plague of punctuation, the fog of forgetting, feuding parts of speech, a panel of poets and illogical mathematicians in the town of Irrationality. This delightful story offers readers ample opportunities to solve the word and number puzzles along the way. I look forward to additional tales in the series. Recommended for grades 4 - 7.



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The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Stockett takes a few liberties with history but still delivers an entertaining story mixing humor, dramatic tension, and stark facts. Not all the characters had adequate dimension for my taste, but I enjoyed the novel nevertheless.



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A Small Hotel: A Novel by Robert Olen Butler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Instead of showing up in Pensacola to finalize her divorce, Kelly Hays checks in to the Olivier Hotel in New Orleans, where she first met her husband Michael, with a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of pills. Unaware of this, Michael is driving to Oak Alley Plantation, an hour west of New Orleans, with Laurie, his new girlfriend. Through the alternating viewpoints of Kelly, Michael, and Laurie, Butler teases out incidents to show the fraying of a marriage. It is a poignant study of miscommunication in human relationships that will have readers holding their breath for the outcome. I wish I had started this while I was in New Orleans for ALA instead of on the plane home! Thanks to Grove Press and Publisher's Group West for the ARC of this novel.



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Live feed from NASA's last shuttle mission:

Video, chat, community by Ustream

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto by Julia Child

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fans of Julia Child will welcome the insights offered by this correspondence which began when Julia Child wrote Bernard DeVoto, responding to an article he wrote about knives. Avis DeVoto, his wife, replied and thus began a friendship. This is a fascinating collection of letters which not only covers the evolution of MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING, but also offers commentary on the political issues of the day, a peak into the life of Avis and Bernard DeVoto, and an insight into Julia's experiences living in various European postings through Paul Child's work for the government. Thank you to netgalley!







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Drawing Conclusions: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When a woman reports her neighbor's death, Commissario Brunetti can't resist investigating further, even though the cause of death is ruled a heart attack. There is a suspicious bruise on the woman's neck and a couple things about her apartment are odd. This is Donna Leon's 20th Brunetti mystery and here there is a mystery about whether there is something to investigate. A pleasant twist for Leon fans!



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A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It is 1932 and Maisie Dobbs is recruited by Scotland Yard's Special Branch to go undercover as a junior lecturer at a Cambridge college to observe activities “not in the interests of His Majesty’s Government.” And sure enough, the college President is found dead in his office, another professor is secretly skulking off to London, and whisps of communism and nazi gatherings are in the air.



Winspear skillfully evokes England at the fulcrum between the wars: Hitler's seductive nationalism, the desperate desire for peace among nations, the hope for a better tomorrow. Observant, beguiling, astute and humorous by turns, Maisie is a delightful and multi-layered character---the perfect companion to lead the reader through these events.



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The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Lord Peter Wimsey sleuths again through the pen of Jill Paton Walsh. I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery which follows the Attenbury family emeralds as they are misplaced, stolen, swapped for paste copies, gambled away and recovered over several generations. I think Paton Walsh stays true to Dorothy L. Sayres' original characters and is adept at creating the witty repartee' and literary references so often found in the original Wimsey mysteries.



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The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Edie Burchill is intrigued by her mother's emotional reaction to a letter, arriving 50 years after it was posted during World War II. Her mother, Meredith, has said little about being evacuated from London as a young teen, or her time with the Blythe sisters of Milderhurst Castle. Events bring Edie close to Milderhurst, and she cannot resist the temptation to look into the secrets and mysteries of the Blythes and this phase of her mother's life. This is a marvelous read if you appreciate intricate character study and tracing the interwoven threads of people's lives. The truth about these lives is seldom what it appears to be at first. Chapters alternate between points of view: Edie, Meredith,the three Blythe sisters, as well as alternating time periods: the present, the childhood years of the Blythes, the years of World War II, and a particular fateful night in 1941. Morton has penned another expansive novel that plumbs the depths of intertwined family history in a similar vein to her The Forgotten Garden.



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The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us by Tanya Lee Stone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am a 'victim'(?)of Barbie's cult of fashion! At age 9 I considered adding 'modeling' to my other career goals which included cattle driver, ballerina, and poet. After saving my allowance, and profits from a door-to-door potholder 'business,' I was able to buy Barbie's "Solo in the Spotlight" and was thoroughly convinced that fashion was attainable with a little planning.

It was delicious fun to pour over the pictures and read the history of Barbie, her appreciators, detractors, and all her incarnations over half a century.



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The Black Cat
The Black Cat (Richard Jury, #22)The Black Cat by Martha Grimes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Richard Jury is back and crossing mental swords with his nemesis, Harry, over the murder of woman at THE BLACK CAT pub. Once again, Melrose Plant is enlisted to help Jury in the investigation and the interplay of these old friends provide a touch of irony and humor amid the murder investigation.

No spoilers here . . . Grimes fans will welcome the Chief Inspector's return along with other familiar characters. I especially enjoy the return of Mungo, Harry's dog, who has his own caper in this book . . . engineering the return of a kidnapped cat to THE BLACK CAT pub.

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Andi is raging against the world. She is depressed over the death of her brother, angry that her geneticist father is pouring himself into his work, frustrated with her mother's inability to cope, and jeopardizing her education. Forced to accompany her father to Paris, Andi starts to research her college application essay when she finds the diary of Alexandrine, a young woman living in France during the French Revolution and becomes obsessed with her story. This is a terrific read that recalls the 'mystery across time' conceit in such titles as Tey's DAUGHTER OF TIME or Byatt's POSSESSION.



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