books I've read

Anne Hawn's books

Who Moved My Cheese?
If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
Scientific Secrets for Self-Control
Just One Damned Thing After Another
The Vanishing
Exercises in Knitting
The Good Dream
The Very Best of Edgar Allan Poe
The Chosen
BT-Kids' Knits
Talking God
The Professor
The Christmas Files
The Finisher
Home Decor for 18-Inch Dolls: Create 10 Room Settings with Furniture and 15 Outfits with Accessories
Dracula and Other Stories
A New Song
Christy
All Quiet on the Western Front
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents


Anne Hawn Smith's favorite books »

I'm reading 150 Books

2019 Reading Challenge
2019 Reading Challenge 19614 members
<b>Are you ready to set your 2019 reading goal?</b> This is a supportive, fun group of people looking for people just like you. Track your annual reading goal here with us, and we have challenges, group reads, and other fun ways to help keep you on pace. There will never be a specific number of books to read here or pressure to read more than you can commit to. Your goal is five? Great! You think you want to read 200? Very cool! We won't kick you out for not participating regularly, but we'll love it if you do. Join us!

Books we've read

The Help
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Night Circus
The Golden Compass
11/22/63
The Little Lady Agency
Catch-22
The Good Father
A Discovery of Witches
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Fahrenheit 451
Frankenstein
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
A Christmas Carol
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
The Color Purple
Matched
Cloud Atlas
The Princess Bride
The Catcher in the Rye


View this group on Goodreads »

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Rahab's Story (Women of the Bible)Rahab's Story by Ann Burton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a wonderful series taken from the Bible and fleshed out with historical details to make an interesting and compelling story. Rahab is cast out of her family due to lies told by her stepmother. Her father won't listen to his daughter and she is sent out with no money or future. Starving and destitute, she attempts to steal some fruit from a tree growing in a yard. She is caught and taken into a high class house of prostitution and under the wing of the owner. This view into her life in such a house is very different from what I would have imagined. The town is pagan and these women are not seen as degenerate as we might feel.

Rahab gets to know some Hebrews spies in town and she confesses that she has been taught the Hebrew ways by her mother and is a believer. She protects them from being captured and when the Hebrew army comes to raze the city, everyone in the house is protected by the strip of red cloth hanging from the window.

The outlines of the story are taken right from the Bible, but this is a delightful story that makes the Bible come alive.


View all my reviews

My ipod

Last night I downloaded 11 books from my public library and put them on my ipod. I am just awed at the technology available to us today. Here I am with this little silver thing in my hand that is not much larger than an opened gum wrapper and it contains the contents of 11 whole books. I pictured myself walking out of the library with my bookbag full of the actual books and lugging them home just to let this sink in.

I use Goodreads website to list my books and write reviews. When I am finished, I copy the html to this blog. Rather than record the books when I am finished reading them, I am setting them all to "currently reading" as soon as I download them. When I looked at my list it looked a little like my junior year in college when I was taking 3 literature classes and 2 history classes. We read a book a week for each lit classes and both of the history classes had a ton of outside reading. I have never read so much in my life! Fortunately, I can have as long as I want to read the books, but the list does look intimidating.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

The Cat Who Talked Turkey (Cat Who..., #26

The Cat Who Talked Turkey (Cat Who..., #26)The Cat Who Talked Turkey by Lilian Jackson Braun

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I usually pick these books up when I am looking for some enjoyable light reading. A cozy mystery where no one dwells on gore and the language is decent. Qwill has retired to Moose County along with his two Siamese, Koko and Yum Yum. KoKo has strange insight and he howls whenever there is a murder...and over the series we've seen many. I listen to them on my ipod and George Guidall"s voice makes the books a pleasure to listen to.



In this book, a man is murdered on Qwill's property. KoKo howls at the time of his death and long before anyone knows he's been killed. All this takes place while a new bookstore is being built which Polly will run. These books are more about the characters rather than the mystery



View all my reviews

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

This Body of Death (Inspector Lynley #16)This Body of Death by Elizabeth George

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did not like this book nearly as well as the earlier books. Isabelle Ardery's is designed to talke Lynley's place if he can't be convinced to come back and she is abrasive, brash, idiotically unsensitive and totally unable to see any of her team as having a lick of sense. She is finally successful in getting Lynley out of the house and working on her team, but that doesn't ring true at all. You can tell from the beginning that she is to be a love interest for him and that just is beyond sense. He could easier fall in love with Barbara Havers, who at the very least is a good detective and friend despite her penchant for going against the rules.

The mystery itself is better than the last few and I thought very clever. It isn't too hard to figure what is going on by the Social Service reports, but you still can't work out the details until the end. As a matter of fact, I have oftened wondered about the subject of this mystery. I can't really say more without giving too much away.

So, it is still a good book, but I pray that Isabelle is bumped off or sent off in disgrace before the next book. She is totally unsympathetic and as for Lynley having any interest in her, well, I would put it down to post traumatic stress disorder due to the death of his wife. In order for him to continue a relationship with her, he'd have to be mentally ill.


View all my reviews

52 Books October till the End of the Year

In Ravelry, I saw a group who pledge to read 52 books in a year. Unfortunately, it was already October when I found it, but since I read a lot I thought I would try to read 52 books by the end of the year. If I go to Virginia early this year, I probably won't make it, but at least it will encourage me to put away some time wasting things that I do...like Facebook and Spider Solitaire to name two! I picked this counter because I read, listen on my computer, on CD and iPod. I thought it was appropriate.

I have started by adding reviews of a lot of books I have on Goodreads that I haven't written reviews of. I left for Virginia in May this year and didn't come back until September 5, so I had a number of books I never got the reviews for, especially in May, June and July. I am still aiming at recording every book I read for a year.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil (An Aunt Dimity Mystery, #6)

Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil (An Aunt Dimity Mystery, #6)Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil by Nancy Atherton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this series a long time ago and enjoyed it. Lori Shepherd inherited a legacy from her "Aunt" Dimity from England, but the legacy is more than money. Aunt Dimity manages to make herself known to Lori when she needs help the most. In this book, Lori takes a job to evaluate a rare book collection at Wyrdhurst Hall, but there are some dark things going on in this old mansion. There are old letters from World War I that seem to tell of a forbidden or doomed love and someone doesn't want Lori to know about it.

Again, a handsome young man becomes attached to the supposedly happily married Lori and Aunt Dimity doesn't approve. Lori's playing with fire and I read each book with apprehension.
View all my reviews

The Blood Detective

The Blood DetectiveThe Blood Detective by Dan Waddell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book was fascinating. I enjoy books which flip between different centuries and this was a good one. A murder victim is found with what look like scratches, but turn out to be a file reference to the city archives. Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster and his partner Detective Superintendent Heather Jenkins get Nigel Barnes, a local genealogist, to help with the reference. Soon this murder is followed by another and another. All the time the detectives are following the clues to the murders, Nigel Barns is looking in the genealogy of the people killed. Eventually he stumbles on the motive in a 100 year old murder, but it appears to be too late. Chief Inspector Foster has gone missing.

While the plot was a little improbable, it is after all fiction and there have been stranger crimes and who is to say why some murderers do what they have done. This was fast paced, action packed and intelectually stimulating and what more can you ask from a book? I'll be reading more by this author.

View all my reviews

Monday, October 11, 2010

Close To Home (Inspector Banks, #13

Close To Home (Inspector Banks, #13)Close To Home by Peter Robinson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Detective Banks books are always good, but this one was particularly enjoyable. DI Banks is catapulted into the past when the bones of an old school friend, Graham Marshall, are found. Banks and his friends were all about 14 when Marshall disappeared and no one knew what happened to him. At the same time, Annie Cabot is investigating a similar disappearance and possible kidnapping of a 15 year old boy. The cases seem to be so similar and Banks is caught somewhere between them. Both boys were not who they seemed to be and Banks found that Graham had a lot more going on in his life than he and his friends were aware of. To add to the problem, DI Michelle Hart, new at her post has uncovered police corruption in the old case. Why are the action log and the case notes gone? Who still has something to hide?

Annie’s case involves 15 year old, Luke Armitage, who was the son of a famous musician who committed suicide when Luke was very young. There is a lot of pressure on Annie because Luke’s mother was a famous model and his step-father a much loved Rugby player. Annie needs to use all her skills in untangling the mystery of Luke’s life before she can even begin to solve the matter of Luke’s death.



View all my reviews

Monday, October 04, 2010

Alice's Tulips

Alice's TulipsAlice's Tulips by Sandra Dallas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed this book. It was told through letters that Alice wrote to her sister. Alice was a young woman married for 1 year whose young husband has gone to fight as a Union soldier in the Civil War. She is living with her mother-in-law, a taciturn and critical somewhat elderly woman. They live in a small farm just outside a village in Iowa and the story gives a fairly good idea of the lives women led at the time. The sexual references are almost certainly inaccurate and would be best left out. I cannot imagine young women of that time writing about such intimate matters in letters. Alice's Tulips refers to a quilting pattern and quilting for soldiers and patterns are a thread that runs through the book. Eventually, Alice is suspected of murder and there is a bit of drama and suspense that brings the book to its conclusion.



View all my reviews

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Crisis

CrisisCrisis by Robin Cook

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dr. Craig Bowman was served with a malpractice lawsuit for making a house call on one of his patients in his concierge medical practice. The lawsuit charges that he should have called an ambulance instead of going to the patient’s home. Dr. Bowman has spent his whole life as an overachiever and especially in his medical practice. A workaholic, he sacrificed his marriage and relationship with his children to his patients and he is bewildered at the charges.

His brother-in-law, medical examiner, Dr. Jack Stapleton, has come to the aid of his sister’s husband on the eve of his wedding to see what he can uncover. This novel has several twists and subplots and the reader is carried away with the rush to find an answer before Jack is due at the altar. Will he make it, or is this another subliminal attempt to avoid the commitment of marriage?

The book did have some problems and some stereotyping. Many of the characters were one dimensional and overly simplified. I found the conclusion to be a little disappointing, but there was a lot of action and suspense. This isn’t Robin Cook’s best, but is still a good read.





View all my reviews