tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-386566332009-12-10T17:50:21.284-06:00The problem is I want to read it all but I fall farther behind every day.Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.comBlogger1139125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-50137043597535084662009-12-09T16:40:00.002-06:002009-12-09T16:47:16.024-06:00

From what I understand (not having read her before), Rainwater is a change-of-pace novel for its author, Sandra Brown. Already well known for her bestselling novels of the romantic thriller type, this time around Brown has written a more serious novel about a woman struggling to raise her autistic son in rural Texas during the Great Depression.Ella Barron’s life has not been an easy one. Her

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-1890053281976729122009-12-08T16:56:00.003-06:002009-12-08T17:02:40.170-06:00

I suspect that most Americans are still confused about Pat Tillman’s death because of how that tragic event was reported. Early reports stated that Tillman had been killed in an enemy ambush and that his heroic actions during the firefight earned him a posthumous Silver Star. A few weeks later, the truth about Pat Tillman’s death began to trickle out and the public learned that he had actually

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-11432769922771573212009-12-07T17:41:00.005-06:002009-12-07T18:07:24.074-06:00

Christopher Meeks sends word that Backward Books is giving away a copy of his most recent book, The Brightest Moon of the Century. All it takes to put your name in the hat for the random drawing is a visit to Backward Books. Just leave a comment to the Meeks interview you will find there and you are automatically entered.Book Chase readers might recall that I gave high marks to The Brightest

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-74659117831486579312009-12-07T16:55:00.002-06:002009-12-07T17:03:22.436-06:00

The Puppet Masters was first published in 1951 as a manuscript of approximately 60,000 words, eliminating some 36,000 words from Heinlein’s original story. The cuts were made because of concerns about the book’s length and the controversial (sexual) nature of some of the passages eliminated. Of course, what was risqué in 1951 is extremely tame by today’s standards and in 1990, two years after

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-91167241431447082062009-12-06T10:01:00.004-06:002009-12-06T10:19:20.824-06:00

Did something good actually come from the Tiger Woods debacle of last week? Author John Gribbin probably thinks so because one of his books just received a huge sales boost after it was spotted in one of the photos of Tiger's wrecked vehicle. This kind of thing has happened before, of course, when celebrities or presidents are spotted carrying a book around, but this is a surprise because

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-52092399918404094432009-12-04T16:47:00.005-06:002009-12-04T17:24:30.215-06:00

Lisa Roe, better known in the book-blogging world as The Online Publicist, has come up with a wonderful idea to honor the memory of a lady whose sudden death was a shock to all of us a few months ago. Dewey was a "community organizer" in the best sense of that phrase - she could have taught those who abuse that job title a whole lot about what is right and what is wrong in the world.Lisa

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-22568070510969906482009-12-03T17:08:00.006-06:002009-12-03T17:28:35.204-06:00

It's time for another feel-good story and this time around it comes all the way from the little English village known as Westbury-sub-Mendip. It seems that the villagers have adopted one of those old British phone booths, the reds one everyone remembers from the day when phones weren't carried in our pockets. But it's what they've done with it that is so cool.They've created the U.K.'s smallest

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-82448168196022952912009-12-02T17:00:00.003-06:002009-12-02T17:08:44.008-06:00

Warren Spooner was trouble even before he was born. Spooner weighed in at all of five pounds when his mother finally pushed him in out into the world after spending 53 hours in labor that first week of December 1956. He arrived only a few seconds after his more handsome twin brother and, even though his twin never took a breath, Spooner knew that his dead brother would always be his mother’s

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-38319719350783740222009-12-01T17:14:00.003-06:002009-12-01T17:32:13.373-06:00

A Question of Blood (Ian Rankin’s 14th John Rebus novel) is a complicated police procedural told in seven parts, one part for each day it takes Rebus and Siobhan Clarke to close the books on the Edinburgh school shooting that claims the lives of two students. The case does not appear to be a difficult one because one of the three students in the room at the time of the murders has survived to

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-68993962603694869472009-11-30T18:01:00.005-06:002009-11-30T18:17:37.820-06:00

Man, do I want this typewriter!This is the little machine that produced every word written by Cormac McCarthy in the last 50 years, every single word - some 5 million of them. And now Mr. McCarthy is selling his little Olivetti typewriter and donating the proceeds to the Santa Fe Institute. Unfortunately, those who know about this kind of thing estimate that the sale will bring somewhere

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-63011277169987169982009-11-30T12:26:00.004-06:002009-11-30T12:35:30.100-06:00

Jay Porter is struggling. He lives in a cramped little apartment with his pregnant wife, a woman he has known since she was thirteen years old, and he wonders if they can ever afford a better home. Porter, a player during the Black Power movement of the 1960s, is now a lawyer with a cheap, strip mall office and an incompetent secretary he can just afford. His clients are walk-ins and referrals

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-46317311542267267002009-11-29T13:31:00.005-06:002009-11-29T14:17:15.633-06:00

I'm doing it again - getting excited enough about a book to write about it even before I finish it. This time it's Spooner, by Pete Dexter, a book that came from nowhere to catch me completely by surprise.I was not unaware of Pete Dexter's work before I started Spooner, having read God's Pocket, Deadwood and Paris Trout, Mr. Dexter's first three novels. But none of those prepared me for the wit

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-75758794663819049892009-11-27T17:36:00.005-06:002009-11-27T18:03:23.202-06:00

The New York Times and some San Francisco books stores believe the world, as they know it, is soon to end. According to them, the twin monsters known as WalMart and Glenn Beck are on the verge of killing off liberal thought. In the best tradition of Chicken Little, the Times has this to say about the discounting of a handful of bestselling hardcovers by WalMart, Amazon and Target:So if this is

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-19285667455199905032009-11-26T17:46:00.002-06:002009-11-26T17:56:32.228-06:00

Reading Mary Karr’s latest memoir, Lit, is akin to catching up with an old friend over a cup of coffee or, perhaps in this case, over something a bit stronger than coffee. Karr’s earlier memoirs, The Liars’ Club (1995), which covered her childhood years, and Cherry (2000), the story of her adolescence and early adulthood, established for her a well deserved reputation as an exceptional memoirist

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-26565837118045721982009-11-24T16:55:00.002-06:002009-11-24T17:05:47.142-06:00

Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, born in 1805 during the Lewis and Clark expedition, is one of the most unique figures in American history. The son of a French fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, and Sacagawea, the Indian woman who played such a prominent role in the expedition, Baptiste was carried on his mother’s back all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He was born with a foot in two different worlds

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-90978733063242842102009-11-23T16:33:00.002-06:002009-11-23T16:42:00.686-06:00

When a dog returns to its waiting owner with a human bone clutched in its jaws, Detective Harry Bosch inherits one of the coldest of cases, the 20-year-old murder of a young boy who was never reported missing. Bosch has seen everything during his long career with the LAPD but he is still capable of feeling a sense of outrage about the murders he investigates for the city. And what he learns

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-2348242590749690642009-11-22T12:48:00.004-06:002009-11-22T13:09:00.498-06:00

I have been down with the flu since Friday and I've spent more time sleeping than reading or doing anything else. Thankfully, I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon and I'm hoping that things gradually return to normal for me over the next few days.I've actually been able to finish two books since Thursday but I can't imagine writing anything about them right now that would even come close to

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-36128341519781457962009-11-19T18:25:00.004-06:002009-11-19T18:50:47.137-06:00

The bookstore from which I would never buy a book is at it again. Remember this from July 16,2008? Well, here we go again. This time it's Sarah Palin and her new memoir that are being ridiculed by the business-plan-challenged management of Bookshop Santa Cruz. Not surprisingly, the Santa Cruz Sentinel is there to cheer them on: By golly, a downtown bookstore has found a way to poke fun at

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-66468811871395234682009-11-18T19:32:00.004-06:002009-11-18T20:57:38.808-06:00

I decided to purchase the Sony PRS-600 Reader Touch Edition this morning and I've been playing around with it all day. I was relieved to see that the Sony salesperson was familiar with the offer (although I was the first such transaction handled in this store) and that everything was set up to make it all go pretty quickly. I was given $75 off the price of a new reader for turning in my old

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-79629964157032805812009-11-17T17:00:00.008-06:002009-11-17T17:25:18.552-06:00

Sony may have just sold me a new e-book reader - with an assist from Kristy who alerted me to an email offer she received from Sony yesterday. It turns out that, as far as its e-book store goes, Sony is killing the e-book format that works on my PRS-500 reader. That means that I can no longer get new content for the reader from Sony.Sony offers two workarounds, however, and both of them are

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-85313696216279832042009-11-16T17:16:00.003-06:002009-11-16T17:28:03.973-06:00

Last Night in Twisted River is not quite the comeback John Irving needed to make readers forget, or to forgive, the dreary Until I Find You, but it is a giant step in the right direction. One of things Irving has always done best is to create remarkably detailed and realistic settings in which to place his larger-than-life characters and he uses that skill to great effect here. Irving also

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-80797124706559023572009-11-15T09:42:00.006-06:002009-11-15T13:30:42.595-06:00

I am reaching the end of one of those rare weeks for me - 7 days during which I have not finished a single book. Not one. I should have seen this coming but it still feels strange. It's not that I haven't been reading at pretty much my normal pace for the last week or so but I started two books on the same day that, between them, total right at 1,000 pages. Now, almost 800 pages of reading

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-26587096333818457502009-11-12T17:19:00.003-06:002009-11-12T18:06:16.695-06:00

I was hoping to find something today that would be a nice contrast to yesterday's downer about the 12 thieves caught stealing $140,000 worth of textbooks from several Maryland libraries. I never expected to find something as perfect as this story, however.According to Kentucky.com, sixty-four-year-old Jim Davis of Sheperdsville, KY, is in a desperate race against the clock to collect and donate

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-4403856038255922682009-11-11T17:09:00.004-06:002009-11-11T17:59:17.182-06:00

College and community libraries in Maryland have lost $140,000 worth of textbooks to twelve thieves looking to make a quick buck by reselling the books to area college students.WBAL-TV, Baltimore, has the story:The investigation into the thefts began in July when University of Maryland, Baltimore County police discovered a large number of the books in a car. The barcodes were removed from many of

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38656633.post-22623790308730212182009-11-10T17:23:00.004-06:002009-11-10T17:49:39.593-06:00

Kathleen, over at Boarding in My Forties, asks an interesting question today."What would you give up to keep reading?"Like Kathleen, I've been a reader as long as I can remember, always carrying a spare book around for those unexpected moments when I can sneak in a few extra minutes of reading time. I've come to the point that I actually see long lines and traffic jams as little bonus reading

Sam Sattlerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17448913705757509608SamHouston23@gmail.com14