Monday, January 24, 2011

The Lotus Eaters

The Lotus Eaters was selected as the book for May 2011 by the Boulder Junction group.  Even though it's a little early to post about the book, I wanted to share some websites and images that are making the book feel "real" to me and didn't want to forget them before our discussion.

Lotus Eaters review -- Washington Post review by Masha Hamilton, the author of The Camel Bookmobile -- another good book.

Fall of Saigon -- If you Google "fall of Saigon", the second or third hit will be images. There are a couple of the helicopter landing on the roof of the Embassy, a few of people piled up against the fences and a number of other photos that show what it must have looked like to Helen.

Links to the photographers and images that the author said she researched while doing the book.

Dickey Chapelle  -- Shorewood, WI native who becomes one of the first female war correspondents and the first female reporter approved by the Pentagon to parachute in with the troops in Vietnam.  There is a link to her photographs at the end of the article. She was killed in Vietnam after stepping on a land mine. Henri Huet was another photographer who was with Dickey at the time and photographed her last rites.

Catherine Leroy -- This is a link to an obituary published by the National Press Photographers Association. Images of her photography can be found by Googling her name. Once again, the second or third hit will be images. She made the cover of Life magazine with a photograph she took of her North Vietnamese captors at the time of her release.  Can you imagine anyone being this gutsy?

Kate Webb -- War correspondent and journalist.  Kate Webb was also captured and presumed dead.  She got to read her "first" obituary in 1971 after being held 23 days.  According to the real 2007 obituary, she continued working until 2001 when she figured she was too old to do the front line reporting she liked. 

Barbara Gluck -- Female war photographer who is still living and doing photography.  If you click on the link "About Barbara" you can see she had quite a few firsts too. 

Thursday, January 13, 2011

February 2011 Books


There are two books for February.  At  Manitowish Waters and Winchester, we'll be discussing The Help.  At the Boulder Junction group, we'll be talking about Little Bee.  The links will take you to a description and discussion questions for each book.



Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Birthday Books

BibliOZ -- Found this fun site for book lovers.  If you go to this site and click on the "Birthday Best Seller" link, you'll be given the option of entering your birth date.  The site then generates a list of the best selling fiction and non-fiction book for the week or year of your birth. 

Nancy Perl on WPR

We were talking today about Nancy Perl being on WPR today (1/12/11).  If you want to listen to her interview and book suggestions, you can go to Kathleen Dunn's homepage and click on her audio archives.  You should see a link to the 10AM show.  


Here's the link--http://www.wpr.org/kathleendunn/ 

Boulder Junction Luncheon

We had a really nice salad luncheon today and selected some really interesting books for next year.  The books we selected are listed to the left and books that were not selected have been added to the recommended book list.  

Thanks again to Sharon for letting us meet at her house.

Sunday, January 09, 2011

Site Cleanup

Hope you like the new site design and layout.  The old one was looking a little dated and, after finding some of the design options now available through Blogger,  I thought it was time for a change.


Another addition is a list of links that are just fun.  Freerice is a site that correct answers earn grains of rice.  It's fun to see what the old brain remembers.  Over the holidays, we had some
neighbor kids visiting.  After I showed them the site, they set a rice total goal and wouldn't give up until they reached the magic number.


The other site, JigZone, offers a variety of jigsaw puzzles to do online.  If you enjoy photography, you can open a free account and upload your pictures and turn them into jigsaw puzzles.

Great Time of Year

This is always a fun time of the year with the publication of best book lists. I've added a link to a website (Fiction Award Winners) that provides access to a number of different sites.


It's always fun to see a book you loved on a list, frustrating to try to figure out how that "great" book could have been overlooked and interesting to see what you considered a more forgettable book included on a number of lists.

Here's a link to a number of lists on the NPR site.  NPR - Best Books of 2010

Carmen brought the BookPage Top 40 list to the Boulder luncheon on 01/12.  Here's the link for that site.  BOOKPAGE Top 40

Saturday, January 08, 2011

January 2011 Books


I'm going to try to keep things updated a little better than last year. Considering that it's only the middle of January, I'm already making progress.


There are only two books for this month -- Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress for Manitowish Waters and The Wednesday Sisters for Winchester.


Boulder Junction will again have its salad luncheon/book selection meeting on the 12th.  Any books on the list not selected for the next year will be posted in the recommended book post.