Monday: Mailbox/What am I reading?/Musings

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at A Girl and Her Books and is hosted by Mari of Mari Reads for  the month of April.

I received two books in the past few weeks, thanks to the author/publicist:

1) A Ball of Fire by John Montague
John Montague, best known as a poet, is also a gifted prose writer. A Ball of Fire collects all of his short stories, together with the erotic novella 'The Lost Notebook' (which he hoped to have banned, but which ended up winning a major literary prize). In the shorter stories, from 'The Road Ahead', which comments poignantly on the loss of established landmarks, to the title story, in which a series of chance encounters helps unlock a painter's creativity, he casts a cool yet sympathetic eye over his environment, both in Ireland and farther afield. The longer works - 'The Lost Notebooks' (about the incendiary relationship between a troubled American girl and a young Irish man in Florence), 'Death of a Chieftain' (a daringly ambitious story set in Mexico) and 'The Three Last Things' (a moving meditation on love and death) - stand as pillars within the book. Montague's clear prose is shot through with hard-won insights into his fellow human beings, and the various burdens, physical and emotional, under which they labour. And of course through it all runs the theme of the importance of love, in its many forms.

2) Snapper by Brian Kimberling
Nathan Lochmueller studies birds, earning just enough money to live on. He drives a glitter-festooned truck, the Gypsy Moth, and he is in love with Lola, a woman so free-spirited and mysterious she can break a man’s heart with a sigh or a shrug. Around them swirls a remarkable cast of characters: the proprietor of Fast Eddie’s Burgers & Beer, the genius behind “Thong Thursdays”; Uncle Dart, a Texan who brings his swagger to Indiana with profound and nearly devastating results; a snapping turtle with a taste for thumbs; a German shepherd who howls backup vocals; and the very charismatic state of Indiana itself. And at the center of it all is Nathan, creeping through the forest to observe the birds he loves and coming to terms with the accidental turns his life has taken.
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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila of Book Journey
I finished reading

Snapper by Brian Kimberling

Currently Reading

A lot of books, none holding much interest!!

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• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it! 

I want to get a few Jo Nesbo novels. I am not desperate as such but yes, I have to read him sooner or later. I don't really know why I have not got around that till date...

Saturday Snapshot: March 30, 2013

With my newly married neighbours on my birthday

With a youngish friend in front of her car

Posted for Saturday Snapshot, hosted by Alyce of At Home With books

Booking Through Rating

Movies have a rating system to help guide the consumer weed out adult/violent/inappropriate kinds of films. Video games do, too. Do you think BOOKS should have a ratings system?

No. Rating system for books will not work. Reading is extremely person. One person's poison is another's acceptable risk. What I consider trash, another person may find it too good.

Teaser Tuesday: Snapper by Brian Kimberling

“Are you okay?” I said.
He grinned. “That was awesome,” he said. Perfectly circular holes like bullet wounds perforated his shoulders, and savage furrows ran down his back, blood streaming from all of them, but he was delighted.
“You could go to prison,” I said again.
“Fucker stole my fish.”
“It’s a bald eagle. It’s allowed to steal your fish.”
“Is that a bald eagle?”
“Does it look like a bald eagle?”

~Page 99, Snapper by Brian Kimberling

Back Cover:

A great, hilarious new voice in fiction: the poignant, all-too-human recollections of an affable bird researcher in the Indiana backwater as he goes through a disastrous yet heartening love affair with the place and its people.

Nathan Lochmueller studies birds, earning just enough money to live on. He drives a glitter-festooned truck, the Gypsy Moth, and he is in love with Lola, a woman so free-spirited and mysterious she can break a man’s heart with a sigh or a shrug. Around them swirls a remarkable cast of characters: the proprietor of Fast Eddie’s Burgers & Beer, the genius behind “Thong Thursdays”; Uncle Dart, a Texan who brings his swagger to Indiana with profound and nearly devastating results; a snapping turtle with a taste for thumbs; a German shepherd who howls backup vocals; and the very charismatic state of Indiana itself. And at the center of it all is Nathan, creeping through the forest to observe the birds he loves and coming to terms with the accidental turns his life has taken.

Saturday Snapshot: March 23, 2013

Ah! Well!! Another Birthday gone!!

Family time!!!

Posted for Saturday Snapshot, hosted by Alyce of At Home With books

The Summons by John Grisham

Under the stern gaze of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and standing there in the center of a room that was timeless, Ray began to realize that his father was not breathing. He comprehended this slowly. He coughed, and there was not the slightest response. Then he leaned down and touched the Judge's left wrist. There was no pulse.

Judge Reuben V Atlee was dead.

The Summons by John Grisham: Judge Reuben Atlee is a much respected person in Clanton, Mississippi. He lives alone in his ancetral home. Then one fine day he summons his sons to talk about the estate. Ray Atlee is a professor and Forrest Ray is the proverbial black sheep who is into all kinds of addiction. Both his sons have issues with the Judge. 

None wants to visit him but when Ray reaches the estate, he finds the judge dead and also he becomes a part  of a secret which is only known to the judge and now him. But there is someone else who knows about the secret....

Ray tries to play an amateur detective and for that he almost gets killed. The ending is, well, unexpected. Grisham is a master of that. He can hold you enthralled  till the end. This is another one which does the same, minus the courtroom drama......

Monday: Mailbox/What am I reading?/Musings

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at A Girl and Her Books and is hosted by Caitlin at Chaotic Compendiums this month.

I received only One book in my mailbox in the past few weeks,  thanks to Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit and two books by John Grisham from my niece.

1) Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman: The year is 1348. The Black Death ravages France, leaving fields and rivers choked with unburied dead and causing whole towns to disappear. Thomas, a disgraced knight, roams the land with a band of thieves, living by the sword; when they encounter an orphaned girl in a dying village, Thomas has just enough humanity in him to save her from his colleagues. No ordinary child, this girl sees angels and talks to the dead. She tells Thomas that Lucifer and the fallen angels have risen in a new war on Heaven, that the kingdoms of men have fallen behind the lines of battle, and that he must now shepherd her on a holy quest to tip the scales in favor of good. Between Two Fires invites you on a journey that is at once a fool’s errand into great danger, and a violent man’s first, uncertain steps toward redemption.

2) The Summons by John Grisham: A pillar of the community who towered over local law and politics for forty years, Judge Atlee is now a shadow of his former self—a sick, lonely old man who has withdrawn to his sprawling ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. Knowing that the end is near, Judge Atlee has issued a summons for his two sons to return to Clanton to discuss his estate. Ray Atlee is the elder, a Virginia law professor, newly single, still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. Forrest is Ray’s younger brother, the family’s black sheep.

The summons is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study. Ray reluctantly heads south to his hometown, to the place he now prefers to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray . . . and perhaps to someone else.

3) The Runaway Jury by John Grisham: Millions of dollars are at stake in a huge tobacco-company case in Biloxi, and the jury's packed with people who have dirty little secrets. A mysterious young man takes subtle control of the jury as the defense watches helplessly, but they soon realize that he in turn is controlled by an even more mysterious young woman. Lives careen off course as they bend everyone in the case to their will

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila of Book Journey
I finished reading

Back From The Dead by Peter Leonard
The Summons by John Grisham
Death by Bourbon by Abigail Keam
Moving Can Be Murder by Susan Santangelo


Currently reading:

The Drop by Howard Linskey
Broken Spirit by Charles L. Fields
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Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

I am in dire need for poetry books. I exhausted all I had. I need to get more of contemporary poetry books. If you know one who would like get their poetry books reviewed, do pass on my name to them and vice versa! Thanks!!!