Weekly Geeks: Favorite Blogs

For a while I was participating in a weekly blogging activity called Weekly Geeks. It was lots of fun and I really enjoyed the topics Dewey came up with for us to post about every week. Sadly, Dewey passed away recently (I wrote about it here). She had brought so such "community" to the book blogging world and no one wanted that to go away. So several groups of bloggers got together to continue hosting all Dewey's activities. I'm so glad to know that the Weekly Geeks are back - and we now have our own blog!



This week on Weekly Geeks our job is to talk about our favorite blogs.


That's a hard one for me. I recently culled my Google Reader list so I'm down to only 115 blogs. However, that includes the Weekly Geeks feed that Natasha from Maw Books set up a while back ... which means that I'm really subscribed to a lot more than 115!

My Reader is organized into the following folders:

• Authors
• Favorite Books
• Books
• Challenge Blogs
• IF World (aka infertility blogs)*
• Local Stuff (bloggers in Maryland)
• Random Things
• Personal Stuff

When I'm pressed for time, I skim over the blogs most of the categories but I ALWAYS read the blogs in my Favorite Books and IF World folders. That's a total of 22 must-read blogs. I hate to exclude ANYONE (because I love all of you) but I'm also know that most of you won't go check out the blogs I list if I give you too many to visit. Ha! Am I right or what?!

Without further ado, a sample of my favorite blogs in alphabetical order:

• Bloody Hell, It's A Book Barrage! - who doesn't love Chartroose?! - always fun book reviews and "stuff"
• Bookish Ruth - I've been reading her since BBAW '08, and she's now hosting the Baker Street Challenge
• Letters from a Hill Farm - recipes, views of country life, Nan's blog is relaxing for me
• Life and Time of a "New" New Yorker - book reviews (we usually like the same books), photos of the city, very enjoyable
• Naked Without Books - Bybee and her TCIB (tough and cool inner bookworm) always make me smile
• Plays With Needles - posts about sewing of all kinds (which I don't do), photography, and life, and she's local
• Stop the Train, I Wanna Get Off! - posts about family, IF, and life in general, plus I met her in real life once
• The Armenian Odar Reads - we have very similar taste in books, plus she reads in several languages so I'm constantly learning about books I've never heard of
• The Dream Year - this couple is driving around the US together for a year and blogging along the way

I'm sorry for not including all of the blogs in my reader. If you want to see who else I read regularly just check out my right side bar. And be sure to check out some of the other posts this week!

* This might need a bit more explanation for some of my readers. Just like there is a wonderful book blogging community, there is also a wonderful community of women dealing with infertility in it's many facets. I have secondary infertility for unknown reasons. For years we tried medical procedures to have a second child, without success. As we came to the end of trying, I found the IF community. So even though we're not trying for a second child any more I still like to visit some of the IF blogs I discovered back then - there are some great gals out there, and I love them all.

Guest Post by the author of My Splendid Concubine

Please welcome Lloyd Lofthouse, author of the historical fiction novel, MY SPLENDID CONCUBINE. I told you a bit about him yesterday if you recall. Today he is sharing a bit about how he came to write this book. Take it away Lloyd!

~~~~~~~~~~~

The journey that led to My Splendid Concubine started with my mother, who thought like a Victorian. The way she raised me would eventually become the driving force behind a decade of research, writing and revisions.

Concubine started writing itself in 1999 — sort of like a fire pushed by the Santa Ana winds in Southern California. I would often find myself studying research material or working on another chapter at three in the morning.

Of course, my mother did not introduce me to Robert Hart. My wife did. She said, “Since you have some Irish in your blood, you might be interested in this famous Irishman that went to China.” That led to a Christmas present to myself from Harvard, Entering China’s Service, Robert Hart’s Journals, 1854 - 1863.

After I started reading Robert’s journals, it didn’t take long to discover that my mother and Hart’s father, Henry, had something in common: a deep, personal connection to religion and a love for God.

Henry was a pastor in the Wesleyan religion and owned a small general store in the town of Armagh thirty miles from Belfast. My mother, on the other hand, loved to read and was the silent type. However, if she found explicit sex in one of her romances, it went into the fire. If a bad word came out of my mouth, a quarter went out of my pocket and into a can kept on the fireplace mantle to be donated to the church on Sunday.

In comparison, before supper each evening, Henry Hart asked his twelve children, one at a time, “What did you do for God today?” Robert was the oldest. However, while in college, Robert’s quest for love ended in all the wrong places. Once Henry Hart heard about what his oldest was doing at the University in Belfast, Robert’s guilt drove him to China.

After reading Robert’s journals, I felt as if I’d met a kindred spirit. To understand Robert was to understand myself. The reason for that was because Robert was also conflicted when it came to his desire for love and the religious guilt brought on by those feelings. Early in his journals, it was obvious that Robert was having the same tug-of-war I spent half my life dealing with. During Robert’s first year in China, when he was having a bad day struggling with his desires, he went to church twice on Sunday instead of once.

Then in 1855, he met Ayaou. That’s where the real mystery begins — the love story between Robert and Ayaou, his concubine. Why did Robert destroy the journals that covered his first three years with Ayaou? Why did he go through the surviving journals later in his life and black out some of the entries? Why was it that three years later, Robert was no longer searching for love? Temptation seems to never enter his mind again.

The answer was simple. The love he found with Ayaou fulfilled all his expectations and afterwards nothing else compared. It was as if he had been starving and stumbled on a feast. That’s what My Splendid Concubine is about — Robert’s journey through love’s passionate flames while finding peace with his God.

Before I finished reading Robert’s journals and letters, I knew I wanted to write his story. It would take another eight years to put it together. To do that I had to become like a Sherlock Holmes. One of the first steps in that journey was to understand Chinese culture and off to China we went — not once, but many times.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you Lloyd for sharing this insight with us. If you'd like to learn more about MY SPLENDID CONCUBINE please check out the website: http://www.mysplendidconcubine.com/

~ My Blogiversary ~

Happy Blogiversary to me!

Happy Blogiversary to me!

Happy Blogiversary to my blog ...

Happy Blogiversary to me!

One year ago today I posted here for the very first time. Thank you to all of you, my lovely readers, who have made this whole blogging thing such a pleasure for me. Here's to many more years together!

About the Author: Lloyd Lofthouse

Author Lloyd Lofthouse is on tour in the blog world this month for his new book MY SPLENDID CONCUBINE. Here's a bit about the book:

Driven by a passion for his adopted country, Robert Hart became the “godfather of China’s modernism,” inspector general of China’s Customs Service, and the builder of China’s railroads, postal and telegraph systems, and schools, but his first real love is Ayaou, a young concubine.

Sounds pretty good, right? I'm excited to read this book for several reasons.

First, I recently listened to The Man Who Loved China, the biography of a more modern British man whose Chinese mistress fostered in him a love of her country that changed for all time the way the West views the East. I'd like to compare the themes between these two similar but different books.

And second, the main character is an Irishman from near Belfast, just like my Gram. You gotta love that!

On Monday Lloyd will be guest posting here but today I'm going to tell you a little bit about him. Here's his bio:

As a field radio operator, Lloyd Lofthouse was a walking target in Vietnam in 1966. He has skied in blizzards at forty below zero and climbed mountains in hip deep snow. [Heather's note: My dad was in the special forces in Vietnam, so I have much respect for Lloyd's service.]

Lloyd earned a BA in journalism after fighting in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine. Later, while working days as an English teacher at a high school in California, he earned an MFA in writing. He enjoyed a job as a maitre d’ in a multimillion-dollar nightclub and tried his hand successfully at counting cards in Las Vegas for a few years. He now lives near San Francisco with his wife, with a second home in Shanghai, China. Lloyd says that snapshots of his life appear like multicolored ribbons flowing through many of his poems.

This link takes you to Lloyd's 'Vietnam Experience' page filled with photos. He took many of them. Since Lloyd still has to edit the photos so they load faster, this page
may load slow for older computers.

This link will take you to a media piece from a Southern California newspaper that Lloyd copied and posted on his Website that will give you an idea about his teaching years.

If you are interesting in learning more about Lloyd's teaching experience, you are welcome to read about it at AuthorsDen. 'Word Dancer' is a memoir of the 1994-1995 school year. He kept a daily journal that year. He is using that journal to write 'Word Dancer'. Everyday, when he arrived home, Lloyd wrote an entry in that journal. It sat on a shelf in his garage for fourteen years gathering dust. Spiders moved into the binder and built a nest. After all those years, Lloyd forgot he'd written it. When he was cleaning the garage, he found it again. Lloyd started reading, remembering and writing. Everything he writes in 'Word Dancer' happened. He's using a primary source as his guide. Memory may be faulty, but a daily journal written the day an event took place is as accurate as it can get from the author's point-of-view.

Accomplishments: Lloyd's short story "A Night at the Well of Purity" was named a finalist for the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. As a teacher, Lloyd found satisfaction in the number of students that published nationally and internationally while attending his English and journalism classes. You can visit his website at http://www.mysplendidconcubine.com/.

Please stop by on Monday to read Lloyd's post about how he came to write MY SPLENDID CONCUBINE.

Friday Finds 1/9/09

Welcome to this week's Friday Finds, hosted as always by the lovely MizB. This week I bring you a very electic list ... this crazy mix should really tell you something about me!

1. Silver, My Own Tale As Told By Me With A Goodly Amount Of Murder, by Edward Chupack - I heard about this one from Book Movement's newsletter - it tells the "true" story of Long John Silver, the pirate from Treaure Island - sounds like fun!



2. Losing Control and Liking It, by Tim Sanford - MizB says "This is, by far, the best “parenting” book I’ve ever read. Highly recommended." 'Nuff said.



3. Havah: The Story of Eve, by Tosca Lee - the fictional account of Eve (as in Adam and Eve) and My Friend Amy really liked it



4. The Last Unicorn, by Peter Beagle - Chris at Stuff As Dreams Are Made On reviewed Beagle's new book and mentioned that he also wrote The Last Unicorn - it was one of my very favorite movies and I never knew it was a book first! I must read this. In case you've never seen it, here's a clip from the movie:
   
   
   
   
   That song STILL gives me chills, even now. I'll have to watch that again, this time with kiddo. I showed him this clip the other night, plus the one with the singing butterfly and one with the red bull, and he TOTALLY wants to see it now.



5. The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper - watching this movie while I was sick last week reminded me that I've never read the book - I remember hearing that it is quite different from the movie



6. Tevye the Dairyman, by Sholem Aleichem - this is the book that Fiddler of the Roof is based on - I learned about it while reading Outwitting History (reviewed here) and now I simply MUST read it - you can read more about it at the National Yiddish Book Center's website



7. any of the books by Charles Eastman - another movie I watched while sick was Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - it is the true story of Ohiyesah Charles Eastman, a Sioux Indian, born in 1858 - after living through the infamous battle with General Custer he was sent to live with the white people and was raised away from his culture - his life is a fascinating and sad mix of two cultures - he wrote many books and I'd love to explore some of them



8. The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic, by Gay Salisbury - on my last Friday Finds, Dreamybee was kind enough to suggest some books she thought I'd like (thank you Dreamybee!) - I'm definitely interseted in this one - I've heard the story before but I'd love to read about this amazing ture adventure story



9. Strand: An Oddesey of Pacific Ocean Debris, by Bonnie Henderson - reviewed at 5 Minutes for Books, this is a collection of essays about the items found on a beach in Oregon and a look at the various happenings that brought them there - a bit of scientific discover, some looks at different countries, and a study of the oceans all come together in these essays - this is the type of book that I find utterly fascinating

Have you found anything good this week? Do any of my title appeal to you? I know, I know, I like wierd things ... and I'm ok with that. ;)

The Man Who Loved China

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom

by Simon Winchester

audio book, 9.25 hours

Before you read my review please take a minute (literally one minute and four seconds) to watch the video of the author posted at Amazon.com. It is VERY fascinating and is an excellent intro for my review.

(I do hope that you took that one minute to watch the video – it does an excellent job of summing up the book concisely.)

This biography of Joseph Needham, a man I’d never even heard of before, was truly fascinating. Born in 1900 in England, he was a brilliant scientist, an eccentric, and passionate student of Chinese history. His intense love of China began with his Chinese mistress and developed into the most expansive study of Chinese history ever undertaken. He set out to prove that the Chinese really were the first people to develop many of the scientific processes and inventions claimed by Western inventors over the years, inventions like the stirrup, the compass, toilet paper, and the suspension bridge.

The result of his lifetime of work is a monumental, 26-volume book entitled Science and Civilization in China, parts of which have yet to be published. Compared (by scholars) in scope to the Oxford English Dictionary*, the various volumes of this book have remained in print since they were released, some as early as the 1950s. Needham died in 1995. Until just a few days before his death he continued to work on his research for the book every weekday.

The first part of the book covers Needham's childhood. The center section is focused on China: his travels there, ancient history, World War II and the surrounding years, the rise of Communism, etc. The final section details the writing of "The Book" (as Needham called it). [You can click on this link to see the Amazon.com listings for the various volumes of The Book. The prices are astounding!]

I listened to the audio book of The Man Who Loved China and for me, this was the perfect choice. I have difficulty with Chinese names so when I read them, I have a tendency to skip over them rather than sound them out. This can lead to confusion later on when I can't remember which characters are which. Having the book read to me solves that problem neatly. Also, the narrator is the author, Simon Winchester. He has a very resonant speaking voice (and a British accent) that make listening quite pleasant.

All in all, a very satisfying book. I learned a lot and I enjoyed myself.

This would be an excellent choice for those of you participating in the 2009 Science Book Reading Challenge. [Update: I intended to read this as part of the World Citizen Challenge, but then I thought that maybe it didn't fit so well. However, after much consideration, I'm going to go ahead and include it as my first read for the WC Challenge. I think is DOES fit after all.]


Have you reviewed this book? I'm happy to add a link to your review here.

• Rose City Reader agrees that this is fascinating book
  

*If you have not yet read The Professor and the Madman, Winchester's history of the Oxford English Dictionary, I highly recommend that you do read it. It is a fascinating look at what went into the creation of the dictionary. Even if the history of a dictionary doesn't sound like your "thing" I'd say that if you liked Devil in the White City or Thunderstruck, you'd enjoy The Professor and the Madman as well.

Azar Nafisi Intervied by Washington Post

A gal in my book club just forwarded me this link to an interview published today on The Washington Post newspaper's website. Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, talks about her upcoming book, Things I've Kept Silent About. This new book is an exploration of her childhood and, according to the interview, sheds light on the experiences she relates in Reading Lolita in Tehran.

My book club read Reading Lolita about a year ago. I recapped the major points we discussed and also linked to other interviews with Nafisi on my book club's blog. And I reviewed it on this blog as well.

I found this new interview - and the premise of the upcoming book - to be very interesting. What do you think about it?

My Month of Joyful Reading

In general, I read because I love information. I can't get enough of learning about new things. Most of the time that brings me enough pleasure to keep me in love with reading. Once in a while I like to read just for the sheer pleasure of it (like with the Twilight books - oh, the memories!). However I know that if I don't "let myself off the hook" and allow myself to read JUST for fun then I'll put it off over and over again.

So ... fun ...

Sherlock Holmes is fun to read to be sure. But what's even MORE fun is the Holmes and Mary Russell combination created by author Laurie R. King. I read the first book in the series, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, last year and was very pleasantly surprised by it (here's my review if you want to check it out).

To bring a bit of unabashed FUN into my reading life I'm going to devote one some time to reading nothing but the Mary Russell books. I was inspired to do this by the Baker Street Challenge.* My plan is to get all the remaining 7 books from and devote myself to them for one joyful month. I don't read books in a series all that often so I'll really enjoy being able to continue the story from book to book. It will be so much fun! I'm calling it My Month of Joyful Reading because it will be a pure joy to read a string of books simply for the pleasure of it.

Hey, do any of you want to join me in my Month of Joyful Reading? If you like old-fashioned mysteries then I guarantee you'll love Mary Russell. She's got a bit of the old and a bit of new worlds in her ... and she's got spunk! You could read along with me, or pick another series that you love and try to read it all the way through in one month. Doesn't that sound like a great month of reading?! I'm doing this in March, so you have a bit of time to think about it. Please let me know if you might be interested!

* You can read all the details of The Baker Street Challenge (held in honor of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 150th birthday this year) by clicking here. I'm signing up at the "Seven Percent Solution" level. Anyone else signing up for this challenge?

In the Words of Kiddo ...

This is totally not book related but it it TOO FUNNY not to share with you!

You know when you sing a song and you THINK you know the words? Take this song for example ...



Kiddo and I were watching Alvin and the Chipmunks the other night and we both started singing along to "Funky Town", the part that goes "Talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it! Talk about, talk about, talk about movin'!"

Ok, well, that is was "I" was singing.

Kiddo was singing "Taco baby, taco baby, taco baby, taco baby! Taco Bell, Taco Bell, Taco Bell movin'!"

I had to pause the show so I could make sure I heard him right. And yep, I did!

I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. Luckily kiddo thought it was pretty funny too 'cause I would have had REAL difficultly not laughing if he had gotten upset - it was just so funny!

Unique Titles

I have another post up at ReadingGroupGuides.com. This time I'm writing about the unique titles that surfaced at my book club's Christmas Party Book Swap. Click here to check it out (you may have to scroll down to the post dated Jan. 5, 2009). Comments are always appreciated - I love to hear what you have to say!