strange and random happenstance

Bookstore: Half Price Books West

Location: Near West Side of Madison, Wisconsin

Why I Love Them: Half Price Books, despite being a chain, has this aura about it that makes each store feel unique. Even though they use the same building blocks from store to store for shelving and layout they all have a distinct personality. In fact for the stores farther afield in the Chicagoland area I actually gave them all nicknames, and yes, they are named after my favorite finds there or the quality of books... there's one I just call "swanky" because of this gorgeous reading area usually filled with Folio Society Editions. But the two locations in Madison are my hometown favorites, and, if I had to choose my favorite of the two, the location on the West side would win. It's not just that it's closer! Best bookstores are never chosen by convenience they have to earn that right! So why is the West location better? They have a faster turnover rate, getting new books in almost daily, their collectible books at the front of the store have drool worthy editions that I covet, and the random British editions are a delight whenever I find them. Also with the addition of new releases being available starting a few years ago there is almost no reason to go to other bookstores. Though I will note that which most people do not know, authors don't get royalties on used sales, so please, buy new when you can because we need to support our authors. For me what I look for at used bookstores are specific editions that are out of print or authors who are hard to find stateside, and for that, nothing can beat my Half Price Books. 

Best Buy: As for my best buy? A little history if you will indulge me... when I was younger I read and fell in love with Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. It instantly became one of my most favorite books ever. I even used it on that recent seven days seven books meme that was going around Facebook. Obviously I wanted to read more of her work but stateside all I could find was copy of Jamaica Inn with an amazingly tacky purple cover at B. Dalton Booksellers, Westgate Mall FYI. Though in fairness it was A LOT better than the tacky red cover of Rebecca with it's "R" in a really bad font. A few years went past and I found a copy of My Cousin Rachel and I could find no more. Therefore I assumed that she only wrote three books. People in the United States NEED TO KNOW that Daphne Du Maurier DID NOT write only three books! She wrote twenty-eight fiction and nine nonfiction books and new editions of her short stories are coming out all the time because previously unknown stories keep getting discovered! So that makes A TON of books that I didn't know about when I walked into Half Price Books one day. This was before their recent reorganization so fiction wasn't in the back of the store but right in the front on your right as you entered. And there, properly shelved under the "D's" were all these books by Daphne Du Maurier. I couldn't believe she had written so many! I grabbed the lot and when I got home and showed my mom she too couldn't believe that she had written so many and that I had found them. Over the years at other Half Price locations I have found the few missing Virago editions that I've needed. I still have eleven to go, but I'm sure they'll one day join the twenty I already have!   

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: British Authors, Chicagoland, Daphne Du Maurier, Facebook, Folio Society, Half Price Books, Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, Prolific, Rebecca, Support Your Brick and Mortar, United States, Used Bookstores, Virago

Today is the day! Today all the discussion questions I have toiled and fretted over shall be actually discussed! But more importantly all these burning questions I have will be talked about amongst you, my fellow readers! I'm so excited it's like a book lover's Christmas! So come join me over on the That Summer Read Along Event on Facebook, I will be there all day, meaning, ungodly early for me because my night and day are somewhat reversed to other peoples... but that doesn't matter when there's a book to discuss! Also, it makes it even more like Christmas when you'd wake your parents up before there was even a sun in the sky. So I shall be a gracious hostess and try not to fall asleep on my keyboard... as if I could!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Christmas, Discussion, Event, Facebook, Lauren Willig, Read Along, That Summer

It's time to have some more fun over on the Facebook Event Page for Lauren Willig's That Summer Read Along! This week I've taken over the reigns as moderator from the lovely Christina and Ashley and prepare the discussion for our final week next week with Céline where all your burning questions will finally be answered! But this week, besides leading the discussion, it's time to talk Dream Casting! I adore playing "what if" games with the characters in books and That Summer is no exception. This painting by John Everett Millais entitled "Mariana" is the basis for the fictional Gavin Thorne's picture of the same name with added sewing box that upsets Imogen at the RA Show. Now I want you to think about what actor could portray an artist capable of painting such beauty and a young actress who could capture the hurt upon seeing her life laid bare on a canvas. Think of who could portray the modern generation finding another painting not on a gallery wall but hidden in the back of a dresser. I know who I think is perfect, but I'd love to hear your opinions too. So head on over to the Facebook Discussion and add your two cents!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Dream Casting, Facebook, Gavin Thorne, John Everett Millais, Lauren Willig, Mariana, Pre-Raphaelite, Read Along, That Summer

At the beginning of last month, after a horrid June I might add, I had a wonderful email waiting for me in my inbox which made me instantly know that July was going to be a far far better month. The email was from the lovely Lauren Willig telling me about an idea that was bandied about on her website and that the St. Martin's folks liked. The idea was for a "That Summer Read Along." Read alongs are a big trend right now online, whether it's a combination re-read/read along in anticipation of the newest volume in a series, or just a virtual book club, they are très chic. What makes them better then book clubs is that you can have immediate discussions with people all over the world and by having a little structure, like with moderator, or with a certain number of chapters per week you get to read together at the same pace instead of having people skip ahead or fall behind. Which brings me to the That Summer Read Along!

Starting today, August 1st, there is going to be an official That Summer Read Along on facebook. There will be giveaways, prizes (one person who signs up by Monday, August 4th will be chosen to receive a signed copy of The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla, a five star book if ever there was one), discussions, answers to burning questions, you name it! I am honored to be one of the four moderators of this bookish event. I am joined by Ashley of The Bubblebath Reader, Christina of Austenprose, and Céline, an ardent Willig fan. To read Lauren's full announcement, head on over to her website, join us on Twitter (#ThatSummerReadAlong) or just join us on facebook! I'll be the moderator for the third week (August 16th-22nd), because all my favorite parts (which was hard to pick in a book with so much awesome in it) of That Summer happen to happen then (happenstance I tell you!) Re-reading the book and taking copious notes was a joy, as was my theme month "This Summer," and I can't wait to discuss this book with all you fellow readers! Also, don't think I won't be popping in all month to talk about the book even though I only moderate one week! I can't wait and hope to see you all there!

And speaking of read alongs... I met fellow That Summer moderator, book addict, and blogger Ashley through our mutual love and admiration of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series. Ashley started her blog, The Bubblebath Reader, back in January, featuring many of the authors I love, so obviously you must now all go and follow her blog! She was kicking around the idea of having a year long Pink Carnation re-read/read along because the final (weep wail) volume, The Lure of the Moonflower, is out in a year and it will be the twelfth book... exactly enough for a year of Pink. I was more then a little excited by this idea, and totally in love with her proposed title of "Pink for All Seasons." I quickly said that not only was I for it, but I might have begged to be a part of it, quickly claiming next April and The Orchid Affair as my book, and then going so far as to design the banner... because once a graphic designing book lover gets an idea in her head she can't let it go! Starting in a month, aka September, aka right after the That Summer Read Along ends and you are feeling bereft, the re-read/read along begins! So I ask you to join me and Ashley reading a volume of the Pink Carnation series each month, with lots of fun discussions, casting ideas, giveaways, and who knows what else we'll think of, as we count down to the final (weep wail) book!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Austenprose, Facebook, Lauren Willig, Pink Carnation, Pink for All Seasons, Re-Read, Read Along, That Summer, The Bubblebath Reader, The Lure of the Moonflower, The Orchid Affair, This Summer

For years I dreamt of a book club. You may think that I exaggerate, you may think this is hyperbole. It is not. My search for one yielded nothing. At school when asked to do projects I would somehow make then about books or book clubs. When people told me they where in book clubs I would ask them when and where they meet, perhaps with a little too much fervor, seeing as they never told me, like Gomez Addams calling into Sally Jesse Raphael, pleading to know where the cults meet. Yes, obscure Addams Family reference there, but I'm sorry, that movie is awesome.

Last year my friend Daniella and I said "IT IS TIME!" There may have been a god like bolt of lightning, or there may have just been a Facebook group formed... but the gist is this: I HAVE A BOOK CLUB! I love that I have a book club! February is about love. It's the time of year when couples are sickeningly sweet and make everyone else feel sad and lonely at this cold and bleak time. But really, there are so many things to love, and I love books and my book club. Therefore I thought that this February, I would ignore the coupledom of Valentine's and concentrate on the love aspect. So this month is an ode to my book club, The Last Word Book Club, (yes we have a name,  a tagline, and soon a blog, I really got to get on that, we meet this weekend) with a selection of the books we read over the past year. Books we loved or loathed or changed our views on human ashes forever, yes I'm looking at you Cheryl Strayed. Stay and enjoy the height of ultracrepidarianism (points if you know what that word means!)

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Book Club, Cheryl Strayed, Facebook, The Addams Family, The Last Word

Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin
Published by: Harper
Publication Date: November 2nd, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 304 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy
Mary Ann has returned to the city of her youth. Full of familiar faces both welcome and unwelcome. Her life is in major upheaval following the realization that her life coach and her husband are having an affair and she has been diagnosed with Cancer. Heading to seek refuge in San Francisco and lick her wounds, she takes up residence with her oldest friend, Michael "Mouse" Tolliver and his young partner Ben. Mary Ann sees her life as a series of probable missteps. She left her first husband Brian, and her adopted daughter Shawna, to be an East Coast tv star, which lasted all of five minutes. Following which she set herself up as a housewife and raised her stepson. Her dreams and ambitions for celebrity thwarted as well as the lives she ruined back in the Bay Area. Ben cunningly thinks that what Mary Ann needs more than anything is to realize she was someone and that this adoration and love will do more to help her heal than anything. Enter Facebook. She connects with many friends and fans who remember her from her old show back in San Francisco. From her silly hats worn when the Queen of England arrived, to her sub par interviews that have a campy nostalgia among the gay community. But this is also when the mysterious messages start to arrive from Fogbound One. Hinting at a dark secret in Mary Ann's past that she has never revealed. A dark secret that will help her connect to the daughter she abandoned. Shawna has followed Mary Ann's love of journalism, only in a more modern and outrageous method. Shawna is a sex blogger. But she's getting sick of the hipster, Betty Page look and wants something more. Enter "Leia." A homeless woman with a mysterious past. A past that Shawna hopes to uncover. A past that might lead back to her "mother." Can Mary Ann get a second chance at the life she threw away? Or will she become even more lost in the fog of her past? And what of those who orbit her?

Returning to the narrative style of short character studies whose lives all magically interweave, we see Maupin once again at the top of his game. Forgiven is the first person narrative style of Michael Tolliver Lives which I hated in it's overly sexual wallowing. Maupin excels at slowly weaving his story, thread by thread, where the web forms and then you realize how all the disparate elements form together into one cohesive whole. And here, he's not just working with the present, but Mary Ann's past is brought in as well. Those horrors not spoken of are back with a vengeance. The characters of the Tales of the City books are the voices of a generation. They will go down as some of the most memorable characters who so well captured a defining moment in our history. Maupin's stories have encapsulated the world as it was happening, particularly when these stories ran as a weekly serial and could move and flow with current events. Which, to an extent, works against him in this book. The earlier books, being separated from the now by a decade or more, feel timeless, at least to me. But once you start throwing Facebook around, it just seems too linked into the now. Of course, this may seem contradictory, because it was his capturing of the time that made the books what they were. Maybe I'm just a hypocrite, or maybe I'm just sick of references to Facebook. In his defense, he uses Facebook in a way that Hitchcock would be proud of. Maupin has always had that bit of Hitchcock in his more successful novels. Perhaps it's just San Francisco bringing out the macabre and the mysterious, or perhaps it's something in the water.

When Maupin starts a little mystery and slowly links it back and loops it around, I can't help but stay up into the wee hours to see where he will finally lead me. His web didn't fully enthrall me this time. Within the denouement, things started to fall apart. Everything almost seemed rosy in the end. After the bleak humor with a dark edge, it felt that Maupin forced his characters into a happy ending. He has never been shy of the darker endings before, so is it age that has mellowed him? His new young love that Ben is modelled on? I almost felt like there'd be a sing song when all the characters came together. I just think there was one too many pairs of rose tinted glasses for my liking. Mary Ann is Cancer free now? From someone who has had many Cancer battles in her family, I can say from experience, it doesn't work like that. It's not a few weeks playing with Facebook, a little surgery and you're better. It's a bloody fight that can only be won by those who struggle hard. Mouse's struggle with AIDS has been a big theme of these books, so it seems that, one, Mary Ann's Cancer is unrealistic and two, he was giving us a bone, a curable illness among the incurable. Again, rose tinting the story. This is what brought the book down a full star in the final analysis, that and why can't we have Brian and Mary Ann in the same book. It seems that since their breakup we are only allotted one. And while Mary Ann was wonderful and back to her original charm, unlike the harpy she became in later books, I have to say, I missed Brian, I have a soft spot in my heart for him.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: AIDS, Armistead Maupin, Betty Page, Cancer, Facebook, Mary Ann in Autumn, Michael Tolliver Lives, San Francisco, Tales of the City

So apparently, the repurposing of an image we fans of Lauren Willig know and love was not exactly intentional. So new cover! Or new, new cover... either way, I'm loving the new cover. While I was all happy to see the cover for the upcoming Christmas book I was a tad disappointed that it seemed to lack a little originality and also seemed to rely on Photoshop trickery to get it took work thematically. As Lauren said on her website: "Never say you don’t have an impact. After all the discussion here and on Facebook about the similarities between the covers of The Mischief of the Mistletoe and The Masque of the Black Tulip, the Dutton art department raced back to the drawing board and whipped up a whole new cover. (Apparently, the duplication was not actually intentional.)" So whew... they fixed it, and they have outdone themselves. Christmasy, mistletoey, and a muff. Cause nothing says winter weather and holiday cheer like a muff. Now I really can't wait!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 9:00 PM 1 comments  

Labels: Christmas, Dutton, Facebook, Lauren Willig, The Masque of the Black Tulip, The Mischief of the Mistletoe

So, my blog is all about the embracing of new technologies and the melding of old and new. How else could you really categorize the internet plus the bookworld other than the two coming together in a wonderful new form. Which is also in essence what a Kindle is, the written word, but written by electronic ink. So in an effort to be more inclusive in my blogging I have decided to make my blog available to Kindle users! How cool is that? No really, cause I think it's amazingly awesomely cool and am very tempted to pay the small amount of money to read my own blog on my own Kindle... kind of insane non? Plus you can try my blog free for 14 days! So head on over to Amazon to see the awesomeness for yourself, and if you subscribe I get twelve cents! (Literally... that isn't a joke. Stop laughing! That's a hard earned dime and two pennies that is!) I'm hoping to crack that Kindle reading none overly tech savvy market of maybe five people! Also you might notice that big white box with a little bit of orange on the left hand side of my blog. It's for networked blogs... meaning you can follow me on facebook! But really, it's me being lazy, because instead of me having to go to all that effort of 20 seconds linking my blog to my status on facebook, it does it for me! So go, enjoy the internet... I'm not far away!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 3:13 AM 3 comments  

Labels: Amazon, Facebook, Kindle, Subscribe

Because of the internet authors are able to keep in closer touch to their readers than ever before. I liken this contact to the days of old, where you could write to the likes of Mark Twain and get a response, or you would write to Patrick Bronte saying what a fan you were of Charlotte's and he'd send you a bit of a letter he had cut up so you could have a little something of hers. Only now it's much more immediate. Whether through social networking websites like facebook or twitter, or more book oriented sites like goodreads, or even the author's personally run site, the internet is making reader author communication more possible than ever before. I love authors who have wonderful websites and are willing to go that extra mile for fans. From message boards to book extras to competitions, if an author does a little something extra they are sure to keep their fans interested.

From time to time I will highlight these authors who go above and beyond. The author I'm lauding today is Laurie Viera Rigler who has written the Austen themed Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, about a modern woman thrown into the past, and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, about the parallel story of what happened to the girl who was thrown from the past into the future. Fun, cute reads from an author who knows how to use the internet. Not only is she a goodreads author, she has a wonderful website with such fun items as Austen, "Signs of Addiction" to quizzes and games and movie trailers. But what I found really wonderful is, if you aren't able to make it to her signings, but really would like your book inscribed, she offers signed bookplates, now how cool is that? I got mine in the mail on Monday morning, with bonus postcards! So go check out her site and perhaps find a new favorite author.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:23 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Charlotte Bronte, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Facebook, Goodreads, Laurie Viera Rigler, Mark Twain, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, Twitter