Black Friday!

Teaser Tuesdays 11/25/2008

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

Here It Is For This Week…

“His gaze followed the bend of her legs down to where her blue jeans flared at the ankle, then on to her bare feet. She had kicked her sandals off, and was twisting the toes of one foot into the toes of the other. When he saw this he felt his heart lunge with a kind of painful-sweet shock.”

From The Collection called: 20th Century Ghosts
From The Story called: “Bobby Conroy Comes Back From The Dead”
By: Joe Hill

Steven Segal: Lawman!

(Source: Arrow In The Head)

This has got to be the coolest f*cking news I’ve heard in a very long time! What news could I be speaking of? Only the fact that Mr. Steven Seagal is coming out with a new reality series for A&E. If the idea of “Seagal” and “Reality TV” doesn’t sound like an ideal match, then just hold on to your mutha-f*ckin’ horses:

The new series will be called STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN and it will be following Seagal in New Orleans where he has been working on and off for the past two decades as a fully commissioned deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. One of his stints found him assisting with recovery efforts during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. LAWMAN also will document Seagal’s life off the beat, including his musical and philanthropic activities in the Big Easy.

How… Friggin’… Cool… Is… THAT?! Are you kidding me?! Seagal as a real life police officer?! F*cking Gold! Could you imagine being a perp in New Orleans and getting busted by the man who shoved an eight-inch blade into the top of Tommy Lee Jones’ head in UNDER SEIGE? You can bet your ass I’ll be tuning in to find out!

Here’s what Seagal had to say: “I decided to work with A&E on this series now because I believe it’s important to show the nation all the positive work being accomplished here in Louisiana.”

You MUST OWN this #3

Jamey Johnson
That Lonesome Song

Rolling Stone (4-Star Review):

“There’s a new Man in Black in Nashville. Jamey Johnson’s monochrome color scheme begins with his denim-and-leather wardrobe and extends to his songs — tales of drug abuse and marital ruin sketched in shades of black and blacker. “I had a job and a piece of land/My sweet wife was my best friend/But I traded that for cocaine and a whore,” he croaks in “High Cost of Living.” Johnson, a 32-year-old former Marine from Alabama, keeps his music rugged and gothic — stark honky-tonk ballads awash in weeping pedal steel — and makes no secret of his love for George Jones, Waylon Jennings and other grandees.

Country has no shortage of wanna-be outlaw neotraditionalists, but Johnson’s songs are crisper and more tuneful than most. And much grimmer. In the title track, Johnson is a broken man who wakes up in his Chevy with “whiskey eyes and ashtray breath.” In the menacingly bluesy “Mowin’ Down the Roses,” he goes through the house collecting his ex’s things and torches them “on a burn pile in the back.” Even in the album’s jauntiest song, “Women,” Johnson’s jokes have an undertone of rueful self-loathing. “Women keep our heads spinning,” he sings. “I just can’t ever seem to make one stay.”

Some Thoughts From Me:

I am always in search for an album that can grab me, hold me and keep me entranced from the first lick to the last… “That Lonesome Song” is just that kind of album!
It must be said that the star of the album (besides Jamey’s songwriting skills) is the STEEL GUITAR. The crying tones fade in and out throughout the entire album and morph it into a journey through the dark part of a man’s soul.
This is one of the best country albums of all-time (I don’t say that lightly)!
You MUST OWN THIS!

Teaser Tuesdays 11/18/2008

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

Here It Is For This Week…

“Why did he tell me to hold on? The branch was breaking – I needed to get off it. Was he too shocked to know that, or did some unconscious part of him want to see me fall?”

From the collection called: 20th Century Ghosts
From the story called: “The Cape”
By: Joe Hill

What I’m Reading Now (11/17/2008)

20th Century Ghosts
By: Joe Hill

Friday Finds 11/14/2008

What great books did you hear about, or find, this week? SHARE WITH US YOUR FRIDAY FINDS!

Just one find this week…

The Shadow Year

Plot:

“Jeffrey Ford, Edgar Award-winning author, gives us a compelling mystery infused with 1960s nostalgia, supernatural doings, youthful mischief and small-town secrets.

It begins in the last days of August—“the shadow year,” a time of strange events for one sixth grader living in Long Island. First, a peeping tom prowls the neighborhood. Then, a classmate disappears, a school librarian goes crazy and a sinister man in a large white car appears. Our young narrator and his older brother Jim keep track of these events in “Botch Town,” a model of their village complete with cardboard houses and clay figures that they build in their basement.

But then the brothers realize that something odd is going on with Botch Town. Whenever they find that their younger sister, Mary, has secretly rearranged the figures, these changes soon turn up in real life! With the help of their seemingly psychic sister, the brothers investigate their classmate’s disappearance, and make a discovery that will cast a dark shadow across their lives.

Written with intelligence, humor and gentle grace, The Shadow Year is a masterly adventure from “a talent to be reckoned with.” (Pittsburgh Press)”

Teaser Tuesdays 11/11/2008

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

Here It Is For This Week…

“Just outside of Greater Los Angeles, in a town called Claremont, are five colleges – Pamona, Pitzer, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, and Claremont McKenna. At the start of the Great Panic, when everyone else was running, literally, for the hills, three hundred students chose to make a stand.”

From: World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War
By: Max Brooks

FirstBook

DONATE to this Great Charity:

What is FirstBook?
“First Book is a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. We provide an ongoing supply of new books to children participating in community-based mentoring, tutoring, and family literacy programs.”

And… If you donate on or before December 31st… Your donation will be matched “Book-For-Book”!!!

Friday Finds 11/07/2008

What great books did you hear about, or find, this week? SHARE WITH US YOUR FRIDAY FINDS!

I came across a couple of books this week that I added to my reading list right away…

MARY MODERN

Plot:

“Lucy Morrigan, a young genetic researcher, lives with her boyfriend, Gray, and an odd collection of tenants in her crumbling family mansion. Surrounded by four generations of clothes, photographs, furniture, and other remnants of past lives, Lucy and Gray’s home life is strangely out of touch with the modern world—except for Lucy’s high-tech lab in the basement.

Frustrated by her unsuccessful attempts to attain motherhood or tenure, Lucy takes drastic measures to achieve both. Using a bloodstained scrap of an apron found in the attic, Lucy successfully clones her grandmother Mary. But rather than conjuring a new baby, Lucy brings to life a twenty-two-year-old Mary, who is confused and disoriented when she finds herself trapped in the strangest sort of déjà vu: alive in a home that is no longer her own, surrounded by reminders of a life she has already lived but doesn’t remember.

A remarkable debut novel, Mary Modern turns an unflinching eye on the joyous, heartbreaking, and utterly unexpected consequences of human desire.”

BOOK OF LIES

Plot:

“Cain kills Abel in Chapter Four of the Bible. It is the world’s most famous murder. But the Bible is silent about one key detail: the weapon Cain used to kill his brother. That weapon is still lost to history.

In 1932, Mitchell Siegel was killed by three gunshots to his chest. While mourning, his son dreamed of a bulletproof man and created the world’s greatest hero: Superman. And like Cain’s murder weapon, the gun used in this unsolved murder has never been found.

Until now.

Today in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Cal Harper comes face-to-face with his family’s greatest secret: his long-lost father, who’s been shot with a gun that traces back to Michell Siegel’s 1932 murder. But before Cal can ask a single question, he and his father are attacked by a ruthless killer tattooed with the anicent markings of Cain. And so begins the chase for the world’s first murder weapon.

What does Cain, history’s greatest villain, have to do with Superman, the world’s greatest hero? And what do two murders, committed thousands of years apart, have in common? This is the mystery at the heart of Brad Meltzer’s riveting and utterly intriguing new thriller.”