Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The October host is Marcia at The Mailbox Monday Blog.
More audiobooks this week, which is a good thing since I’ve been listening twice as much as I’ve been reading.
For review from Harper Audio:
Live By Night
by Dennis Lehane
Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city’s most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw. more
The Uninvited Guests
by Sadie Jones
One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honor of Emerald Torrington’s twentieth birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savory survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor—and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief. more
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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.
Share what you read last week and what you are currently reading.
This will be another big week for audio as I get the house and garden ready for (blech) winter. I got the garden shed painted yesterday, now I have to get the patio furniture cleaned and put away, plants that overwinter inside need to be dug up and potted, more spring bulbs planted, leaves raked and garden beds mulched. I could go on and on, it’s endless!
Reading/Listening This Week:
I have a backlog of reviews to write this week. I finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimen, In the Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison, and The Dog Stars by Peter Heller.
This week I’m listening to The Long Earth and reading The Shortest Way Home.
What Are You Reading?
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Within the next few weeks the majority of the fall migrants will have departed Illinois for their winter residences. While most of the warblers have already moved on, I’m still seeing a lot of sparrows and an occasional unexpected visitor like the Rusty Blackbird, which is currently on the Audubon Watchlist for vulnerable species.
Last week I literally stumbled across a snipe. This is another bird I did not expect to see at a small pond along a nature trail in a residential area. I had left the main path and was walking through the brush towards the pond and came within a few feet of stepping on it. It’s color blended so well I didn’t see the bird until it flushed out of the grass. When I saw that long beak I knew it wasn’t one of the usual residents. Of course I wasn’t leaving until I found the bird and eventually I located the snipe who was standing on the far side of the pond almost out of range of my zoom lens.
A Snipe is a medium-sized shorebird and is common over most of North America. It spends the summer in Canada and the northern US and migrates to the southern US and Mexico for the winter. It’s a year-round resident in a few areas in the northwest.
It has a very long, flexible bill that it uses to probe in the mud for small invertebrates. It eats larval insects, worms, crustaceans, mollusks, some vegetation and seeds.
Interesting Facts
- The Wilson’s Snipe is one of the few shorebirds that can still be hunted legally.
- An elusive bird that’s difficult to hunt, the snipe led to the use of the word sniper in terms of a sharpshooter in the early 19th century.
- The clutch size of the Wilson’s Snipe is almost always four eggs. The male snipe takes the first two chicks to hatch and leaves the nest with them. The female takes the last two and cares for them. Apparently the parents have no contact after that point.
- The Common Snipe is found in Europe and Asia and looks almost identical the North American Wilson’s Snipe. Until recently they were considered the same species.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books. Visit her blog to see more great photos or add your own.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
The Orchardist
by Amanda Coplin
Narrated by Mark Bramhall
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publish Date: August 21, 2012
Format: Audio, 14 hours | 29 minutes
Audio Listening Level: Intermediate
Rating: 2½ of 5
William Talmadge is a quiet, reclusive man who keeps to himself spending his days tending an apple orchard on a small piece of land in the Pacific Northwest. He is a man with a troubled past, one that he rarely speaks about, but the memories haunt him. His sister went missing when she was a young girl and was never found.
One day he observes two teenage girls stealing the fruit he has harvested for market. Pregnant and scared they hide from him but later return for more food. Talmadge, not knowing their story but feeling sympathy for the young, frightened girls, allows them to remain on his land. He is happy to provide them safety, but someone is searching for them and wants them back. Soon men show up at the orchard and demand Talmadge turn them over only to set off a chain of horrifying events.
This is not a happy story. It is mostly bleak, depressing and filled with despair. The plot moves along slowly, often boringly so. There were occasional bright spots in the lovely descriptive language of the beauty of the landscape and the wonder of the orchard, but even that was often way too lengthy and made the story drag.
It was a struggle at times to keep going but I had read positive reviews and was hoping the story would pick up the pace. I continued listening and it did get more interesting but unfortunately it only got more depressing. In the end, while I understood some of their motivations, I didn’t feel a connection with any of the characters.
The audio was read by Mark Bramhall in an unemotional, almost bland, tone. I assume this was meant to depict the seriousness and bleakness of story but the result was to make it feel longer than the 14½ hours it took to listen to this book. I don’t have a problem with long audiobooks; I’ve listened to a few in 20+ hour range and the time flew by, but this felt long.
This book was not a good fit for me. I can handle troubled characters and a story filled with despair, but I prefer a faster pace and a less verbose writing style. Other reviewers have enjoyed this book so don’t rely on only my experience when making a decision.
A few other opinions:
Leeswammes’ Blog
write meg!
Have you read this book? If you have a review, leave me the link.
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Source: Review copy.
© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Almost wordless: Last week the Virginia Creeper was bright red and the tree leaves were still green.
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More Wordless Wednesday. © 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Instead of writing I’ve been out enjoying the last nice days of autumn, watching birds and taking photos before the snow and cold arrives in the Midwest. So today, instead of the usual book review or bookish post, here’s a photo of one of the trails where I go for walks.
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Mailbox Monday was created by The Printed Page. It is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their home last week.
Mailbox Monday is currently on tour, hosted by a different blog each month. The October host is Marcia at The Mailbox Monday Blog.
A wonderful selection of audiobooks arrived last week. Since I’ve been listening to more books than I’ve been reading, I was happy to receive them.
For review from Audiobook Jukebox:
In the Tall Grass
by Stephen King, Joe Hill
Could there be any better place to set a horror story than an abandoned rest stop?” In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they’ve lost one another. The boy’s cries are more and more desperate. What follows is a terrifying, entertaining, and masterfully told tale.
Audiobooks for review from Penguin Audio:
Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young
The Bone Bed by Patricia Cornwell
Call for the Dead by John le Carré
Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett by Mike Huckabee
Poseidon’s Arrow by Clive Cussler
Mad River by John Sanford
Dark Storm by Christine Feehan
What are you reading?
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Let the Read-a-thon Begin!
A few hours late (ok, nine hours but who’s counting?), and I’m finally putting up my introductory post for the 24 Hour Read-A-Thon.
Over 400 book bloggers are participating in this event, all starting at the same time. Here in Chicago that was 7am. I had a previously scheduled commitment this morning so I didn’t start until about noon when I began listening to an audiobook, The Orchardist, in my car on the drive home.
Introduction
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
USA – Chicago suburbs.
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
I really, really, really want to finish The Dog Stars, which I have been trying to read for two weeks now.
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
For me, pasta is a snack, and I’m eating it now. Later tonight I’ll be munching on popcorn.
4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
I love birds! I was late to start the read-a-thon because I was out on a bird walk this morning.
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today?
Spend more time reading and less time on the challenges.
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Update – Hour 20
I made it through hour 20. It’s almost 3am and that’s it for me.
Listened to six hours of The Orchardist, read half of The Dog Stars, and read a non-fiction book, The Big Squeeze.
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© 2012 Under My Apple Tree. All rights reserved.
Under My Apple Tree 