Coffee and a Book Chick
&
Susan F.
are winners.
Enjoy your book.
Mailbox Monday is touring through blogs. For the month of October it will be hosted by She Reads and Reads. Next month the tour moves to Knitting and Sundries where it will be hosted for the month of November.
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.
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New books in my mailbox last week:
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton for review from the publisher.
A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WW II. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.
Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg for review from Doubleday.
Avi Steinberg is stumped. After defecting from yeshiva to Harvard, he has only a senior thesis essay on Bugs Bunny to show for his effort. While his friends and classmates advance in the world, he remains stuck at a crossroads, unable to meet the lofty expectations of his Orthodox Jewish upbringing. And his romantic existence as a freelance obituary writer just isn’t cutting it. Seeking direction—and dental insurance—Steinberg takes a job as a librarian in a tough Boston prison.
The Peanuts Collection by Nat Gertler
Treasures From The World’s Most Beloved Comic Strip
Genre: Comics, Graphic Novel
Format: Hardcover Book
Publish Date: October 25, 2010
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Rating: 5 of 5
Description:This fully authorized, one-of-a-kind illustrated book celebrates the 60th anniversary of the world’s most beloved comic strip characters. A compendium of rare materials from the Charles M. Schulz Museum and family archives, The Peanuts Collection comes in a sturdy slipcase and features high-quality reproductions of original sketches, comics, and photographs from the world of Peanuts. Removable film cels, stickers, and booklets are included, as well as reproduction prints of Peanuts artwork ready for framing.
The comic strip Peanuts ran for almost 50 years in 2,600 newspapers, a record number. During those years 18,000 strips were published. When Charles Schultz fell ill in 1999 new strips ended. Readers still wanted to see Peanuts in the comic section even if they weren’t new. As a result the strip still appears in over 2,200 newspapers. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy and the gang are now firmly a part of pop culture. This beautiful book is the ultimate collection for Peanuts’ fans.
I grew up reading Peanuts, listening to Snoopy vs the Red Baron, watching the Holiday Specials; I thought I knew everything there was to know about them. Well, I was wrong. This collection is a wealth of information. Longtime fans will find many familiar items plus much new material, some of which has never before been seen by the public.
The book begins with a forward from Schultz’s daughter and a note from the author. After that it’s divided into about 30 two-page sections. Each section focuses on one of the characters or holidays or something from Peanuts’ pop culture. About a third of each section is text with the rest artwork, illustrations, photos and removable materials such as reproductions of sketches, letters, stickers, coloring book, prints of the Peanuts characters and much more. The text is filled with fascinating detail about the creation and evolution of the characters.
We learn that neither Lucy nor Linus was part of the original Peanuts crew. In their early years they were very young children and soon grew up to be an important part of the strip. We also learn that Snoopy started out as just a dog. Not a beagle, not a WWI flying ace, just a dog. Eventually he evolved to be superior to the kids in the strip. It was way back in 1960 when Charles Schultz integrated the comics page by introducing Franklin, a ground breaking move. There’s an entire section on the good causes the Peanuts gang promoted. This is just a small sample of what is covered in this collection.
What I found most striking was the high quality artwork and the beautiful layout. If you are of a certain age this book will not only entertain you but will bring back lots of memories. I’ve read it through twice already and I’m still noticing new things. This is the type of book you need to see to appreciate.
Following is a gallery of photos I took of some of the pages and removable reproductions. Click for a larger image.
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- Outer hardshell book cover
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- Inner Book Cover
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- Peanuts coloring book
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- A sketch drawn in charcoal on newsprint
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- Letter to Schultz encouraging integration in the strip
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- Book of pumpkin carols from Halloween special
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- Schultz’s letter to a fan
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- Baseball card giveaway with Dolly Madison products
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- Framable drawings
Highly recommended for Peanuts fans young and old. An excellent gift book.
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Where to buy this book.
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Source: Review Copy provided by the publisher.
The Book Blogger Hop, a weekly event hosted by Jen at Crazy For Books, is a place just for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word! Each week there is a new discussion question for your post. This week’s question is:
“Where is your favorite place to read? Curled up on the sofa, in bed, in the garden?”
My favorite place to read in the warm months is outside on my deck surrounded by my flowers and taking occasional breaks to watch the birds at the feeders. In the cold months I’m inside curled up on the sofa near the fireplace if it’s winter. Unfortunately a lot of my reading time has to take place on the train traveling to and from my job in the city.
What great books did you hear about/discover this past week? Share your FRIDAY FINDS! This weekly event is hosted by Should Be Reading.
Something new from Audrey Niffenegger, The Night Bookmobile. A graphic novel about one women’s obsessive search for her disappearing library. I’m intrigued.
First serialized as a weekly column in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, The Night Bookmobile tells the story of a wistful woman who one night encounters a mysterious disappearing library on wheels that contains every book she has ever read. Seeing her history and most intimate self in this library, she embarks on a search for the bookmobile. But her search turns into an obsession, as she longs to be reunited with her own collection and memories.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey caught my eye and ended up on my to read list after I read a review on Bermudaonion’s Weblog. And it has a lovely cover.
A woman, confined to her bed, watches a snail, first on her night stand, then in a terrarium next to the bed. The limited world of the snail mirrors the limitations of her own and the reader learns, along with the author, about a creature either despised for its presence in the garden or admired for its taste with beurre blanc—but is otherwise rather a mystery. What follows is an oddly compelling story of a woman who finds companionship and beauty in the most unexpected of creatures.
Autumn colors peaked this weekend in the Chicago area.
Photo taken at Lincoln Marsh in the early morning.
More Wordless Wednesday.
Mailbox Monday is touring through blogs. For the month of October it will be hosted by She Reads and Reads. Next month the tour moves to Knitting and Sundries where it will be hosted for the month of November.
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.
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New books in my mailbox last week:
Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey into Alzheimer’s by Andrea Gillies from Read It Forward.
Five years ago, Andrea Gillies— writer, wife, and mother of three—seeing that her husband’s parents were struggling to cope, invited them to move in. She and her=” newly extended family relocated to a big Victorian house on a remote, windswept peninsula in the far north of Scotland, leaving behind their friends and all that was familiar; hoping to find a new life, and new inspiration for work.
Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis a win from Murder, Mystery and Mayhem.
Vienna 1903. Outside one of the cities most splendid baroque churches the decapitated body of a monk is found. Shortly after, the remains of a municipal councillor are discovered in the grounds of another church – his head also ripped from his body. It transpires that both men were rabid anti-semites and suspicions fall on Vienna’s close-knit community of Hassidic Jews. In a city riven by racial tensions and extremism, the situation is potentially explosive. Detective Inspector Rheinhardt turns to his trusted friend, the young psychoanalyst Doctor Max Liebermann, for assistance.
From another Friends of the Library sale:
The Color Of Magic by Terry Pratchett
You Are Not A Stranger Here by Adam Haslett
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Participation is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.
Last week I reviewed Recipes from an Italian Summer and I said that I would try the Fried Zucchini Flower recipe if my zucchini plants cooperated and continued to make flowers. Earlier this week they produced a dozen flowers so I gave the recipe a try. I’m happy to report that it was absolutely delicious! I have been making fried flowers for years using basically the same ingredients as this recipe, but the few differences in this one make all the difference in the world. These were crisp, light and tasty. Seriously, they rival my Italian grandmother’s fried flowers and she’s an expert at it.
Fried Zucchini Flowers
Freshly picked zucchini flowers
Preparation time: 1½ hrs
Cooking Time: 15 min
Serves 4
Ingredients:
scant 1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
5 tablespoons dry white wine
1 egg, separated
vegetable oil for frying
12 zucchini flowers
salt and pepper
Fried Zucchini Flowers
Preparation:
Combine the flour, oil, wine and egg yolk in a bowl and season with the salt and pepper. Add 2/3 to 1 cup warm water to make a fairly runny, smooth batter. Let stand for 1 hour.
Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks in a grease free bowl and fold gently into the batter. Heat the vegetable oil in a deep-fryer or heavy pan to 350-375° or until a cube of day-old bread browns in 30 seconds.
Dip the flowers in the batter, shake off the excess and fry in the hot oil in batches until they are golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with salt and serve immediately.
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Recipe from the book Recipes From An Italian Summer
Photos from my kitchen.
Under My Apple Tree 