I recently read a recommendation by Nancy Pearl (my library goddess) about a book called To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever; A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry by Will Blythe. She recommended it as a great nonfiction read .... very readable and spunky. Loving college basketball like I do I thought it would be a kick. Although it is definitely different than I expected I am really enjoying it. The writer has made it part memoir and part journalistic project or as he calls it, "written by the beast and by the journalist!" The rivalry is real and the author lives it himself, yet he maintains enough of a distance that he rather fairly exposes us to both sides of the ball! I am almost done --- good timing too. North Carolina recently whomped my team (U of Arizona) and now I am ready to pass the book on to a real North Carolina fan. I am usually a sporadic nonfiction reader but I have tried to really focus on this one and read it all the way through rather than mixing it in with my other fiction books. It seems to be working and I am finding the book easy to pick up and become involved in. It is also a good bus companion as I continue to commute to jury duty.
I completed Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larsen over the weekend and loved it. It was a Newbery Honor book, announced last Wednesday. The story of a brave young woman in Montana during 1917 - 1918 in the midst of World War I. I LOVED it and found that I could easily compare it to Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker - even a tad bit like the feel of My Antonia by Willa Cather (my favorite!) It makes me want to visit the vast prairies and gaze out on them myself. The story was inspired by the true story of the author's relative and the post script gave information on genealogical research and a connection to websites where people could investigate on their own family lines. That was a fun twist. I wonder how many young adults would do that very thing? I sure want to pass it on to some of my friends though. It was great and read really fast. The character was spunky and keen, full of moxy that I like to feel I have yet really know I probably don't! Isn't that why we read about different characters?!?
They just announced the release date of the last Harry Potter. It will come out when we are on vacation this summer. I wonder if we can pick it up in route on the trip and read it in the car. We will need multiple copies for the readers in this household. We all get a bit possessive.
2 comments:
Just found you via Semicolon. We just ordered several copies of the last HP book because we know that it's going to be hard to wait a turn to read it this summer if we have only one copy.
Laura, We are the same. We will be traveling on vacation when the book comes out and I can picture all of us in the car with our noses buried in our OWN individual copies - oh, with the exception of the current driver!! Thanks for reading! Gaye
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