Reviewlets of Like Water for Chocolate, Julie and Romeo, and The Mao Case
The Great Library Purge of 2013 (That's right! I actually got rid of some of my books. Gasp! Check out my post to see how many I was able to part with.)

Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig (I'm devouring this one. I was barely able to put it down long enough to get this post ready.)

Well, The Masque of the Black Tulip is the last in my stack of library books. That means I'm back to tackling my TBR pile in an effort to complete the Mount TBR Challenge by the end of December. Six books to go. You can check out my Reading Challenges page to see the list. Fingers crossed that I'll be able to finish them all in time!

My home library has been in a state of, well, unusability for several months. I'll post pictures of this whole process at some point, but last weekend, I was finally able to spend some time making it friendly and library-ish again. As part of this process, I decided it was time to go through my bookshelves. Surely there are books I no longer need to own. I am a great spontaneous buyer of used books. If it looks slightly interesting and it costs less than $3, I'll probably end up taking it home. Those are the sorts of books, however, that accumulate dust on my shelves for years because that initial urge to own has never translated into a subsequent urge to read. And Sunday night, I was finally in the mood to cull these books from my shelves.

Or at least I thought I was. After an hour or so spent carefully examining each book on my shelves, weighing how likely it was I would ever read it, here is what ended up in the giveaway boxes:

Seventeen books. And nothing that was all that difficult to give up - a couple of old textbooks that somehow made it onto my shelf instead of a box in the basement, and several books I've read or tried to that I just didn't like. Nothing earth-shattering here. Seventeen books, leaving seventeen holes on my bookshelves to fill. That doesn't even begin to cover the 49 books I acquired from our public library book sale a couple of weeks ago, let alone the piles in the corner of the bedroom that have accumulated over the past several months. I have discovered that I am absolutely no good at giving books away - but extremely good at adding to my collection. This may be problematic someday. . .

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that there are a few more than 17 holes on my shelves. I also have two (small) boxes of books that I pulled off my shelves that I'm not completely ready to part with yet but may be on their way out. Hopefully, these books will end up in a Little Free Library in my front yard someday. Or they may somehow find their way back onto my bookshelves if I decide that I really just can't bear to see them go. What is it about books, even ones we've never read, that make them so hard to let go of?

Does anyone else have trouble getting rid of books or giving them away?

True love. How much can it survive? Can it survive having your beloved marry your sister instead? What quality will it be after everything? And how important is tradition if it ruins someone’s life? Esquivel tackles these questions in Like Water for Chocolate. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book set in Mexico, and I certainly don’t know much about Mexican history. This book made me want to investigate that further, which is what great literature should do. It’s magic realism, and there was a very interesting balance between the two. It is also very different than the magic realism of Sarah Addison Allen, which is my only other experience with this genre. It’s much deeper and more serious. I can’t say that I liked the ending, but I did like the book as a whole. It’s a quick and satisfying read.

I love this twist on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Julie and Romeo own rival flower shops in town. Their families have hated each other for as long as either of them can remember, but no one seems to know why. Then they meet (or re-meet) at a local conference, and fall in love. How will their grown children, who have been learning to hate the other family as they did that growing, react to this? Not well, as you can probably guess. The story was well-told, with plenty of humor and plenty of suspense. Of course it doesn’t end as Shakespeare’s does, but you are kept guessing to the last moment if they will end up together or not. There was some unnecessary swearing (okay, all swearing is unnecessary, but I really didn’t see the point of it in this book at all), but that was the only major disappointment in this creative and amusing book.

Certain books open your eyes to the world around you, and that’s exactly what this book did for me. By reading The Mao Case, I discovered that I know next to nothing about China, either present-day or historically. This book is one in a series about Inspector Chen, who is a detective in Shanghai. The case he is tackling this time involves a suspected secret about Chairman Mao. It is his task to discover this potentially embarrassing secret so that the news never breaks. I’m not a big mystery reader, so I really can’t judge it on that. The writing style seemed a little stilted, but I’m guessing that’s more a cultural difference than anything. I probably won’t read any of the other Inspector Chen books, but that’s solely because mystery isn’t really my thing. I am grateful, however, for the realization that this book brought – my knowledge of China is sorely lacking, and I plan to start making up for that as soon as possible. This book opened my eyes to another country, another people, another culture. What more can we ask of a book?

I've been able to spend some time over the past week getting my home library back in shape. It's been a bit of a construction zone for months, but it's finally usable again. Just in time for snowy days and steaming mugs of hot chocolate. I can't wait!

The Jane Austen Marriage Manual by Kim Izzo - Review
The Menagerie by Tui and Kari Sutherland - Review (You should read this book!)
Saturday Snapshot - Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett
The Lavender Garden by Lucinda Riley (What a poignant story!)

Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler

A few weeks ago, I took my class on a field trip to see our Capitol building in Lansing. This is the fourth time I've taken this field trip, and every year I learn something new. I don't remember ever hearing in past years that the stars at the top of the dome are made with gold and platinum paint in order to make them more visible from the ground level. It's an absolutely beautiful building. If you're ever in Michigan, I highly recommend taking a tour!

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at West Metro Mommy.

Unicorns with an attitude. Escapee griffin cubs. A hibernating kraken (or is it?). Do I need to say more to get you to read The Menagerie?

The Menagerie is a refuge for mythical creatures. It is top secret, obviously, but somehow six griffin cubs have escaped. And the supervisory agency is performing an inspection in two days. Luckily, Logan, the new kid in town, discovers one of the griffin cubs underneath his bed. Although outsiders are strictly forbidden from becoming involved in the Menagerie, his skills at griffin-cub-finding allow him to make friends with the animals and the family who runs it.

This was an extremely refreshing and fun read. The idea of the Menagerie is so imaginative. Each mythical creature is given its own personality and quirks. The main human (or human-ish) characters are written with depth and have extremely amusing interactions. The plot is suspenseful and twisty and has all the right things to keep you reading breathlessly to the very end. The authors, Tui and Kari Sutherland, are sisters, and you can just tell they had tons of fun writing this book. It shows in every word.

For a fun, entertaining, and mythical read, enter the world of The Menagerie. You will not regret it. (Although you may find yourself wanting a griffin cub.)