Double-Stacked Bookshelves

Teaser Tuesday:  The Girl in the Road Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB @ Should Be Reading . Here are the rules: grab whatever you're reading, open to a random page, select no more than two sentence (NO SPOILERS), share the title and author, and GO! Here's this week's teaser: "Of all my pain stars, the one in my armpit is shining brightest.  I stop to examine it and see that my entire left flank is soaked with blood.  I pinch the fabric of my shirt and it peels away with a wet sucking sound" --page 96           ----- The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne I'm really enjoying this book so far and I can't wait to see how it plays out.  What are you enjoying? Happy reading!

    Okay...so this is kind of cheating on my part since I've been basing the challenge on last name, but I'm sticking with this one.  I bring you:  Yann Martel. Yann Martel I remember putting off reading Life of Pi for years.  Not because it didn't sound interesting, it did, but because there was so much hype and I was terrified that it would be a letdown.  Thankfully, I finally let one of my dear friends talk me into reading it and I'm so glad I finally caved!  It's a fantastic book.  Martel, a Canadian writer, has won multiple awards for his writing, including the Man Booker Prize for Pi in 2002.  I have yet to read anything else by Martel, though Beatrice and Virgil sounds interesting.  I have also not watched Ang Lee's film version of Pi , though it is in my Netflix queue.  *Recommendation:  Life of Pi Who are some of your favorite Y authors?

Yet again, another Wednesday of "Why I Love", a meme hosted by Alexis at Reflections of a Bookaholic .  This week's theme is Favorite Chunksters .  I'll be honest, I'd never heard this term in reference to books until I read Alexis' post for today.  Evidently, a "chunkster" is a hefty/thick/dense/long book.  Well, I've read a few of those and have several that I list among my favorite books; namely Gone with the Wind , the later books in the Harry Potter series (I wouldn't consider the first three "chunksters"), Les Miserables , Anna Karenina , and others. But for today's favorite "chunkster", I'm going with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children , which I read as a senior in college.  It was the only book we read the entire term (three months), though we did read critical theory and other supplemental materials in addition to this book.  It's an incredibly dense book that requires many things to fini...

I've put off reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi for years it seems.  I don't know why.  It's been recommended to me several times and touted as a "must read" by many of my friends, mainly Audrey. Maybe that's why I never got around to reading it:  fear of it not stacking up to the hype.  So, while I was in Portland at one of my favorite bookstores, Wallace Books, I saw a used copy for four bucks and finally picked it up.  All I can say is "Thank You" Martel for writing a book that was seriously awesome and thank you Audrey for continually extolling its awesomeness! Pi follows the story of Pi Patel, a sixteen year old boy who has been shipwrecked while on his way from India to Canada on a Japanese ship.  Before setting sail, Pi and his family have liquidated the zoo that his father manages.  All of the animals have found homes around the world in different zoos and sanctuaries.  However, there are a few animals that embark on the same journey the P...