Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 30, 2009, 8:00 am
Between vacation, Thanksgiving, and putting up the Christmas tree this weekend, there wasn't any time for book shopping. But my Mailbox Monday list is not entirely blank, thanks to the communal st...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 29, 2009, 8:00 am
Readers interested in the experience of 19th Century Chinese immigrants or the development of the American West will want to read Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon, Gregory Nokes's t...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 28, 2009, 8:00 am
"Smoke at the horizon." -- Good for the Jews by Debra Spark Does an incomplete sentence count as an opening sentence? Oh well. It gets much better very fast. I was immediately plunged into the connec...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 27, 2009, 8:00 am
The story of Maud Gonthier’s marriage to Edward Harrison is not a happy one. Looking back on their years together, their daughter – the self-described “unreliable narrator” of the book – cr...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 26, 2009, 8:00 am

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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 25, 2009, 8:00 am
"He judged men and he grew apples and it was a perilous autumn for both." -- A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell So begins Charles Marden's quest to understand his son's death, killed i...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 24, 2009, 8:00 am
"Not only did the Chieftain delay nearly a year before reporting the murders, the April 19, 1888, edition that finally carried the story was missing from the newspaper's files. Rick Swart, the ed...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 23, 2009, 8:00 am
Before leaving for vacation, I had time for a quick visit to one of my favorite used book stores -- Booktique, run by the Friends of the Lake Oswego Library -- to stock up for Mailbox Monday. Altered...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 22, 2009, 8:00 am
My vacation box of books includes several off my Guilt List and LibraryThing list. I look forward to cozying in the cabin for the next several days, reading in front of the fireplace. I over packed, ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 21, 2009, 8:00 am
Hubby and I are off to the woods for a short, pre-Thanksgiving vacation. We've rented a cabin by a river and are heading out with a box of books, a box of booze, and groceries enough for the long ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 3, 2009, 8:00 am
"Maud simply wanted to live in Paris, with or without a husband, preferably without. While careful not to let her thoughts show on her severe and slightly disdainful golden face, Maud had a secret de...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 2, 2009, 8:00 am
Thanks once again to Reading Local and its monthly readers' participation contest, I have several new books to list for Mailbox Monday. I used my contest winnings at Hawthorne Boulevard Books, a ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Nov 1, 2009, 12:59 pm
Mark Helprin’s rollicking novel, Freddy and Fredericka, follows the adventures of the Prince and Princess of Wales as, plagued by scandals that threaten the continuity of the royal throne, they set ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 31, 2009, 8:00 am
Our new neighborhood takes Halloween very seriously. Everyone has jack-o-lanterns, lights, decorations, and spooky stuff -- all geared for little kids, not teen-aged Halloween hooligans. It's gre...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 30, 2009, 12:40 pm
Caprial's Bistro is one of my favorite restaurants in Portland. I also love her on her tv show and have learned a lot by watching her. For instance, I am indebted to her for fixing my pie crust -...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 29, 2009, 8:00 am
. Kate Atkinson is a new find for me. I recently read her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, because it won the Costa (Whitebread) Book of the Year Award. That one book was enough to make ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 28, 2009, 8:00 am
... Prize winner, is the only Anita Brookner novel I have read. I can't say that Hotel du Lac stuck with me -- so little so that I actually read it a second time without realizing it -- but Bro...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 26, 2009, 8:00 am
It was shaping up to be a completely book-free week last week, until I got an invitation from a friend to go to her husband's book-signing party. Whew! Mailbox Monday saved! I stopped by the part...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 25, 2009, 8:00 am
Natasha at Maw Books Blog is hosting this month's Bookworms' Carnival and her theme is "Africa" books -- those written by African authors, set in Africa, or with some other African connection....
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 24, 2009, 8:00 am
. Laughing Gas is one of Wodehouse's stand-alone novels, featuring none of his usual cast of characters up to high jinx in their usual locales. This one-off follows the adventures of Reggie,...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 23, 2009, 8:00 am
. Donovan Campbell joined the Marines after 9/11. A recent Princeton grad and first in his class at the Marines’ Basic Officer Course, Campbell was made the Lieutenant of a forty-man infantry...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 22, 2009, 8:00 am
"I had just begun to write this story, when a literary pal of mine who had had a sticky night out with the P.E.N. Club blew in to borrow a bicarbonate of soda, and I thought it would be as well to hav...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 21, 2009, 9:00 am
Sarah Stonich’s sophomore novel, The Ice Chorus, is one of those rare books in which all the parts come together seamlessly. The ideas, plot, characters, and images all work to entertain the reader...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 17, 2009, 8:00 am
"Most of his senior aides didn't want him to say it." The Age of Reagan (Vol. II): The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980 - 1989 by Steven F. Hayward. This opening sentence refers to Reagan...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 16, 2009, 8:00 am
This is the second part of my two-part autumnal assessment of my 2009 reading progress. The first part tallied up the total of books I have read so far in 2009 from the lists in the right column. Thi...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 15, 2009, 8:00 am
. Paul Newman referred collectively to his acting roles as “the child of our time.” Shawn Levy puts it this way in his new biography, Paul Newman: A Life: Taken as a whole, Newman’s bod...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 14, 2009, 8:00 am
I have referred to my LibraryThing Early Reviewer list as my "guilt list" because of the number of books I have not read and reviewed yet. But a little perusal of my TBR shelf made me face up the the ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 13, 2009, 8:00 am
. "Five minutes later, Noriel and I hit the large dirt road that signaled the approach to the cemetery. But no sooner had I breathed a sigh of relief than headlights appeared around a road bend ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 12, 2009, 11:22 am
. Last week was a book bonanza at my house, although none came in the mail. It was the annual Friends of the Multnomah County Library book sale -- my favorite book event of the year. We got too many ...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 10, 2009, 8:00 am
. Before there was a Food Network, Iron Chef, or even a Martha Stewart magazine, there was The Silver Palate. Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins may not be classical chefs, and they did not revoluti...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 9, 2009, 8:00 am
It is that fall-is-in-the-air, back to school, get things done time of year that always gives me a jolt of energy. So I am doing a little autumnal assessment of my year in reading -- so far -- to deci...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 8, 2009, 1:40 pm
. "I found myself fascinated by the interesting geometric designs of the twisted iron rebar in front of me." Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood by D...
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Rose City Reader posted an article on Rose City Reader - Oct 7, 2009, 8:00 am
. Kate Atkinson won the 1995 Whitbread (Costa) Book of the Year Award for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, before going on to write six more books, so far, including the popular Jack...
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