Friday Finds hosted by Should Be Reading asks us to share what great books we heard about or discovered in the past week. My pick this week is a YA novel called Restoring Harmony by Joelle Anthony to be released May 13, 2010 by Putnam Juvenile. Here's a bit about the book from Amazon.com: The year is 2041, and sixteen-year-old Molly McClure has lived a relatively quiet life on an isolated far...

   I would hate for anyone to fall over and hurt themself, because I tell you this is a shock to me, let alone to any one else! This week I managed to write not one, but two reviews! The first was for Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland, and the second is a guest post that I wrote for Royal Reviews reviewing Roses by Leila Meacham. Head on over to see what I had to say!This post was or...

This weekend, I am escaping the incoming Seattle chill and rain by flying to Hawaii. I have no idea what to expect. The most exposure to Hawaii I've had has been thanks to the television show Lost. Do the smoke...

I’m in the midst of what I call March Madness, the musician’s version, which means musicals, choral festivals, and Easter.  My days are filled with melodies, rehearsal schedules, and performance notes, and what I’m looking for in my reading is a book that quickly captures my attention with an exciting, fast paced storyline and compelling characters. Almost Home,

Thanks to Lee Wind of I'm Here. I'm Queer. What Do I Read? for hosting a video of LAPL young adult librarian Henry Gambill, telling us about the dire circumstances of the LA City Council's planned cuts to library staffing.

You know you’re big news when your publisher lets you name your novel Gauntlgrym. Reminds me of Paolini and Brisingr. That said, with Dungeons & Dragons, Forgotten Realms, ‘New York Times Best-Selling Author’, and R.A Salvatore on the cover, it probably doesn’t matter what the title is. Gauntlgrym, the 7,345th volume of the Drizzt Do’Urden saga, ...

What do you call a monarchy in which a popular reformist politician-writer can enjoy the warm support of the ruling dynasty but still find some of his books banned from sale at home? There can be only one answer: the unpredictable Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The author in question, novelist and minister of labour Ghazi al-Gosaibi, is living proof that the gnarly contradictions that encumber questions...

His supernatural novel The Castle of Otranto might not be much read today, but there is a direct line of cultural descent to the films of Tim Burton He was, wrote Thomas Macaulay, "the most eccentric, most artificial, most fastidious, most capricious of men", the culmination of what it was to be rich, English and stylish in the mid-18th century. Horace Walpole's whole life was in some ways an...

I can’t resist asking…did anyone catch this? It’s the new show Ugly Americans that just started on Comedy Central. What can I say, I’m curious…if you’ve seen it, what do you think? Ugly Americans Weds 10:30pm / 9:30c

What is it about Yeats that is so attractive to rock stars, and why does Auden have the crowd moshing at the Forum? Graeme Thomson meets the musicians turning poetry into pop One day in 2005, Mike Scott decamped to his music room armed only with a long-cherished dream and a copy of WB Yeats's greatest hits, a brick-like anthology of the late poet's collected works. For a fortnight, the l...