Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More


Giveaway: THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Garth Stein

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on August 27, 2010
Posted in My Past Giveaways  | 28 Comments

Listen up everybody, you don’t want to miss out on this extraordinary book.  There is a new edition of The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. The picture on the left is the cover.  Who can resist such a cutie?  

This book isn’t all about the cover though, this was one of my favorite books of 2008.  It’s not a cute dog story although the narrator is a dog named, Enzo.  You can read my review here.

Now for the Giveaway: Sarah Daily of Terra Communications has offered one of my readers a new copy of The Art of Racing in the Rain, along with a swag bag filled with notepad, lapel pin and bookmark.
Here’s the book description:

Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver. Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn’t simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate all of life’s ordeals.

On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through. In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zoë at his side.

A heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life…as only a dog could tell it.

Here are the rules:

1. For one entry, leave a comment.  Please be sure to include your email address (if it isn’t available in your profile), so that I can contact you if you win. If I can’t find your email either in the comments or your profile, you will be disqualified!

2. For another two entries, comment on my review of The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
and then come back to this post to let me know you did it.

3. For two more entries, post about this giveaway on your blog and leave link to your blog post in the comments. You will also get an entry for each person who tells me that they learned about this
giveaway from you.

4. For another 5 entries: Become a Follower of my blog or subscribe to my blog through Google Reader or other subscription service. If you are already a subscriber or follower you still get the five extra entries! Please do not comment that you are a follower five times! I will give you the extra entries myself. I will delete any extra entries that you make as it will just confuse me when I go to pick the winners.

5. If you do all of the above, you will have 10 entries!

Sorry, the giveaway is only open US and Canadian residents only.

The winner’s mailing address: NO P.O. Boxes.

Only one entry per household/IP address.

This giveaway will end on Friday September 10th, 11:59 P.M. E.S.T. The winners will be notified by email, so remember to include your email address in the comments, if it isn’t available in your profile! Winners must respond within TWO days or will be disqualified.

Copyright 2007-2010: All the posts within this blog were originally posted by Teddy Rose and should not be reproduced without express written permission.

I was so impressed with Melissa Walker’s A Place for Delta, that I jumped at the change to have her as my guest. To read my review, click on the link above.

I asked Melissa to write a post about how she did her research for the book. Welcome to So Many Precious Books Melissa.

I use the word “research” as an active verb that involves finding people who know what I want to learn, arranging appointments, asking questions in a casual environment, and conducting formal interviews. Sometimes a telephone call yields what I’m looking for, but often more is required. Finding what I needed to write the Delta book required much more: flying across the continent and up to remote places inaccessible by motor vehicle, driving through mountain passes down dead-end roads, bunking in unheated shared quarters in an Arctic research station, and peeking through barred windows waiting to see roaming polar bears.
I’ve learned through years of exploring and writing to be open to chance encounters and to assume that in certain environments (like Pepe’s Mexican restaurant in Barrow, Alaska) any one person might be helpful. So, what do I do? I listen to the talk around me, usually surreptitiously. In other words, I eavesdrop before I decide which of the people around me seems promising. Then I might start a conversation with a casual question. That’s how I met two men who were leaving the next day for the Colville River where they would dig for dinosaur fossils; and how I met a group of four men who told me they worked in the oil industry, although they assured me they did not work for “Big Oil.” Readers of A Place for Delta will recognize scenes inspired by these encounters. Fran Tate, proprietor of “Pepe’s,” and her son Joe Waterman were as available to me as they were to Joseph and Ada in the book.
Scheduled meetings with experts helped me get the facts straight and to understand the scope of the research conducted by scientists in the Arctic. I learned from wildlife biologists, lawyers, veterinarians, native whaling captains, Eskimo elders, artists and more. Scott Schliebe, polar bear specialist and marine mammal biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, granted me a lengthy interview. From Scott I learned about polar bear habitats and what threatens them and about the methods used to study polar bear dens.
The parts of the story that are set in the Appalachian Mountains of North Georgia required a different kind of research. I revisited an ecosystem that I’ve been exploring from time to time since I was a child. Exploring the woods alone, I once encountered a coil of rattlesnakes in a tree hollow, and another time saw young red salamanders scurrying down a mountainside. Talks with local naturalists have enhanced my knowledge of these and other native creatures.
I still have a great deal to learn about search and rescue dogs. But I learned enough from Pam Nyberg, who trains Labrador retrievers to search out human remains, to write the chapter about a dog’s help in solving one of the book’s mysteries.
From where I sit at my desk are two shelves of books. More than thirty are just about polar bears; some twenty-five about black bears and grizzlies. Among the others are books concerning Alaska in general, the Arctic, expeditions to the North Pole, Arctic flora and fauna, whaling, climate change, and global warming. When I first started acquiring books about the far north, I didn’t think I was doing research for a book. I was interested in Alaska, and so I read about it, traveled there some eleven times, and settled into remote cabins for weeks at a time. My interest in the place came first. Then came A Place for Delta.
Last comes the Internet. Through Google I accessed countless sites with information I could find easily. Especially valuable were sites with videos of cubs being born and vocalizing while nursing their mothers. Another site featured a cub in the wild, floundering in the snow and calling out in a human-like squall for its mother. Especially useful was footage from the Quebec, Berlin, and Denver zoos of cubs being cared for by human caretakers, much as Kate and Joseph take care of Delta.
When I was asked to write about the process of researching A Place for Delta for this blog, I knew I would have fun recalling how I go about learning in order to write a book that can both instruct, inspire, and entertain. So, there you have it. I did it.  
Melissa Walker, Ph.D., has been a professor of English at the University of New Orleans and Mercer University and a Fellow in Women’s Studies at Emory University. She’s has been an advocate for civil rights and a national leader for wilderness preservation. Her current commitment is to empower children to understand their place in the natural world and to discover how they can help save the environment. A Place for Delta is the first of a planned series of novels (chapter books) that will follow the adventures of the characters as they learn to take their place in a complex world. Walker’s previous books include Writing Research Papers, 4 editions (W. W. Norton, 1982–1997); Down from the Mountaintop (Yale University Press, 1991); Reading the Environment (W. W. Norton, 1994); and Living on Wilderness Time: Two Hundred Days Alone in America’s Wild Places (University of Virginia Press).
Copyright 2007-2010: All the posts within this blog were originally posted by Teddy Rose and should not be reproduced without express written permission.

THE QUEEN OF SPADES by Alexander Pushkin

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on August 23, 2010
Posted in Uncategorized  | 5 Comments

Born in February 1799, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin is a Russian writer that has been on my “to be Read (TBR)” for a very long time. 

I decided it was high time I read something written by him, when I came across this short story.  It is considered one of his best works of fiction.

Published in March 1834, The Queen of Spades is described as a gambling story but it is much more than that.  Hermann, an army officer seemed to enjoy watching other people gamble but never did do himself.  However, one day a friend,Tomsky was telling a story about how his grandmother, the Countess. Many years ago, while living in Paris, the Countess lost a lot of money gambling.  A friend told her that if she played three certain cards in succession, she would win her money back and it worked.
This story gave Hermann the idea to find out what the three cards are.  The story is about his quest to find out and the people he may hurt along the way.  It’s a story of good verses evil and of course, greed.

I enjoyed this story.  It has some great character development and simple yet strong prose to keep the story and plot moving.It’s said to be a novella but at only 23 pages, I choose to call it a short story.  You can read it here.

If you would like to participate in Short Story Mondays or just find out about some great short stories, go to John of The Book Mine Set. He has a short story review every Monday and a place for you to link your short story reviews. Come join in the fun!

 
Copyright 2007-2010: All the posts within this blog were originally posted by Teddy Rose and should not be reproduced without express written permission.