Get Stuffed on January 14th

Reward yourself for keeping your diet and exercise new year's resolutions for two weeks by stopping by the John F. Germany Public Library on January 14th at 11 a.m. Author and chef K. MacInnes, author of Get Stuffed, will "entice you with his delectable hors d'oeuvres and show you how easy they are to make." Book sale and signing will follow the program.

Online Book Club Review:"Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier

Reading Charles Frazier's book Cold Mountain made me glad I had seen the movie first. Otherwise I wouldn't have have truly appreciated the love story between the main characters Ada and Inman or fully understood the less-than-happily-ever-after ending.

Inman is a Confederate soldier who gets severely injured in Petersburg and becomes disheartened and disillusioned with the war, himself, and life in general. He clings to the memory of Ada, the woman he left behind at home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Their developing romance was new and incomplete, but it gives Inman something to live for and a reason to walk away from the war towards home. Cold Mountain is Inman's Odyssey-like journey home.

Back home, Ada and others are suffering from shortages -- of food, of money, of men to plow the fields, and of hope. She, too, relies on her memories of better times with Inman to sustain her and give her the strength to survive.

Frazier's descriptions allow the reader to see the beauty of North Carolina and to hear and smell the brutality of war. The phrase "...a late summer so hot and wet that the air both day and night felt like breathing through a dishrag..." brought back many memories for this south Georgia girl. You have to read Cold Mountain at a slower pace than usual, which mimics Inman's slow journey on foot through the summer heat and dust.

However, the slow pacing and detailed descriptions stripped the ending of its emotional impact. The movie version touched me, while the book merely entertained me.

What did you think?

Learn more about the Tampa Book Buzz Online Book Club by clicking here.

Local Authors Finally Gettin' Some Attention

While I was off eating, drinking and making merry over the holidays, the ever-wonderful Sticks of Fire was keeping up with the local book news. Thank goodness for that. Otherwise, I would have missed Kevin Walker's article in the Tampa Tribune, in which he says he's going to review books by local authors a few times each year. 'Bout time!

There are many, many authors in the Tampa Bay area. Plus there are lots of book clubs, signings, lectures, and discussion groups (both online and in person) in the area. If you love books and reading, then the Bay area is the place to be.

My Christmas Loot

I've always heard that the holiday season can be an odd mix of happiness and sadness, of joy and nostalgia. I finally understood that this year.

This was the first Christmas without my dad, who died in May. But it was also the first Christmas with my precious niece Morgan, who was born in October.

My usual sibling rivalry and jealousy (my sister went to culinary arts school and I can barely boil water) was set aside when we left her house with our bellies stuffed with delicious food and our bags full of homemade fudge, truffles, and other wonders.

My excitement over my interview in my college alumni newsletter (which I'll post the link to as soon as it's up, don't worry) was muted by the fact that my mother cared more about the above-mentioned precious niece Morgan burping or smiling or...pretty much anything. Any future accomplishments of mine will always pale in comparision to the fact that my sister popped out a kid. Oh wait, there's that sibling rivalry again.

After a month of receiving Christmas cards in the mail -- a welcome break from the usual round of bills and junk mail -- on December 22 I received a summons for jury duty for January. Merry Christmas to me.

But as far as presents go, it was all happiness and joy. In addition to the ton of non-book related gifts (like the Hello Kitty toaster!), I got a biography of Cary Grant, a book about Harrison Ford's movies, a book about the top 100 greatest TV stars, and The 100 Greatest American Films:A Quiz Book by Andrew J. Rausch. The quiz book is very interesting and fairly difficult, plus a fun way to annoy your in-laws.

I love Christmas loot!

Light Posting Over The Holidays

I'll be traveling a bit over the next week and won't always have easy computer access. (Note to Santa: please bring me a laptop with a wireless card this year. Pretty please.) So the posts will be lighter than usual for the next week or so.

With that, I wish you a ...please choose the appropriate greeting based on your religion, beliefs, political affiliation, and/or ability to be offended:

Merry Christmas
Happy Hanukkah
Happy Kwanzaa
Happy Holiday
Pleasant Winter Solstice
Happy December 25th
Happy Regular Day With No Religious or Commercial Significance

Now go read a book!

Holiday Gift Ideas

There's still time to get holiday gifts for the book lovers in your life:

*books from the Turner Classic Movies online store

*the book lover's bracelet from the Wireless catalog

*a gift card from Inkwood Books or Haslam's Book Store or MicklerSmith Florida BookTraders

*one of the books recommended by Margo Hammond of the St. Pete Times

*"When in doubt, read" t-shirt or sweatshirt from the Wireless catalog

* the Complete Far Side collection by Gary Larson or the Complete Calvin and Hobbes

*the Harry Potter scarf and hat set and The Science of Harry Potter book from Signals

*a membership to the Florida Bibliophile Society

*The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes 150th Anniversary:The Complete Short Stories and Novels

*a greeting card that is also a bookmark

*Edward Gorey book lovers' t-shirts and sweatshirts from Signals

*bookbags, bookmarks, reading pillows, book covers and more from the Book Venue Gift Store
*"Books. The Original Laptop." t-shirts and sweatshirts from Signals

*one of the books on About.com's list of Top 2005 Holiday Gift Books

*Women Writers umbrella and tote from Signals

*Books, books, books -- from "America's Jewish Bookstore" or a cookbook or some nonfiction books or comic books or something from the New York Times' 2005 holiday gift guide.

Happy shopping!

Local Author S. L. Juers

Local author S. L. Juers -- who I met briefly at the St. Pete Times Festival of Reading in October -- has a new book out titled Eternally Yours. This book is a different take on vampire fiction, recounting one man's sad and lonely life as an immortal, culminating in a suicide letter anonymously signed "Eternally Yours."

Juers is working on getting a website, and when he does, I'll include his link in the "local authors" section. In the meantime, you can learn more about the book and read a preview at the www.authorhouse.com link for Eternally Yours.

Writers In Paradise Has Extended Application Deadline

The 2nd Annual Writers in Paradise has extended its application deadline to December 27th. Writers in Paradise is "an intensive, eight-day experience of intimate workshop classes, panel discussions, readings, book signings, receptions and dinners designed for those who are passionate about writing."

Best-selling authors Stephen King, Dennis Lehane and Mark Bowden will be there, along with many other guest speakers.

Writers in Paradise will be January 21-29, 2006 at Eckerd College in St. Pete. Visit their website for more information.

Tampa Area Romance Authors Book Signing January 7

The group Tampa Area Romance Authors (TARA) will have a book signing from 2 to 4 p.m. January 7th at the Carrollwood Barnes & Noble. It's not listed on their website yet and the person at B&N I spoke with said she didn't know when it would be posted. It's not listed on the TARA website and my e-mail to the contact listed on their website bounced back. Hmmm.

The book signing is happening, even though I don't have anything yet to link to. Both Kimberly Llewellyn and Kelley St. John told me they would be there. I won't post the author attendee list I have because it's not confirmed (besides Llewellyn and St. John). The TARA website is http://tara.writerspace.com if you want to learn more about this group.

Book Signing at MickerSmith Florida BookTraders Tomorrow

Author Col. Joe Reich will be at MicklerSmith Florida BookTraders on December 19 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. to discuss his book The Treasure of Tampa Bay, meet local readers and sign copies of his book.

T. Allan Smith, MickerSmith proprietor, gave me the following description:

The Treasure of Tampa Bay covers 400 years of Tampa Bay history. It is fiction based on history. The book begins in 1528 with the tale of Juan Ortiz, a Spanish soldier who was inadvertently left when the explorer Panfilo de Narvaez departed. Col. Reich starts with a fictional marriage of Ortiz to a native princess. Then he covers the history of the region following the descendants of Ortiz right up to the era of space exploration.

Col. Reich is retired from the U.S. Air Force. He was stationed at MacDill for about a year in an intelligence-gathering capacity. He became fascinated with Florida history, and specifically Tampa Bay history, when he helped his son with a school project. The Treasure of Tampa Bay is the result of his decision to write a book based on the research he did. He is now settled in Louisiana and is ROTC director at a private school.

MickerSmith Florida BookTraders, located at 718 Second Street N. in St. Pete, is a new and used bookstore specializing in books about Florida and by Florida authors. The store has works by well-known Florida authors, as well as a growing collection of hard-to-find and out-of-print Florida books, some quite rare.

For more information, call MickerSmith Florida BookTraders at 727-894-1565.

(cross-posted at Sticks of Fire)

Local Author Wendy Boucher in "Tampa Bay Illustrated"

Congratulations to local author Wendy Boucher, who was recently included in a St. Pete Times article on local authors and was also featured in the December issue of Tampa Bay Illustrated magazine.

"St. Pete Times" Recognizes Local Authors

The City Times section of the St. Pete Times recently had a nice article about some local authors. Maybe in their next article about local authors they'll include Tampa Book Buzz as a great local resource for learning about local authors. I can dream, can't I? Sigh....

The local authors profiled were:

John Mueller and Ken Walters (Pusillanimous Pirate Packwood Pillages and Plunders Peninsula Preserve)

Kim Bailey (The North Beach Diet:Add Belly and Hip Fat Instantly With Batter-Fried Twinkies and More)

Wendy Boucher (Parvenue Throws a Party)

Celeste Chum Colcord (My Darling Margy:The World War II Diaries and Letters of Surgeon Charles Frances Chunn, M.D.)

Patty G. Henderson (The Missing Page)

Cindy Krueger (Do You Know What You Don't Know...About Women's Health Issues?)

USF Tampa Library Exhibit

From now until March 31, the USF Tampa Library will show the exhibit Liturgy & Devotion: Manuscripts from England to Ethiopia.

According to their website:

This exhibit is the third installment of medieval illuminated manuscripts presented by the USF Libraries. Liturgy and Devotion takes a global survey of liturgical manuscripts, with an emphasis on medieval liturgy, and brings together the rituals and ceremonies of the early Catholic Church in Western Europe and the Christian Orient. It features manuscripts from both books for the Mass and books for the Divine Office, including Breviaries, Missals, and Graduals to illustrate the varied forms of codifying the complex structure of medieval liturgy.

This exhibit is on the 4th Floor of the USF Tampa Library and is open to the public.

TCM Annual Book Giveaway

Click here to read more about this month's Turner Classic Movies' book giveaway and how to enter the sweepstakes. This month they're giving away a few copies of Architectural Digest:Hollywood at Home.

I'm a Bibliophile -- Are You?

Checking my e-mail has never been so much fun; I find interesting and informative e-mail in my in-box almost every day. I have met some great people through my blogs. Last week I received an e-mail from the Florida Bibliophile Society.

The Florida Bibliophile Society is a great organization that you might not have heard of. I must admit that I had never heard of it before last week. The FBS, formed in Tampa in 1983, is for people who are involved with books -- collecting, selling, making, reading, etc. The FBS membership form defines a bibliophile as "a connoisseur of books, a book collector, a lover of books."

The FBS currently has just over 50 members throughout the state and four members outside the state. They belong to an umbrella organization called the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, which incorporates more than 25 organizations in the U.S. and Europe, including such prestigious clubs as Grolier (New York), Philobiblon (Philadelphia) and Caxton (Chicago). FBS members have reciprocal visiting privileges with all of the other clubs.

The FBS meets monthly from September through May on the 3rd Sunday of the month at 1:30 p.m. In even months they meet at the University of Tampa and in odd months they meet at Heritage Village in Largo. They have speakers on book-related subjects and twice a year they auction member-donated items for charity. They also have a member flea market and show-and-tell in November and provide the checkroom service and evaluate books at the book fair held each March at the St. Petersburg Coliseum.

Annual membership fees are $25 for those in Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco and Pinellas counties, and $20 for those living elsewhere in the state. Even though their membership year runs from October through September, I'm sending in my membership form this week. There's still nine months' worth of book fun that I don't want to miss.

They invited me to their holiday party this past Sunday. Even though I didn't know anyone and was almost an hour late because I'm directionally challenged, I had a blast. I met a man who is a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society. (I read in the FBS newsletter that at the November meeting he brought a poster he created about the different actors who have portrayed Sherlock Holmes through the years. I wish I could have seen that!)

I met someone who told me that he has 19 boxes of books packed away in his closet and a couple of thousand displayed on bookshelves. The Husband and I have about 500 or so books on shelves and about 4 or 5 boxes packed away. I thought that was a lot, but I'm learning that "a lot of books" means different things to different people.

I bought four books for $9 at the member-donated auction, which I promptly gave to The Husband as soon as I got home. )At the rate I'm going, he'll have nothing to open on Christmas Day.) Also, I learned how little I actually know about books. I don't mean book titles or genres or authors, but the actual books themselves. When describing the books being auctioned, the auctioneer talked about the binding, bookplate, dedication, illustrations, whether the book was in "good" or "fine" condition and so on. Very, very interesting stuff.

Visit www.floridabibliophilesociety.org to learn more about the FBS, to read the various articles, or to peruse the various biblio links.

If you're interested in joining or learning more, you're welcome at the next meeting. C'mon, embrace your inner bibliophile.

Local Author R. Beck

I recently heard from Pinellas author R. Beck, who let me know that his new book Elements of Recovery, published in October, was nominated for a Benjamin Franklin Award, a ForeWard Magazine Award, and an IPPY. Beck's working on getting a website, but until then you can learn more about Elements of Recovery at the Behler Publicatons website.

Quote of the Day

If we encountered a man or rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tampa is Florida's "Most Literate" City

Central Connecticut State University has ranked the culture and resources for reading in the 69 largest U.S. cities. Tampa is number 24 -- tied with Tulsa, Oklahoma -- on this "most literate" list. Other Florida cities that made the list were Miami, number 27, and Jacksonville, number 50.

The 2005 study looked at six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.

Tampa ranked number 36 in the 2004 survey.

Read the full story in the Tampa Bay Business Journal or view the survey online.

(cross-posted at Sticks of Fire)

Book Buzz:"Good Girls Don't" by Kelley St. John

Good Girls Don't by Kelley St. John (ISBN 0-446-61720-2)

Reading Good Girls Don't is like eating expensive gourmet chocolate: delightful, decadent and utterly delicious. What should be a routine romance is instead a fun, toe-curling read.

Colette Campbell, the main character, runs a company called My Alibi, which provides fake cover stories and alibis for people who want to avoid telling their spouses, families, and employers the truth about their actions. She's not really proud of helping people lie, but she's making good money that she's socking away for the future. Her sister Amy designs sex toys for a company called Adventurous Accessories.

Amy doesn't want to ever be tied down to a boyfriend or husband, but stumbles across true love anyway. Colette reconnects with an old flame by having to lie to him for her job. You know how both romances are going to end up, but St. John makes the ride so enjoyable that you're glad to go along.

I could take the high road and tell you that I enjoyed Colette's struggle with being deceitful for a living and her thoughtful self-examination. Or I could tell you that the sex scenes are well-written, the characters sassy and engaging, and that this book is hard to put down. Both are true.

Good Girls Don't is a racy, romantic romp that is great fun to read.

Books, Blogs and Burgers

Today I had lunch with Tommy from Sticks of Fire. He's just as nice in person as he is via e-mail. Afterward, we browsed at the Old Tampa Book Company for a few minutes and then, unfortunately, we had to go back to work. On my way back to the office, I passed a tiny bookstore that I've never seen before. I'm going to check it out later in the week.

Books, blogs and burgers. What a great way to start off the week!

Local "Book Babes" in "Good Housekeeping" Magazine

Last night I was reading the December issue of Good Housekeeping magazine and discovered, to my delight, that local "Book Babes" Margo Hammond (book editor for the St. Pete Times) and Ellen Heltzel write for that magazine. Their columns are archived on the Good Housekeeping website. Sigh...I don't need anything else for Christmas; this is gift enough to suit me. (Note to The In-Laws: please disregard the last sentence.)

December Book Club Pick:"Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier

December's pick for the TBB Online Book Club is Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Throughout the month, I'll post various news, trivia and tidbits about the book. Then on the last day of the month, I'll tell you what I thought of it and look forward to your comments about what you thought of it.

Online Book Club Review:"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (ISBN 0-316-01177-0)

Who is the historian in Elizabeth Kostova's novel? One historian is the sixteen-year-old woman telling the story of how she stumbled across her father's papers, which led her down a path of investigation into both her own personal history and the history of the medieval ruler Vlad the Impaler. Her father is certainly a historian, who shares with his daughter stories of his decades of traveling the world examining obscure texts while anxiously looking over his shoulder, fearful that the evil he is researching will find him first.

Author Kostova is certainly a historian, having done meticulous research on the mythology, folklore, history, customs and religion of central and eastern Europe. She has created a complex tale that explores the idea that Vlad the Impaler -- the Dracula of modern myth -- is still alive, still as cruel and voracious as the vampire "myths" of many cultures portray him.

Unfortunately, the reader needs to be a historian to be able to dredge through all 642 pages of this book successfully. Kostova took a brilliant idea and buried it in multiple flashback sequences, giving minute historical, literary and cultural details that don't advance the storyline.

The ending is a disappointment, wrapping everything up too suddenly, with no satisfaction for the reader. It's as if Kostova spent all her time on the build-up -- the development of the story -- and then suddenly ran out of steam when it came time to actually tell the story. The Historian is more of a lengthy, sometimes interesting, certainly well-researched, backstory on what, how and why the characters were going to research the Dracula myth, and not the story of what happens when they discover the truth and come face-to-face with evil.

What did you think?

Help me decide what to read every month by joining the Tampa Book Buzz Online Book Club.