Books: Travels with a Pet and Other Animals

Besides downloading more than 250 books so far from Kindle, most of them classics for free, I've bought and am reading a few that cost $2.99 or less and one just downloaded for $7.95.  Keeping costs down, but then two days ago I spent over $30 in the bookstore!

I'm now re-reading and enjoying Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson, in which the author roams through mountains in France with his pack animal, a little donkey he names Modestine.

 Another travel book that I've read a couple of times is Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Centennial Edition) by John Steinbeck, who motored across America in the 1960 with his dog, a standard poodle named Charley.

Wish I knew more books about traveling with a pet or animal. Do you know of any?

Teaser Tuesday: Threads West by Reid Lance Rosenthal

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose two sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"That's it? asked Johannes. "We're going on a five-month-long journey, to an area that I hear is like the Alps, in a country where half the citizens dislike the other half, filled with hostile Indians based on one man's assessment? How do you know what you're going to find when you get there?" (p. 173)

Threads West: An American Saga, Book One
Author: Reid Lance Rosenthal
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Rockin SR Publishing (October 12, 2010)
Genre: Historical fiction, western
Source: publicist, the Cadence Group

Product description: The romance of America, her people, her spirit, and the West. The ongoing story of us. This first book and namesake of the six-novel series is being compared by reviewers and authors to Lonesome Dove and Centennial. The tale bursts with the adventure, romance and promise of historical America and the West. The epic saga of Threads West begins in 1855 with the first of four richly-textured, complex generations of unforgettable characters. The separate lives of these driven men and independent women are drawn to a common destiny that beckons seductively from the wild and remote flanks of the American West. They are swept into the dangerous currents of the far-distant frontier by the mysterious rivers of fate, the power of the land and the American spirit. Their turbulent journeys are heartbreaking quests intertwined with romance and adversity, passions and pathos, despair and triumph.

Comments: The author weaves many different characters and personalities, native and immigrant, into the story to give a full picture of what the West was like in the mid 19th century. Recommended for those interested in American history and stories of the opening up of the West.

Sticker Shock: Keeping Track of Books Bought in 2011

Memoirs

I hardly buy new books these days, preferring the library and used book sales! However, with my new Kindle, I bought several eBooks in 2010, though nothing more than $2.99 each, and I've downloaded over 200 free classics.

So far in 2011, I've made the following purchase(s):

1. A Haunting Smile (Land of Smiles Trilogy) by Christopher G. Moore, eBook, $2.99.
2. Good Poems by Garrison Keillor, $16.20.
3. Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems (Edición bilingüe), $15.30.
4. 9 Gold Bullets (Vincent Calvino Crime Novel) by Christopher G. Moore, eBook, $7.95.









UPDATE: I have just found there are free e-Book downloads at Many Books and at Project Gutenberg.

Thanks to Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for the idea of keeping track of book buys/costs. I hope to shock myself by spending as little as possible! We'll see.....

Free eBook until Jan. 16, courtesy of Graham Parke

No Hope for Gomez!

I'm sharing with you an email from Graham Parke, author of the popular book, No Hope for Gomez! Parke is offering his new eBook, a very short novelette, Random Acts of Senseless Kindness, free for you to download until Jan. 16.

Here's his email:

           Hi!

As a token of my appreciation for letting me guest-post on your blog, I'd like to give you the rights to distribute my new eBook,"Random Acts of Senseless Kindness" to your followers.

You can find the eBook and some text and graphics here:

http://www.grahamparke.com/gomezbday/gomeznewyear/gny476.html

Feel free to link directly to this page, or to set up some kind of hosting yourself.

For legal reasons I have to state that I am hereby granting you digital distribution rights to this eBook from the 26th of December 2010 until the 16th of January 2011.

At the end of the period the page above will go offline, so if you link directly to it, that part is taken care of automatically.

Happy holidays,
Graham

There you have it, folks. A brand new eBook novelette, free to download until Jan. 16. Go for it! I must warn you though, as the book title suggests, No Hope for Gomez, the novelette/short story has a bit of a Noir message and carries the No Hope theme through; maybe makes fun of the reader at the same time. But go ahead and try it.

2010: Some Favorite Books Read But Not Reviewed

Looking over my list of book reviews for last year (in the previous post), I noticed some outstanding gaps. Did I really read the books below and not give them a full review? Here are some of the Read But Not Reviewed books that I recommend for everyone's TBR list!

1. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.)  by Barbara Kingsolver, one of the best books I read in 2010.

2. The Girl Who Played with Fire (Vintage)by Stieg Larsson
3. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
4. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Alan Bradley

5. Aching for Alwaysby Gwyn Cready
6. Tumbling Through Time by Gwyn Cready
7. Several mysteries by Susan Hill

8. Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen, Kindle edition
9. I Curse the River of Time: A Novel (The Lannan Translation Series) by Per Petterson
10. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd - the audio book I really enjoyed

11.Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

12. World and Town by Gish Jen, a novel


There are more, especially library books that I've returned and can't (heavens!) remember! I've really got to be more deliberate next year - another New Year's Resolution!