A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore...

The first image is the cover of James Patterson's Cross ; the second, the Harper Perennial version of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice . Essentially, the same picture but tinted differently. Does anybody know which building is in the background? Thanks to Andi-- Tripping Towards Lucidity (Estella's Revenge) --for alerting me to this!

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

Here are the rules: 1. Compile your list of favorites. Please be sure that books you choose actually were published in 2008, or at the very earliest in the winter holiday season of 2007. Sometimes books that come out then are left out. 2. Come back and sign Mr Linky with the url to your top books of 2008 post. 3. If you happen to see any non-WG bloggers making similar lists, please grab the url and come put it in Mr Linky for them. Let them know you’re doing that, please, in case they have some sort of objection; if they do, they can ask me to remove their link. I’ve already seen a couple favorites of 2008 posts, which is another reason I wanted to get started early. 4. Feel free to make changes to your list if you read something new in the next few weeks. After about October 25, I can’t guarantee your changes will be reflected in the master list. We’ll probably start compiling lists around then. 5. Please consider whether you’d like to help me compile lists. So here's my list (in ...

I've been trying to limit my TBR pile, so my list this week is going to be short. The Rose of Sebastopol , by Katharine McMahon. Set during the Crimean War. The Dracula Dossier , by James Reese. ARC. Historical mystery about Bram Stoker, Jack the Ripper, and other late-19th century people. The Blackstone Key , by Rose Melikan. Historical fiction/ mystery, set in late-18th century England. Not an ARC, but I've been sent a copy for review. Bones of the Dead , by Ellie Newmark. Mystery set in 15th century Venice. Completely tangental to Friday Finds is... today's my birthday!

I'm back again with another plug for a website/ blog that's caught my attention lately. It's a blog called People Reading , and essentially this woman goes around San Francisco taking pictures of people reading. She also talks to them a bit about their reading habits. Then, she asks her readers questions about their own habits. I've considered starting a sister blog for New York, but I'm not quite outgoing enough to do so.

What was the most unusual (for you) book you ever read? Either because the book itself was completely from out in left field somewhere, or was a genre you never read, or was the only book available on a long flight… whatever? What (not counting school textbooks, though literature read for classes counts) was furthest outside your usual comfort zone/familiar territory? And, did you like it? Did it stretch your boundaries? Did you shut it with a shudder the instant you were done? Did it make you think? Have nightmares? Kick off a new obsession? I'd have to say that one of the most unusual books I ever read, and not in a good way, was Lucky Billy , by John Vernon. It features the life (and death) of the famous outlaw. I do read historical fiction, but not books set in the American west, so I thought this would be a new and welcome change. Wrong. Vernon's fictional treatment of the story was so disjointed and confusing that I stopped reading about 100 pages in. He kept switching ba...

The thinly-disguised story of Catherine Dickens, wife of the famous author, is at the heart of this unpretentious, unassuming novel. The celebrated author Alfred Gibson has died, leaving England in mourning. His estranged wife, Dorothy (or “Dodo”) sits at home as the funeral and reading of the will take place. As she sits, she looks back on her twenty-year-plus marriage to “the One and Only,” and “The Great Original.” An invitation to visit Queen Victoria, as well to her sister Sissy and the actress Wilhelmina Rickets, leads to another series of reflections on her marriage. It’s a quiet novel, simple yet complicated in many ways. There’s not much action, certainly not in the present day, but there’s a certain gentleness of language that makes this book compellingly readable. Dodo, despite her shy, retiring ways, is a likeable heroine, strong in the ways a “typical” Victorian woman wasn’t supposed to be. In addition, I enjoyed the way the characters interacted with one another: Dodo’s d...