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Lisa Guidarini
Chicago
Interests: Reading, writing, reviewing books, photography.
Recent Activity
Happy birthday! Any my "thing" was a little pillow my grandmother sent me. I forgot it at her house once (six hours away) and all my wailing resulted in her having to quickly pop it in the mail. It was so well loved she sewed a new pillowcase for it, which I wasn't entirely happy about...
Toggle Commented Aug 7, 2013 on Happy Birthday to... at dovegreyreader scribbles
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So beautiful! I love, love, love lavender and that cake... Yes, please!
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What a clever idea to continue the Holmes tradition via his landlady! I'm going to search these out...
My dear Lynne! My daughter will be studying in Wales a year from now (Swansea). I'll have to pass along to her the fact winter loses its grip so much earlier in Britain. Here we still have snow. No flowers popping up 'til late March/early April at the earliest. And we can't plant anything 'til mid-MAY... Sigh. But she won't be that far from you next year, will she? The lucky thing! Lisa :-)
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Large container of pate (can't do accent mark!) coming your way, Magnus my friend, if you pick me.
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I must read this book! Creepy old houses are definitely my sort of thing. Lisa
I found it! I did! I posted about today's book haul on my blog and In a Dry Season was one of them! I'm pleased and have two books to finish ahead of it - including the JK Rowling The Casual Vacancy - then I'll start it. Yay!
I'm about 200 pp in and I think it's well-written so far. It won't be the best book I've read this year but it's far from the worst. I'm trying to think whose style it reminds me of but can't quite decide. It's very British and serious. The characters are well-drawn - though so many it's hard keeping track of who's who. The plot's okay, not quite as tight as it could be but she has 300 pages left to draw it in. Pretty good, methinks.
Mmm, yum! I'm just now starting to look for such engrossing thrillers - came across Karin Fossum's name, have you read her? I love Ian Rankin, for one, and preferred settings are villages in Britain. This one, featuring a lost village is exactly my sort of book! Will hit the used bookshops to look for this and also the Vintage Penguins I've fallen in lust with. Thanks for the lovely review!
Yesssssssss!!!! Congratulations!!
Toggle Commented Sep 13, 2012 on We Are The Chosen Ones at Causerie
1 reply
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Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, 1912 “Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.” Death in... Continue reading
Posted Jul 25, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Julian Barnes - A Life with Books. Jonathan Cape/Random House, 2012. 27 pp. [Personal copy.] Novelist, essayist, Booker Prize winner and all around genius writer Julian Barnes published this tiny essay for charity. I found out about it and was... Continue reading
Posted Jul 19, 2012 at Bluestalking
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First Love: A Gothic Tale by Joyce Carol Oates, Illus. by Barry Moses. The Echo Press/W.W. Norton 1996. 86 pp [Library copy.] I'm a fervent fan of Joyce Carol Oates, though I'll admit I don't appreciate all her works equally.... Continue reading
Posted Jul 19, 2012 at Bluestalking
Plots, Plots, Plots! When last I wrote we were discussing Freytag's Triangle, the classic framework for storytelling. At the end of the post I mentioned it's perfectly okay to borrow general ideas from other writers. In fact, all writers do... Continue reading
Posted Jul 18, 2012 at Bluestalking
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A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers McSweeney's; First Edition edition (June 19, 2012) I'm not particularly an Eggers fan, or particularly not. I don't follow his work per se, though I dip into the McSweeney's site every now... Continue reading
Posted Jul 16, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Busy reading weekend if not a particularly remarkable week, otherwise. The highlight was taking the cat to the vet to find out if there's a medical reason he's "leaking" all over the place. Turns out kitty has an infection of... Continue reading
Posted Jul 15, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Foster by Claire Keegan Faber and Faber, 2010 [Library copy] Her mother pregnant with the latest of her seemingly endless siblings, Leanbh is sent to live with her aunt and uncle on a farm in Wexford, to help lighten the... Continue reading
Posted Jul 12, 2012 at Bluestalking
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In early August I'm going on a self-imposed solitary writing retreat for just shy of a week. Left to my own devices at home there are always a million reasons I come up with not to work on fiction: I... Continue reading
Posted Jul 11, 2012 at Bluestalking
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The age of miracles by Karen Thompson Walker Random House, 2012 269 pp. [Library copy] The premise is simple but brilliant: one day the earth's rotation begins to slow; from that point things rapidly degenerate, endangering all life on earth.... Continue reading
Posted Jul 10, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Turn away now, Austenites! I'm about to make a statement you will find vulgar and unfitting for a lady of good breeding: I've abandoned my reread of Pride and Prejudice, leaving it due to the antsy feeling I encountered every... Continue reading
Posted Jul 9, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Busy reading for review and even a bit for optional review. I always manage to squeeze in a little of both. That's what they call "life balance." Others may insist this is actually keeping your house clean, exercising, running errands... Continue reading
Posted Jul 7, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Fifty Most Important Landmarks of the World, Pt. 1: via pxleyes 13 Trickiest Grammar Hang-Ups, via Writers Digest Rare Paul McCartney Photos: via Huffington Post Books The Visual Art and Design of Famous Writers A Writer's Book of Days by... Continue reading
Posted Jul 6, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Will be out rockets red glaring this evening, along with half the American population, save those who are curmudgeonly sticks in the mud. But then, since we haven't had enough rainfall in two months to call an actual rainfall, they're... Continue reading
Posted Jul 4, 2012 at Bluestalking
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I should get some flipping nice hits for today's subject line but I needed a bit of a break from my recent seriousness. My regular readership must think the real Lisa has been captured and held ransom, possibly killed, her... Continue reading
Posted Jul 3, 2012 at Bluestalking
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Funny, when I was in Mississippi I thought it was terribly hot but compared to this week in Chicago, that was nothing. It was hanging out in the high 80s/low 90s there but at least in the shade, with a... Continue reading
Posted Jul 2, 2012 at Bluestalking