Vintage Movie Classics

Here's a pretty neat idea for classic film fans who also like to read. Vintage has taken a few titles that were made into popular Hollywood films back in the day and reissued them with all new cover designs and forewords from film historians and biographers. Sure, it's all about finding new ways to market old books to new audiences but as marketing goes, this idea is a pretty good one.  As of March 25 four titles will be available, with additional Vintage Movie Classics editions of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and The Bitter Tea of General Yen slated for release in September.  If your favorite channels are TCM and AMC, Vintage Movie Classics might be your new favorite books.

Titles available March 25:

Review: Madam: A Novel of New Orleans

Madam: A Novel of New Orleans by Cari Lynn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Before New Orleans's infamous Storyville red light district, there was Venus Alley. And before Josie Arlington, whose Chateau Lobrano d'Arlington was one of the crown jewels of Basin Street in Storyville, there was little Mary Deubler, one of Venus Alley's anonymous crib girls who would someday be one of the most famous of the Storyville madams.

Madam follows Mary's struggles as one of the nameless underclass, fending off her abusive uncle while keeping her brother and sister-in-law fed and with a roof over their heads. Even at this point, she shows remarkable nerve and initiative when she assumes ownership of her own crib on Venus Alley, and again when she seeks employment with the flashy Lulu White, the unchallenged queen of the New Orleans bordellos. Lulu isn't impressed with what she sees in Mary, but Storyville saloon owner Tom Anderson is, and soon enough Mary has a new business partner, a new name, and a new destiny.

Running parallel to Mary's reinvention is that of a young piano player, Ferdinand LaMenthe, who is juggling professional ambitions of his own against his grandmother's expectations of Creole respectability. The name Ferdinand will eventually choose for himself will go on to be legendary in the history of American ragtime.

Featuring a well-researched cast of real-life characters from New Orleans's colorful past, as well as a vintage photograph to open each chapter, Madam breathes some life back into a brief period that has largely been scoured out of New Orleans's official history.

*This review is of an advanced reader copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review*



View all my reviews

I took the 50 Book Pledge!

I signed up to read at least 75 books in 2014 at the 50 Book Pledge.  So far I'm on track to do a lot more, so I'll give it a look later and revise if I think I can break 100 this year.  The site has giveaways and badges you can earn as you meet your challenge, and adding books to your shelves is as easy as searching for the book's title and clicking add on the shelf page.  I'll be adding this challenge onto my challenges page as well.

Kindle First

Here's some great news for owners of Kindle devices who also subscribe to Amazon's Prime program.  I'm sure you already knew about the Kindle Owners Lending Library program Amazon runs, where you can "borrow" one book a month out of a selection on offer but Amazon also has a program that allows Prime members access to pre-release Kindle books.  It's called Kindle First, and here's what you need to know:

• If you're a Prime member, you automatically have access to Kindle First.
• You can choose one of four picks for each month to download prior to its official release and read for free on any Kindle device or Kindle reading app.
• The book you choose is yours to keep.
• You can opt in to a monthly email letting you know when new picks are available.

So far, Kindle First is open to US subscribers only.  You can check out this month's Kindle First picks here.  Happy Reading!

Street Shot, Texas Book Festival in Austin

Loading Penguin's FirstToRead Galleys on a Kindle Fire

If you're anything like me, you were a bit dismayed to discover that the Penguin FirstToRead program doesn't offer Kindle formatted e-galleys.  You probably also couldn't get anywhere with the instructions provided on how to get the books to work on a third-party app.  Relax.  I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do to get your book up and running on your Fire, without any confusion.

1.  First of all, as the program tells you, you will need the Aldiko app.  It's not available as of this posting through Amazon's app store, but you can change the settings on your Kindle Fire to allow you to load outside apps just long enough to download it from their site and install it (they have instructions, I'll skip ahead presuming you're already at that point to tell you how to get over the final hurdle they don't.)

2. You need to have Aldiko authorized for Adobe Digital Editions with an Adobe ID.  If you're an Overdrive user through your public library, you already use ADE so all you need is your current Adobe ID and password to set up in Aldiko.  If you're not, you need to get an Adobe ID, but it's really easy (and free!) to do.

3.  Here's the important part, that none of the other directions I've found make clear.  Everyone else says, "open ADE on your computer, load your .acsm file, and then copy that PDF to your device".  DON'T DO THAT.  I tried it countless times, and it doesn't work.  Here's what does.  What you want to transfer onto your device is the original .acsm file downloadable from FirstToRead.  It won't want to work using the browser on your device (on mine it tries to open the file using Overdrive, which doesn't support PDFs), so you'll need to download it onto your computer first, then hook your Fire up to your computer using the USB cable and transfer the .acsm into the Digital Editions folder.  Once that's done, go into Files on Aldiko's main screen, open the Digital Editions folder, click the file and choose Import.  The book itself should now appear on your bookshelf.

Now you're ready to read!  This should also work with any other DRM protected PDF books you may download.

Texas Book Festival - Authors announced!

The Texas Book Festival is one of my favorite annual activities, and they've just recently released a full list of the authors who will be in attendance this year. Mark your calendars for the final weekend in October! The festival has created a handy list of every author separated by genre in a downloadable, printable PDF here. Stay tuned for news on the full schedule release. As you may or may not know, they have also released the festival poster for this year!

(image via Texas Book Festival Facebook)

From the Texas Book Festival Facebook page:
"The 2013 Texas Book Festival poster art is by Randal Ford of Randal Ford Photography, a photograph that he shot for "The Amazing Faith of Texas," a book featuring images of people and churches all over Texas. This photo was taken on Highway 67 near Ruidosa, Texas (population 43)."

Giving this another go...

It's been a while since I attempted this, and I didn't do such a great job.  Whoops!  Anyway, here I am, back to give this book blogging thing another go.  In the meantime, while I haven't been so great at keeping my resolution to post here, I have been very active on goodreads, my current favorite review platform.  You can catch up on what I've been reading over there, and in the meantime I'm working on some new exciting stuff!

Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2011

To really get my year in books off the ground, I've decided to take part in some of the reading challenges out there on some book blogs.  The first one I've decided to join should be a breeze for me, since historical fiction is my favorite kind of fiction.  So I'm very excited to throw my hat in the ring for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2011!

I've decided to sign up at the "Severe Bookaholic" level, which means completing 20 books between now and December 31.  I'm confident I can do that many (possibly more!), and I've even got started on my to-read list.  So, in no particular order (links go to each book's page on goodreads):

1. The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar ✓
2. The Pirate Devlin by Mark Keating ✓
3. The Orchid Affair by Lauren Willig ✓
4. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
5. Queen Hereafter by Susan Fraser King
6. Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran
7. The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor
8. The Wake of the Lorelei Lee by L.A. Meyer
9. The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer
10. The Wrong Blood by Manuel de Lope
11. Juliet by Anne Fortier ✓
12. Poison by Sara Poole ✓
13. Prophecy by S. J. Parris
14. The Lady's Slipper by Deborah Swift
15. 
    
16. 
    
17. 
    
18. 
    
19. 
    
20. 
    

... and that's all for now, just going off my current library stack and the books on my shelf.  Others will be added in time but half the list chosen this early in the year is a pretty good start.

Fresh blog, fresh start!

Here I am in a new location, ready to start my reading year in a new place.  I might try to migrate old posts from the livejournal I used to keep as a reading log, but for now I'm just focusing on getting this new one off the ground.  If you're reading this, welcome and thank you very much for visiting!