TheBookJeanie

WELCOME  TO THE BOOKJEANIIE After a week's break due to lack of internet service during my move, I am back with more book news and reviews. Take time on this beautiful Easter spring day to enjoy a good book or perhaps this lovely poem by Billy Collins, former  U.S. Poet Laureate.  Today BY  BILLY COLLINS If ever there were a spring day so perfect, so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house and unlatch the door to the canary's cage, indeed, rip the little door from its jamb, a day when the cool brick paths and the garden bursting with peonies seemed so etched in sunlight that you felt like taking a hammer to the glass paperweight on the living room end table, releasing the inhabitants from their snow-covered cottage so they could walk out, holding hands and squinting into this larger dome of blue and white, well, today is just that kind of day.

     A Spring Waterfall of Books. . .         Welcome to THEBOOKJEANIE It is a beautiful March day here in the desert Southwest: warm sun, wide blue sky, and a gentle cooling breeze.  I'm sitting outside on the patio with a good book, a glass of red wine, and the promise of a radiant sunset.  Here are some suggestions for your future reading - enjoy the promise of spring!                                    This book literally dropped into my lap, delivered by a neighbor one day.  You have to read this, she said, and left me to open the pages and fall under the spell Jan Philipp Sendker's mystical novel set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. Julia Win has come halfway around the world in search of her Burmese father who left New York on a business trip to Asia and disappeared in Thailand four years ago. After finding a letter that her father wrote to a woman in Kalaw, Burma, before she was born, Julia impulsively flies to Rangoon hoping that sh

ONE HUMP OR TWO? GET ON BOARD WITH THEBOOKJEANIE Camels shuttle books to remote nomadic tribes throughout Mongolia thanks to the Mongolian Children's Mobile Library, a project initiated by author Jambyn Dashdondog.  Author of 108 books, Dashdondog aims to provide reading opportunities to children in rural areas who have little or no access to books.  In 2006 he won the reading promotion award from the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) for his "lasting contribution to promote reading among children." Dashdondog is featured in Margriet Ruurs book My Librarian is a Camel: How Books are Brought to Children Around the World. Just spent the day at this wonderful book festival in Tucson, Arizona.  It was a bright sunny day and thousands of locals and visitors from around the country came out to enjoy this special weekend on the campus of the University of Arizona.  For two days authors gave presentations, writers provided workshops

MARCH INTO    SPRING WITH  THEBOOKJEANIE I am going to try and follow the advice from this poster produced in the 1930's, as one of the WPA projects for the arts. Haven't you always wanted to read Jane Austen?  I know there are many of you who are already Austen fans, seen the movies, etc. but how many people have read the books?  I know you Austen readers are out there.  I vow to finally become a member of this exclusive enclave of readers and would appreciate your suggestion of a favorite title.  Please let me know the Jane Austen book that I should not miss in the comment section at the end of this post.  Many thanks, dear readers. Don't open this book if you are not going to allow yourself to be open to any and all possibilities.  In Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore , Clay Jannon finds himself out of a job as a web designer in San Francisco. One day he happens to notice a Help Wanted sign in a narrow bookshop window.  When he reveals t