Comments for On My Wishlist: December 25, 2010

Everything but the Horse by Holly Hobbie (Recommended by Manga Mania Cafe)

Goodreads description:

This gorgeous, resonant tale is a beautiful recollection from Holly Hobbie's own childhood about her love affair with horses.When Holly's family moves from the city to the countryside, she's scared of this new world at first, but gradually comes to love the animals she encounters. Soon she is drawing the horses in the local pastures obsessively, hinting to her parents what she wants more than anything. But will her one wish ever come true?

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass (Recommended by Manga Mania Cafe)

GoodReads Description:

Four children have been chosen to compete in a national competition to find the tastiest confection in the country. Who will invent a candy more delicious than the Oozing Crunchorama or the Neon Lightning Chew?

Logan, the Candymaker's son, who can detect the color of chocolate by touch alone? Miles, the boy who is allergic to merry-go-rounds and the color pink? Daisy, the cheerful girl who can lift a fifty-pound lump of taffy like it's a feather? Or Philip, the suit-and-tie wearing boy who's always scribbling in a secret notebook?

This sweet, charming, and cleverly crafted story, told from each contestant's perspective, is filled with mystery, friendship, and juicy revelations.

Beryl: A Pig's Tale by Jane Simmons (Recommended by Manga Mania Cafe)

When Beryl decides to look for a family that will love her just the way she is, from her pig nose to her curly tail, she bravely sets off on a journey that will ultimately change her life forever.

Away from the cruel and ill-tempered pigs on the farm where she grew up, Beryl finds her preconceived notions of wild pigs — and everything else — put to the test. And with the help of the many unlikely friends she meets, Beryl discovers, at the cost of some heartache, that there just might be a place she could call home after all. If she could only get there

Invisible Things by Jenny Davidson (Recommended by Amanda's Books and More)

Sixteen-year-old Sophie knows there is more to the story of her parents' death. And she's on a mission to find the truth. To aid her in solving the decades-old mystery, Sophie has enlisted her best friend, Mikael, whose friendship has turned into something more. It's soon clear that Sophie's future is very much wrapped up in the details of her family's past, and the key lies with information only one man can provide: her parents' former employer, the elusive billionaire Alfred Nobel.

As the threat of war looms in Europe, dangers to Sophie and her loved ones grow. While her determination to solve the mystery doesn't waver, forces beyond her control conspire to keep her from her purpose. Then, news of her great-aunt Tabitha's death sets off a chain of events that leaves Sophie questioning everything.

The more Sophie learns, the more she realizes that nothing—and no one—in her life is what it seems. And coming to terms with the dark secrets she uncovers means imagining a truth that she never dreamed possible. Full of gorgeous settings, thrilling adventure, and romance, invisible things is a novel that dares to ask, what if?

Mapping Desire by David Bell (Recommended by Sara Ahmed)

GoodReads description:

Editors David Bell and Gill Valentine have brought together contributors with a wealth of approaches to ways in which the spaces of sex and the sexes of space are being mapped out across contemporary culture. Among the many sexual geographies covered are: Lesbians at home and on the streets; gay men on fantasy islands; bisexual identities; The heterosexualization of the workplace; bachelor farmers and spinsters; surveillance and sexuality; prostitution; queer politics; sexual citizenship, and the transformation of intimacy.

The book is divided into four sections: cartographies/identities; sexualized spaces: global/local; sexualized spaces: local/global; sites of resistance. Each section is separately introduced. Beyond the bibliography, an annotated guide to further reading is also provided to help the reader map their own way through the literature.

Pleasure Zones by Jon Binnie and Ruth Holiday (Recommended by Sara Ahmed)

GoodReads Description:

The essays collected in this volume apply queer theory in a consideration of the human body as a vehicle for understanding relationships between people and place. The book examines the body as an entity constructed by gender, sexuality, race, class, nationality and disability.

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia by Mary Stefaniak (Recommended by Tina Says)

GoodReads description:

Narrator Gladys Cailiff is eleven years old in 1938 when a new, well-traveled young schoolteacher turns a small Georgia town upside down. Miss Grace Spivey believes in field trips, Arabian costumes, and reading aloud from her ten-volume set of The Thousand Nights and a Night. The real trouble begins when she decides to revive the annual town festival as an exotic Baghdad bazaar.

Miss Spivey transforms the lives of everyone around her: Gladys's older brother Force (with his movie-star looks), her pregnant sister May (a gifted storyteller herself), and especially the Cailiffs' African American neighbor, young Theo Boykin, whose creative genius becomes the key to a colorful, hidden history of the South.

C by Tom McCarthy (Recommended by The New Dork Book of Reviews)

GoodRead's Description:

C follows the short, intense life of Serge Carrefax, a man who - as his name suggests - surges into the electric modernity of the early twentieth century, transfixed by the technologies that will obliterate him.

Born to the sound of one of the very earliest experimental wireless stations, Serge finds himself steeped in a weird world of transmissions, whose very air seems filled with cryptic and poetic signals of all kinds. When personal loss strikes him in his adolescence, this world takes on a darker and more morbid aspect. What follows is a stunning tour de force in which the eerily idyllic settings of pre-war Europe give way to the exhilarating flightpaths of the frontline aeroplane radio operator, then the prison camps of Germany, the drug-fuelled London of the roaring twenties and, finally, the ancient tombs of Egypt.

Reminiscent of Bolaño, Beckett and Pynchon, this is a remarkable novel - a compelling, sophisticated and sublimely imaginative book uncovering the hidden codes and dark rhythms that sustain life.

The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean (Recommended by Manga Mania Cafe)

GoodRead's Description

Cissy Sissney has always longed for a life filled with adventure, and her wish is unexpectedly granted when she is sent to live aboard the Sunshine Queen—a shipwrecked paddle steamer that houses the Bright Lights Theater Company. When the showboat is carried back out to sea, the motley crew on board embarks on a wild and hilarious journey. But along the way, one of their own falls into grave danger…and Cissy learns that the stakes of fame are higher than she could possibly have imagined.

Renowned storyteller Geraldine McCaughrean weaves a rip-roaring river adventure that’s chock-full of sidesplitting humor and daring escapades. Readers won’t be able to resist riding along on the Sunshine Queen’s thrilling journey in this fun and accessible tale.

The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler (Recommended by Dashiell Hammett)

A couple of missing wives — one a rich man's and one a poor man's — become the objects of Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.