Leslie's Bookcase

celebrating books & the literary lifestyle

Page 13 of 30

‘THE DOLLHOUSE’ & MY MARDI GRAS PARTY

I don’t have a book club, but I do have a Downton Abbey group…a group of 4 women who connected over this show years ago.

Once or twice we tried to read this same book but we were forgetting to talk about it until the end of our “meetings” so we gave that idea up, and now we just “meet.”

At the past meeting I hosted I had to laugh because they all walked in with a pile of books, and the first 20 mins of the gathering consisted of them passing books around to each other, returning books to each other, and recommending books.

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THE BOOK I JUST READ IN ONE DAY

Not often can I finish a book in only one day due to work, kids, etc. but I just did…

I started reading Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro yesterday before dinner, and I finished it early this evening.

This is a memoir from an already established writer who (just for fun) sent in a DNA test to Ancestry.com, as many of us have. But instead of finding out an interesting variation from what she expected, she found out her beloved and deceased father was not actually her biological father.

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A GUIDE TO THE 2019 OSCAR AWARDS – How & where to see all the movies before the awards show

The 91st Academy Awards will be televised on Sunday, February 24. This gives us a few weeks to watch the movies that will be honored.

Keep reading to find out how to see all the nominees for best picture.

Unless you go to the movie theater regularly, seeing all the films nominated for “best picture” can be a challenge. By the time the nominees are announced, some movies are already out of theaters and may have entered a blackout period where they are not yet available through other providers.

Luckily, this year with some careful planning we can have access to all the movies in time for the awards show. Not many are available for rent yet so you will have to purchase some of them, but keep in mind that $15 is still cheaper than two people going to the theater!

Although the list of nominations is by no means a complete list of all the movies worth seeing from the year, I have found this project a good way to see a diverse group of movies, many of which I would not have seen otherwise.

Below is my guide for how you can see all the movies before Feb. 24. I will be filling in my thoughts about all as I work through the list myself.

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THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY

This book about the German occupation of the island of Guernsey during WWII was published in 2009, but caught my attention as a new movie feature on Netflix. And I’m always looking for additions to my WWII historical fiction reading list.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – A Novel

The novel reads as a series of letters. At first, the letters were a bit confusing as Juilet Ashton corresponds with her publisher and friends. But then, she receives a letter from Guernsey (territory of Great Britain in the channel islands) because her address was inscribed on the inside of a Charles Lamb book that made its way to the island. Juliet begins corresponding with the letter writer (Dawsey Adams) and the other members of his informal literary group called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers How delightful if that were true.”

the guernsey literary and potato peel society (2009)
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Favorite Children’s Books – Part II

I was helping my 10-year-old clean out his room yesterday – I mean really clean it…it took us more than 2 hours and resulted in a full bag of trash, a pile of recycling, and several other piles to be relocated to other areas of the house. We even went through the closet and under the bed, Ick!!

And in the closet I found the tattered covers of a book I want to recommend.

A couple of years ago I wrote My Favorite Children’s Books Part I about my absolute favorite series of children’s books. I’ve been so focused on my own reading that I forgot to finish this series of posts, but I was inspired to do so yesterday.

Because what I found was obviously another favorite considering the state of this book…I have no idea where the pages went! It literally fell apart due to lots of reading over two kids!

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MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2018

This is my third year of blogging on “Leslie’s Bookcase” and my year-end tradition is to announce my favorite five books of the year. To keep this process consistent from year to year, I only consider books published within the past year. And I can’t read ALL the books so this honor is obviously limited to the books I have read and posted about.

And here are my favorite books of 2018:

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