This week’s “assignment” is all about the magazines we read. Dewey wrote:

For each magazine you want to talk about, here are a few questions. Answer as many or as few as you want.

1. Name of magazine.
2. Do you subscribe or just buy it now and then?
3. What’s your favorite regular feature in the magazine?
4. What do you think your interest in this magazine says about you?
5. How long have you been reading this magazine?
6. Is there any unique or quirky aspect to the magazine that keeps you reading?

I read a lot of magazines…and I thought the best way to talk about them would be to break them up into categories. To read more about each magazine (including subscription information) click on the photo of the magazine cover.

I. Physical Therapy - Professional Magazines

As a California licensed physical therapist, I am continually upgrading my knowledge of what is current in the field. Some of the magazines I get come to me at no cost, simply because I’m a licensed PT. Others I must pay a membership to receive.

Today in PT - published by Steve Hauber is an attractive, glossy freebie which explores topics in the major areas of PT including: cardiopulmonary, geriatrics and home health, neurology, pediatrics, and sports and orthopedics. I most enjoy the sections on home health, neurology and pediatrics as they deal with information pertaining to my business, as well as my work as a home health physical therapist AND my volunteer work with children in Hippotherapy and therapeutic horseback riding.

Advance for Physical Therapists & PT Assistants is a trade magazine published by the APTA. It is another freebie and has the latest information about my profession, as well as a wealth of job advertisements. I enjoy the book reviews, information on conferences and the articles on the latest technologies.

Hippotherapy magazine comes to me through my membership with the American Hippotherapy Association (click here to learn more about what Hippotherapy is all about). I usually read this one cover to cover, but my favorite sections are those which give ideas about treatment on the horse.

Strides is the official publication of the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association (NARHA) and I get this one through my membership with that organization. This is a fun magazine designed to assist instructors in Therapeutic Horseback Riding programs. Again, this is one I enjoy cover to cover.

II. Book Related Magazines

World Literature Today is published bimonthly through the University of Oklahoma. I just started subscribing to this fascinating publication about a year ago. Often I find several interesting articles, and always I find new books to add to my wish list. This month’s edition (which just arrived today) is focused on the subject of the world’s rapidly changing ecology.

Bookmarks Magazine comes out once a month and is a terrific resource for book reviews and opinions about books. I subscribe to this one and look forward to reading each and every issue. I love the section which focuses on a new author each month.

Poets and Writers is also a bimonthly magazine devoted to writers, poets and the literary life. There is always plenty of information on writers conferences and news and trends in the literary world. I don’t subscribe to this one, but I often pick up a copy in the bookstore. The website for this magazine is fabulous - check it out.

III. Lifestyle, Regional and Cooking Magazines

Fine Cooking is one of the best cooking magazines out there - but it is expensive. I don’t subscribe to it (yet), but I do buy a copy when I’m feeling flush. It is glossy with gorgeous photos, and the recipes are those anyone can manage. One of my favorite regular features is the one about Equipment.

I’ve been subscribing to Sunset magazine now for too many years to count. This is a regional magazine that covers food, gardening, travel and home in the West. I constantly am ripping out the travel articles and filing them in a loose leaf binder for vacation and getaway ideas.

Country Home is also a longtime favorite of mine. I’ve been a subscriber for over 20 years now! I love the fresh ideas for home and garden. My favorite regular feature is probably Antiquing Highway.

Thanks for taking a tour through my favorite magazines. Other Weekly Geeks who have also posted on this topic are:

• Maree who shares her favorite cross stitching magazine
• Jessica who offers an eclectic mix of magazines
• Julie who enlightens us with a magazine which is designed to increase cross-cultural awareness

To see all of this weeks posts, visit Dewey’s post about Weekly Geeks #10 and scroll down to Mr Linky.

I also participated in Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon and won 3 Bookmooch points for being one of the participants who raised money for Reading Is Fundamental. Thanks, Dewey!

There are tons of great give-aways out there this week. Check out Books on the Brain where you can win both of Elin Hilderbrand’s books: A Summer Affair and Barefoot. Also Wendy at Musings of a Bookish Kitty is having TWO give-aways in honor of her wedding anniversary.

1. Describe yourself in one sentence: I’m highly motivated, joyous (most of the time), loyal and completely addicted to books.

2. What book will you start the challenge with? I just finished my first book which was People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (read my review here). I’m now reading The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver.

3. Where is your favourite place to read? I love curling up on the couch, or sitting on my porch in the rocker. And reading in bed is always a favorite spot.

4. What is your favourite book of all time? I would have to say The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak. Although I also love Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

5. Remind us all of your challenge target: I hope to read one more than my monthly average which will be 9 books.

Edition #13 Hosted by Jenn

This month’s theme for the Bookworms Carnival is Relationships (and not the Harlequin Romance type). There are many types of relationships: sibling, parent-child, spouse, lover, friendship, business. I’m probably missing some. I prowled my personal library and discovered several books I’ve read which revolve around friendship. I love books with this theme - especially friendships between women which are often filled with ambivalence, extremes of emotion (anger, sadness, joy), comfort and meaning. Most will agree that if you have one true and loyal friend in your lifetime, you are doing well. I’ve been lucky to find several friendships which I continue to treasure - each one unique and special to me.

Below are some book selections which I think capture the essence of female friendships. Clicking on the picture of the book will take readers to Amazon to learn more about the books.

Author Elizabeth Berg writes books about friendship better than many writers. And for that reason, she has become one of my favorite authors. Talk Before Sleep, published in 1994 is the story of Ruth and Ann - two friends who face a crisis which tests their friendship. The book highlights the strength of unconditional love and the joy and sadness which comes from loving another person. This book made me laugh and cry. It is a tender and honest look at women’s friendships.

I discovered two new authors this year: Meg Waite Clayton and Marisa de los Santos. Both of these talented women write about friendship.

Clayton’s novel, The Wednesday Sisters, revolves around five women who bond one summer in 1968 and eventually form a writer’s group. The novel is brilliantly executed - a story with heart and substance which brought me to tears. Clayton captures the essence of women’s friendships without being sappy or overly emotional. For more of my thoughts, read my review of this book.

Belong to Me, written by Marisa de los Santos and published this year (following her very successful debut novel Love Walked In) also tackles the theme of women’s friendships. de los Santos has a rare skill - she makes you care deeply about her characters, to climb inside their shoes and feel their joy, sadness, doubt, and fear. The characters in Belong to Me first appeared in Love Walked In…and I would recommend reading the books in order (although I didn’t do that!). To read more of my thoughts on this book, read my review which I published here on my blog in March of this year.

Helen Hooven Santmyer wrote “…And Ladies of the Club” at the age of 88. I’ve read this book three times - remarkable given that I rarely re-read a book even once. The novel spans several decades - from just after the Civil War to the threshold of the New Deal. It follows the lives of two women in a small Ohio town who are part of the Waynesboro ladies’ literary society. This is a book which goes beyond friendships and explores the impact of history on the lives of its characters. Santmyer’s novel is huge (more than 1000 pages) and yet the book is a breeze to read. Deeply satisfying on many levels, this wonderful epic will resonate with women.

July 6, 2008

The last time I posted for the Sunday Salon on June 22nd, I wrote:

This morning the lingering smell of smoke from lightening strikes drifts on the morning breeze. There is probably nothing that evokes fear more to a Northern Californian (living in the mountains) than the smell of smoke. The news is reporting that no fewer than 75 fires were sparked by lightening in the forests of Northern California yesterday - So we are wary and alert today…but, still I will find some time to relax with a book.

My words proved to be eerily prophetic. Later that afternoon two wildfires took off very close to our home, putting us on evacuation alert for a week. You can read my posts on that here and here and here. That and participation in the 24 Hour Read-A-Thon kept me from posting last week. But, my life is back on track now…so with no further ado, let’s settle down and talk books.

Since my last Salon post, I finished Life of Pi (read my review). Thank you to everyone who left comments about their impressions of this book. I found it slow to get into, but it grew on me as I continued to read. It is a deep, thoughtful book - and one I felt I couldn’t completely appreciate being under the stress I was under last week. It is a novel I will probably re-read at some point.

Thanks to the Read-A-Thon, last week I also finished Comfort Food (read my review), The House at Midnight (read my review), Springtime on Mars (read my review), and Down River (read my review). Of those, I can highly recommend Springtime on Mars (a wonderful short story collection by Susan Woodring and published by a small, independent press) and Down River (this years Edgar Award winner and a great suspense-thriller with some edge of your seat psychological tension). John Hart’s first novel was published to high praise and I haven’t yet read it…but I will now. Did any of you read it?

This week I slipped between the pages of People of the Book by the Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks. I bought this book when it first appeared in bookstores and it has lingered on my TBR mountain for several months. But the Bookies Too Yahoo Group chose to discuss Brooks’ novel this month, so I finally picked it up. And I’m happy I did. The amount of research which went into the writing of this novel is evident - and the story was one I immediately latched onto. My review is now posted. If you haven’t read this one yet, I’d encourage you to do so.

My current read is The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - a book I’ve heard about over and over again. Believe it or not I have never read a Kingsolver novel before. I’m 100 pages into this chunky book and growing attached to the narrators: a mother and four daughters who arrive in the Congo in 1959 as missionaries. I am quite enjoying the voice of Adah who was born hemiplegic and mute, but who sees the world in her own unique way. Here is a passage I’ve already marked which not only highlights Adah’s individuality and the scenery of the Congo, but also demonstrates Kingsolver’s gift of language:

Sunrise tantalize, evil eyes hypnotize: that is the morning, Congo pink. Any morning, every morning. Blossomy rose-color birdsong air streaked sour with breakfast cookfires. A wide red plank of dirt - the so-called road - flat-out in front of us, continuous in theory from here to somewhere distant. But the way I see it through my Adah eyes it is a flat plank clipped into pieces, rectangles and trapezoids, by the skinny black-line shadows of tall palm trunks. -From The Poisonwood Bible, page 30-

Isn’t that gorgeous writing? I’m looking forward to hunkering down with this book today. Despite its size (more than 500 pages), I don’t think it will take me long to finish it.

Have a wonderful day of reading, fellow Sunday Saloners. See you next week!

Of course, a book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand. -From People of the Book, page 19-

Pulitzer prize-winning author, Geraldine Brooks, has written another stunning and impeccably researched book. People of the Book begins in 1996 when rare book expert (and conservator) Hanna Heath is summoned to post-war Bosnia to examine an ancient manuscript.

The Sarajevo Haggadah, created in medieval Spain, was a famous rarity, a lavishly illuminated Hebrew manuscript made at a time when Jewish belief was firmly against illustrations of any kind. It was thought that the commandment in Exodus “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or likeness of any thing” had suppressed figurative art by medieval Jews. When the book came to light in Sarajevo in 1894, its pages of painted miniatures had turned this idea on its head and caused art history text to be rewritten. -From People of the Book, page 8-

Between the pages of this incredible book, Hanna discovers clues to its history:  a fragile insect’s wing, a missing clasp, a small wine stain, a drip of salt water and a single white hair. In alternating chapters, the clues reveal themselves and uncover the people whose hands the manuscript passes through…and remarkably the author and illustrator of the Haggadah. The reader visits Sarajevo in 1904, Vienna in 1894, Venice in 1609, Tarragona in 1492, and Seville in 1480. At the same time, Hanna’s story is also gradually revealed as she moves forward from 1996 to 2002.

People of the Book is inspired by the true story of the of the Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. Brooks novel, however, is richly imagined - borrowing certain facts and then creating multi-layered characters and situations which immerse the reader in a fictional world of intrigue, emotion and wonder. Brooks did her homework - and People of the Book includes fascinating facts about early art history and the skill of book conservation, as well as the history of the Jewish people.

I turned a page. More dazzle. The illuminations were beautiful, but I didn’t allow myself to look at them as art. Not yet. First i had to understand them as chemicals. There was yellow, made of saffron. That beautiful autumn flower, Crocus sativus Linnaeus, each with just three tiny precious stigmas, had been a prized luxury then and remained one, still. Even if we now know that the rich color comes from a carotene, crocin, with a molecular structure of 44 carbon, 64 hydrogen, and 24 oxygen, we still haven’t synthesized a substitute as complex and as beautiful. There was malachite green, and red; the intense red known as worm scarlet - tola’at shani in Hebrew - extracted from tree-dwelling insects, crushed up and boiled in lye. Later, when alchemists learned how to make a similar red from sulfur and mercury, they still named the color “little worm” - vermiculum. Some things don’t change: we call it vermilion even today. -From People of the Book, page 15-

I found this novel immensely satisfying  and one which I highly recommend for readers who enjoy world literature and have a fascination for books and art history, as well as for those who enjoy unraveling mysteries.

July 1, 2008 - June 30, 2009

Once again, I’ve been tempted by a challenge. Kristi from Passion For The Page is hosting this one - and it’s her first time hosting a challenge…so I wanted to support her! And I discovered that I actually had a lot of books in my TBR Mountain which I could use. Here’s the rules:

Read at least 6 books that have any of these requirements:

• an animal in the title of the book
• an animal on the cover of the book
• an animal that plays a major role in the book
• a main character that is or turns into an animal (define that however you’d like.

Crossovers are okay and lists are not necessary and can be changed at any time. I’ll be choosing my six books from this list (subject to change):

1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Hadden
2. The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa
3. Hope Rising, by Kim Meeder
4. The Lizard Cage, by Karen Connelly
5. Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson
6. The Heart of Horses, by Molly Gloss
7. The God of Animals, by Aryn Kyle
8. Enemy Women, by Paulette Jiles
9. Marley and Me, by John Grogan
10. A Bridge Called Hope, by Kim Meeder

“That sounds nice.”

“There are legends that go back much further. The ancient Celts believed something entirely different. Their legends speak of white deer leading travelers deep into the secret parts of the forest. They say a white deer can lead a man to new understanding.” -From Down River, page 86-

John Hart’s 2008 Edgar Award winning novel Down River is a suspense-thriller which is all about redemption, misunderstanding, and self-discovery. Adam Chase returns to his childhood home in Rowan County, North Carolina when an old friend contacts him and requests his assistance. Five years before this Adam was acquitted of the murder of a young man, even though the testimony of Adam’s step mother fingered him for the crime. Forced to choose between his wife or his son, Adam’s father chose his wife. Now Adam will be forced to reconcile those events with his father, his ex-lover and the people of Rowan County. Hart doesn’t make the reader wait long for action. Almost immediately upon Adam’s return to his old stomping grounds, family and friends begin to be victimized, and once again Adam must defend himself against old suspicions.

Hart writes magnificently with gritty, believable dialogue and gorgeous descriptions of the North Carolina landscape. The characters are painstakingly drawn - showing the reader both their strengths and weaknesses. As Adam works to clear his name, he must uncover long buried secrets and betrayals and Hart’s ability to create tension and keep the reader guessing make this a fast-paced and compelling read.

John Hart has also published a New York Times bestseller: The King Of Lies.

Down River is a book that readers of the suspense-thriller genre will not want to miss.

Highly recommended.