Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

It's Friday and that means it's time for the Book Blogger Hop! Hosted by Jennifer at Crazy For Books it's a fun, weekly gathering of over 200 book bloggers and a great way to get to know the community. This weeks question is in honour of Banned Book Week: What is your favourite banned or frequently challenged book? One of my favourite books is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I read it in high school and at the time didn't see anything wrong with it, and I still don't. In fact, it was one of only two books that I read in high school that I enjoyed and was interested in. One book from the 2010-2011 list that I really enjoyed is Push by Sapphire. I wouldn't have a problem with my children reading it in their teens. I am against banning books. There may be some that I feel are inappropriate for certain age levels, but I think that's the responsibility of parents to pay attention to what their children are reading and talk to them about it.

Katie Johnson wants nothing more than a baby of her own. But her husband Alex, who says he'll keep an open mind, doesn't want a child. What makes this really difficult for Katie is the fact that as San Francisco's premier baby planner, she is surrounded all day by pregnant women and everything baby. When Katie takes on a new client, single father Seth Harris, she gets more than she bargained for. Seth needs all the help he can get with his newborn daughter and Katie is more than willing to step in to fill that role. Will she end up with the family she has always dreamed of or will her job as a baby planner remind her too much of what she doesn't have? The Baby Planner by Josie Brown takes you inside a brand new world, the upscale baby planner. Having a baby is a very busy time so why not let someone else do the work for you? They will take care of all your shopping needs, help you get the nursery ready, help you find a drag queen to be the nanny for your ch

It's Monday What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey that lets book bloggers share what books are making their way through the to-read pile. I am still in the midst of reading through the Giller Longlist, although I seem to be going pretty slow (not the fault of the books but my time management skills!) What I Read Last Week: A World Elsewhere by Wayne Johnston What I'm Currently Reading: Into The Heart of the Country by Pauline Holdstock What I Plan to Read Next: Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner Have you read any books from this years Giller list?

Fall Into Reading 2011 is a low-pressure reading challenge hosted by Callapidder Days . Here is what you do to participate: Create a list of some books you’d like to read or finish this fall. This is the only real requirement for participating in the challenge. Feel free to set some additional reading goals (such as reading to your kids two hours per week, getting through your pile of magazines, etc.). However, this is not required ; setting additional goals is completely optional . Write a blog post that includes the list of books you want to read (and any additional goals you’ve set), and get ready to post it on your blog on September 23rd. Visit Callapidder Days on September 23rd to sign up for the challenge. I’ll have an official launch post up that morning, complete with an area for you to submit a link to your personal Fall Into Reading post, where it will be added to the master list of participants. Read! Work on your goals throughout Fall 2011. Report your results. Write

Chelsea Handler is hilarious. I say that as someone who has just recently discovered her. I had heard of her television show but I don't have cable so I had never seen it. I had seen her books all over the place but never picked one up since I didn't know anything about her. But on a whim I thought they might be good summer reading so I picked up two of them - Are you There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea and C helsea Chelsea Bang Bang . I am so glad I picked up the books. They are fast paced reads as I couldn't put either of them down, except for when I was laughing so hard, which was often. Each book is a collection of essays about Chelsea's life that are so funny, you'll find yourself thinking they can't possibly true because no one's life can be that crazy. In Are You There Vodka, It's Me Chelsea? she takes on such topics as going to prison, dating a red-head, dining in the dark, re-gifting, vacationing with her father and getting atta

It's an exciting time of year for authors, publishers and readers as there are quite a few book prizes being handed out. Here's a look at two Canadian awards I'm following: Giller Prize The Scotiabank Giller Prize is Canada's most distinguished literary prize. Past winners include Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler and Rohinton Mistry. Last years winner Johanna Skibsrud caused quite a stir as her book was put out by a very small Canadian publisher and it was difficult to get your hands on her book before and after the win. This years longlist is: The Free World - David Bezmozgis The Meagre Tarmac - Clark Blaise The Beggar's Garden - Michael Christie The Antagonist - Lynn Coady The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt Extensions - Myrna Dey (Readers' Choice Winner) Half-Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan The Little Shadows - Marina Endicott Better Living Through Plastic Explosives - Zsuzsi Gartner Solitaria - Genni Gunn Into the Hea

Seventeen-year-old Kate and eleven-year-old Albert have spent their entire lives on a secluded Welsh commune led by their father. What was once a vibrant community full of potential is now disintegrating, just like their parents marriage. To escape, Kate heads off for school and suburban life with her boyfriend. Albert stays on the commune and begins preparations for the end of the world, something he is sure is coming soon. But their father Don isn't going to let the community break up so easily. He decides that the best way to keep his family together and attract new wwoofers (those looking to volunteer on an organic farm) to the commune is to throw a rave complete with a 10k soundsystem. The last day on earth is coming. Bring Your Own Booze. Wild Abandon is Joe Dunthorne's second novel. It is a typical coming of age story set in very untypical territory. It contains a colourful cast of characters who together make a perfect comedic combination. Suburban life an

It's Monday What Are You Reading? is my favourite meme. That's because I love getting organized, making lists, planning what I'm going to do and this meme does just that for my reading. It's hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and be warned, it's going to add to your to read list dramatically!!! My list this week is all CanLit as I'm currently reading my way through the Giller Prize longlist. What I Read Last Week: The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly "Cat's Table" with an eccentric and unforgettable group of grownups and two other boys. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys find themselves immersed in the worlds and stories of the adults around them. At night they spy on a shackled prisoner -- his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them

Reading. It never goes out of style and it's always in the news. Here are a few news pieces that caught my eye this week. *One of my favourite books I have read with my kids is Please Baby Please by Spike Lee. We also love the follow-up Please Puppy Please. I was pretty surprised to learn that Spike Lee has written children's books but he's not the only celebrity jumping on the trend. Would you believe that Tyra Banks, Terrell Owens, John Travolta and Julianne Moore have all written children's books? What do you think? Can Celebrities Write Good Children's Books? *If you're a book blogger you no doubt have overflowing bookshelves in your home. But according to Ikea, you're in the minority. People are no longer keeping books on the shelves, they're using them more as display cases. And for that, Ikea is changing the depth of their bookshelves to better suit their new uses. Personally, I think it's a great idea, it means I can probably fi

In Jennifer Weiner's latest novel, Then Came You , four very different women are about to find their lives crashing head on. Jules is a senior at Princeton, beautiful, smart and focused. When she is offered a large sum of money to donate her "pedigree" eggs, she takes the opportunity in the hopes of helping her addict father get into rehab. Annie is a young mother of two boys, married to her high school sweetheart. As a stay at home mom she finds herself struggling to support her family on her husbands sole income. When she discovers she can earn extra money as a surrogate, she jumps in despite her husbands hesitations. India Bishop has started life over at age forty-three (though she tells people she is thirty-eight.) She has changed her name, her face and her past and is now married to Marcus Croft, a wealthy older New York City businessman. When her attempts at pregnancy fail she turns to Annie, Jules and a fertility clinic to help make her dreams come true.

Fall is definitely my favourite season. I love getting out the warm sweaters and scarves, the colours of the leaves, sitting on the balcony wrapped in a blanket sipping a warm cup of tea. Not to mention the excitement of back to school, the season premieres of favourite television shows (Big Bang Theory anyone?) and cooking meals that warm you up from the inside out. Fall is an exciting time for readers as it is when many of the major awards are given. This year the Man Booker Prize for fiction will be announced on Tuesday 18 October. The Scotiabank Giller Prize for Canadian fiction will be announced on Tuesday 8 November. Join me as I try to read through all of the books on the Giller longlist and hopefully many of the books on the Booker longlist. Here at Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea I look forward to reading a lot of Canadian literature, blogging and tweeting about books in the news, and pretty soon a giveaway. Stay tuned!

Through six seasons and two movies we laughed, cried, celebrated and hurt with the ladies of Sex and the City . They were more than characters on the television and movie screen, they were friends, alter-egos, role models. When we met them, they were successful women with homes, careers and love lives. In The Carrie Diaries , we were introduced to teenage Carrie Bradshaw. We discovered where she came from and how she ended up in New York City. And now, in Summer and the City , we see how she met Samantha and Miranda and how she came to settle in NYC. Summer and the City by Candace Bushnell is a young adult novel that fans of Sex and the City will enjoy no matter what their age. While the intent of the novel is to discover who the women we love so much are and what made them the women we know, the book itself is a great stand-alone novel, a story of young women taking New York City by storm in the 1980's. Carrie has arrived in NYC to take a summer writing class at The

Are you a book blogger? Are you a reader? Then welcome to the place where all of us connect over the weekend and chat about books! The Book Blogger Hop is a fun meme where you can meet almost 200 book bloggers each week! Hop along and you can find out more about your favourite bloggers, meet new ones and most definitely find some great new books to read! To join in, check things out here . This is my first Hop back since taking the entire summer of from blogging. I managed to get some reading done, though not as much as I had hoped. And I definitely missed blogging, so it is great to be back! This weeks question is: As a book blogger, how do you introduce yourself in your profile? My answer: I know when I started blogging, I wanted to keep things kind of anonymous. I was a little unsure of this whole blogging world and how much of me I wanted to put out there. But as I became comfortable in this world over time I began to share my profile. I shared the most important things to m

I am so very happy to say that I am back to blogging!!! I decided to take the summer off from blogging and that was a good decision because I honestly did not get much reading done. We had a wonderful summer full of trips, theme parks, barbecues, baseball games and sleepovers. It was sad to see it come to an end but it also brought new beginnings including my daughters start at a new school (in French!) And now that we have settled in and are back to our routine it's definitely time I get back to the books myself. I had a huge list of books prepared to read during the summer and unfortunately I barely made a dent in the list. I made the decision that the warm weather was too precious to waste on books that weren't really grabbing me so there were a lot more DNF's than I was used to. Some of them were quite surprising, I was really looking forward to both Untold Story by Monica Ali and The Kid by Sapphire, but I just couldn't get into them. The books I did finish