New Mormon Books

for $5.95 you will get
philosophy
love
conversion
adventure
sects
drugs
rock and roll

and even if you don’t love it
as much as i do
you are only out a couple dollars.
or even if you aren’t mormon
as much as i am
at least you will gain some insight into us peculiar people.

. . . your favorite mormon-themed book for really cheap?
By cjane
Dear cjane, July 17, 2009
http://dearcjane.blogspot.com/2009/07/your-favorite-mormon-themed-book-for.html

I had a hard time getting into this book at the beginning. I suppose I didn’t relate to Abe and Maddie as well as I did to Lizzy in Lyon’s previous book House on a Hill. Abe seemed to be too modern minded for the historical time period and that threw me off. His first point of view chapter felt too preachy for me to really get sucked into the story at the start, but I ended up enjoying his character later on. I also felt for Maddie as she tried to heal from the death of her fiancee. While on the surface this seems like the typical LDS romance plot—girl converts boy to gospel and they marry—Lyon’s characters have layers that made it feel unique and fresh.

At Journey’s End by Annette Lyon
By Gamila
Gamila’s Review: YA and LDS Fiction, July 18, 2009.
http://gamilareview.blogspot.com/2009/07/at-journeys-end-by-annette-lyon-abe.html

… perhaps his most personal novel. …Reminded me of Stephen King even though the supernatural touches are very light, I wasn’t surprised to find out he wrote this after reading Pet Semetary and wanting a different ending. I may not like his political views, but he can be a wonderful writer, at his best when showing the cracks in a strong marriage between a husband and wife put under stress. A lot of the details were based on Card’s own life (he wrote for a computer magazine that had similar Machiavellian scheming) and makes this a winner.

Moar Book Reviews!: Lost Boys, by Orson Scott Card
By MacGuffin
Darth Ennui, 18th-Jul-2009
http://mac6uffin.livejournal.com/140077.html

… as Latoya Peterson pointed out in a piece for Double X … the current crop of pointy-toothed dramas continues the genre’s fascination with sexual violence and the idealization of the chaste woman. I can’t fault her for taking issue with eroticized depictions of abuse, often against women. But she’s wrong to equate the sexual politics of True Blood with those of the abstinent, repressed Twilight. These two are not the same animal.

Rough Sex With Vampires: What Does “True Blood” Tell Us About Women and Sexuality?
By James Brady Ryan, Nerve.com.
AlterNet.org, July 18, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/sex/141317/rough_sex_with_vampires:_what_does_%22true_blood%22_tell_us_about_women_and_sexuality/

Julie is very good at writing suspense. I read this book rather quickly because I had to see if everyone made it out alive. I felt the book had a good ending, though some people have a thing against a “Happy Ever After” type ending. Personally, I don’t mind reading a happy ending once in awhile. I have had too much reality in my own life lately and like to be taken away to a happy place when I read.

Review of “All’s Fair” by Julie Coulter Bellon
By Sheila
LDS Women’s Book Review, July 18, 2009
http://ldswbr.blogspot.com/2009/07/review-of-alls-fair-by-julie-coulter.html

In his book, “Juanita Brooks: Mormon Woman Historian,” Levi S. Peterson describes a woman who lived two distinct lives. In one, she was the Bunkerville, Nev., native one or two generations away from early-Mormon pioneer life, bred to be a farmer’s wife and live a life similar to her mother and grandmother. But there were life changes in store for Brooks (1898-1989), a remarkable individual who experienced most of the 20th century. Left a young widow with a baby, she entered academia. As middle age approached, she made another life change. She married a sheriff, Will Brooks, and quickly had four more babies. Had she stayed single, opines biographer Peterson, she likely would have had a distinguished academic career, editing and writing literary criticism. Instead, her return to a domestic life signaled the career of Mormonism’s most tenacious historian. Brooks’ achievements brought much-needed candor to Utah and Mormon history.

Political Surf on biography of Juanita Brooks, Utah historian
by Doug Gibson
Ogden UT Standard’s Political Surf Blog, Jul 17th, 2009.
http://blogs.standard.net/2009/07/17/political-surf-on-biography-of-juanita-brooks-utah-historian/

Every faith and denomination has an approach for balancing faith and reason. In Chapter Two of the book, Bushman briefly outlines the LDS approach. The context, of course, is how a faith or denomination defends its claim to have possession of religious truth or correct doctrine. If reason alone suffices, it’s not a religious approach. Faith or revelation alone might seem like the religious ideal, but faith or revelation always, at the very least, needs reason to make the system of doctrines hang together with a minimum of contradiction and to interpret the written texts. So what is the Mormon approach?

Reason and revelation in Mormonism
By Dave Banack
Mormon Inquiry on Beliefnet, July 17, 2009.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/mormoninquiry/2009/07/reason-and-revelation-in-mormo.html

My ideas come from two places: anywhere and everywhere. There is no facet of my life or experience that doesn’t give me ideas for stories. It isn’t a matter of getting ideas, but of filtering out mediocre ideas and shaping those with the potential to be good. And we do shape our ideas; they don’t come in grade-A story form, and they never come complete. My stories are the result of percolation. I get ideas—fractured, isolated bits of dialogue, or theme, or archetypal emotion, and other stuff—that I write down on scraps of paper that eventually make their way onto my computer. They stay there and in my mind, where they bounce around and accrete until a genuine story concept is born. That concept I then work and build consciously, stressing conflict and the inherent emotive theme of the story. I do this until I become confident enough to begin writing.

Interview with Clint Johnson author of Green Dragon Codex
By Michelle Ashman Bell, July 17, 2009
http://micheleabell.blogspot.com/2009/07/interview-with-clint-johnson-author-of.html

It seemed to me that Strain was going for a Shannon Hale-esque cutesy chick-lit humor. But, while that generally doesn’t bother me, in this case it didn’t work. Not by a mile. The humor was grating (but then — as I’ve mentioned before — humor is such a fickle thing), as were all the “dear reader” asides. The dialogue was flat, and the vague Mormon-ness (it was published by a small LDS publisher) was awkward (either go all out, or don’t go there at all). But, what really bothered me was that Annabelle was shallow…

Previously Engaged
By Melissa
Book Nut, July 16, 2009
http://melissasbookreviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/previously-engaged.html

…then the Harry Potter comparisons started rolling out. Media pundits everywhere declared Twilight the new Harry Potter. I wondered, flabbergasted, how any person could ever believe such a thing. Potter?! Really? What I saw onscreen was soap opera trash for the tween nation. It didn’t bear anywhere near the universal appeal of the Harry Potter series. But now I’m here, explaining how such a preposterous claim is less an arguable statement and more a joke, an unfunny one at that, like Will Ferrell trying to ice skate.

Do The Math: 8 Reasons Harry Potter Is Greater Than Twilight
By Tim Gomez
Cinema Blend.com, July 16, 2009
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Do-The-Math-8-Reasons-Harry-Potter-Is-Greater-Than-Twilight-13981.html