Saw this meme on Stumpet’s Life, and thought I'd give it a whirl.
SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own blog, paste this as a post. Then, put x's next to the films you've seen, add them up, and change the header adding your number. Have fun.
( x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(X) Grease
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean
(X) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest
( ) Boondock Saints
() Fight Club
() Starsky and Hutch
() Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
(X) Airplane
Total: 6
(x ) The Princess Bride (- much to the shagrin of my Boss, who tells me I MUST see this)
() Anchorman
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
() Labyrinth
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
() Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates
( x)The Princess Diaries
( x) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
Total so far: 10
( )Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
() American Pie
() American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 10
(X) Harry Potter 1
(X) Harry Potter 2
(X) Harry Potter 3
(X) Harry Potter 4
( ) Resident Evil 1
( ) Resident Evil 2
(X) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
( x) Lilo & Stitch
Total so far: 16
(X) Finding Nemo
() Signs
(X) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
( ) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30
(X ) I, Robot
( ) Robots
Total so far: 19
(x ) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
() Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
(x ) Along Came Polly
( x) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
(x) Never Been Kissed
(X) Meet The Parents
(X) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
() Joe Dirt
( X) KING KONG
Total so far: 26
(x ) A Cinderella Story
( ) The Terminal
(x ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
(X) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
() Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
( ) Flubber
Total so far: 29
( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
() Practical Magic
(X) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
( X) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( X) I Am Sam
( X) The Whole Nine Yards
( ) The Whole Ten Yards
Total so far: 33
( ) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
(X ) Ten Things I Hate About You
(x ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
() Nightmare on Elm Street
(x) Sixteen Candles
( x) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
( ) The Grudge 2
(X) The Mask
() Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 38
( ) Bad Boys
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Slevin
(X) Ocean's Eleven
(X) Ocean's Twelve
( X) Bourne Identity
( X) Bourne Supremacy
( ) Lone Star
() Bedazzled
( ) Predator I
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
(X) Ice Age
(x) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( x) Curious George
Total so far: 45
(X) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(X) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Bosses Daughter
(X) Maid in Manhattan
() War of the Worlds
() Rush Hour
() Rush Hour 2
Total so far: 48
( ) Best Bet
(X) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( x) She's All That
( x) Calendar Girls
( ) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
() Ever After
(X) Wizard of Oz
(X) Forrest Gump
(x) Big Trouble in Little China
(X) The Terminator
(X ) The Terminator 2
( x) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 58
( X) X-Men
(x ) X-2
( ) X-3
(X) Spider-Man
(X) Spider-Man 2
() Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
( x) Catch Me If You Can
(X) The Little Mermaid
(X) Freaky Friday
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(X) Shrek
(X) Shrek 2
Total so far: 67
( ) Swimfan
( x) Miracle on 34th street
( ) Old School
(X) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf's Tribe
(X) A Walk to Remember
(x ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
( ) The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 71
( ) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring
( ) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
( ) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King
(X) Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
(X) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(X) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Total so far: 74
( ) Baseketball
( ) Hostel
( ) Waiting for Guffman
( ) House of 1000 Corpses
( ) Devils Rejects
() Elf
(X ) Highlander
( ) Mothman Prophecies
( ) American History X
( ) Three
Total so Far: 75
( ) The Jacket
( ) Kung Fu Hustle
( ) Shaolin Soccer
( ) Night Watch
(X) Monsters Inc.
(X) Titanic
() Monty Python and the Holy Grail
( ) Shaun Of the Dead
( ) Willard
Total so far: 77
( ) High Tension
( ) Club Dread
( ) Hulk
( ) Dawn Of the Dead
(X) Hook
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
() 28 days later
( ) Orgazmo
( ) Phantasm
( x) Waterworld
Total so far: 80
( ) Kill Bill vol 1
( ) Kill Bill vol 2
( ) Mortal Kombat
( ) Wolf Creek
( ) Kingdom of Heaven
( ) the Hills Have Eyes
( ) I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
( ) The Last House on the Left
( ) Re-Animator
( ) Army of Darkness
Total so far: 80
( ) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace
( ) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones
( ) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith
( ) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope
( X) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back
(X ) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi
( ) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage
( ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor
Total so far: 82
( X) The Matrix
( X) The Matrix Reloaded
( ) The Matrix Revolutions
( ) Animatrix
( ) Evil Dead
( ) Evil Dead 2
( ) Team America: World Police
( ) Red Dragon
(X) Silence of the Lambs
( ) Hannibal
Total so far: 85
Now Add them up and...
Put "I've seen ...__ out of 239 films" in the subject line and repost it.
I have to say it's a rather odd list. It's not like they're award winners or anything.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Book Review - The Best Christmas Pageant by Barbara Robinson

Title: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Author: Barbara Robinson
Genre: Young Adult
Challenges: 101 Books in 1001 Days Challenge, Series Challenge Season 3, A to Z Reading Challenge, 2009 Support Your Local Library, 20 Books in 2009, Pages Read Challenge, 2009 YA Challenge, Summer Vacation Reading Challenge 2009, The Four Month Challenge, Take A chance Challenge, Christmas in July, Summer Reading Challenge 2009,
Rating: 3/5
No. of Pages: 128
Published: 2005 (1988)
From the back: the Herdmans are the worst kids in the history of the world. They lie, steal, smoke cigars, swear, and hit little kids. So no one is prepared when this out-law family invades church one Sunday and decides to take over the annual Christmas pageant.
None of the Heardmans has ever heard the Christmas story before. Their interpretation of the tale – the Wise Men are a bunch of dirty spies and Herod needs a good beating – has a lot of people up in arms. But it will make this year’s pageant the most unusual anyone has seen and, just possibly, the best one ever.
Mine: It’s amazing how kids that know the story can interpret the story. Through the Herdmans innocent (well maybe not so innocent) eyes – the true story of the Christmas can come to light.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Book Review - Run-Away Roley by Alison Inches

Title: Run-Away Roley (Bob The Builder)
Author: Alison Inches
Genre: Children’s
Challenges: PB & J Challenge, 101 Books in 1001 Days Challenge, A to Z Reading Challenge, The Year Of Readers – 2009, Pages Read Challenge, Young Reader's Challenge 2009, Read a Book a Month Challenge, Summer Vacation Reading Challenge 2009, Summer Reading Challenge 2009
Rating: 4/5
No. of Pages: 24
Published: 2002
From the back: Roley is sleep-rolling his way through town! Can Bob and the machines get him home safely?
Mine: My youngest nephew is sorting through his early books. He’s going to donate them to the local used book store, but in the mean time we are going to try to read them before they go. I love reading with my nephews
Roley is sleep-rolling (walking) through town – every comes to the rescue to make sure Roley doesn’t hurt himself. He’s already knocked down mailboxes, garbage cans, signs. Will he ever wake up?
When he does everyone else is exhausted from trying to keep other things out of harms way.
Book Review - Fall Leaf Project by Margaret McNamara

Title: Fall Leaf Project (Robin Hill School)
Author: Margaret McNamara
Genre: Children’s
Challenges: PB & J Challenge, 101 Books in 1001 Days Challenge, A to Z Reading Challenge, The Year Of Readers – 2009, Pages Read Challenge, Young Reader's Challenge 2009, Read a Book a Month Challenge, Summer Vacation Reading Challenge 2009, Summer Reading Challenge 2009
Rating: 4/5
No. of Pages: 32
Published: 2006
From the back: The First-graders of Robin Hill School love to look at all the different fall leaves. When they hear that in some states the leaves don’t change color; they come up with a plan to share fall with other first-graders.
Mine: My youngest nephew is sorting through his early books. He’s going to donate them to the local used book store, but in the mean time we are going to try to read them before they go. I love reading with my nephews
What a cute story about sharing with others that don’t have the same things as you. The teacher in the story is also trying to teach the children about other states, so there is geography involved. It’s also about the seasons of the year (Fall).
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
New Challenges Signing Up For
I'm signing up for the followng new challenges and will have my pages up shortly:
the Summer Reading Challenge 2009 Sponsored by A Southern Daydreamer Reads
The August Reading Challenge Sponsored by Pizza's Book Discussion
Popular Penguins Reading Challenge Sponsored by Reading Upside Down
the Summer Reading Challenge 2009 Sponsored by A Southern Daydreamer Reads
The August Reading Challenge Sponsored by Pizza's Book Discussion
Popular Penguins Reading Challenge Sponsored by Reading Upside Down
Mailbox Monday #13

These are the books I've received this last week.

About the book:
Turnings by Donald Fletcher
ISBN: 9781432738495
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Date of publish: March 13, 2009
Pages: 262

About the book:
Lizzi & Fredl by Dr. William Stanford
ISBN: 978-0595433117
Publisher: iUniverse
Date of publish: April 2008
Pages: 440

About the book:
Hunter by Campbell Jefferys
ISBN: 978-1845493332
Publisher: Swirl, an imprint of Arima Publishing
Date of publish: Jan 2009
Pages: 264
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Book Review - Candytuft's Enchanting Treats by Kay Woodward

#21
Title: Candytuft’s Enchanging Treats (Flower Fairy Friends)
Author: Kay Woodward
Genre: Young Adult
Challenges: To Be Continued…Challenge, 101 Books in 1001 Days Challenge, Series Challenge Season 3, A to Z Reading Challenge (Author), 2009 Support Your Local Library, 20 Books in 2009, 2009 Second Chances, Pages Read Challenge, 2009 YA Challenge, the confuzzled Faerie Book Challenge, Summer Vacation Reading Challenge 2009, The Four Month Challenge
Rating: 4/5
No. of Pages: 80
Published:
From the back: It’s Fairy Friendship Week and Candytuft wants to make delicious sweets for all the Flower Fairies. But someone is up to no good and seems determined to spoil the special week for everyone……..
Can Candytuft make a new batch of enchanted treats and save Fairy Friendship Week?
Mine: This is actually a fun series and I ho9pe to be able to read all of them. Each Flower Fairy has a special skill. Candytuft’s is making sweets – the only problem is that her recipe book was washed and now there are no recipes.
Candytuft must learn to make some new treats, but she must also figure out how all the good deeds have turned bad. Each fairy is getting mad and blaming the others for the misdeeds that are to happy during Fairy Friendship Week.
Candytuft discovers that there are several elves pretending to do good things while making everyone miserable.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Big Read - top 100 books
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own Blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnet
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own Blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnet
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Mailbox Monday #12

These are the books I've received this last week.

How to Train a Rock by Paul Steven Stone
ISBN: 978-1442117211
Publisher: CreateSpace
Date of publish: April 22, 2009
Pages: 200
S.R.P.: $15.00

Man Overboard by Sandy Mason
ISBN: 978-1439233849
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Date of publish: April 16, 2009
Pages: 230
S.R.P.: $14.99

Broken Wing by Judith James
ISBN: 978-1933836447
Publisher: Medallion Press
Date of publish: Nov. 2008
Pages: 440
S.R.P.: $7.95
Friday, June 19, 2009
Book Review - The Skeleton at the Smithsonian by Ron Roy

#20
Title: The Skeleton at the Smithsonian (Capital Mysteries #3)
Author: Ron Roy
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery
Challenges: To Be Continued…Challenge, 101 Books in 1001 Days Challenge, Book Around the States Challenge, A to Z Reading Challenge, 2009 Support Your Local Library, 20 Books in 2009, 2009 Second Chances, Pages Read Challenge, 2009 YA Challenge, Summer Vacation Reading Challenge 2009, The Four Month Challenge, What’s In a Name 2009
Rating: 4/5
No. of Pages: 96
Published: 2003
From the back:
When Leonard Fisher claims that the Smithsonian and all its museums belong to him, Washington D.C. goes into an uproar. KC Corcoran and her best friend Marshall have a feeling that there is something fishy about Fisher. But if they are wrong, the United States may lose the Smithsonian forever!
Mine:
Reading this series along with my nephew – who loves this series. It’s great when we make a trip to the library together.
KC is at it again, getting into trouble and solving the mystery. Leonard Fisher claims he is a relative of the James Smithson (who started the Smithsonian) and wants to be paid. It’s up to KC to figure out how he did it before the government has to pay big. She and Marshall get trapped in the crypt, Happy comes to the rescue and helps solve the crime.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Larry Kaplan - Guest Author Blog

Constructing The House of Ghosts
I am a self-confessed history junkie. World War II is my disease. I’ve read more than a hundred books on the most destructive period in world history when 100,000,000 died.
My late mother-in-law, Irene Lederer, was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944 when American bombers flew overhead on the way to bomb the I.G. Farben, synthetic rubber and oil plant being constructed by the camp’s inmates only four miles away. An SS Guard used to taunt her, “Deine freunde sind droben haute,” which means, “Your friends are overhead today.”
She always wondered, why didn’t those bombers attack the camp to stop the murders taking place there? By then, the world knew of the camp, and knew its only purpose was to dispose of the remnants of European Jewry.
“Deine freunde sind droben haute,” stuck in my head.
Those bombers were of the 15th Air Force based in Italy. They returned four more times and flew another forty missions in that section of Poland. No attack was ever made on the concentration camp where 700,000 Hungarian Jews awaited the ultimate outcome - death - either from gassing, beatings, hanging, or starvation.
I read Sir Martin Gilbert’s Auschwitz and the Allies. There was an inscription in the book under a picture which stated that it was taken at 22,000 feet by a B-17 bomber on one of the runs against the I.G. Farben plant. I thought that had to be wrong. I contacted veterans’ groups and befriended a retired general who, as captain, flew on one of the missions. The bombardier used the chimneys of the crematoria in Berkenau as landmarks to begin the bomb run. He told me they were at 12,000 feet and could see the trains unloading at the ramp.
I knew I had to write about this. My initial thought was to write a non-fiction book about the crews who flew on those missions. I also wanted to write about the social and political situations in the U.S. prior to WWII, and how they influenced American reaction. Why didn’t the United States lift a finger to help the helpless gain entry into the country instead of stifling immigration, specifically of European Jews? And most important, I wanted to find out why Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy, did not authorize bombing of the gas chambers in Auschwitz, when one 500-pound bomb could have stopped those murders.
So, I read everything I could get my hands on -- The New York Times on microfilm, personal interviews. I buried myself on Fridays, my day off, in the Firestone Library at Princeton University, for over six months. The research was tedious and difficult. Pilots and crews either were deceased or didn’t want to talk. Only that one retired Air Force general opened up to me. He flew a B-17 in the 15h Air Force during WWII. Based in Foggia, Italy, his group, the 2nd Heavy Bombardment, flew missions to Germany, France and Poland. The Poland runs took him over the death camp. He confirmed my suspicious and stated in no uncertain terms that the accepted version that the pilots did not know what lay beneath them was untrue. The massive complex with the crematoria stacks blowing smoke and ash into the sky wasn’t an amusement park, and everyone knew it.
Unfortunately no one else would talk to me, and one man’s testimony does not make a book. Even with all the research I did, I worried that I couldn't substantiate my theories. Somewhere during this time, I also began to worry that I had a DDS after my name, not a PhD in history. Without scholarly credentials, I feared the book would never be published. This was when I decided that fiction was the best genre in which to work. I changed direction, and the process of giving life to House of Ghosts began. I would use a washed-up Westfield NJ Police Department detective and his Russian stripper neighbor to uncover two sets of diaries that spanned the years 1938-1944. One diary was written by a WASP freshman at Princeton University, the son of a Wall Street investment banker. The other diary was written by a young Jewish NYU student from Brooklyn, the son of Hungarian immigrants.
House of Ghosts uses historical fact. It includes the aviation hero, Charles Lindbergh, and his affiliation with the isolationist organization America First and their attempts to keep the U.S. out of another European war. It shows the perceptions of American-Jewish college students to the events unfolding in Europe, and their hesitation to act. It reveals the acts of Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy, the man responsible for not bombing the camps. But House of Ghosts delivers all this information through the sub-genre of mystery,
because I wanted the book to also be entertaining. The material is very serious, so placing it in the voice of a cynical New Jersey detective allowed me to control the tone, to bring in some humor and sarcasm.
House of Ghosts tells a story that I believe needs to be told, and tells it in a way that promises to reach a wider audience of readers. House of Ghosts offers an answer to a question that has been asked since 1944. I hope your readers believe that it does those things well.
“Larry Kaplan is giving away a signed copy of his book, House of Ghosts, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to Larry’s book tour page, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 8930, for your chance to win. Entries from Books, Books, the Magical Fruit will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on Larry’s book tour page next week.”
Giveaway at The Book Resort
Check out The Book Resort for a chance to win Molly Harper's Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs! It's worth it :-)
Monday, June 15, 2009
Mailbox Monday #11

These are the books I've received this last several weeks.

Critical Mass by Kathleen M Henry
ISBN: 978-0595524129
Publisher: iUniverse
Date of publish: Nov. 18, 2008
Pages: 124

The Philosopher King by Ronnie Lee
ISBN: 978-1432735814
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Date of publish: April 30, 2009
Pages: 738

Surviving High Society by Elizabeth Marvin Mulholland
ISBN: 978-1935098072
Publisher: Bascom Hill Publishing Group
Date of publish: November 25, 2008
Pages: 184
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Upcoming Author Book Tours - Larry Kaplan

Larry Kaplan's online book tour and giveaway for his debut mystery House of Ghosts introducing detective Joe Henderson starts Tuesday, June 16th. For more information visit his tour page at Larry Kaplan
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Library Loot #7
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