PURPLE QUEEN FAIRY READS

I have read so many good and interesting books and discovery many new and great authors this year that it's difficult to nail down my top 3 favourites.  Anyway, I think the following would be my top 3 choices, each for different reasons and I'm glad to have read them. They are (in no particular order) : 1. Outlive your life by Max Lucado 2. Forgiven (2nd book in Firstborn Series) by Karen Kingsbury 3. Overheard in a dream by Torey Hayden. I certainly look forward to a new 2011 - lots of new books (hopefully!).  HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE AND GOD BLESS YOU!

I made my first order with BookXcess recently and here they are :)  Arrived save and sound courtesy of PosLaju Malaysia :) From L to R : 1. The Burning Girl by Mark Billingham - yet another of Mark's book.  2. Paths of Glory by Jeffery Archer - only for RM9.90. Who can resist that! 3. House by Ted Dekker - to scare myself silly! I can't wait to get started.

** Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year ** Wishing you a blessed Christmas. May your stockings be filled with lots and lots of books. Love from Purple Queen Fairy What I got for Christmas :) The Heaven Trilogy (Heaven's Wager, When Heaven Weeps, Thunder of Heaven) by Ted Dekker

I can’t believe that I read another Sophie Kinsella so soon after Shopaholic & Baby . I was at the library recently (and so far I do have good luck in the library) and what do I come across but Twenties Girl . I have been yearning for it since Chirstmas last year and was just thinking whether I should get a copy while at the bookstore recently. Lo and behold, there it was, right in front of me. All I have to do is to reach out and take it home and I can start reading it that very night. That’s exactly what I did and it took me a week to read it and I enjoyed every minute I had with the twenties girls! Synopsis : Lara Lington has always had an overactive imagination, but suddenly that imagination seems to be in overdrive. Normal professional twenty-something young women don’t get visited by ghosts. Or do they? When the spirit of Lara’s great-aunt Sadie – a feisty, demanding girl with firm ideas about fashion, love and the right way to dance – mysteriously appears, she has on...

Today, 16th December is the 235th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth. The wonderful people in Google did a wonderful doodle in celebration of this annivesary.  Here you have a couple that could come from Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Perjuice , both books which I read for English Literature in High School.  I have another of her book, Mansfield Park somewhere at home. I dont read a lot of literature but if I do, Jane Austen would be the top in my choice.  Perhaps it's time to dig out Mansfield Park .

Books by Neil Gaiman - you either love them or you don’t. After a few titles from Stardust to American Gods to Coraline and Anansi Boys , I finally decided that I don’t really like what Neil Gaiman produces. His books are too bizarre for me. I first knew of Neil Gaiman from the movie Stardust which was adapted from his novel with the same name. After watching the movie, I read the book and decided that I enjoyed the movie more than the book which says a lot as I normally never like much about movie intepreted from novels.  Next, I read an e-book on American Gods when a publishers offers it for free on-line for a limited period of time. Subsequently, I was presented with Anansi Boys and here we are. Anansi Boys is about Charlie Nancy whose nickname was Fat Charlie for obvious reason and whose estranged father recently dropped dead on a karaoke stage. It was then that Fat Charlie found out that his father is actually Anansi, the trickster spider-god. Anansi is the spirit of...

POPULAR – the well known bookstores in Malaysia is having a nationwide warehouse sales. This is not the same as the sales at the bookstores but held in different venue like an exhibition hall or warehouse. I saw the notice when I was in Penang recently and when I’m back home, I saw the banner proclaiming the sales from 7 – 12 December 2010 in Permata Carpark, Kuching . The selection is quite good if you have the time to slowing look through the messy stacks of books. Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella going for 50%, books by Jeffery Archer, Dean Koontz, James Petterson, David Baldacci and lots more all going for 30% - 70% discount. Even Goodnight Nobo dy was there! I stay far away! Went there during lunch break and left with these four, all at 50% discount. 1. The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang  (hardcover) – the China version of No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency . 2. Lifeless by Mark Billingham (paperback) – it’s difficult to find books by Mark in the bookstores....

I love to cook and I look cooking show too so a book about cooking show is just too hard to resist. Joy Ballard is a host of her cooking show ‘Dining with Joy’ but she can’t cook. It’s a secret that only few know about and when her show is picked up by a major network and given prime time slot, it was just a matter of time before her secret is out especially since her television rival is stopping at nothing to bring her down. When Luke Redmond, a handsome, creative but jobless chef was asked to co-host with Joy on her show, Joy sees him as her way out of the secret that’s consuming her. Joy holds on to a promise from God taken from John 4:34 ‘ My food is to do the will of Him who sent me’ . By saying that my food – my substance, my reason for existence is to do God’s will, surely she can’t expect to keep her secret and continue with living the life of lies? It just doesn’t work that way. God won’t allow it because what He has for us is a life without lies. Joy found out the hard wa...

Synopsis : Cash-strapped Rosie and her boyfriend Mark are city folk longing for a tiny country cottage. Rampantly nouveaux-riches Samantha and Guy and also searching for rustic bliss – a mansion with a mile-long drive and hot and cold running gardeners. The Village of Eight Mile Bottom seems quiet enough, despite a nosy postman, a reclusive rock star, a glamorous Bond Girl and a ghost with a knife in its back. But there are unexpected thrills in the hills. The local siren seduces Guy while a farmer fatale rocks Rosie’s relationship. Then a mysterious millionaire makes an offer she can’t refuse but should she? Correction on the synopsis - Rosie‘s the one who is tired of city life and longs for life in the country. She managed to persuade boyfriend Mark who has just got his own column in the papers. However, life in the country isn’t really what they expected and it wasn’t long before things get out of hand. Likewise, beautiful has been actress (although she won’t admit it) Samant...

Synopsis : Tears of the Giraffe charts the adventures of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s only and finest female private detective. It’s going to take all her intuition and eminent sensibility for Precious to crack her hardest case yet : the decade-old disappearance of an American on the edge of Kalahari. And if that wasn’t enough, there are plenty of matters closer to home to concern her: her highly talented secretary, Mma Makutsi, eager to be promoted to detective, the unscrupulous maid of her husband-to-be, the wonderful Mr J.L.B.Matakoni and the sudden and unexpected increase in her family by not one but two. The book is slightly bigger than the normal paperback but smaller than trade paperback so I’m not sure what it’s called at this size. At only 230+ pages, it’s an excellent book to bring when travelling as it will not take up a lot of space and weight. I quite like Tears of the Giraffe . I don’t love it but finds it very refreshing to read about another culture other than th...