books – Page 2 – Casteluzzo

Period Presents

December 17, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I try to stay away from those braggy “my husband is so awesome” types of posts, because I know they’re insufferably annoying. Typically, I only indulge when Tony is off in California for weeks on end without me, because I feel like if I have to suffer through living without him, the least the rest of you can do is indulge me in my mushy ramblings about how dreamy he is.

But we’re going to California at the end of this week, and I’ll be coming back a couple of weeks before he does, so I guess I’m already in gushy romantic mode again.… Read more

Book Reviews: Proud Tower, Delivered, Infernal Devices, And Then There Were None

November 12, 2014November 12, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Besides my slow but productive progress through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I’ve made some time for a few other books lately. Among which:

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve been thinking a lot about World War I during this centennial year, and I am fascinated by anything to do with the Long 19th Century, so when I was browsing for commute audiobooks on Overdrive and saw this, I knew I had to read it. It’s an engagingly written history of the Western world before WWI that tries to paint that world as it was and seemed at the time to those who lived in it, and not as it looked (or looks) through the rosy glasses of war-wearied remembrance.… Read more

The Lives We Never Live

October 18, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I was watching the BBC miniseries Daniel Deronda the other day. Based on the George Eliot novel of the same name (which I’ll have to hunt down and read now), it follows the career of the titular character, who ends up having to choose between two love interests. It’s a beautifully done series, and it’s on Netflix, so if like me, you have a weakness for 19th century period dramas, it’s one of the better ones out there.

Hugh Bonneville is creepily magnificent as the aristocrat who enjoys his domination over others. Romola Garai is brilliant in the role of Gwendolyn Harleth, the young woman who must choose between love and her family’s financial security.… Read more

Drawing on the Wrong Side of the Brain

October 5, 2014November 1, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Earlier this week, this fun set of drawing pencils arrived at my house.

It was waiting for me when I got home from work, and after the kids were in bed and Tony had left for his weekly Euro-gaming night, I opened it up and looked at everything in it. It seemed like an awful lot of different pencils, all marked with cryptic number and letter combinations. I tried out a few, noting how the softer lead of some of them slid onto the paper so effortlessly. The charcoal looked fun too, but I’ve always hated how chalk or pastels feel in my hands, and had no desire to get black all over myself, although that eventually happened anyway, since I just had to try smudging the pencil lines with my fingers to see how the different hardnesses of graphite reacted.… Read more

My Top 20 Books

September 23, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

You know that Facebook thing that’s been going around where people tag you and you have to list your top ten books? Well, I was waiting and waiting to get tagged. I finally did a couple of days ago (thank you, Jared) but by then the number had ballooned to 20 books. Which I guess is OK, because I had a hard time as it was narrowing it down to just 20. And I didn’t think I could just post a list without explaining what each and every book meant to me. So it got too long for a Facebook status, and ended up on my blog.… Read more

Game of Thrones, Falling in Honey, Bigger on the Inside, and Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Lives and Times

August 18, 2014August 16, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

It’s been a while since I published a book review. As is probably obvious, I spend most of my discretionary time these days watching Doctor Who. It’s still not clear whether my infatuation will eventually burn itself out, or develop into a lifelong love affair. Of course I am hoping for the latter–doesn’t everyone who’s in love want it to last forever? In the meantime, I just signed my daughter up for an online homeschooling class entitled Traveling Through History With Doctor Who, because who doesn’t need another excuse to watch a Doctor Who episode every week and then write papers and do projects relating it to history, science, literature and ethics?… Read more

Silence in the Library

August 9, 2014August 9, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

As per our usual Saturday routine, I took the children to the library this morning. Upon walking in the door, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a book sale going on in the Book Nest, our library’s resident book store. It was one of those $3 per bag sales that I absolutely love, because I don’t have to weigh the relative merits of each book–I simply have to concentrate on stuffing as many books as possible into my allotted grocery bag. I’ve become quite an expert at this. Here’s my haul for today:

I always hit the classics shelf first.… Read more

Exciting News!

July 12, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

You know all those times people told me I should write a book about our international adventures? Well, last week I indie published my very first book. Here it is:

Paradise Interrupted: Romantic Adventures Backpacking Across the Philippines, Baby in Tow by Sarah Bringhurst

It’s available on Amazon for Kindle here. Check it out!… Read more

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Voices, City of Bones (Ashes, and Lost Souls), Under the Never Sky and Graceling

May 27, 2014May 27, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Despite the fact that I have spent a fairly obscene amount of time watching Doctor Who during the past several weeks, I have managed to get a little reading in too. Stay tuned later for my review of Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside, which I currently have on hold at the library. But in the meantime,

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I quite loved this book. Yep, it was violent. And quite disturbing. But the characters were so very compelling to me. Especially Lisbeth Salander. She’s a person whom society has completely failed, who is in an incredibly vulnerable position.… Read more

The Red Tent, Confessions of a Latter-day Virgin, The Mists of Avalon, and A Song for Arbonne

March 27, 2014Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Yes, more book reviews! Here are a few incisive feminist retellings from the Bible, Arthurian legend, and the Age of Chivalry. As well as a funny and heart-wrenching memoir about being single in the Mormon Church.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The core of this book is one of those disturbing and troublesome stories in the Bible that we don’t tend to talk about much–like the time Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law got pregnant and he wanted to burn her alive, but then it turned out that he was the one who had impregnated her. Or the time Lot hospitably offered to give his virgin daughters to the mob of rapists outside his door.… Read more

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