Shelf Share Thursday

Welcome to Shelf Share Thursday! It's back after a weeklong hiatus due to my vacation. This is the place to give a little love to the books that have been lingering on your shelf for a little while. Every week I will post a letter and 3 books that start with that letter. Maybe I'll find that book I've been hanging onto is a drop everything and read it right now or maybe I'll find its suited to better purposes-like spider squashing. Feel free to share your shelf too and leave a link using Mr. Linky at the bottom of the post. This week's letter is F.

is for...........

The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye

From LibraryThing:

"This is a magnificent romantic/historical/adventure novel set in India at the time of mutiny. "The Far Pavilions" is a story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is a story about and English man - Ashton Pelham-Martyn - brought up as a Hindu and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It's a story of divided loyalties, of tender camaraderie, of greedy imperialism and of the clash between east and west. To the burning plains and snow-capped mountains of this great, humming continent, M.M. Kaye brings her quite exceptional gift of immediacy and meticulous historical accuracy, plus her insight into the human heart."

I found my copy at Cheapstacks bookstore which is the Grand Haven library bookstore. I think I paid 50 cents for it and the only reason I have for not reading it yet is because it is huge and I haven't been in the mood to read a great big book in awhile. Hopefully I will soon because this one looks awesome. Everywhere I've looked it has 5 star reviews :)

F is also for....

Finn by Jon Clinch

From Amazon:

"Embarking from a scene in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Clinch has written a debut novel of harrowing intensity. When Jim and Huck find a dead man in a house floating down the Mississippi, the room with the body is filled with mysterious oddities: a wooden leg, two black masks, crude scrawlings over the walls, etc. Huck does not know that the corpse, shot in the back, is his father. Clinch meticulously fills in the backstory of Finn (or "Pap Finn," as Twain usually referred to him). He uses the details of the floating-house scene, and much of Twain's plotting, characters, and themes, to create a story at once intricately entwined with Huckleberry Finn and separate from that novel in tone and focus. The author makes no attempt to duplicate Twain's humor and satire. Instead, he sets his sights on humanity's immense capacity for evil. While Huck's innate good heart won the battle against his society-produced conscience, allowing him to help the runaway slave, Finn has neither the heart nor conscience to aid anyone."

I re-read Huckleberry Finn for a college course about a year ago and loved it just as much as the first time. Huck's dad is rarely a blip on the radar in the original book but here is his whole story. I like different takes on classic characters (well, except for those wierd fusion of horror creatures with classic stories-little women and vampires, pride and prejudice and zombies etc...). I think I might like this one.

and finally F is for....

Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

From Amazon:

"Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth."

I have heard great things about The Name of the Rose by this author but it was this one that caught my attention for some reason. Its been on my shelf forever so maybe I'll get to it sometime this year.

And thats it for this week. Since I am posting this so late on thursday feel free to post yours anytime the rest of this week. I am so behind on everything... Now its your turn.

What's on your shelf?