Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Review: The Determined Heart by Antoinette May

I first read Frankenstein in college. It was for a class in popular fiction from pre-Victorian times onward. Of course, prior to actually reading it, I was pretty certain I knew all about the tale, so ingrained it is in our own pop culture collective. So it was fascinating to see that it was so very different from what I had thought. And as a physical manifestation of a terrifying and desperate mental state, it was that much scarier than I ever expected. Between Frankenstein and Dracula, it was a rough semester for me. But if it was hard to read the novel because of the nightmares it inspired, I remained completely fascinated by Mary Shelley and the origins of the book. The Determined Heart, Antoinette May's fictionalization of Mary Shelley's personal life and how it contributed to her creation of her dark monster, is an engrossing read that fleshes out what I already knew about the author and her tale.

Mary Shelley, daughter of the famous and notorious Mary Wollstonecraft and philosopher William Godwin, was intelligent, strong, determined, and destined to write. Although her mother died only days after her birth, young Mary is raised to know her as an amazing, progressive woman, at least until her father remarries. Her stepmother dislikes Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny, and makes Mary's life unpleasant, denying her many things that she claims are too expensive.  She supplies these same denied things to her own daughter, Claire, despite the impoverished state of the Godwin family. Mary's growing up years are very much a Cinderella story, with her father loathe to anger his wife by supporting his intelligent daughter. After the family moves to London, setting up their press on a squalid street, William Godwin finds a potential investor in the young Percy Bysshe Shelly. His introduction of Bysshe into their home changes everything. Fanny, Mary, and Claire all fall for the young poet, despite the fact that he is married. He, in turn, falls for Mary, convincing her to elope with him to Europe after her father's enraged denial of their love despite his famous scorn for traditional marriage.  They leave behind an apoplectic Godwin, Bysshe's pregnant wife, and his young daughter.

But it's not just Bysshe and Mary heading to the Continent, Mary's scheming stepsister Claire accompanies them as well. Their actions provoke a scandal but Bysshe and Mary are in love and determined to weather anything. Their life together is one of penury and hardship, constant moving, and tragedy after tragedy. Bysshe is continually unfaithful, even having an affair with Claire, and he comes across as needy and selfish. Mary is unaccountably devoted to him, bearing (and burying) his children, enduring the hardships and scorn of their chosen life, and putting his own intellectual life ahead of hers, albeit sometimes grudgingly. Mary is clearly faced with the uneasy dichotomy of the times between life as a model wife and that of a strong woman author. The literary luminaries of the time pass in and out of their lives and it is, of course, Lord Byron who, during a lengthy storm, challenges Mary to write the ghost story that becomes her most famous work, Frankenstein.

Mary's character is both frustrating and heartbreaking. She desires love and family but she gets Bysshe, who refuses to remain true, and her father, who disowns her but still comes knocking on her husband's door for monetary infusions that the small Shelly family, estranged from Bysshe's purse string controlling grandfather, can ill afford. Despite the high minded beliefs of the men around her, Mary is not valued as she should be simply because of her sex. And she refuses to assert herself for the recognition due her. Stepsister Claire is an odious character who again and again highlights Mary's inability to challenge for what she wants and deserves. May has used the facts of Shelly's life to weave this well researched and engrossing novel about the author. Reading about the darkness and heartbreak in her own life, it is not hard to see where she could create a tale like Frankenstein, a tale of monsters, loneliness, and rejection. The novel focuses mainly on Shelly's life with Bysshe, wrapping up quickly after his untimely death, and some of the repeated details (repeated because Bysshe does the same thing over and over) could have been left out without significantly altering the reader's feelings of empathy for Mary and her situation. But over all, the novel is quite a quick read, one that elaborates well on the popular, but rarely detailed, specifics of the famed author's life. Readers curious about Shelly, her place in the pantheon of Romantic Poets, and the origins of her enduring and disturbing novel will find much to think about here.

For more information about Antoinette May and the book, take a look at her webpage. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson. The book is being released by Doubleday on October 10, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation's heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed. Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn't altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain's occasional failings and more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. And not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, and an extra day off at Christmas. Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest and quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous and the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute and perceptive insight into all that is best and worst about Britain today.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Review: Sit! Stay! Speak! by Annie England Noblin

Although we often try to escape our problems by running away from them or finding something else to focus on instead, the issues we're ignoring stay with us. In fact, they might even be joined by new and different problems in our new place or situation. Eventually we have to face everything, and that is made much more comfortable by the presence of people we love and especially by a beloved pet. It is only by facing our pasts that we can build a future. We all deserve a second chance.  In Annie England Noblin's debut novel, Sit! Stay! Speak!, every character, including the dog, is trying to make a second chance work.

Addie Andrews has inherited a house from her great-aunt Tilda so she moves from Chicago to small town Eunice, Arkansas. She only intends to be there for as long as it takes to clear out Tilda's house, fix it up, and sell it. While she's in the house, she remembers snatches from the 12 summers of her childhood that she spent with Aunt Tilda, happier memories than the melancholic memory ambushes of her fiance Jonah. One evening, as she walks along the Mississippi River, she stumbles across a young, abused pit bull tied up in a garbage bag and left to die. Rushing the animal to the vet, she finds out that he has also been shot. This visit to the vet changes everything about Addie's life in Eunice. She ends up adopting Felix; meets Wanda, the vet receptionist who becomes her best friend; and first lays eyes on Jasper Floyd, a local farmer who sparks her interest and whose family is the wealthiest in town.  It also puts her on a collision course with a nasty piece of work who is likely the one who wanted Felix to die.

Addie is incensed by the fact that someone would treat a defenseless animal the way that Felix was treated and she is determined to root out the evil, inhumane perpetrators. But Addie is sticking her nose where it's not wanted and while Wanda and Jasper seem to be on her side, she also barrels along making enemies. Her plan to sell the house after she fixes it up goes very slowly and she starts to settle into this small, gossipy town, wondering what she means to Jasper and vice versa. At every turn, various people warn her off of her renegade investigation into what is going on that almost left Felix dead but she apparently doesn't trust any of these people enough to heed their advice, landing herself in danger over and over again. The pain in her past is also slowly exposed, especially as she gets closer with Jasper.

Addie is often a frustrating character. She rescues Felix and recognizes that something terribly unsettling is going on in this town but she is too naive to acknowledge the fact that she doesn't understand all of the undercurrents and history and so she barges forward without thinking or considering. Her zeal for rescuing dogs and getting justice for them is admirable but her methods leave a lot to be desired, embroiling ever more people in her unthinking actions. The remaining cast of characters is a little bit boilerplate feeling: the hot but sometimes distant love interest, the devoted best friend, the caricaturish evil baddie, the very attractive and possessive competition for the love interest, and the rest of the quirky, small town, Southern eccentrics. The plot was generally predictable but did still have a few unexpected moments in it that saved it.  The mystery of what happened to Jonah was not really a mystery and might have added more to the book if it had been addressed head on as something that Addie wanted to shy away from instead of presenting it as something to be uncovered.  Of course, since Aunt Tilda was a phemonenal cook and Addie is a dismal one, there are the requisite recipes for scrumptious sounding Southern foods that are always popular in women's fiction. Despite problems, ultimately this was a nice tale of healing a broken heart, starting over, and the second chances we should all get in life.

For more information about Annie England Noblin and the book, like her Facebook page or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Monday, September 28, 2015

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Food Whore by Jessica Tom
The Determined Heart by Antoinette May

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46

Reviews posted this week:

Little Woman in Blue by Jeannine Atkins
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
Sit! Stay! Speak! by Annie England Noblin
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Food Whore by Jessica Tom
The Determined Heart by Antoinette May

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Between Gods by Alison Pick came from Harper Perennial and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

The role our religion plays in our lives and how it defines us is fascinating so this memoir of a woman raised Christian who discovers her family was actually Jewish and fled the Holocaust promises to be thoughtful and thought provoking.

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain came from BookSparks PR.

Can long buried secrets sabotage a woman and her husband's quest to adopt or even more basically, destroy their marriage? I look forward to uncovering the secrets and seeing how all of this plays out in this novel.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Review: The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton

A book club friend of mine raved about this book to me. I admit I was skeptical about the story even when she read aloud a beautiful passage. Appalachian tales are not generally in my wheelhouse. I looked at the jacket copy. "An act of violence" is one phrase that makes me run in the other direction, about as fast as possible. I checked out the cover art. It looked a little new agey or maybe washed out, dull with the watercolors. It just didn't call to me. I wasn't sold. So I had decided that I was probably not going to read this one when it showed up on my doorstep and demanded to be read. The universe obviously didn't agree with my decision. And I have to say I am so glad to have been over-ruled!

Fourteen year old Kevin and his mother move to Medgar, Kentucky for the summer to try and heal from the terrible tragedy of his younger brother's death. His father blames Kevin, his mother has retreated into herself, but his grandfather, into whose home they land, while also grieving, can see the bigger picture and can comfort this grandson who has to shoulder so much. As Kevin makes a local friend in Buzzy Fink and spends time with his wise and thoughtful grandfather, he slowly starts to become a regular teenager again. But if Medgar is healing Kevin, it is also a place where everything is changing. Long a mining community, now in the 80s, strip mining has come to Medgar, razing the tops of mountains, polluting the water, and raising tensions in the town between those who argue for the environment and protection of the mountain hollows and those who want the influx of jobs and money that this type of mining brings. The town can be short-sighted, bigoted, and narrow-minded but the situation, the need to create jobs to sustain the townsfolk, is a complicated one. When a local man, loved by some and reviled by others because of his homosexuality, who was very vocal about the underhandedness of the strip mining operation is murdered, tensions spill over and both good and evil and the difficult areas in between are exposed to Kevin, affecting him in ways he never could have predicted.

This novel was completely engrossing and hard to put down. Scotton beautifully draws small town Appalachia in the 80s and the competing concerns of living in such a place. He manages to raise moral, political, and social issues without preaching, wrapping a heart warming grandfather and grandson relationship story around such troubling things as homophobia and mining rights; the concepts of guilt, blame, and forgiveness; the hopefulness of healing, both of an individual and a community; and the value of the long, slow process of justice. Kevin is a sympathetic character and his friendship with Buzzy is wonderful. Pops, his grandfather, is magical, a touchstone for his hurting grandson. The tension and fight in the novel is personal, which makes it all that much more dangerous to everyone involved. The writing is richly descriptive, drawing the reader into the place both physically and in terms of its character and that of the people who inhabit it. The story is told retrospectively by an adult Kevin looking back at that formative summer but adult Kevin still captures the effect that events had on teenaged Kevin in such a way that the reader forgets that it isn't being narrated in the present. That Scotton offers no easy answers for the issues he raises and manages to create sympathy for several characters the reader wants to despise is a real testament to his talent. A beautiful coming of age tale, this is one not to be missed.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Clasp by Sloane Crosley. The book is being released by Farrar, Staus and Giroux on October 6, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Part comedy of manners, part treasure hunt, the first novel from the writer whom David Sedaris calls "perfectly, relentlessly funny"

Kezia, Nathaniel, and Victor are reunited for the extravagant wedding of a college friend. Now at the tail end of their twenties, they arrive completely absorbed in their own lives-Kezia the second-in-command to a madwoman jewelry designer in Manhattan; Nathaniel the former literary cool kid, selling his wares in Hollywood; and the Eeyore-esque Victor, just fired from a middling search engine. They soon slip back into old roles: Victor loves Kezia. Kezia loves Nathaniel. Nathaniel loves Nathaniel.

In the midst of all this semi-merriment, Victor passes out in the mother of the groom's bedroom. He wakes to her jovially slapping him across the face. Instead of a scolding, she offers Victor a story she's never even told her son, about a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France.

And so a madcap adventure is set into motion, one that leads Victor, Kezia, and Nathaniel from Miami to New York and L.A. to Paris and across France, until they converge at the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story "The Necklace."

Heartfelt, suspenseful, and told with Sloane Crosley's inimitable spark and wit, The Clasp is a masterful story of friends struggling to fit together now that their lives haven't gone as planned, of how to separate the real from the fake. Such a task might be possible when it comes to precious stones, but is far more difficult to pull off with humans.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Review: Little Woman in Blue by Jeannine Atkins

Like just about every other young bookish girl, I read Little Women growing up. In fact, I read Little Men and Jo's Boys as well. And like the majority who read it, I desperately wanted to grow up and be Jo March. She was the be all and end all of heroines. (Well, I'm still disappointed that she didn't marry Laurie but I suppose I might eventually get over it.) I never gave much thought to little Amy, the family pet who came across as a little bit of a spoiled, vain, flibberty gibbet. So I was completely intrigued to find that Amy was modeled to some extent on Louisa May Alcott's youngest sister, May. What was even more surprising was the way in which May was so much more interesting than the paragon of motherhood that Amy grew up to be. Jeannine Atkins' new novel, Little Woman in Blue, fictionalizes May's life, bringing to light her accomplishments, her humanness, and her desires, bringing an oft overlooked, yet talented in her own right, Alcott into the light.

May Alcott found her passion for painting at the age of ten. But she was born into a world that made it very difficult for women to be artists, expecting them to give up their artistic passion and ambitions to marry and raise a family, a world that often believed that women were incapable of being artists of the same caliber as men. May was determined to prove the world wrong. Even as she helped her mother tend to their home, to cook, clean, and sew, she needed creative time too, time spent with her paintbrush in hand, capturing what she saw before her. As the younger sister of Louisa May Alcott, she wrestles with the desire to be good and helpful but to also achieve the success, acclaim, and professional respect that her older sister has found. Her relationship with her sister is a complicated one tinged with both respect and envy and once May sees how Louisa has portrayed her in the character of Amy in the famous Little Women, she is even more determined to live life on her own terms.

Atkins has taken what is known about May Alcott and expanded on it, giving voice to a vibrant, intelligent, and determined woman. She details the myriad of stumbling blocks May faced and the ways she did eventually find and fulfill her desires. May is very definitely a woman of her time and she is torn between what she wants and what society expects of her. Her passion for her art drives her and shines through the narrative, making the life she chooses and which ultimately takes her so very far from home and family the only choice that she can make. Many famous characters in the arts and literary worlds cross May's path through the course of the book, some pointing to the budding promise of positive change for women and others still hidebound in their attitudes and each of these characters has an impact on May. May as a character is by turns confident and uncertain. She knows what she wants, both art and a family, but she doesn't know how to find and maintain both, having to forge her own way if she does intend to have them. Her doubts and insecurities make her real, her desire for her sister's support and pride in her makes her human. Atkins has drawn a fascinating, artistically talented young woman emerging first from the shadow of her family's impoverished situation and then from the long shadow cast by a beloved sister, struggling for recognition and respect in her own right. Fans of Little Women will certainly enjoy this imagined look at the woman who was much more complex than little Amy March.

Thanks to the publisher and Caitlin from Caitlin Hamilton Marketing for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Monday, September 21, 2015

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Another insanely busy week this past week immersed me in books while strangely keeping me from them as well. On the book related front, I got to have lunch with Kim Boykin and Lisa Wingate, both of whom are like your best girlfriend (well, plus they can write fun and fabulous stories that keep you turning the pages which my best girlfriend can't); my neighborhood book club resumed meeting after our summer break and we discussed a pair of middle grade novels, a genre we don't typically tackle; and I spent the weekend surrounded by book folks at SIBA15 (the trade show for the Southern Independent Bookseller's Association), from which I cam home with a carload of wonderful looking upcoming books. If I can squeak out the time, I'll put together a post highlighting what publishers are excited about and what independent bookstores here in the South (and hopefully wherever you are too) will be showing you in the coming months. And maybe, just maybe, I'll manage to write a few reviews as well so there's something beyond these weekly posts for you to read! This meme has been hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and I hope will be again one day.

Books I completed this past week are:

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe

Reviews posted this week:

Not one thing

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
Little Woman in Blue by Jeannine Atkins
Two Across by Jeff Bartsch
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
Sit! Stay! Speak! by Annie England Noblin
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate

Monday Mailbox

Another good looking pair arrived here this week. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain came from St. Martin's Griffin.

A novel about a sister who was believed to have committed suicide many years ago turns out to be alive, changing the truth about everything, this looks totally gripping.

Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister came from BlueBridge and Meryl Zegarek PR.

Anyone who has been owned by an animal should have an interest in books like this which tell not only stories about our beloved pets but also look at what they teach us about life. My fur coat wearing family member (aka the dog) can't wait for me to read this one.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood. The book is being released by Nan A. Talese on September 29, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid's Tale and as richly imagined as The Blind Assassin.

Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes.

At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled.

Monday, September 14, 2015

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I was very busy with moving bedrooms and furniture and then painting this past week. I cleaned out a bunch of things that needed tackling (there are still countless more areas that need help but it's a start) so I didn't do much with books. My to do list is quite a bit shorter than it was though so I am pleased with that. (Not so my to be reviewed list.) I am actually fairly surprised I read as much as I did but it is hard for me to end a day without any reading in it so I guess there will always be *some* reading no matter how busy the rest of my life gets. This meme has been hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and I hope will be again one day.

Books I completed this past week are:

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
Sit! Stay! Speak! by Annie England Noblin
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson

Reviews posted this week:

Not one thing

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
Little Woman in Blue by Jeannine Atkins
Two Across by Jeff Bartsch
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
Sit! Stay! Speak! by Annie England Noblin
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin

Monday Mailbox

An enticing pair arrived here this week. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain came from St. Martin's Press.

Can long buried secrets sabotage a woman and her husband's quest to adopt or even more basically, destroy their marriage? I look forward to uncovering the secrets and seeing how all of this plays out in this novel.

Speed Kings by Andy Bull came from Avery and LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

I thrill to books like this one about athletes and the amazing feats they accomplish. Firmly ground them in history like this story of the 1932 American Olympic bobsled team and I couldn't be happier.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Sunday Salon: Summer Is Officially Over and So Is My Summer Reading

My oldest child has been off at college for three weeks. My younger two have been back at school for three weeks also. Labor Day was this past Monday. Pools all over the area have closed for the season. My WNBA meetings have started back up again. All of this means that, despite the continued high temps here in the sunny South, summer is officially over. So now it's time to check in and see how I managed to do on my overly ambitious summer reading list. There is little rhyme or reason to what I managed to read and what I didn't (except to me) but based on the original list, here's my tally:

Finished reading from the original list (link to my review if applicable):

Worthy by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky
Washing the Dead by Michelle Brafman
George's Grand Tour by Caroline Vermalle
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave
In a Dark Wood by Joseph Luzzi
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
The Door by Magda Szabo
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Appetites of Girls by Pamela Moses
The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall
Whisper Beach by Shelley Noble
Summer Secrets by Jane Green
It's You by Jane Porter
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Newport by Jill Morrow
Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid
When the Moon Is Low by Nadia Hashimi
The Road Home by Kathleen Shoop
Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
The Invisibles by Cecelia Galante
Stepdog by Nicole Galland
The Reinvention of Albert Paugh by Jean Davies Okimoto
Anchored by Bridgette Quinn
Making Nice by Matt Sumell
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
Spinster by Kate Bolick
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Bread Alone by Judith Hendricks
The Race For Paris by Meg Waite Clayton
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
Satisfaction by Andee Reilly
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
Baker's Blues by Judith Hendricks
White Dresses by Mary Pflum Peterson
A Window Opens by Liz Egan
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
Little Woman in Blue by Jeannine Atkins
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

Finished reading but not on the original list:

Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number 8 by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
Henna House by Nomi Eve
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Two Across by Jeff Bartsch

Still has a bookmark in it:

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson

Just didn't get to 'em but will eventuallly:

Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb
Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
The Nurses by Alexandra Robbins
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth
Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain

How did you do with your summer reading this year?

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Vintage by David Baker. The book is being released by Touchstone on September 22, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: “Vintage is at once a mouthwatering culinary tale, an evocative look at the strength it takes to create the life we want, and a delicious adventure.” —Nina Mukerjee Furstenau, MFK Fisher Award–winning author

Good ingredients, an open heart, a dash of tenacity and a pinch of courage...

Food journalist, wine connoisseur and onetime bestselling writer Bruno Tannenbaum has long believed these are the elements of a full life. The rest will take care of itself. But lately, nothing’s going right for Bruno. His career is floundering, he’s separated from his wife and their two daughters, and is drinking his way through a dwindling bank account, certain all that’s left of life is a downward slope into obscurity.

Then Bruno stumbles on a clue leading to a “lost” wine vintage, one of the many bottles stolen and smuggled out of France during WWII, now worth a small fortune and sought after by wine collectors throughout the world. Bruno realizes that finding this bottle could be the key to restoring his career—maybe even writing his comeback book. But his discovery is not a secret for long; as word of his finding spreads, nefarious characters interested in the bottle start appearing at every turn. Bruno scrapes together his final resources, calls in favors he may ultimately regret and sets off on a grand adventure.

From the rolling hills of Burgundy to a raucous wedding in Moldova, from a Beaune bacchanal to the graying walls of a Russian prison, Vintage is a hilarious food-filled debut about redemption, sacrifices and making one last effort to follow your dreams.

Monday, September 7, 2015

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme has been hosted by Sheila at Book Journey and I hope will be again one day.

Books I completed this past week are:

Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
Little Woman in Blue by Jeannine Atkins
Two Across by Jeff Bartsch
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

Reviews posted this week:

Spinster by Kate Bolick

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
Little Woman in Blue by Jeannine Atkins
Two Across by Jeff Bartsch
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman came from a friend for a postal book club I'm in.

About a woman who comes home from her tour of duty in Iraq, irrevocably changed and suffering from PTSD, and the impact it all has on her family, especially her beloved brother, this sounds incredibly painful but important too.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Sunday Salon

As summer winds down, I have been in a tidying up sort of mood. Unfortunately this hasn't managed to spill over into making my book shelves look pretty. Of course, those are so often in flux that as soon as I finish they will be a disaster all over again and I could start over at the beginning. I'll be honest, it's also an overwhelming task! Here are a few of the shelves on the first floor as they look today.  Note the books stacked in front of the tidily shelved bits.



And those shelves are much tidier than the ones in the public basement areas:



And if these are the ones that anyone coming to my house can see, you will just have to imagine how disastrous the ones in the non-public areas of the house look. (I do have pictures but I'd like to hang onto them and only share them once I've cleaned up the horrendous mess--which possibly means never.)

Maybe cleaning these up will be my fall/winter project, at least the publicly viewable ones. Then again, my daughter wants to move into her older brother's room now that he's gone off to college and he doesn't object so I might just be moving two rooms instead of doing book things!

This past week, I have traveled all over in my reading. I went to Naples, Florida in the 1960s as the members of the literary society there tried to stop development in the Everglades. I went to the beach in Newport, Rhode Island as a woman tries to meet men after her former fiance dumped her via Facebook. I went to Concord, Massachusetts and France as the youngest sister of Louisa May Alcott strives to be taken seriously as a painter. I went to Washington, DC and Boston and Providence, Rhode Island as two spelling bee champions meet, marry (maybe), and cross into and out of each others' lives for years. I am also still in the midst of St. Malo, France during WWII with a blind French girl and a German soldier who specializes in radios and in London and the woods with a survivalist father and the daughter he's taken into the woods with him. Where have your reading travels taken you this past week?

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Review: Spinster by Kate Bolick

The word spinster has very negative connotations to it. It is not used as often in this day and age as it used to be but it still carries the suggestion that the woman to whom it refers is a failure. She has failed to get married, which must, of course, be the goal of any right thinking woman. Except that marriage is no longer necessarily a goal; nor is it expected. Once upon a time, women did have to rely on men financially and so marriage made sense. With women fully able to support themselves, you would expect that marriage would no longer be such a coveted goal, and yet, in many cases, it still is. Kate Bolick has set out to examine why, to find inspirational women who point to another way, to reclaim the word spinster, and to share her own experience as an unmarried woman in her new book Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own.

This book is part memoir, part biography, part sociology. As she discusses her own life and the societal expectations up against which she runs time and time again, she talks about five women who inspire her, the women she calls "awakeners," whose own paths were unconventional, who helped her find her voice and to stay on the path she's chosen. Essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman are the women who guided her, whose lives she examines not only in conjunction with her own but also in contrast to the world they lived in as well. Interestingly, all of her awakeners did in fact marry at some point in their lives albeit unhappily so while they might have been disapproved of in their own times, they would not have been called spinsters.

It is very clear that Bolick greatly admires the women she's chosen but trying to knit her own life into the mix felt forced and as if it all didn't fit nearly as well as she wanted it to do. The narrative tone is inconsistent with portions of the book sounding quite pedantic while others were much more personal, perhaps a result of too many foci here. Also, the fact that she talks about her own status as always single is a bit disingenuous given her almost constant involvement in long term monogamous relationships, one after the other. If she's calling that single, she has a very narrow definition of coupled, one narrower than most people these days. There are some interesting tidbits buried here and she has clearly done a huge amount of research to compile the sociological and biographical portions of the book. An interesting concept for sure, I really wanted to like and be engaged by this a whole lot more than I did.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

This Is Your Life Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison. The book is being released by Algonquin Books on September 8, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: With Bernard, her husband of fifty-five years, now in the grave, seventy-eight-year-old Harriet Chance impulsively sets sail on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise that her late husband had planned. But what she hoped would be a voyage leading to a new lease on life becomes a surprising and revelatory journey into Harriet’s past.

There, amid the overwhelming buffets and the incessant lounge singers, between the imagined appearances of her late husband and the very real arrival of her estranged daughter midway through the cruise, Harriet is forced to take a long look back, confronting the truth about pivotal events that changed the course of her life. And in the process she discovers that she’s been living the better part of that life under entirely false assumptions.

In This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! Jonathan Evison has crafted a bighearted novel with an endearing heroine at the helm. Through Harriet, he paints a bittersweet portrait of a postmodern everywoman, her story told with great warmth, humanity, and humor. Part dysfunctional love story, part poignant exploration of the mother-daughter relationship, nothing is what it seems in this tale of acceptance, reexamination, and forgiveness.

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