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 House on Primrose Pond by Yona Zeldis McDonough The book is being released by NAL on February 2, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: After suffering a sudden, traumatic loss, historical novelist Susannah Gilmore decides to uproot her life—and the lives of her two children—and leave their beloved Brooklyn for the little town of Eastwood, New Hampshire.

While the trio adjusts to their new surroundings, Susannah is captivated by an unexpected find in her late parents’ home: an unsigned love note addressed to her mother, in handwriting that is most definitely not her father’s.

Reeling from the thought that she never really knew her mother, Susannah finds mysteries everywhere she looks: in her daughter’s friendship with an older neighbor, in a charismatic local man to whom she’s powerfully drawn, and in an eighteenth century crime she’s researching for her next book. Compelled to dig into her mother’s past, Susannah discovers even more secrets, ones that surpass any fiction she could ever put to paper...

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro
The Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Reviews posted this week:

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

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

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
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
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
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
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Making Babies by Anne Enright
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks
A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Daniel's True Desire by Grace Burrowes
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Burned Bridges of Ward, Nebraska by Eileen
The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro
The Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell

Merry Christmas to all

As we head into an election year, we thought we should refresh your memory of just who gets to vote this coming year. The fact that there will be four of us should not alarm you much, well until you read this: the 2015 K. year in review.

January: D. continued to mostly enjoy working from home except for the fact that K. did not appreciate his version of the water cooler chat: randomly appearing in the kitchen. She took to ordering him back down to the basement whenever he happened to pop up upstairs and threatened him with the enforcement of the no workplace relationship clause common in most employment contracts.

February: It’s official. There will be no medical doctors from this branch of the family. Frog dissection makes T. vomit. And the middle school is relieved to hear that he’s the last of the weak stomached K. children to come through their hallowed halls.

March: And then there were three: T. became a teenager this month. K. and R. were rear-ended driving home from a dance competition. These two things (three teenagers and being rear-ended) are actually pretty similar—angst and aggravation all around.

April: This month had some pretty big highs and a horrible low. K. was asked to sit on a blogging in the literary world panel at the local community college’s literary festival. It was even covered in the paper. While it hasn’t led to an increase in readership, it’s just an honor to be nominated. ;-) W. turned 18 this month, making him a legal adult despite K. being sure we just brought him home from the hospital yesterday. And this is also the month we lost our beloved Daisy dog. There are no words.

May: D. took a new position this month, Senior Service Cloud Specialist (don’t you just love corporate speak titles?—and no, K. can’t tell you what it means either), which calls for pretty constant travel. Only the airline miles people could tell you where all he’s been this year. T.’s show choir went to States in May after winning Regionals. Unfortunately he didn’t get to perform as he managed to throw up on his friend’s shoes on the bus on the way to the competition. The biggest disappointment in all of this was that the music director had finally granted him permission to sing at a regular volume instead of very quietly so no one got to hear the result of all those voice lessons. K. and D. went to London for their twentieth anniversary this month. This is the same trip that D. gave her for their tenth anniversary and their fifteenth anniversary. K. reckons that means she’s still owed two trips over there.

June: K. went to New Orleans for the WNBA National Meeting. She came home just a couple of days before W.’s graduation and immediately had to jump into party planning mode. Before W. even walked across the stage to get his diploma [(it was really in there—we checked! (misspelled name and all)], his first college tuition bill arrived.

July: Remember all of the news about shark attacks? Dance Nationals was in Myrtle Beach, just up the beach from most of the attacks. If R. and her friends weren’t too young to get the reference, they probably would have been unimpressed by K.’s Jaws theme song impression. After dance was over, we (and again, I am leaving D. out of that collective noun) headed up to the cottage, where K. was willing to get in the water, confident there would be no hungry sharks around. With an unpleasant sense of déjà vu, we went down the dock one morning to find the boat half-sunk. This is an improvement over the summer K. fully sunk one, but still not a fun (or cheap) problem to have. W. and K.’s dad partnered to win the tennis tournament up there, a fact that tickled them greatly but annoyed K., who had to play against them (and lost badly).

August: We sent our first baby off to college this month. W. headed to High Point University for his freshman year. Given half a chance, W. wouldn’t be the only one in college as D. suffered serious pangs of jealousy during move-in weekend. As W. started his freshman year, R. started her senior year of high school and T. his last year of middle school. Just in time for him to go to school, T. came down with mono. The source of the virus, and by that we mean her name, remains a mystery.

September: T.’s braces finally came off so the orthodontist is going to have to find another way to fund his kids’ college education. K. painted both W. and R.’s bedrooms but not T.’s this month. She wanted to make sure he gets the full “third child” treatment. She’s promised to paint his if and when he cleans it up so she can see what color the carpet is. This is why it took so long to paint the others’ too.

October: W. came home for fall break this month and it was wonderful to have him ignoring us from the same zip code instead of from afar. To be fair, if you text him about something football related, you’re likely to get a response. If you are his mother and you text him with a question or an “I miss you,” you are not.

November: R. hit send on her college applications and got her first college acceptance this month. D. is still trying to ignore the fact that this means she really will be leaving us next year. T. had his biggest role yet in the middle school musical playing Ed the dumb hyena. That he plays the baffled and befuddled so very well is either a sign of some impressive acting talent or is terribly concerning.

As 2015 comes to a close, we hope that all of you are surrounded by family, peace, love, and happiness now and throughout the coming year.

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 Longest Night by Andria Williams. The book is being released by Random House on January 12, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: In this absorbing and suspenseful debut novel—reminiscent of Revolutionary Road and inspired by a little-known piece of history—a young couple must fight to save both their marriage and the town they live in.

In 1959, Nat Collier moves with her husband, Paul, and their two young daughters to Idaho Falls, a remote military town. An Army Specialist, Paul is stationed there to help oversee one of the country’s first nuclear reactors—an assignment that seems full of opportunity.

Then, on his rounds, Paul discovers that the reactor is compromised, placing his family and the entire community in danger. Worse, his superiors set out to cover up the problem rather than fix it. Paul can’t bring himself to tell Nat the truth, but his lies only widen a growing gulf between them.

Lonely and restless, Nat is having trouble adjusting to their new life. She struggles to fit into her role as a housewife and longs for a real friend. When she meets a rancher, Esrom, she finds herself drawn to him, comforted by his kindness and company. But as rumors spread, the secrets between Nat and Paul build and threaten to reach a breaking point.

Based on a true story of the only fatal nuclear accident to occur in America, The Longest Night is a deeply moving novel that explores the intricate makeup of a marriage, the shifting nature of trust, and the ways we try to protect the ones we love.

Review: Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

Sometimes you are lucky enough to find a quiet, pleasing jewel of a novel, one that touches you just right and that you hold close to your heart. The late Kent Haruf's final novel, Our Souls at Night, is one such novel, written beautifully and reverently and is deeply touching.

Addie Moore and Louis Waters live in the small farming community of Holt, Colorado. Both are in their 70s, widowed, and living alone. They don't know each other well but one day Addie walks over to Louis' house, tells him that her loneliest hours are at night, and asks him if he'd be willing to come over and share her bed at night. There's nothing sexual in her proposition, just a yearning for connection and companionship. And although the town will gossip about them, Louis agrees, coming to value the comfort of Addie's hand in his as they drift off to sleep. Lying in the dark, these two gentle souls who have found each other share their pasts and the sorrows they carry in their hearts and they forge a lovely and deep relationship with each other.

When Addie's son and his wife separate the same summer, her six year old grandson Jamie comes to live with her and the dynamic of Addie and Louis' days changes to include this young boy and the dog they adopt for him but their nights remain mostly unchanged. They are two loving and kind people quietly enjoying these late in life moments of pure contentment. But not everyone sees the beauty between them and life flows on, changing and moving beyond their peaceful arrangement.

Haruf has written a beautiful, meditative little book on human connection and its loss. It is a moving look at aging and loneliness but also at the understated pleasure in the friendship, love, and presence of another human being, one whose soul compliments yours. The story is intimate, comforting, and ultimately sad. But with its peaceful plot and gorgeous writing, everything about the story feels like a benediction. As both Addie and Louis know, life is fickle so it matters that everyone taste of its sweetness whenever it's presented, offering thanks and appreciation for beauties encountered. This short novel is itself indeed one of the beauties of life.  Stunning in its simplicity and its sincerity, this is well worth the read.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Burned Bridges of Ward, Nebraska by Eileen Curtright
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro

Reviews posted this week:

Speed Kings by Andy Bull
The Santa Claus Man by Alex Palmer

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

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
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
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
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
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Making Babies by Anne Enright
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks
A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Daniel's True Desire by Grace Burrowes
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Burned Bridges of Ward, Nebraska by Eileen
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Lady's Command by Stephanie Laurens came from Mira and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

I love boats. I love water.  I love romances.  So what could be better than a Regency era high seas romance?

News of the World by Paulette Jiles came from William Morrow and LibraryThing Early reviewers.

A story about a retired Army Captain who is paid to take a dangerous journey and deliver an orphan recently rescued from her Kiowa captors to her relatives, this looks fascinating and complex.

The Restaurant Critic's Wife by Elizabeth LaBan came from TLC Book Tours in a Facebook win.

A stay at home mom whose husband is a restaurant critic obsessed with maintaining his anonymity starts questioning what has happened to her own identity in this fantastic looking 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.

Review: The Santa Claus Man by Alex Palmer

When my children were small, I always helped them write out their letters to Santa so I'd know what they really wanted for Christmas. We'd pop the letters in our mailbox and I'd subsequently go out and retrieve them before the mailman got here. But what about those letters that make it into the postal system? And what about the letters written by children whose parents can't afford to grant the innocent wishes painstakingly penned on grubby paper? In 1913 in New York City, those letters were actually answered and gifts provided by the Santa Claus Association, created by John Duval Gluck, Jr. but the organization wasn't as benevolent as it appeared on the surface, as Alex Palmer details in his new non-fiction release, The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York.

Prior to 1913, letters addressed to Santa Claus were sent to the dead letter office and ultimately destroyed. John Duval Gluck, Jr., a customs broker in New York City, saw an opportunity to move out of the job he didn't love into the more lucrative field of PR via a feel good charity of his own creation, the Santa Claus Association. What started out as heartwarming and altruistic on the surface, pairing the poorest of New York's children with wealthier folks wanting to play Santa Claus to them, turned into an unregulated fundraising scam. If Gluck started out with the best of intentions, rescuing these sad letters, he was soon corrupted by the desire for fame and wealth that his association with the sentimental charity afforded him. By tapping into the good feeling and Christmas cheer of the public, he was able to solicit untold funds, rub elbows with the most famous stars of the day, and even parlay this job into other mutually beneficial, highly lucrative, and unfortunately dishonest or fraudulent positions for himself for fifteen long years.

Gluck's ascent as the Santa Claus Man coincided with the development and evolution of Santa into the jolly, giving figure we know today and with the rise of the commercialization of the holiday. Palmer, who is a distant nephew of Gluck's, not only details his relative's life and dishonest practices, but he also highlights the world in which a man could become rich off the back of a children's charity. World War I was looming. The Boy Scouts of America and the United States Boy Scout organizations were developing along diverging tracks, the latter of which employed Gluck in a fundraising capacity that was morally questionable. Charities had no watchdogs making sure that funds were applied appropriately and the public was generous and patriotic feeling. Perfect conditions for a scam artist.

Palmer has done an enormous amount of research into the time itself and into his great-great uncle's dealings, as far as any records show, and he has drawn a complete picture of a past with a more innocent, less cynical populace. Gluck was clearly a charismatic man who presented a show of bonhomie to all and sundry. And even though the reader knows from the outset that Gluck's intentions were not entirely honorable, the first part of the book ends with the hope that perhaps they are mistaken about what they ultimately know to be true, which is a credit to Palmer's writing.  The rest of the book will prove the subtitle of the book to be the case and that chronicling of the underhanded, sneaky practices of Gluck's is not quite as compelling and feel-good as the creation of the Santa Claus Association is.  Some of the small details of the time, especially in this later part of the tale are a bit overwhelming and unnecessary to the story as a whole but the premise is a fascinating one, made all the more interesting for its truth.  This is a not a sweetly seasonal Christmas tale but instead a curious, unusual, and slightly sordid chapter in modern Christmas history.

Special blog tour Christmas gift: Get a free Santa bookplate signed by the author, plus two vintage Santa Claus Association holiday seals. Just email proof once you buy The Santa Claus Man (online receipt, photo of bookstore receipt, etc.) along with the mailing address where you'd like the gift sent to santaclausmanbook[at]gmail[dot]com. Email before 12/21 to guarantee delivery by Christmas.

For more information about Alex Palmer and the book, take a look at his web site, his Facebook page, or follow him 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. The Santa Claus Man was also featured in this New York Times post: “Mama Says That Santa Claus Does Not Come to Poor People“.

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

Review: Speed Kings by Andy Bull

Adrenalin. Risk takers. Dare devils. Speed junkies. Some people are just built to pursue thrills. They thrill to the feeling of air whistling past their faces and sights flashing in their peripheral vision too fast to make out. Others of us are content to watch these people hurtle down hills and around curves, or better yet to find them in the pages of a book. Andy Bull's book, Speed Kings, about the men who would come to represent the US in bobsled at the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid gives readers a chance to live vicariously through these "fastest men in the world."

Bull combines part history of the sport of "bobbing," part biography of several team members, and part story of how the Olympics came to Lake Placid in 1932 in this sporting tale. Although the team was comprised of four men, the focus here is on Billy Fiske, a young, wealthy boy who was the embodiment of speed and competition and in fact the central figure, the heart and soul, of the team. In fact, the story opens with Fiske's daring and unlikely landing of a crippled fighter plane in Britain during WWII and his resultant death. After setting the stage with Billy's heroic death and a brief chapter centered on the teenager's life and lifelong attraction to speed, the tale moves backwards to cover the roots of the sport of bobsledding in St. Moritz, the winter playground of the rich. Starting as a tourist event open to all that quickly became too dangerous for any but the most reckless, bobsledding was a risky, adrenaline-filled sport that drew high society and thrilled crowds. As it grew in notoriety, it required more and more skill to drive a bob, eventually leading this exciting and novel sport to be added into the line-up of the fledgling Winter Olympics.

The story, while focused more on Billy Fiske than on his other teammates, does look at the interestingly disparate backgrounds of the four men who would eventually bob for the US in 1932: Tippy Gray, Eddie Eagan, Jay O'Brien, and of course, Billy Fiske. Each man had a very different road to the Olympic team and Bull looks at their lives and how they either fell into or chose the sport that caught the public's imagination. In addition to the history of the sport and the lives of the men, Bull also focuses on the almost failed attempt to bring the Olympics to the small town of Lake Placid, the man behind the effort, and the personality conflicts and financial crises that plagued the whole endeavor.

Bull has done a lot of research but sometimes the narrative is overwhelmed by the information he shares and his choices about what to elaborate on and what to skim superficially didn't always feel the right way round. It is so wide-ranging and detailed that it doesn't always maintain an even narrative tension and feels very choppy. The story is quite long and drawn out in the run up to the Olympics and the late addition of some of the very important people is a bit disconcerting. But as a piece that paints a picture of a time period with the decadence of the Roaring Twenties giving way to the austerity and loss of the Great Depression as the world faced an uncertain future with possible war looming again, he does a good job. Despite the flaws in the narrative, that a small town in upstate New York would step in, when bigger donors balked, and give money, even in the depths of the Great Depression, to bring the Olympics to their town, that the public would so fully embrace the new sport of bobsledding, and that an American team, a long shot by now, would overcome dramatically warm weather conditions to capture the gold makes this a tale worth telling.

Thanks to the publisher and LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of this 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 Hole in the Middle by Kate Hilton. The book is being released by NAL on January 5, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: The heartfelt and hilarious, international bestselling debut about having it all without losing your mind.

Sophie Whelan is the kind of woman who prides herself on doing it all. In a single day, she can host a vegan-friendly and lactose-free dinner for ten, thwart a PTA president intent on forcing her to volunteer, and outwit her hostile ‘assistant’ in order to get her work done on time.

With her fortieth birthday looming, and her carefully coordinated existence beginning to come apart at the seams, Sophie begins feeling like she needs more from her life—and especially from her husband, Jesse.

The last thing Sophie needs is a new complication in her life. But when an opportunity from her past suddenly reappears, Sophie is forced to confront the choices she’s made and decide if her chaotic life is really a dream come true—or the biggest mistake she’s ever made…

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Santa Claus Man by Alex Palmer
Daniel's True Desire by Grace Burrowes

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Reviews posted this week:

nothing :-(

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

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
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
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
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
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Making Babies by Anne Enright
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks
A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Santa Claus Man by Alex Palmer
Daniel's True Desire by Grace Burrowes

Sunday Salon: Christmas Is Coming

Does the title phrase make you panic? Or maybe it causes you to sigh heavily. I am straddling the line between the two reactions at the moment. "I may need to mug an elf to get my Christmas $#!t together" is what I just posted as my status on Facebook. And there's a more than a little truth to it. I have undipped Buckeyes rolling around in my refrigerator. I have a kid who is in the middle of finals so has yet to text me his Christmas list (socks and underwear it is then). I have a pile of unwrapped presents that need to be mailed to my in-laws' house, which also means I have a trip to the chaos that is the Post Office at the holidays in my near future. I have little more than socks and underwear for my husband's stocking (are you sensing a theme yet?). My mother's gift has not yet shipped from the manufacturer. My husband said he'd come up with a gift for my brother-in-law (he hasn't). And my sister has never sent me any suggestions for her three young children's gifts. Not that I'm keeping score or anything. OK, I am keeping score. And from my vantage point, it looks like it's late in the fourth quarter and I'll need a Hail Mary to even tie (I'd say to win except my niece and nephews are going to be terribly unimpressed with their socks and underwear). On the plus side, I finally found the wreath hanger for the front door so the wreath can shed its needles all over the door step instead of in the house.  Baby steps.

I have to be honest, being frantic or frazzled doesn't inspire Christmas cheer. But maybe if I got into the spirit of the season a little, I wouldn't be so stressed. It is quite the circularity, isn't it? So I think I need to settle in with some Christmas books and some Christmas movies and practice some deep breathing techniques (they didn't come in handy during labor but maybe they'll work now). I don't tend to like heartwarming Christmas stories, preferring funny or warped. I mean, last night watching Rudolph (it was the 51st anniversary of it first appearing on tv), I might have remarked on what an arsehole Santa (and Donner and the chief elf, and the young reindeer, and Clarice's father, and, and, and) was. Hard to imagine, I know, but it's fairly difficult to find holiday themed books and movies that hit my sweet spot. I think I've got the movies sorted with several Mrs. Brown's Boys Christmas specials (if you haven't read Brendan O'Carroll's The Mammy, read it--not a Christmas book but the inspiration for this completely hilarious and inappropriate series) but I keep running up against the dreaded "heartwarming" word in looking at Christmas books, David Sedaris excepted. And I've already read his book. Any suggestions for me? If you don't have any books to suggest, I'll take offers to dip those Buckeyes, wrap presents, stand in line at the PO, or shop for me too. Oh!!!  Stop the presses! That's all I want for Christmas: an assistant, elvish or not, to take all of this crazy off of my shoulders so I can just concentrate on my usual levels of batty.  But I need Santa to drop said assistant off before Christmas please.  (And Santa, I'm awfully sorry I called you an arsehole last night--you kinda were, but if it gets me an assistant, I can be sorry I mentioned it.)

In trying to get myself closer to finished with Christmas, I haven't been reading as much as usual but this past week my reading travels did take me to India and Rhode Island as one brother grappled with his brother's loss and legacy to him, to New York City as Santa's letters from the poorest children were answered and then exploited, and to historic England as a married vicar fell in love with the earl's sister. I am still traveling through England's domestic realm before World War II, New York as a young woman traces what happened to her great aunt's art work, at the medical clinic with a father hoping to have his son "resurrected," and entrenched in upper class Britain between the wars with a family modeled after the Mitfords. Where did your reading take you this past week?

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.

Stars Over Sunset Boulevard by Susan Meissner. The book is being released by NAL on January 5, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: In this new novel from the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life, two women working in Hollywood during its Golden Age discover the joy and heartbreak of true friendship.

Los Angeles, Present Day. When an iconic hat worn by Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind ends up in Christine McAllister’s vintage clothing boutique by mistake, her efforts to return it to its owner take her on a journey more enchanting than any classic movie…

Los Angeles, 1938. Violet Mayfield sets out to reinvent herself in Hollywood after her dream of becoming a wife and mother falls apart, and lands a job on the film-set of Gone With the Wind. There, she meets enigmatic Audrey Duvall, a once-rising film star who is now a fellow secretary. Audrey’s zest for life and their adventures together among Hollywood’s glitterati enthrall Violet…until each woman’s deepest desires collide. What Audrey and Violet are willing to risk, for themselves and for each other, to ensure their own happy endings will shape their friendship, and their lives, far into the future.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

If Christmas is a ship, mine is sinking! I have a long list of tasks to do to be even close to ready for the holiday. That fact combined with the fact that I was sick and cruddy feeling (15+ hours of sleep one day) means I got almost no reading in again this week. Once I get all gifts purchased though, I should have loads of reading time while I stand in line at the Post Office to send them. :-P In any case, I miss my books dreadfully! This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Reviews posted this week:

Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

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

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
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
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
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
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo
Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker
Making Babies by Anne Enright
The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Matthew Dicks
A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

Monday Mailbox

I started Christmas shopping and while I can't list the books I got family in case they read this, you can see I work on the one for you, one for me premise. (Not entirely since I got them more than I got myself but sometimes my finger slips and I add something of my own to the bucket--purely by accident, of course!) This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Violinist of Venice by Alyssa Palombo came from St. Martin's Griffin.

The story of a young woman who loves music and Vivaldi, her music teacher, this tale of forbidden love and loss sounds magnificent.

All of Us and Everything by Bridget Asher came from Bantam in a Facebook contest win.

A story about complicated sisters, their eccentric mother, and a long buried secret, this sounds fantastic. That I won a copy for my sister (shhhh! don't tell her yet) too is just icing on the cake.

Falling Into Bed With a Duke by Lorraine Heath came from me to me.

A spinster, a duke, a seduction. Yum. Perfect reading for a season where I easily get overwhelmed.

Miss Featherton's Christmas Prince by Ella Quinn came from me to me.

Because who doesn't love a good Christmas romance?

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.

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.

It's. Nice. Outside. by Jim Kokoris. The book is being released by St. Martin's Press on December 8, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: Meet John Nichols. He’s fifty-something years old, an ex-basketball player, ex-author, ex-philanderer, ex-husband, ex-high school English teacher. And he’s the father of three: two overachieving adult daughters and 19-year-old Ethan, who will never be an adult. John’s older daughter is getting married, and as the family members travel to the celebration, John is secretly preparing for a life change that will alter his family’s hearts forever.

The five Nichols’ are held together by love and humor, as well as the spiky parts of sisterly competition and a difficult baby brother. Parents John and Mary have devoted themselves to caregiving, and John especially finds himself caught in the tension between being a parent and being true to himself. So when a new challenge comes their way in the wake of a road trip and wedding plans, the family bonds are stretched and tested. Funny, heartbreaking, and generous, IT’S. NICE. OUTSIDE. asks: What happens when you have to let go of the person who has been holding you up?

Review: Pretending to Dance by Diane Chamberlain

Molly and Aidan want to adopt a baby. Molly lost their daughter at twenty weeks pregnant and had to have a hysterectomy so they can no longer have a biological child. As they go through the long and comprehensive process of applying to be adoptive parents, Molly worries that the lies and omissions about her past will finally come to light, keeping them from being approved. She desperately wants to be a mother but the events of one terrible summer that formed her so many years ago rise up in the form of reluctance and unexplainable fear at the process and what it could uncover now. In order to hide from that summer, Molly has told Aidan that her mother is dead rather than the truth: that she is completely estranged from her mother because the summer Molly was 14, her mother killed her father.

Fourteen year old Molly lives a fairly idyllic life on Morrison Ridge, with her mother Nora, father Graham, biological mother Amalia, and Graham's caretaker Russell. Graham needs a full time caretaker because he is in the advanced stages of MS, completely confined to a wheelchair and unable to move any part of his body but his head and neck. Despite this devastating disability, he is a kind and gentle father, adored by Molly, and is a still practicing therapist renowned for Pretend Therapy and his books on the topic. Molly's life is going to change significantly this summer though. At 14, she's both naive child and striving to be an adult. She is sometimes attuned to her father's feelings, worrying that he needs more happiness in his life and at other times she's a bratty, selfish teen who can't see beyond her own irresponsible wants. Her summer starts with Molly getting close to a new friend, one who turns out not to have the golden life Molly has imagined but who is given freedoms and left unsupervised in ways that tempt and draw Molly. Through fast, wild Stacy, Molly will push her boundaries, experimenting with pot and fooling around with boys. And as she rebels against the sheltered, safe life her parents have created for her, she will miss vital undercurrents in her immediate and extended family that will change everything and reverberate through her life.

Chapters alternate between adult Molly in the present and teenaged Molly that long ago summer, between the emotional roller coaster unknown of a potential open adoption with a teenaged mom and the summer that Molly storms towards adulthood and loses her father. The two different time lines don't always compliment each other as much as they might and sometimes one even undermines the emotional resonance of the other, as when Molly's fear of open adoption is contrasted with the inclusive way in which her own childhood was handled. Chamberlain has done a great job portraying Molly's early teen naivete, the way she can change from lovely and caring to offended high dudgeon in no time flat, her rejection of her parents' strictures, and her self-centered desire for the freedom to indulge herself. All of these aspects of young Molly's personality ring very true to life but they don't make her a very likable character. Adult Molly can, and sometimes does, come across as cold and unemotional rather than someone protecting her feelings as a result of her past. That she continues to keep the biggest secret (and several related secrets) of her life from Aidan, despite knowing that he is the most steadfast, forgiving, and caring man ever, as if in not facing the tragedy of that summer, she has not been able to mature beyond that fourteen year old girl, is troubling. In fact, she's never tried to examine what she knows to be true from an adult perspective, clinging to her childhood certainty and deliberately turning her back on her entire family. Of course, the secrets must eventually come out and the (rather predictable) truth of the mystery of Graham's death is slowly revealed as the narrative moves on toward a final culmination. The portions of the novel focused on young Molly are dominant over the present day story, leaving the novel a bit unbalanced, not delving as deeply into the fascinating issue of open adoption as it might have. As a coming of age novel, a look at the cost of debilitating chronic illness on an entire family, the destructive power of secrets, and the many permutations of what constitutes family, this delves into complicated and interesting ideas in an emotional and mostly engaging way.

Thanks to the publisher and Book Sparks PR for sending me a copy of this book to review.