Friday, January 31, 2014

Feature & Follow Friday


Gain new followers and make new friends with the Book Blogger Feature & Follow! If this is your first time here, welcome! You are about to make some new friends and gain new followers -- but you have to know -- the point of this hop is to follow other bloggers also. I follow you, you follow me.

The Feature & Follow is hosted by TWO hosts, Parajunkee of Parajunkee's View and Alison of Alison Can Read. Each host will have their own Feature Blog and this way it'll allow us to show off more new blogs!

How does this work? First you leave your name here on this post, (using the linky tools -- keep scrolling!) then you create a post on your own blog that links back to this post (easiest way is to just grab the code under the #FF picture and put it in your post) and then you visit as many blogs as you can and tell them "hi" in their comments (on the post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you. Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you!

What sets this Hop apart from others, is our Feature. Each week we will showcase a Featured Blogger, from all different genres and areas. Who is our Feature today? Find out below. Just remember it is required, if you participate, to follow our Features and you must follow the hosts  ParajunkeeAlison Can Read) as a courtesy. How do you follow someone? Well, if you have a preference, state it in your #FF post. A lot of blogs are transitioning to Wordpress in which they do not have the luxury of GFC, so an RSS subscription is appreciated or if you choose an email subscription. If you don't have GFC please state in your post how you would like to be followed.

Question of the Week: Time for Book Spine Poetry again! Take a picture of your book spines spelling out something epic.


Moon Women
The Girl Who Chased the Moon
Mermaids on the Moon
Fair and Tender Ladies
Crazy Ladies
A Long Way From Home
Their Eyes Were Watching God

RULES

To join the fun and make new book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:
  1. (Required) Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts {Parajunkee & Alison Can Read}
  2. (Required) Follow our Featured Bloggers
  3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing. You can also grab the code if you would like to insert it into your posts.
  4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say "hi" in your comments and that they are now following you.
  5. If you are using WordPress or another CMS that doesn't have GFC (Google Friends Connect) state in your posts how you would like to be followed
  6. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "HI"
  7. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers.







January Wrap-Up: I Love Library Books Reading Challenge

It's time for my January Wrap-Up!
I checked out and read the following from my library this month:










January Wrap-UP: TBR Pile 2014


I read the following books in January that qualify for the 2014 TBR Pile reading Challenge:












January Wrap-Up: Southern LIierature Challenge

Southern Literature Reading Challenge hosted at The Introverted Reader

I read one book in January that qualifies for the Southern Literature Challenge:







Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

Title: Lost Lake Author: Sarah Addison Allen Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pages: 294



I've been a huge fan of Sarah Addison Allen for a long while now, and Lost Lake does not disappoint. Allen's novels are at once magical, yet realistic - the real world mixed in with just enough of the supernatural to make it believable. I first met the  main character, Kate, in Waking Kate- Allen's novella which serves as a prequel of sorts to Lost Lake. Recently widowed, Kate finds herself being swept up into the world of her mother-in-law, a wealthy and ambitious real estate agent. As her mother-in-law slowly takes over her life, Kate finds herself packing up her belongings for the move when she runs across a letter from her great aunt Eby, which her mother had hidden. In the letter, Eby invites Kate to visit her at her South Georgia Lake resort, Lost Lake. The background for her most fond childhood memories, Lost Lake looms in Kate's mind as an oasis in the sea of confusion her life has become.  Suddenly, she and her daughter, Devin, pack all their belongings and head out for Lost Lake. Part adventure, part coming home, this story weaves the tale of not only Kate, but those who make Lost Lake their home, and those who return year after year. Not only is this a wonderful story, it is also a very interesting character study. I especially loved Selma. As the story begins, the reader finds her to be pretty unlikable- home-wrecker with a dour personality. However, as more and more of her life is revealed, Selma becomes not only likable, but thought-provoking. This is a great story and I highly recommend it.

Read this story if...
*you love Southern Fiction
*you love Sarah Addison Allen novels
*you love realistic fiction with a little magic mixed in
*you love stories of mothers and daughters

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Lost Lake is Finally Here!!!


Finally! After months and months of waiting!! Lost Lake hit the shelves yesterday! I'm half way through mine so far and I love it as much as I knew I would! Is there anything so good as a Sarah Addison Allen book? IS there? NO. There isn't.
Her books are like being curled up under a fuzzy blanket by a warm fire on a snow day. Nothin' better. I stumbled upon The Sugar Queen a few years back and I have devoured all her books ever since. So far, my favorite has been The Girl Who Chased the Moon...(if I HAD to choose).
If you haven't grabbed your copy of Lost Lake yet, download Waking Kate- a free "pre-book" that tells the story-behind-the-story of Kate- the main character of Lost Lake.
OK, enough blogging. I'm back to my book!

Monday, January 20, 2014

Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir

Title: Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir Author: Terry Helwig Publisher: Howard Books Pages: 282 C. 2011


WOW. A powerful story of hurt and hope and healing. A fascinating coming of age novel and memoir. Terry Helwig's story begins in Iowa, where she and her sister live with their biological father and teenage mother. Their mother eventually abandons them and leaves them with their father and his parents. Later, she comes back and takes them to Texas to live with her new husband- the man they would come to think of as Daddy. Two girls eventually become six as they travel from town to town in Texas, Colorado, and eventually California following their step-father's job. Living with their mothers dependence on pain pills and numerous infidelities, the sisters become self-sufficient and band together to survive. Their story is sad at times, heart warming at times, and always hopeful. I truly enjoyed this book.

Read this book of...
*you enjoy memoirs
*you love stories that take place in the 1960,s
*you love stories of family
*you love stories about sisters

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?


It's Monday, What Are You Reading is hosted by Book Journey.

This week, I am reading Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir by Terry Helwig. So far, I can't put it down!


From Goodreads:
"I invited the child I was once to have her say in these pages. I am the one who came out on the other side of childhood; she is the one who searched for the door."
In the tradition of The Glass Castle comes a debut memoir about a woman’s hopeful life despite the sad results of her mother’s choices.Moonlight on Linoleum is an affecting story of a girl who rose above her circumstances to become an early and faithful caretaker to her five siblings. It is about the power one finds in sisterhood to thrive in a difficult and ever-changing landscape as the girls bond in unconditional love despite constant upheaval and uncertainty. In these pages, Teresa Helwig crafts a moving portrait of a mother she loved completely even as she struggled to understand her.
"Putting myself in Mama's shoes, which were most often white moccasins molded in the shape of her size seven-and-a-half foot, I see an eighteen-year-old girl with two children, one of them still a baby. . . . Her former husband is in Korea, drafted after their divorce; she has a sister who disappears from time to time, leaving yet another child in her care; she has no money, no high-school diploma, and a mother unhappy to have her home."
Teresa and her sisters, who were added regularly throughout the 1950s and '60s, grew up with with their charismatic, troubled, and very young mother, Carola. Because of their stepfather’s roving job as in the oil fields, they moved frequently from town to town in the American West. The girls were often separated and left behind with relatives and never knew what their unstable mother would do next. Missing her mother became a habit for Teresa; one summer Carola dropped off her two daughters at her ex's family farm.
"If there were an idyllic summer of childhood, it was that summer on the Iowa farm. Yet, if I had to choose a time when I felt most forsaken by my mother, it was also that summer. Even back then, I was acutely aware of the paradox. On the outside, by day, I was like the morning glory vine twining around the back fence. Every day opened to a life I loved on the land. I reveled in and relished the absolute freedom and abandon of being turned loose in Eden.
     "But then, each evening, after the sun set and the dinner dishes had been hand-washed and dried, I became like the moonflower vine climbing up the weathered boards on the side of the garage. The moonflower opens its large fragrant blooms at night; they shimmer like moonlight and sweeten the night air.
     "I evolved a ritual at bedtime before crawling into my bed . . . I held Mama's Polaroid picture to my heart. I love you. Please come get us soon. I want to be with you more than I want to be anywhere else. These were my prayers, my blooms that opened to the night. Then I pursed my lips against the cool glass and kissed her smiling face goodnight."
There were good times too: Carola made fudge for the girls during rainstorms, helped Teresa's cat deliver kittens, and taught her to play "You Are My Sunshine" on a toy piano. But when her husband was out working on the oil fields, Carola, who had married at fourteen, began to fill her time with men she met in the various towns her roving family moved to. She referred to her secret dating life as "going to Timbuktu," leaving Teresa in charge of her siblings. As Carola roamed and eventually developed crippling migraines, Teresa became a replacement mommy before her own childhood was fully in swing. Stress, guilt, and recurring nightmares marked her days and nights.
"In addition to the amphetamines [for weight loss], Mama was now taking barbiturates for her migraines. Her moods began to yo-yo. She became as hard to predict as the weather. When Daddy was out of town and Mama was in one of her fogs, I learned to fend for myself. And, being the oldest, I learned to fend for my sisters, too . . . It was around this time I came to realize a hard truth. Once your sisters begin looking up to you, as if you really could save them from being poisoned, as if you know a way out of a dark cave, there's no going back. You'll draw your last breath, trying to find that door to the Lost City of Enchantment, because you can't bear to let them down."
Yet, even in the face of adversity, Teresa found beauty in the small moments: resting in the boughs of her favorite oak tree, savoring the freedom she found on her grandparents’ farm, and gleefully discovering the joys of dating and dancing. While Carola struggled for an exciting and satisfying life, Teresa faced adolescence and young adulthood, increasingly burdened by Carola's dysfunction. Finally, as the family splintered between colleges, homes, stepfathers, and their mother's disintegrating mental health, Teresa drove Carola to a mental hospital--where at last the mother of five found some peace and order.
Upon leaving the hospital, sadly Carola continued in a downward spiral: more men, a drug addiction, a toddler son's death, and finally her own accidental overdose death in 1974. Though Carola's unhappy life meant Teresa's was marked by hardship and tragedy, Teresa found redemption in writing her mother's story and discovering empathy for the woman continually harmed by her own bad choices. The bonds of sisterhood helped sustain her, and today the girls are still close, still savoring the good in a childhood pocked with pain. Teresa, now a counselor and mother of a daughter, was able to conclude, after visiting her mom's grave and asking her blessing on the book,
I believe joy and sorry rest together, the two sides of love. I have repeatedly uncovered places of joy inside my own heart tucked within the folds of sorrow. 
With enormous skill and sensitivity, Teresa deftly explores the history she shared with Carola and the relentless love of a child for her mother.




Friday, January 17, 2014

The Book of Fred

Title: The Book of Fred Author: Abby Bardi Publisher:Atria Books Pages: 314 C: 2001


I really like this book- even more than I expected, actually. 15-year-old Mary Fred is taken into foster care while her parents, members of a religious cult, are tried for the wrongful deaths of her brothers. Having lived on "The Compound" and "The Outpost" all her life, Mary Fred is totally unprepared for the real world. Alice, her foster mother, is a mousy librarian who never got over her divorce from the father of Heather, her blue-haired rebel daughter. Heather also still struggles with her parents' divorce and hides behind an angry facade in order to cope. Add Alice's reclusive younger brother, Roy, into the mix and you get a rather unusual foster family for Mary Fred. 
Because she has never been allowed to watch TV, read books or newspapers, visit restaurants or stores, or wear any color other than brown, Mary Fred is lost in her new world. At first, Alice, Heather, and Roy are too lost in themselves to take much notice. Slowly, however, the four lost individuals come together and form their own family. When tragedy strikes, they slowly begin to come to terms with themselves.
When Mary Fred's mother returns from prison and attempts to reclaim Mary Fred into the cult, Mary Fred has to make a life changing decision.
I won't include spoilers, but this is not one of those predictable books where you pretty much know the ending from the beginning. It kept me guessing. Set against the backdrop of the doomsday predictions of Y2K, this book is an excellent character study, told in turns through the eyes of Mary Fred, Alice, Heather, and Roy. I was drawn to Mary Fred and her innocence. Bardi has drawn well-rounded characters- human and lovable, yet flawed. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I highly recommend it.

Read this novel if...
...you enjoy modern fiction
...you enjoy stories about family
...you are intrigued by religious cults and their followers

Monday, January 6, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?


It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Journey.

I am currently reading Ghosthunting North Carolina by Kala Ambrose.


I read Spirits of New Orleans a while back and loved it!

It's Monday! What Are YOU Reading????



Thursday, January 2, 2014

Feature and Follow Friday


How does this work?

The goal is to increase blog followers and make friends. First you leave your name here on this post, (using the linky tools — keep scrolling!) then you create a post on your own blog that links back to this post (easiest way is to just grab the code under the #FF picture and put it in your post) and then you visit as many blogs as you can and tell them “hi” in their comments (on the post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you. Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you! What sets this Hop apart from others, is our Feature. Each week we will showcase a Featured Blogger, from all different genres and areas. Who is our Feature today? Find out below. Just remember it is required, if you participate, to follow our Features and you must follow the hosts (Parajunkee & Alison Can ReadAlison can Read) as a courtesy. How do you follow someone? Well, if you have a preference, state it in your #FF post. A lot of blogs are transitioning to WordPress in which they do not have the luxury of GFC, so an RSS subscription is appreciated or if you choose an email subscription. If you don’t have GFC please state in your post how you would like to be followed. All features are chosen randomly to be the feature. They are not chosen by content or name.

Question of the Week: What were your favorite books of 2013?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, as I've done a post on my top reads from 2013 and I am currently working on a 2013 end of year survey. 
I would say my favorite 2013 books are:



RULES

To join the fun and make new book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:
  1. (Required) Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts {Parajunkee & Alison Can Read}
  2. (Required) Follow our Featured Bloggers
  3. Put your Blog name & URL in the Linky thing. You can also grab the code if you would like to insert it into your posts.
  4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say "hi" in your comments and that they are now following you.
  5. If you are using WordPress or another CMS that doesn't have GFC (Google Friends Connect) state in your posts how you would like to be followed
  6. Follow Follow Follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "HI"
  7. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the Love...and the followers

The Last Time I was Me by: Cathy Lamb

Title: The Last time I Was Me Author: Cathy Lamb Publisher: Kinsington BOoks Pages: 417 Pages


Synopsis from Goodreads:

I wrapped up my grandmother's tea cup collection and my mother's china, then grabbed a violin I'd hidden way back in my closet that made me cry, a gold necklace with a dolphin that my father gave me two weeks before he died of a heart attack when I was twelve and, at midnight, with that moon as bright as the blazes, I left Chicago. When Jeanne Stewart stops at The Opera Man's Cafe in Weltana, Oregon, to eat pancakes for the first time in twelve years, she has no idea she's also about to order up a whole new future. It's been barely a week since she succumbed to a spectacularly public nervous breakdown in front of hundreds of the nation's most important advertising and PR people. Jeanne certainly had her reasons--her mother's recent death, the discovery that her boyfriend had been sleeping with a dozen other women, and the assault charges that resulted when Jeanne retaliated in a creative way against him, involving condoms and peanut oil.
Now, en route to her brother's house in Portland, Jeanne impulsively decides to spend some time in picturesque Weltana. Staying at a B&B run by the eccentric, endearing Rosvita, she meets a circle of quirky new friends at her court-ordered Anger Management classes. Like Jeanne, all of them are trying to become better, braver versions of themselves. Yet the most surprising discoveries are still to come--a good man who steadily makes his way into her heart and a dilapidated house that with love and care might be transformed into something wholly her own, just like the new life she is slowly building, piece by piece.
As heartfelt as it is hilarious, The Last Time I Was Me is a warm, wise novel about breaking down, opening up, and finally letting go of everything we thought we should be, in order to claim the life that has been waiting all along.

This was a fairly entertaining read, but I had problems with the believability factor. How can a wealthy (although hated) member of a small town be missing and no one investigate or even question the disappearance? I have my doubts that real anger management classes visit bars together, throw peanut butter at one another, pretend to be birds, and require male members to go out dressed as women.  Even if a grown woman were brave enough to jog naked at night, would her anger management class not at least question the safety of such when she told them about it? How can an alcoholic quit cold turkey and experience zero withdrawal symptoms? Lastly- the court trial, although hilarious, was highly unrealistic. No judge would put up with that.

 That being said, it was a funny read. You just have to take it as the chick lit beach read that it is, and not expect more.


 The main character was not entirely likable. You've lost your husband and unborn child in a horrid accident, you've had a nervous breakdown and are struggling with alcoholism...but you can feel much better by staring at your shoes? The reader is left wondering if Jay couldn't have found himself a kinder, less self-absorbed wife.


The other characters, although one-dimensional, were much more likable. Rosvita, in spite of (or maybe because of) her neurotic germ obsession was amusing.
All in all, as I stated earlier, this is an OK beach read, as long as one takes it for what it is. Would I read it again? No. However I DID finish it which, for me, was saying something at least.

Read this book if...
*you are bored and looking for a light, humorous read


Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Waiting on Wednesday


"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

I am eagerly awaiting

Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen


release date: January 21, 2014

From Amazon:
From the author of New York Times bestseller Garden Spells comes a beautiful, haunting story of old loves and new, and the power of the connections that bind us forever…
The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.
That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby’s past. Her husband George is long passed. Most of her demanding extended family are gone. All that’s left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires.
It’s a lot, but not enough to keep Eby from relinquishing  Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand, and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.
Lost Lake is where Kate Pheris spent her last best summer at the age of twelve,  before she learned of loneliness, and heartbreak, and loss. Now she’s all too familiar with those things, but she knows about hope too, thanks to her resilient daughter Devin, and her own willingness to start moving forward. Perhaps at Lost Lake her little girl can cling to her own childhood for just a little longer… and maybe Kate herself can rediscover something that slipped through her fingers so long ago.
 One after another, people find their way to Lost Lake, looking for something that they weren’t sure they needed in the first place:  love, closure, a second chance, peace, a mystery solved, a heart mended.  Can they find what they need before it’s too late? 
 At once atmospheric and enchanting, Lost Lake shows Sarah Addison Allen at her finest, illuminating the secret longings and the everyday magic that wait to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places.
I absolutely LOVE everything Sarah Addison Allen has written and I am eagerly awaiting this one. I read Waking Kate, which introduces Kate and her daughter. It has an excerpt from Lost Lake and it was wonderful! I can't wait for this one!!

Forgotten Bookmarks by: Michael Popek

Title: Forgotten Bookmarks  Author: Michael Popek  Publisher:Penguin Pages: 182 Copyright: 2011


From Amazon:
It's happened to all of us: we're reading a book, something interrupts us, and we grab the closest thing at hand to mark our spot. It could be a train ticket, a letter, an advertisement, a photograph, or a four-leaf clover. Eventually the book finds its way into the world-a library, a flea market, other people's bookshelves, or to a used bookstore. But what becomes of those forgotten bookmarks? What stories could they tell?
By day, Michael Popek works in his family's used bookstore. By night, he's the voyeuristic force behind www.forgottenbookmarks.com, where he shares the weird objects he has found among the stacks at his store.
Forgotten Bookmarks is a scrapbook of Popek's most interesting finds. Sure, there are actualbookmarks, but there are also pictures and ticket stubs, old recipes and notes, valentines, unsent letters, four-leaf clovers, and various sordid, heartbreaking, and bizarre keepsakes. Together this collection of lost treasures offers a glimpse into other readers' lives that they never intended for us to see.



I first heard of Michael Popek's forgottenbookmarks.com online. After one visit, I new I just had to read the book. I found it fascinating. To think that these treasures remained hidden for decades. (Especially those tickets! You know someone went CRAZY trying to remember where they put those tickets!) I found myself wondering when I looked at the photographs- would someone read this book and see their own relatives? The letters were thought provoking as well. Page after page of hidden treasures: letters, cards, mementos-it made me wonder what memories are hiding inside my own books.
I plan to visit the website more often, and I hope Popek will publish more of his fascinating finds.

Read this book if...
*you love non-fiction
*you love old books
*you love old treasure and mementos