TBR Challenge 2013 March Wrap-Up

Is it the end of March already? Yeesh! I can't believe it! I didn't get through as many books as I planned this month. My job is changing, I'm busier with my writing...and on it goes...

My March reads are:

• The Southern Chapter of the Big Girl Panties Club by: Lynda Stephenson

• Wild Things by: Clay Carmichael

Wild Things

Title: Wild Things Author: Clay Carmichael Publisher: Boyds Mills Press Pages: 240

From Amazon:

Stubborn, self-reliant eleven-year-old Zoe, recently orphaned, is forced to move to the country to live with her strange and bad-tempered uncle. In this moving coming-of-age novel, an ALA Notable Children's Book and Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of the Year, Zoe and her uncle learn about love, trust and the strength of family ties.

Eleven-year--old Zoe is brilliant-and street smart. Having raised herself, (with no help from her drug- addicted, mentally ill mother or her mother's endless series of lowlife boyfriends) she trusts no one. When her mother dies unexpectedly she is placed in the care of her father's half-brother, an ex-surgeon turned artist. For the first time in her life, Zoe has a home and stability. At this same time, she begins to befriend a feral cat living in the woods near her new home. Like Zoe, he learned long ago not to trust anyone and to rely upon himself. The story of how the two of them learn to love and trust is heartwarming and insightful. Young readers will be drawn to Zoe's independence and her vulnerability at the same time. 

I really enjoyed this book. The cast of characters is colorful and unique. I highly recommend this book for young readers.

---

It's Monday- What Are You Reading?

It's Monday- What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey. This is a great way to find out about wonderful books you may not have known about! What a great way to add to your TBR list!

This week I am still reading:

Wild Things by Clay Carmichael

a novel for ages 9 & up

From Amazon:

Stubborn, self-reliant eleven-year-old Zoe, recently orphaned, is forced to move to the country to live with her strange and bad-tempered uncle. In this moving coming-of-age novel, an ALA Notable Children's Book and Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of the Year, Zoe and her uncle learn about love, trust and the strength of family ties.

I am also reading:
The Cutting Season
by: Attica Locke

From Amazon:

Attica Locke’s breathtaking debut novel, Black Water Rising, won 

resounding acclaim from major publications coast-to-coast and from respected crime fiction masters like James Ellroy and George Pelecanos, earning this exciting new author comparisons to Dennis Lehane, Scott Turow, and Walter Mosley. Locke returns with The Cutting Season, a second novel easily as gripping and powerful as her first—a heart-pounding thriller that interweaves two murder mysteries, one on Belle Vie, a historic landmark in the middle of Lousiana’s Sugar Cane country, and one involving a slave gone missing more than one hundred years earlier. Black Water Rising was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an Edgar® Award, and an NAACP Image Award, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize in the U.K. The Cutting Season has been selected by bestselling author Dennis Lehane as the first pick for his new line of books at HarperCollins.

It's Monday- What Are You Reading?

Book Beginnings

This is a cool Friday Meme I've just discovered at Rose City Reader.

Share the fist sentence (or so) of the book you are reading along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.


My Book Beginning:

Humans were diggers and buriers, the cat thought, like dogs.
The day the girl came, the men were digging again in the woods below the house.

These are the first two sentences of Wild Things by Clay Carmichael. I plan to start the book tonight and all I can say is, I'm already intrigued...

Can't wait to read everyone else's Book Beginnings!

Beth :)



It's Monday- What Are You Reading?

It's Monday- What Are You Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Book Journey.  It's a great way to find out about wonderful books and add to your TBR List!

This week I am reading:

Wild Things by Clay Carmichael

a novel for ages 9 & up

From Amazon:

Stubborn, self-reliant eleven-year-old Zoe, recently orphaned, is forced to move to the country to live with her strange and bad-tempered uncle. In this moving coming-of-age novel, an ALA Notable Children's Book and Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of the Year, Zoe and her uncle learn about love, trust and the strength of family ties.

 

And...

Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women's Literary Society

by: Amy Hill Hearth

 From Amazon:
Eighty-year-old Dora, the narrator of a story that began a half century earlier, is bonding with an unlikely set of friends, including Jackie Hart, a restless middle-aged wife and mother from Boston, who gets into all sorts of trouble when her family moves to a small, sleepy town in Collier County, Florida, circa 1962.




With humor and insight the novel chronicles the awkward North-South cultural divide as Jackie, this hapless but charming “Yankee,” looks for some excitement in her life by accepting an opportunity to host a local radio show where she creates a mysterious, late-night persona, “Miss Dreamsville,” and by launching a reading group—the Collier County Women’s Literary Society—thus sending the conservative and racially segregated town into uproar. The only townspeople who venture to join are regarded as outsiders at best—a young gay man, a divorced woman, a poet, and a young black woman who dreams of going to college.




This brilliant fiction debut by Amy Hill Hearth, a New York Times bestselling author, brings to life unforgettable characters who found the one thing that eluded them as individuals:a place in the world. Inspired by a real person, Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women’s Literary Society will touch the heart of anyone and everyone who has ever felt like an outsider longing to fit in.

So...
It's Monday- What are you reading???