Wordless Wednesday

The Letter H

Hosted by Vicki from Reading At The Beach


Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!

To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link(amazon, barnes and noble etc.)

This week's letter is :H:

My book choice is Hens Dancing by Raffaella Barker

From Library Journal:
Meet Venetia Summers, a charmingly disorganized, thirtysomething single mom who's doing her best to raise her kids and keep her sanity in a rural English cottage amidst a maelstrom of pets, plants, and wacky relatives. Told in diary format over the course of a year, this work represents literary voyeurism at its best. We share in the birth of a daughter (The Beauty) after Venetia's husband, Charles, leaves her for the dreaded Helena; the antics of Venetia's well-meaning, albeit daffy, mother; chaotic seaside holidays; and the home-improvement projects of the increasingly attractive and available David. Her characters are real, the events believable, and the author able to address some all-too-common family problems without losing the story's humor and appeal. Venetia is a woman many readers would like to have as a friend

(PS. I just discovered there is a sequel to this book that I think I need to track down. It is called: Summertime)

It is time for....

Just in case you didn't notice my enthusiasm for the read-a-thon in a few previous posts, let me just say it again....

Hooray!!
It is almost time for the read-a-thon.
When?
April 10th, 2010 (which is less than 2 weeks away!)
Click here, to visit the event page and to sign up.

I am already getting my books in a row. After participating in 2 previous events, I am finally figuring out what works best for me.
I need a huge variety. I will be reading graphic novels, shorter novellas, some young adult choices and probably the 2nd in the Wimpy Kid series ( I read #1 during the last read-a-thon and it was such a nice break from the more serious stuff I had been reading.

So...go on.
Sign up.
You know you want to! ;)

Rainy Day Monday

Well, here is it.
Monday again!

I think this was the last of my really crazy, jammed packed weekends, for awhile. I didn't get a chance to put up a weekend cooking post or a Sunday Salon post this weekend-I am hoping to getting around to visit you all this coming week.

Sam performed his solo at the regional solo/ensemble competition on Saturday and received a score of 1--which is the highest score awarded. He was pleased--and was so handsome all dressed up!




Now, on to the Monday fun....








What's In Your Mailbox Monday is hosted each week by Marcia over at The Printed Page.

I had a very quiet mailbox this week, which my book shelves (and husband) are quite happy about!













(from phenix & phenix)

"A brave and profoundly moving novel of faith and forgiveness. A closely observed novel of voices, it speaks the tongues of America's impoverished underbelly and reveals, amid the squalor, mystery, goodness, and salvation."-Douglas Glover

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Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca at Just One More Page.

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about multitasking. Do you – or are you even able – to do other things while you read? Do you knit, hold a conversation, keep an eye on the TV? Anything?

Heavens no! I used to be able to read with the tv on, but those days for this brain are long gone. I do manage to read during commercial breaks if the tv is muted. The radio doesn't bother me if I have it on a station that is playing instrumental music-my radio station of choice is a smooth jazz station.

Knitting while reading??? I can't even imagine. Not only because knitting for me still requires such steady concentration, but there is also that not- enough- hands dilemma!

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What are you reading on Mondays? is hosted each week by hostess, Sheila from One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

I finished Out Stealing Horses last week and even wrote my review of it already! Now I am slowly making my way through The Marriage Bureau For Rich People and I must say, I mean it when I say slow going. I am not sure about this book. I keep waiting for something to happen. Or to come to care about at least one of the characters, but is just hasn't happened yet. I was at first kind of getting the same vibe that I have gotten when I read Alexander McCall Smith's #1 Detective Agency books--kind of a plodding storyline. I will persevere!

Up next? I have no idea. Probably something on my Spring Reading Thing list. Or my Once Upon a Time challenge list.

Happy Friday----I have nothing to say...

Our little beauty
(photos taken by her mommy's friend, 1 month ago)

Book Review: Out Stealing Horses

Book: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Finished: March 2010
Pages:238
Challenges:

**A-Z Challenge** Book Awards 4 Challenge** New Author ** Rainbow Connection** Read & Review** Reading From My Shelves**

My thoughts:
This is a book that has been floating around for quite some time. I had avoided reading many reviews of it before choosing it for my Book Awards challenge, so I did not have any real idea what it would be about. It was totally different from what I was expecting--(possibly a novel of 2 teenage boys up to no good ?)--instead I found a book about the love between a father and a son, set in the wilderness of Norway in the early to mid 1940's. I loved the way the boy unabashedly loved and admired his father--but as happens to all of us at one point or another, he comes to realize his father is human and thus not perfect. Even as an old man, many years later he finds himself drawn to remembering that all important time in his life and the impact it had on him for the rest of his life.

It is a quiet, slow moving book, (especially in the beginning) but as the story progresses it begins to pack a punch. This book reads like a book award winner, and I can see why it won the 2007 IMPAC Dublin award. I don't want to say much more about the plot or the father/son relationship as I don't want to give anything away.

From The New Yorker
In this quiet but compelling novel, Trond Sander, a widower nearing seventy, moves to a bare house in remote eastern Norway, seeking the life of quiet contemplation that he has always longed for. A chance encounter with a neighbor—the brother, as it happens, of his childhood friend Jon—causes him to ruminate on the summer of 1948, the last he spent with his adored father. Trond’s recollections center on a single afternoon, when he and Jon set out to take some horses from a nearby farm; what began as an exhilarating adventure ended abruptly and traumatically in an act of unexpected cruelty. Petterson’s spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force, and the narrative gains further power from the artful interplay of Trond’s childhood and adult perspectives. Loss is conveyed with all the intensity of a boy’s perception, but acquires new resonance in the brooding consciousness of the older man.

The Letter G

Hosted by Vicki from Reading At The Beach


Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!

To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link(amazon, barnes and noble etc.)

This week's letter is :G:

My book is: the Great Western Beach: a memoir of a Cornish childhood between the wars by Emma Smith
I found this book last year on Beth Fish Reads blog and just purchased it from Amazon. I need a G book for the A-Z challenge, and this one has been on my wish list ever since I saw it reviewed!

From Amazon:
The Hallsmiths are a truly remarkable family; or that, at least, is how Elspeth’s parents would like to be perceived. But Father, a hero of the Great War, convinced his destiny is to become a famous painter, has to suffer with gritted teeth the ignominy of his actual position in society—that of lowly bank clerk. And although Mother, bereaved of three fiancés during the Great War, is at last a married woman with children, she does have the unfortunate knack of upstaging her husband, being, unlike him, tall, charming, and admired by everybody. As to the twins, fearless defiant Pam and sickly bewildered Jim, existence for them is an unremitting struggle. Elspeth, their younger sister, is Daddy’s favorite, but rather wishes she wasn’t. And it seems, at first anyway, as if money always in too short a supply to support those appearances thought so essential to the Hallsmith family dignity. But there is one thing about which Elspeth’s parents are in harmonious agreement—picnics on the beach. And when the family sets forth on summery Sunday outings loaded with picnic baskets and swimsuits, their quarrels will, for a brief interval, be forgotten, buried in sandcastles, washed out to sea on the tide, and they can be happy together. This marvelous memoir of a 1923 to 1935 childhood pulsates with life. Newquay—its eccentric residents and exotic holiday-makers, its tennis tournaments and bathing parties, invigorating walks and teas at the Rose Café—is the Hallsmith children’s entire world; a world observed and remembered in meticulous detail by young Elspeth. Written with enormous love and a gently caustic wit, it generates an atmosphere hauntingly different from the usual childhood reminiscences.

Wordless Wednesday

What????

Is it really Monday??

This is going to be a bullet type information/to do list kind of post.
Crazy busy weekend = no time to blog!

• Finished Out Stealing Horses (review to come)
• Started reading The Marriage Bureau For Rich People
• Need to update my challenges on my sidebar
• Found a fun knitting blog who hosts a knit-a-long each month with seasonal washcloths-they are mystery patterns so you don't know in the beginning what the pattern will be. I started the March one yesterday...kris knits...
• I finished the knitting portion of another hat for Lyddie bug-just need to seam it up.
• Started my first ever sweater for Lyddie.
• Spent the whole day Saturday at Sam's jazz band jazz festival
• Spent the whole day waiting for Sam at dress rehearsal for wind ensemble--then concert in the evening.
  
• Spent the night after the concert in the ER with Sam after he got his hand slammed in a car door. Thus all the time for the knitting this weekend.
• Spring Reading Thing has begun along with actual Spring.
• Read-a-Thon is quickly approaching--:squeal:!

More formal blogging to come later.
Happy Monday....

My Favorite Reads is hosted by Alyce from At Home With Books every Thursday. I am using this space each Thursday to highlight outstanding books I read before I blogged about books.

This week I am spotlighting a book written by Pip Granger, a British author.


From Fantastic Fiction:
"A rags-to-riches story with a delightfully original spin, NOT ALL TARTS ARE APPLE is narrated by seven-year-old Rosie who grows up in a cafe in 1950s Soho, watched over by her eagle-eyed Auntie Maggie and Uncle Bert, and visited on occasions by her mother, the mysterious, and often drunk, Perfumed Lady. But it soon transpires that the Perfumed Lady's family - landed gentry who hail from a country estate near Bath - are desperate to get their hands on Rosie, and will stop at nothing - even kidnap - to acquire her. NOT ALL TARTS ARE APPLE is peopled with a wonderful cast of eccentric subsidiary characters - Great Aunt Dodie, Madame Zelda and Paulette, Sharky, the Campini Family who run an Italian delicatessan in Old Compton Street, and Maltese Joe - all of whom live in a Soho so atmospherically evoked that you can smell and taste it."


This is lovely work of historical fiction, set in Soho, after WWII.
Life was tough. Little Rosie had to be tough, although she was spared some of the hard knocks of life by all the wonderful people surrounding her and watching out for her. There is a little mystery thrown in also--and I just remember connecting with the characters and having a hard time putting the book down. My husband gave me a first edition copy of the sequel,The Widow Ginger, one year as a Christmas gift! These are definitely books I will read again sometime-I kind of consider them a cozy read.

Granger's autobiography of her early life, Alone, is one I have on my nightstand--hoping to get around to reading someday. I think it will be a sad one though, as I think the Rosie character in Not All Tarts Are Apple is base a bit on her own early childhood.

Bon Appetite

Baby Lyddie
4 months
1st cereal

Wordless Wednesday: stormy weather

Spring
Stormy Skies
March: 2010

the letter: F

Hosted by Vicki from Reading At The Beach


Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!

To join, here's all you have to do:
Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
Post:
1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link(amazon, barnes and noble etc.)

This week's letter is :F:
My book is: Fanny and Sue by Karen Stolz

Summary from a blog entry, dated March 3, 2003 at this blog: Mostly Fiction Book Reviews:

My face-to-face book group chose A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for our February selection. We all liked it well enough, afterwards my friend Julie remarked, and I agreed, that it had been pleasantly refreshing to read something positive. No abused women, no rape or incest, just a realistic, pleasant, and well-written story. I am doubly pleased now to have discovered a new book that reads in a similar vein -- Fanny and Sue written by Karen Stolz. Far from the current popular novels that feature a dead fourteen-year old girl looking down from heaven or a teenage boy marooned on a lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger, this is a sweet old-fashioned slice of life story. We met the titular Fanny and Sue in 1926 as six-year old twins, identical in every respect except personality and follow their lives until 1940. The slim story follows them through illness, accidents, and just the sheer joy of girlhood. The two love each other quite deeply, although a little warily at times...
....I was reminded throughout the book, of Tony Earley's marvelous study in minimalism, Jim the Boy since both books tell sweet stories with neither flounce nor flurry.

My Note: I read Stolz's World of Pies last year and plan to read Fanny and Sue this year as part of the A-Z challenge I am participating in.

Review: Keeping the Feast

Book: Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini
Pages: 259
Finished: March 2010
Challenges:
** Read & Review** Support Your Local Library** A-Z Challenge** Memorable Memoir **

From Amazon's site:
"Written with grace and courage, Paula Butturini's Keeping the Feast is about the endurance of love in the face of overwhelming odds--depression, tragedy, loss. But it is also about the comfort to be found in the dailiness of life, when every humble act becomes an act of faith; when the preparation and sharing of three good meals a day, however simple, is both a reminder and a celebration--an insistence on celebration--of what life offers. Keeping the Feast is a triumph of will and spirit. It made me hungry for everything."
-Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life


For me, this book was hard to put down.
While the subject matter was anything but light hearted----:

• A beating.
• A bullet.
• A death.
• Deep depression.

----------it was full of hope
The author finds comfort and normalcy in the very act of cooking and eating. Not just eating, but eating with family and friends. She was the very essence of keeping those marriage vows-"in sickness and in health" which I also found oh-so inspiring in this generation of throw away marriages and running the minute life with a spouse gets difficult. I don't doubt there were many times she would love to have run away. To have her husband back. But she stayed the course--found a way to be the steady one, for terribly long stretches of time. She found a way to confront the pain and difficulties they were experiencing in their life together, without feeling guilty for her own feelings of frustration and helplessness.

The structure of this book was unique and meaningful and helpful in letting us see the whole person that is the author. It is done in a flash back/flash forward kind of manner. Each chapter is titled with some kind of food related term or actual dish. Then the beginning of the chapter was usually begun with a story from her life as a child, teen, or single woman, which related back to the title and then moved into the next part of the current story propelling the timeline of events forward.

Page 177
"Cooking was my way of trying to make us both feel at home again, to make us feel as safe and nourished as we did as children, when we ate all our meals surrounded by utter familiarity and routine. During the year on the Via Giulia, I went to the Campo six days a week, to multiply the good I took away from each visit. I bought enough food to last for a day, two at most. Everything we ate seemed to have been picked just the night before, just for us. During that year, I cooked every comfort food from my childhood and John's."

Page 253
"All of us cook, I think, in part to feed our daily hunger, but just as important, and perhaps more so, we cook and eat to feed our spirits, to keep us all in the same orbit of life. As the generations turn, as our family expands, the table and its simple pleasures--never just the food, but the food and the talk, the food and the laughter, the food and the tears, the jokes, the memories, the hopes--still hold us in place, well anchored in a safe harbor. There may very well be another depression or endless other troubles, big or small, lying in wait for us, but rather than freezing in fear about what may come, we try our best to live and enjoy the lives we've been served forth."

I highly recommend this memoir.

Monday Games

What's In Your Mailbox Monday is hosted each week by Marcia over at The Printed Page.







It's 1941 and London is burning. Gwen Davis (35 and a horticulturist formerly seeking a cure for parsnip canker) must now flee the city she loves, so she's volunteered to lead a team of girls from the Women's Land Army in growing vegetables for the war effort at an old country estate.
While her best friend, Jane, is fiercely trying to keep her missing fiance alive by remembering him and while the land army girls are depicting their former lives in chalk on blackout curtains, Gwen is tracing the meanings of the flowers in her lost garden in search of what she knows of love.








Sometimes even Miss Julia just wants to go to bed and hide under the covers. Her husband, Sam, wants them to attend mar­riage enrichment classes. Could their marriage be in a poor state? Even worse, the psychologist leading the sessions is Dr. Fred Fowler-a man Miss Julia could go forever without seeing again and one she'd certainly rather not introduce to Sam.

But she can't stay in bed for long, even if she wants to. Someone has knocked Francie Pitts in the head and put her in the hospital. Francie didn't see her attacker, but she sure smelled her. She rec­ognized Etta Mae Wiggins's perfume, Shania Twain by Stetson. It's up to Miss Julia to clear the air.

As if playing detective wasn't enough, Miss Julia still needs to show Sam that there's life left in their marital batteries-even if it means his are going to need some recharging. Perhaps a bit of Shania Twain might just solve all her problems.
Readers flock to Ann B. Ross and her popular southern heroine. Miss Julia Renews Her Vows is filled with the wit, sass, and quirky charm her readers have grown to love, and is poised to hit the bestseller list.







Shhhh...this book did not arrive via my mailbox, but it did arrive into my house. After spotlighting it in my Friday Finds post, I researched it more and received such positive comments from people who have already read it, that I ran back out and bought it! And yes I know--it does sound sad.)

From the day Cobb and Mary meet kayaking on Maine's Allagash River and fall deeply in love, the two approach life with the same sense of adventure they use to conquer the river's treacherous rapids. But rivers do not let go so easily...and neither does their love. So when Mary's life takes the cruelest turn, she vows to face those rough waters on her own terms and asks Cobb to promise, when the time comes, to help her return to their beloved river for one final journey.

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Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca at Just One More Page.
Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about: picture books. Do you have a favourite picture book, either from your own childhood, or reading to you children?

Oh my! The list I have of favorites I have from reading to my own 4 children could go on and on an on. My kids' ages range from 26 down to 14, so you can imagine how many picture books I have seen over an age span like that. Rather than bore you with a list a mile long, I will name just a few that have recently come up in conversation:
Good Night Moon
Piggy in the Puddle
Piggies
Barn Dance
The Napping House

Really, the list could go on and on.

This question also evokes sweet memories of my Dad. I grew up in the 60's and 70's in a home that supported reading, but the idea of actually owning copious amounts of books was foreign. Thankfully, my dad was always willing to take me to the library whenever I wanted to go. (Mom did not drive). I remember both of my parents occasionally reading books of their own, but it is my dad that I remember reading to my sister and I. He was a big fan of Dr. Seuss and we owned many of his books in hardback. I also remember him reading his childhood favorite out loud to us, Wind in the Willows on summer.

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What are you reading on Mondays? is hosted each week by hostess, Sheila from One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

I am right smack dab in the middle of, Out Stealing Horses, and expect to finish it by Tuesday night.
Up next:
The Marriage Bureau For Rich People by Farahad Zama
Ten Degrees of Reckoning by Hester Rumberg
The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein
Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

Happy Monday everyone!!

The Sunday Salon

Weekends just fly by.
Weeks fly by for that matter!
Happy Day Lights Saving Time. (wasn't it just last week we were setting our clocks back??)

I had a great reading week--finishing 2 books.
1. La's Orchestra Saves the World
2. Keeping the Feast

I reviewed La's Orchestra here, and still need to write one for Keeping the Feast. (preveiw: I loved it!)

Today , my reading will continue in Out Stealing Horses. I started this yesterday and was not so sure about it in the beginning. It seemed a bit slow and a tad boring, but I am about 60 pages in, and I am definitely hooked. It was the IMPAC Dublin award winner in 2007, and I find sometimes that award winning books tend to be more slow moving and wordy than other books I read. You, know, books that you can't just rush through? I will have an extended reading time while waiting 3 hours for my son at his wind ensemble rehearsal. My husband and I go hang out at a pizza place that has no problem with us being there for such a long time!

I participated in several memes: Weekend Cooking, Friday Finds, Wordless Wednesday, A-Z Wednesday, What Are You Reading Monday, Musing Monday and What's in Your Mailbox. If you scroll down through my blog you will find all of these.

I also wrote about some easy-peasy graphic novels I have read. I am just starting to dip my toes into the graphic novel genre pool. My review is here.

And lastly but not leastly, I wrote about the upcoming read-a-thon. It is all set for April 10th--the weekend after Easter. I am so excited for this event, not only because of all the fun it is, but because I am a co-host this time around! Like Molly said on her blog the other day--
Raise your hand if you are excited for this event!!










This week I need to:

• update challenge lists
• set reading list for The Spring Reading Thing
• write review of Keeping the Feast
• begin gathering book ideas for read-a-thon

Have a great day everyone--a day full of relaxation and lots of reading!

Weekend Cooking

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads each week and offers a unique way to merge booking with cooking!

I am not spotlighting a book this week. Instead I am going to focus on the blogging part of cooking!

So many times, in my past, I would run to allrecipes.com and search for a last minute recipe. Or I would google "slow cooker" recipes and find 100 sites to sort through, looking for some kind of recipe that would be new to us. I would spend hours sometimes, sifting through recipes.

But then, I stumbled across a cooking blog. And, then I stumbled across a second cooking blog. And pretty soon, it dawned on me that there is a whole community of cooking bloggers, just like this community of book bloggers. (I know--I am real quick, aren't I? )

Anyway, I thought I would share a couple of my favorite sites--ones where I regularly find something new to serve my family.

1. The first one is maintained by a set of sisters- 5 in all who contribute recipes. It is called, The Sister's Cafe. Check it out!
2. The second one is called, My Kitchen Cafe--and she is the writer that I have found my new favorite skillet meal recipe from. If you like bbq flavor then you must check outthis chicken/pasta recipe. It is easy and delish!
3. The third site is Mommy's Kitchen. Her food tends to be on the southern side with lots of comfort ingredients thrown in.

How about you? Do you have some blogs you visit which focus on food and recipes? If so, please share.........!

wanna reads

To see other Friday Finds or to share some of your own, visit MizB, our Friday hostess!

I haven't participated in this meme for several months but wanted to share what I saw at Target this week. I really want to read all of these!

From the day Cobb and Mary meet kayaking on Maine's Allagash River and fall deeply in love, the two approach life with the same sense of adventure they use to conquer the river's treacherous rapids. But rivers do not let go so easily...and neither does their love. So when Mary's life takes the cruelest turn, she vows to face those rough waters on her own terms and asks Cobb to promise, when the time comes, to help her return to their beloved river for one final journey.

Bright, precocious but socially awkward Lydia Pasternak reports on the aftermath of her older brothers disappearance in Gershows accomplished debut. Danny was everything Lydia wasn't: at ease with their parents, popular in school, physically imposing, beloved by the opposite sex. Danny went from being Lydia's playmate in their youth to her tormentor in high school, so his disappearance leaves Lydia with some very mixed feelings, one of which is relief. As time goes on and the weekend search parties prove more and more fruitless, Lydia struggles with the fact that her geeky best friend, David, has feelings for her; she also obsesses over the private investigator hired by the family and allows herself to be sucked into the social world Danny once dominated. Lydias perspective gives this Lovely Bones–esque story line an unflinching quality as she details the emotional damage that reverberates even through her 10-year high school reunion. Gershows psychologically acute grasp of the mundane, ugly details that accompany tragedy, combined with an understanding of the tragicomedy of high school, make for a stark and merciless narrative, leavened by Lydia's wry insights.

When Hollywood entertainment lawyer Alex Hirsh starts hitting the gym and sporting Armani, his wife, Alice, chalks it up to a midlife crisis. But soon Alex—now the execrable Xander—is all over the tabloids, caught canoodling with his newest client, man-eating actress Rose Maris. Cue Alice's tears, rage, breakdown, followed by a bumpy and comic road to happiness, right? Yes and no: the novel walks a familiar path, but there are plenty of details to keep the story feeling fresh. Alice is entertainingly judgmental, and the new friends she makes as a divorcée are winning: there's Nancy, who wears horrible Hallmarky sweatshirts but curses a blue streak, and Ruth, a former porn star desperate to protect her son from her past. Naturally, there's a love interest for Alice, but the real love story is the one between Alice and her precocious six-year-old daughter. And it's their sweet, complicated relationship that lifts this tale above the slew of competing family dramas.

Sally Thorning, part-time environment rescuer and full-time mother, struggles to maintain her sanity and juggle the overwhelming demands of work and home in this superior psychological mystery from British author Hannah (Little Face). During a week away from her husband and children, Sally has a brief affair. A year later a local headline tragedy—Sally's lover's wife appears to have murdered her six-year-old daughter then committed suicide—reveals that Sally's lover was not who he claimed to be and she needs to find out why. After surviving a shove in front of a bus, Sally re-examines that unwise affair as she plays amateur detective and nearly loses all she values in the process. The story alternates between Sally's confessional and a tight police procedural interspersed with evidence—pages torn from the diary of the alleged daughter-killer. Paced like a ticking time bomb with flawlessly distinct characterization, this is a fiercely fresh and un-put-downable read.