Winner!

Only one giveaway this week, so only one winner!

The winner of India Black and the Widow of Windsor is ... Maria D.!

Congrats! Check out my current giveaways -- more coming this week!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

Image
Title:The Orchardist
Author: Amanda Coplin

Genre: Fiction (Historical / early 20th Century / Pacific Northwest / Oregon / Horticulture / Teenage Pregnancy)
Publisher/Publication Date: Harper Perennial (3/5/2013)
Source:TLC Book Tours

Rating: Liked, possibly loved. This one will grow on me, I suspect, as time goes on.
Did I finish?: Oh yes.
One-sentence summary: Set in early 20th century Oregon, a orchardist helps two pregnant girls on the run and the experience has explosive results for all.
Reading Challenges:Historical Fiction

Do I like the cover?: I'm of two minds: a little bit I like it for the colors, and the bucolic setting; but up close, the image is sort of rendered like one those paint programs that makes photos look like canvases. It's odd.

I'm reminded of...: Alice Hoffman, Doris Lessing

First line: His face was as pitted as the moon.

Buy, Borrow, or Avoid?: Ohemgee, borrow or buy, especially if you like narratives set in the American West.

Why did I get this book?: I re…
Keep reading

Book Review: How to Be Everything by Emilie Wapnick

Image
First line: If you picked up this book, it's probably because you've had trouble narrowing down "what you want to be" to one thing.

I agreed to review this book purely on the title: I was unfamiliar with Wapnick and her TEDx talk on calling but have long struggled with what I "want to be when I grow up" (even now, in my mid-30s). While I love learning, I don't love it enough to want to attempt a Master's degree or expensive classes, and I've struggled with understanding if I'm happy or not in my vocation(s).

Still, I was apprehensive about this book when I started, fearing it'd be a long form essay on #YOLO (you only live once) or a passionate defense of the gig economy.

Instead, I found this a fascinating, empathetic, empowering read that acknowledges today's economic realities, the personal temperament of many people I know, and the ways current US culture is oriented toward a rigid, specialist-type career path (and how that need n…
Keep reading

Book Review: Novel Destinations by Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon

Image
First line: "I felt as if I'd got into a novel while going about in the places I'd read so much of," Louisa May Alcott wrote in her journal after seeing the sights of Dickensian London in 1865., from the Introduction

Book-inspired travel is a favorite of mine and my wife's. On my first trip with my in-laws, they cheerfully indulged my literary nerdiness by diverting a family road trip so that I could search for poet and novelist H.D.'s grave in Bethlehem, PA. Through multiple biographies and Jackson's own writing, my wife and I pieced together a route through North Bennington, Vermont, to explore Shirley Jackson's world. And for my babymoon, my wife took me to Yaddo, famed writing center, so I could walk the grounds so many favorite authors had.

All this is to say: a book that basically does all the work and offers me many, many ways to visit my favorite literary sites is pretty much catnip for me.

In its second edition, Novel Destinations offers a va…
Keep reading