Winner!

Just one winner this week!

The winner of Lucky Bunny is ... Karen K.!

Congrats! If you didn't win, be sure to check out my open giveaways -- and as always, more are coming this week!

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The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

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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…
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Book Review: The Secret History of Jane Eyre by John Pfordresher

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First line: We begin with a mystery.

I grabbed this book because of the cover (gorgeous) and the fact that I'm not a huge Jane Eyre fan and I kind of want to be. (I mean, it seems like a book I should be all over.) I love books about books, stories that dive into the nitty-gritty and ineffable magic of writing a novel. And I'm always up to learn more about books and how, possibly, to read them.

But this one really disappointed me.

Pfordresher's argument -- his 'secret history' -- is that Brontë mined her own life for Jane Eyre. (No duh.) But he pushes a literal person-for-person sort of equivalency that really disappointed me; while arguing for Brontë's creative genius, I couldn't help but feel like he was minimizing it in this manner.

There are also some intense leaps that just seemed a stretch to me. For example, Rochester's agonizing sexual frustration reflects "...a sexual energy Charlotte Brontë knew, daily, at Haworth," (p82), from the a…
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Teaser Tuesday: The Alice Network

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My Teaser Tuesday for this week comes from Kate Quinn's marvelous The Alice Network. I'm only a fourth through but I am hardcore in love. There are a handful of badass women who dominate the book, and Quinn's trademark mix of rich detail and delightful one-liners. (Limiting myself to one teaser today was a challenge!)

This quote is from the start of the novel, when our World War I spy Eve gets her first job at a Lille-based restaurant..

Eve could see why the Germans came to dine here. It was a civilized place to relax after a long day of stamping on your conquered populace. (p103)

What are you reading right now? Any teasers to share?
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Book Review: Novel Destinations by Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon

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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…
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