Literary Quote of the Month

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one." - George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Chick with Books Caught a Cold... It's been HACKing and seems like it caught a VIRUS!


Well, it's been a long week or so... I caught a virus of some sort... not me personally, but my computer! All sorts of funky things have been going on as I tried to post, work other applications on my Macintosh and then even use my iPhone and iPad! All my info got dumped from my contacts lists on both the computer and iPhone! At one point Chick with Books disappeared altogether off the internet! Talk about panic! But things have settled down a bit... The Genius at the Genius Bar at Apple couldn't find the problem, ran 2 anti-virus scans there and at home, and restored some of the information on my iPhone. Nothing else has gone crazy, although someone did tell me my "subscribe to this blog" link was not working and will be checking on that tonight. But barring no other problems, I'm back to work on Chick with Books!

So, if you hang out here normally, or if you just stopped by recently, thank you for your patience as things get back to normal! If something funky happened while you tried to subscribe to the blog or even become a Google Friends Connect, please let me know! And in the meantime, someone did point out that I have 666 followers, so not being all that superstitious, but after all that's gone wrong a little cautious, can someone start to follow me so I don't have 666 on my blog! ;-)

Happy Reading.... Suzanne




Sunday, June 12, 2011

The Sunday Salon... Summer Reading!

It's Sunday! Time to relax and take it easy! Open a good book and have a cup of Joe! Sometimes life gets in the way of reading & blogging, and my time has been spent in the throws of that the last few weeks. Now though, as things have settled down, I'm back to say hello and to say I've missed you! But books are still published and authors still havea lot to say, and today I'd like to share some of the books I've discovered that have a lot of Buzz! Summer has come to Connecticut with a bang and there are some wonderful summer reads coming our way! Here's some Books with Buzz...

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan... For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano at night. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree bearing the initials “A.H.” At the cottage, built by Kelleher hands, cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface. As three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago.

This book is splashed all over the web, in emails I've received and has gotten great pre-pub reviews. And I for one am excited about this book! I love generational stories and these 3 women sound rich & complex and should make for a wonderful luxurious summer read. This will be released Tuesday, June 14th!

Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson... Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say: Henderson debuts with a coming-of-age story set in the 1980s that departs from the genre's familiar tropes to find a panoramic view of how the imperfect escape from our parents' mistakes makes (equally imperfect) adults of us. Jude Keffy-Horn and Teddy McNicholas are drug-addled adolescents stuck in suburban Vermont and dreaming of an escape to New York City. But after Teddy dies of an overdose, Jude makes good on their dream and forms a de facto family with Teddy's straight-edge brother, Johnny; Jude's estranged pot-farmer father, Lester; and the troubled Eliza Urbanski, who may be carrying Teddy's child. What results is an odyssey encompassing the age of CBGB, Hare Krishnas, zines, and the emergence of AIDS. Henderson is careful, amid all this youthy nostalgia, not to sideline the adults, who look upon the changing fashions with varying levels of engagement.

Coming-of-Age stories are always popular, and this has gotten a lot of positive buzz. What may be different with this story is that it takes place in a more contemporary era that is not the norm with these kinds of tales. That may make this even a better bet because we all can relate to the landscape of this portrait. This book was recently released (June 7th) and is available fromyour favorite bookseller!

Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad... Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? opens with the line: "The person you love is 72.8% water, and it hasn’t rained for weeks." From there, Brage Award–winning author and playwright Johan Harstad’s debut—previously published to great success in eleven countries and now making its first English-language appearance—tells the story of Mattias, a thirty-something gardener living in Stavanger, Norway, whose idol is Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon: the man who was willing to stand in Neil Armstrong’s shadow in order to work, diligently and humbly, for the success of the Apollo 11 mission. Following a series of personal and professional disasters, Mattias finds himself lying on a rain-soaked road in the desolate, treeless Faroe Islands, population only a few thousand, a wad of bills in his pocket and no memory of how he had come to be there—that’s when a truck approaches him, driven by a troubled, fantastic man with an offer that will shortly change Mattias’s life. And so, surrounded by a vivid and memorable cast of characters—aspiring pop musicians, Caribbean-obsessed psychologists, death-haunted photographers, girls who dream of anonymous men falling in love with them on bus trips, and even Buzz Aldrin himself—launches Buzz Aldrin, What Happened To You In All The Confusion?, the epic story of Mattias’s pop-saturated odyssey through the world of unconventional psychiatry, souvenir sheep-making, the Cardigans, and space: the space between himself and other people, a journey maybe as remote and personally dangerous as the trip to the moon itself

This book sounds like fun! With a group of quirky characters and a road trip, how can you go wrong? Add the fact that this has been published to great accolades in eleven countries doesn't hurt. Kirkus Reviews calls it, "A modern saga of rocketships, ice floes and dreams of the Caribbean, and great fun to read." And I for one am looking forward to a fun romp with this one! Though we had to wait almost 6 years for Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion by Johan Harstad, it's now available from your favorite bookseller!

So what have you been reading lately?! Does your reading change like the seasons? Do you slow down and read more fun in the summer? I'd love to hear what summer reading means to you!

Happy Reading... Suzanne

Friday, June 10, 2011

First Lines... 212 by Alafair Burke

"Tanya Abbott noticed the quiver in her index finger as it pressed the three silver buttons in the rain-- 9... 1... 1. Listening to the ring, she found herself mentally calculating the number of days that had passed since she had first arrived in New York City.
Tanya had put the number at twenty-six by the time the dispatcher answered the call..."
212 by Alafair Burke, just published! And if you like crime fiction with a thriller bend, you'll want to pick this one up! Alafair Burke is having a Virtual Book Tour and making a stop at Chick with Books! Look for my review coming in a couple of weeks!

Friday, June 3, 2011

First Lines... I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

"ISO, TIME FOR -
Eliza Benedict paused at the foot of the stairs. Time for what, exactly? All summer long - it was now August - Eliza had been having trouble finding the right words. Not complicated ones, the things required to express strong emotions or abstract concepts, make difficult confessions to loved ones..."
i'd know you anywhere by Laura Lippman coming August 2011!

Laura Lippman fans are in for another treat from their favorite author! Psychological suspense at it's best! Eliza Benedict was kidnapped at 15, but now years later leads a normal life, with a husband and two kids. What remains inside her is the constant question of why Walter Bowman killed all his victims, but her? She may find out the answer because 23 years later, Walter Bowman on death row contacts Eliza...
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