2016 I Love Libraries Reading Challenge

I do love my library, and I try to use it as often as I can. It's a great resource! I usually can get any book that I want. It saves you money! They have books! And eBooks! And music! And this year, Bea from Bea's Book Nook is hosting the Goodreads library reading challenge that nudged me into using the library in 2015. The name of the challenge has changed (in 2015, it was Snagged @ The Library Challenge), but the purpose is the same - to encourage people to use their libraries more. And those libraries depend on you using them to keep them going! Save our libraries by walking through those doors once in a while! So, I'm officially joining the 2016 I Love Libraries Reading Challenge!


        Here are "The Rules"…

• The challenge runs… January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016
• Use your library to check out reading material - books, magazines, any sort of reading material that you are allowed to check out, physical or digital.
• Put a sign up post on your blog and link it on The I Love Libraries Reading Challenge post. If you don't have a blog, make a dedicated goodreads shelf (or LibraryThing), make sure it's public, and link it on the "Challenge Post". 
• Any reading material that can be checked out of your library counts - print books, audio books, digital books, magazines, etc. 
• As part of your sign up post, briefly write why you like using your library - free books, internet access, a quiet place to work, whatever draws you to the library. If you don't have a blog platform, post it in the comments below.
• Write a review - 2 sentences or an essay, whatever works for you, but there is a minimum of 2 sentences. Not sure what to write? How about something like, "The characters were a delight but the story was slow and confusing. It was disappointing." 
• There will be a post each month where you can link your reviews. Each linky will run for the calendar year.
• Pick a level from the list below. You can move up as needed but you can't move down.
• Books may overlap with other reading challenges.

Levels:

          board book - 3

          picture book - 6

          early reader - 9

          chapter book - 12

          middle grades - 18

          Young adult - 24

          adult - 36

          just insert IV - 50

My Level? I'm going for "Picture Book", which is 6 books. I think I can manage that and if I can, I can move up to Early Reader! What do you think? Interested in supporting your library, sharing your book choices with other like minded readers and joining in on the reading challenge? Go to I Love Libraries Reading Challenge to get more info and sign up!
********************************************************************************
My Challenge Books...
I signed up for "picture book" level, which means 6 books. Here they are...

1. Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
2. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haru
3. American Housewife by Helen Ellis
4. Concussion by Jeanne Marie Laskas
5. The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer
6. The Great Danbury State Fair by Andrea Zimmerman
7. The Guise of Another by Allen Eskens
8. The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
9. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
10. Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
11. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
12. The Revenant by Michael Punke

National Reading Day or National Readathon… Your Choice!

Today is National Reading Day! A day designed to promote the love of reading to Pre-K through Third graders. All across america there will be schools, libraries and parents participating in a variety of activities to encourage children to read. Who exactly organized this annual event? I have no idea! But it seems a worthy cause to me and here is the LINK if you'd like to learn a little more and need some suggestions on what you can do.

Along those same lines is National Readathon Day! Now, National Readathon Day is tomorrow, January 24th. National Readathon Day is sponsored by Penguin, The National Book Foundation, Mashable and GoodReads. Its a marathon of reading to be done between the hours of 12 noon and 4pm. Along with encouraging a marathon of reading, it's also a fund raising event for The National Book Foundation. You can read all about it on THE PENGUIN SITE. Riverhead books, Goodreads and Books on the Nightstand are leading the fundraising efforts of teams. I'm a bit shy when it comes to soliciting donations, (ok, begging for money even for a good cause), but donating is also acceptable. You can follow THIS LINK to read about who has a team or individuals that you can donate to if you would like.

And don't forget… There's also Drop Everything And Read Day on April 12th, and World Book Night on April 23rd!

What's your fancy?! Are you going to participate for a reading day?!

The Sunday Salon and 3 Books You Need to Write Down Now!

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! Pour yourself a cup of java, pull up a chair and relax. It's that time of the week we chat about books and bookish things! Not only have I been a reader this week, but I've played Sherlock Holmes as I've searched the virtual book shelves to find our next great read...

It's fun sometimes to take a peek at what books are coming out in a few months. I do this in a lot of different ways. I get notices from publishers, I get an email from an author sometimes, I read other readers blogs or I find interesting books while I'm at websites like Goodreads and LibraryThing. LibraryThing is a place where you can "store" your books virtually. Before I found the Goodreads site, that's where I entered in all my books so I could keep track of them. I haven't kept up with my books there since Goodreads enticed me, but LibraryThing also has a great monthly feature called Early Reviewers, where LibraryThing members can request books listed by publishers for reviewing. It's more like a giveaway, because there are only so many books for A LOT of requests, but even if you  don't snag an ARC, it's a great source to see what's being published in the next few months. I saw a few books there that I definitely want to read and I had to share them with you today…

First, I saw a new book by Sara Gruen! Ever since Water for Elephants I have been a huge fan of hers. I didn't really enjoy her last book though, Ape House. I think I may have not been in the right frame of mind for it. I started it, but it just didn't hold me. Maybe because it was so different than Water for Elephants? But when I saw that Sara has a new book coming out in a few months, I had to read about it, and I think it's going to be a great read! It's called At The Water's Edge. First of all it's time frame is WWII (I love WWII settings!), secondly it takes place in the Scottish Highlands (I know there won't be any highlanders, but oh what a wonderful landscape!), and finally Sara throws in a quest to find none other than the Loch Ness Monster! I think all these elements in Sara's hands spells READ ME. Here is the description from the publisher…

At The Water's Edge by Sara Gruen… In At the Water’s Edge, she tells the gripping and poignant story of a privileged young woman’s moral and sexual awakening as she experiences the devastations of World War II in the Scottish Highlands. Madeline Hyde, a young socialite from Philadelphia, reluctantly follows her husband and their best friend to the tiny village of Drumnadrochit in search of the Loch Ness monster—at the same time that a very real monster, Hitler, wages war against the Allied Forces. Despite German warplanes flying overhead and scarce food rations (and even scarcer stockings), what Maddie discovers—about the larger world and about herself—through the unlikely friendships she develops with the villagers, opens her eyes not only to the dark forces that exist around her but to the beauty and surprising possibilities as well.

If you enjoy historical fiction like I do, you should copy this one down. It's due out March 31st from Random House. *It is on my wish list! UPDATE: After writing this post, I actually received an eGalley of At The Water's Edge. I decided I would read a little bit to get a feel for the story… and couldn't stop reading it! All the elements I thought would make this a great read DID! I really enjoyed this! SO, look for my review this Monday, Jan. 12th!

Next book that looked really interesting to me was Shadow's Over Paradise by Isabel Wolff. I have never heard of Isabel Wolff, but it seems she's got quite a few books under her belt here in the states and internationally. When I read a reviewer say that fans of Jamie Ford would enjoy this book, my eyes perked up. I love Jamie Ford. Hotel on The Corner of Bitter and Sweet is on of my favorite books! Shadow's over Paradise brings together Jenni Clark, a ghostwriter and Klara, an elderly woman to have Jenni ghostwrite Klara's life story. I like having 2 generations of women together and I like stories that visit the past this way, while weaving a new story together with all the other pieces. Here's what the publisher writes...

Shadow's Over Paradise by Isabel Wolff… Sometimes the only way forward is through the past. Jenni Clark is a ghostwriter. She loves to immerse herself in other people’s stories—a respite from her own life, and from a relationship that appears to be nearing its end. Jenni’s latest assignment takes her to a coastal hamlet in England, where she’s agreed to pen the memoir of an elderly farm owner named Klara. Jenni assumes the project will be easy: a quiet, ordinary tale of a life well lived. But Klara’s story is far from quiet. She recounts the tale of a family torn apart by World War II, and of disgraceful acts committed against a community in the Japanese prison camps on the Pacific island paradise of Java. As harrowing details emerge and stunning truths come to light, Jenni is compelled to confront a secret she’s spent a lifetime burying. Weaving together the lives of two very different women, Isabel Wolff has created a captivating novel of love, loss, and hope that reaches across generations. 

Shadow's Over Paradise is due to be released on Feb. 10th by Bantam. On my wish list too!
OK, I can't wait for this one to come out too! It has that WWII aspect again, and I can see the Jamie Ford connection, because part of the story of Hotel on The Corner of Bitter and Sweet was set in the internment camps of WWII.

Another "list" I look at is the Indie Next List. Every month Independent Bookstores get together and recommend a book. There is a list of "runner's up" as well, but the Indie Next pick for that month is the top banana. Usually, the top pick is a great read, and that's where I saw The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton. The setting is a small rural coal town in Kentucky and it just sounds like a wonderful character driven story. Maybe a bit of coming-of-age sprinkled in there too. I was able to get an eGalley of it and was immediately taken with Christopher Scotton's writing…

"It was always coal. Coal filler their pantry and put a sense of purpose in their Monday coffee. coal was Christmas and the long weekend in Nashville when the Opry offered half-priced tickets. Coal was new corduroy slacks and the washboard symphony they played to every step."

Here's what the publisher's had to say...

After witnessing the death of his younger brother in a terrible home accident, 14-year-old Kevin and his grieving mother are sent for the summer to live with Kevin's grandfather. In this peeled-paint coal town deep in Appalachia, Kevin quickly falls in with a half-wild hollow kid named Buzzy Fink who schools him in the mysteries and magnificence of the woods. The events of this fateful summer will affect the entire town of Medgar, Kentucky. Medgar is beset by a massive Mountaintop Removal operation that is blowing up the hills and back filling the hollows. Kevin's grandfather and others in town attempt to rally the citizens against the 'company' and its powerful owner to stop the plunder of their mountain heritage. When Buzzy witnesses the brutal murder of the opposition leader, a sequence is set in play which tests Buzzy and Kevin to their absolute limits in an epic struggle for survival in the Kentucky mountains. Redemptive and emotionally resonant, The Secret Wisdom of the Earth is narrated by an adult Kevin looking back on the summer when he sloughed the coverings of a boy and took his first faltering steps as a man among a rich cast of characters and an ambitious effort to reclaim a once great community.

Look for a review coming soon for this one. It just came out January 6th from Grand Central Publishing and should be available at your local bookstore, so no waiting for this one!

Weekly Recap…

Monday, Jan. 5th, I reviewed Wonder by R.J.Palacio. A great Young Adult (YA) novel about acceptance, bullying and redemption. If you haven't read it, you should! Here's my REVIEW.

Wed, Jan. 7th, I reviewed Strange Girl by Rick Remender. A graphic novel about a young girl who hasn't earned her wings when "the rapture" comes, and ends up on an earth turned into Hell, trying to find redemption anyway. Good story, good artwork. Here's my REVIEW.

Saturday, Jan. 10th, I reviewed another graphic novel called The Mind Gap Volume 1: Intimate Strangers by Jim McCann. It's a mystery/suspense with a paranormal twist and I really enjoyed it. Artwork was good and the story even better. Here's my REVIEW.

That's what I found this week to read, how about you? What great books have you been reading about? And where do you find your "Next Great Read"?

Happy Reading… Suzanne

The Sunday Salon and The Beginning of the "Best of 2010" Book Lists

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! The day of the week where we bookish people catch up on what we've been reading, and all the other bookish things going on around us. Grab a cup of joe and relax. It's been a hectic weekend for most of us. First with preparing for our Thanksgiving with cooking & cleaning, welcoming family & friends to our homes, and then for some the tradition of a black friday shopping excursion. Did you start your Holiday shopping friday?! I usually work the day after Thanksgiving, and this year was no different, except that if I really wanted to, quite a few shops were open 10pm on Thanksgiving. And of course there were the 4am openings on friday. But I merrily avoided those long lines and drove to work, half comatose from eating way too much turkey and Juniors cheesecake for dessert! (Thanks to my sis-in-law that works in the city for picking the later up!) I did manage to get myself into a long line at Borders at the beginning of the week though, because they were tempting us readers with a 50% off anything coupon. It was the first time in a long time that I saw Borders that busy! Do you buy books for gift giving?! I usually do. Already there are "the best" of 2010 reading lists out there. How do we qualify the books published in the last few months of the year? Remind me that if I ever publish a book I do in the middle of the year! In any case, I love reading these "best of " lists. So, today's Sunday Salon is a few books on the top of the "Best of 2010" Books, that I keep seeing on list after list....

Just Kids by Patti Smith... In 1967, 21-year-old singer–song writer Smith, determined to make art her life and dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities in Philadelphia to live this life, left her family behind for a new life in Brooklyn. When she discovered that the friends with whom she was to have lived had moved, she soon found herself homeless, jobless, and hungry. Through a series of events, she met a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe who changed her life—and in her typically lyrical and poignant manner Smith describes the start of a romance and lifelong friendship with this man: It was the summer Coltrane died. Flower children raised their arms... and Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, and the summer of love.... This beautifully crafted love letter to her friend (who died in 1989) functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by a passion for art and writing. Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York as she shares tales of the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's, and Strand bookstores. In the lobby of the Chelsea, where she and Mapplethorpe lived for many years, she got to know William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Winter. Most affecting in this tender and tough memoir, however, is her deep love for Mapplethorpe and her abiding belief in his genius. Smith's elegant eulogy helps to explain the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe's life and work.

Patti Smith won The National Book Award this year for Just Kids in the nonfiction category. This book sounds like a wonderful trip back to the New York of the 60's and 70's. I don't know much about Patti Smith, but being an art student in the 70's, I knew about the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe. Besides the National Book Award, Just Kids has gotten lots of great buzz, and is on almost every "best of" list I've seen. And how can you go wrong with a book that "shares tales of Scribner's, Brentano's and Strand."?! Right now the paperback version of this book is priced at $7.71 at Amazon, so if you know someone who loves memoirs, Rock 'n Roll and New York back in the day, pick this one up. I've got it on my wish list now. *P.S. This Book is also Kindle Ready!

The Girl who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow... Durrow's debut draws from her own upbringing as the brown-skinned, blue-eyed daughter of a Danish woman and a black G.I. to create Rachel Morse, a young girl with an identical heritage growing up in the early 1980s. After a devastating family tragedy in Chicago with Rachel the only survivor, she goes to live with the paternal grandmother she's never met, in a decidedly black neighborhood in Portland, Ore. Suddenly, at 11, Rachel is in a world that demands her to be either white or black. As she struggles with her grief and the haunting, yet-to-be-revealed truth of the tragedy, her appearance and intelligence place her under constant scrutiny. Laronne, Rachel's deceased mother's employer, and Brick, a young boy who witnessed the tragedy and because of his personal misfortunes is drawn into Rachel's world, help piece together the puzzle of Rachel's family.

This book was released in early January of this year, and that it makes more than one "best of" list speaks volumes. The author wrote a great column for Bookpage, talking about what inspired her to write The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, and what she wanted to impart to the reader. This has book club pick written all over it, with the story exploring race and identity. This book also won The Bellwether Prize for Fiction in 2008. The Bellwether Prize is awarded to an unpublished novel representing "serious literary fiction that addresses issues of social justice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships. The prize is awarded to a previously unpublished novel representing excellence in this genre." The Bellwether Prize is awarded on even-numbered years, includes a $25,000 cash payment to the author, and guarantees publication by a major publisher. This January Algonquin Books will release this in paperback, in the meantime it is available in hardcover from your local bookstore, or This is Kindle Ready!

Before I

Fall by Lauren Oliver... Here's NPR's Gayle Forma's review:

High school senior Samantha Kingston is a typical mean girl. She and her popular troika of friends cavalierly treat the lesser students like dirt because th

ey can. Early on in the book, on Feb. 12, Sam is killed in a car accident on the way home from a party with her friends. But instead of floating away to some afterlife, Sam wakes up in her bed to find it's the morning of Feb. 12, and she must relive the last day of her life over. With the rules upended, Sam tweaks her actions (seducing a teacher, ditching school to spend the day with her little sister, attempting to help a deeply unhappy "loser," kissing the boy she maybe should have been kissing all along). This may sound like Groundhog Day meets Afterschool Special, but it's actually a subtle, layered and ultimately ethical book. As Oliver widens her lens, Sam comes to understand not only the butterfly effect of kindness but also the cumulative effect of cruelty: "If you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. ... You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth." By the end, Sam's (and the reader's) understanding of herself and of her friends is so complete that the bitches from chapter one have become complex, even sympathetic girls.

This is one of those YA books that tugs at our adult hearts. Had we the chance to change something when we were young, would we? Do we view our teenage years differently now that we are adults? I love the idea that Sam comes back (after dying) and discovers the world around her that she never took the time to get to know. There are plenty of "dead teens" coming back stories, but Before I Fall is the one getting some great buzz and topping some YA lists to boot! It's a 480 page book too! The hardcover is under $11 right now at Amazon, and This Book is Kindle Ready!

Here are some sights to check out for the Best of 2010 Book lists:

• Books on the Nightstand
• Publishers Weekly
• Goodreads
• NPR's Best Teen Reads
• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble

I'm going to sit down and look back over the next few weeks and make my own "favorites" list from this year's reading. What were your favorites? Do you like reading the Best Book lists? Who's list do you read?

I hope you had a great reading week! And a great Thanksgiving! Did you get any reading done this week? Share your favorites! I'd love to hear about what you're reading! Next week, I will be reviewing Cake Boss by Buddy Valastro! I was going to review it this past weekend, but things got a little hectic after Thanksgiving....

Happy reading... Suzanne