The Sunday Salon and Can you Overfeed Your eReader?

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's that one day of the week we give ourselves permission to sit back, relax and talk books virtually with all of our friends! It's been a beautiful week here in Connecticut, with the temperatures rising and the sun showing its lovely face all week long! It's put me in quite a reading mood!

My question today is, can you overfeed your eReader? One of the motivations of getting an eReader, for me, was to free up some space in the ever crowded house. My new husband realized quite soon after we were married that books were part of the decor… in EVERY room. But just like the piles of books we have on the table (in the corner, on the shelves, next to the bed…) we sure can fit a lot of eBooks in our readers! Though I still like reading physical books, especially when I am reviewing for a publisher, eBooks can be easier to store and carry around. What do you think?

Recently I've loaded my eReader with some great books and I thought I would share some of the eBooks I just couldn't resist feeding my eReader with! A thank you to the publishers for the courtesy eGalley's of these books too!

The Major's Daughter by J.P. Francis… WWII, a "forbidden" love story, secrets & lies. The writing is so good and the premise is just compelling. This has book club favorite written all over it! In a few words by the publisher: Like Snow Falling on Cedars, a stirring tale of wartime love. 

April, 1944. The quiet rural village of Stark, New Hampshire is irrevocably changed by the arrival of 150 German prisoners of war. And one family, unexpectedly divided, must choose between love and country. Camp Stark is under the command of Major John Brennan, whose beautiful daughter, Collie, will serve as translator. Educated at Smith and devoted to her widowed father, Collie is immediately drawn to Private August Wahrlich, a peaceful poet jaded by war. As international conflict looms on the home front, their passion blinds them to the inevitable dangers ahead. Inspired by the little-known existence of a real World War II POW camp.

The Major’s Daughter is a fresh take on the timeless theme of forbidden love. Published by Plume ( An imprint of Penguin), it's coming July 29th to your local bookstore!

Sweet As Cane, Salty As Tears by Ken Wheaton… Ken Wheaton is a fun writer. He writes great stories that will make you smile because he has a great sense of humor. His first book I read for a book club, I had never heard of him and I was weary that I would even like it ( The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival), but I LOVED it! It was a great story, light and fun. This newest book offers the same and I can't wait to start reading! In a few words, the publisher writes: A freak accident forces a New Yorker to return to Louisiana and confront her Cajun past. The freak accident is a Rhinoceros that happens to escape his zoo and runs rampant in Cajun countryside. The rest of the story is about family and coming home to a place you never thought you'd set foot in again. This has fun written all over it! Published by Open Road Media, it's coming to a bookstore near you on July 1st!

Ruth's Journey by Donald McCaig… If you just love Gone With the Wind, this book should call your name like it called mine. I just love the setting and the story is that of the Mammy from Gone with The Wind. Her name was Ruth, she hails from Saint Domingue, and her life was rich with love and family prior to being the caretaker at Tara. Here's part of the description from the publisher:

“Her story began with a miracle.” On the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue, an island consumed by the flames of revolution, a senseless attack leaves only one survivor—an infant girl. She falls into the hands of two French émigrés, Henri and Solange Fournier, who take the beautiful child they call Ruth to the bustling American city of Savannah.

How can you resist after reading that!? The setting of this book is the South from the 1820's until the Civil War. AND, this book is actually authorized by the Margaret Mitchell estate, which should say something right there. The writing I've sampled is wonderful! It reminds me of the kind of book to start reading on a lazy day, sitting on the porch with a glass of fresh sweet tea! Published by Atria Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster, this will be hitting the shelves Oct. 14, 2014! Save the date!

Some other great eGalleys that fed my eReader this week are, The Good Girl by Mary Kyrychenko (June 25), The City by Dean Koontz (July 31), The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber (Oct. 2014), All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner (Aug. 28), and Take Me Home by Dorothy Garlock (June 24). All of these eGalleys are hints of great reads coming our way to a bookstore this summer (Except for Michael Faber's book, coming out in Oct.)

Weekly Recap… 
Memoir Monday showcased So Long, Marianne by Kari Hesthamar. The love story of Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen.

Tuesday, I reviewed A Sudden Light by Garth Stein! Ghost story, great story, coming-of-age story, dysfunctional, quirky great characters, and as always great storytelling from Garth!

Saturday, I reviewed a absolutely wonderful graphic novel, This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki. Coming-of-age, summer BFF's, great story, beautiful artwork. If you enjoy graphic novels, you HAVE to read this one, and if you're new to the genre, this is a great intro for us girls!

What are you feeding your eReader with lately?! What new books from your favorite authors can you recommend!? What graphic novels are you reading!? Share your great reads here, I'd love to hear about them!

Next week, Memoir Monday will highlight a memoir about a reclusive author and the relationship that would become a surprise. Come back to discover what memoir that is!

Happy reading… Suzanne

The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival by Ken Wheaton... A Review

"The pages are "thick with the smell of gumbo"...

As You Crack the Spine of...

The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival by Ken Wheaton

Welcome to the sleepy little backwoods town of Grand Prairie, Louisiana... Father Steve Sibille has taken over the parish in Grand Prairie where the most excitement comes from listening to confessions involving little old ladies taking nips out of their husbands Wild Turkey and trying not to get caught. But things are stirring a little in Grand Prairie... if it weren't enough to have pubescent teenage altar girls instead of altar boys, and a runaway gay priest hiding out at his home, there's also Vicki who stirs Father Steve in ways that make him pray for guidance. Top that with a new preacher, charismatic as all heck, who just moved in across the tracks and who's got on eye on Father Steve's flock. What's a priest to do?! What Father Steve does is seek advice from Miss Rita, who's over 100, loves Crown Royal, and can't get enough cracklins to go with her whiskey...

Miss Rita doesn't say too much about the altar girls, or about Vicki (except she thinks Father Steve needs a woman- even though he's a priest), but she plants the seed for Grand Prairie's First Annual Rabbit Festival...

"You need a fair... A festival or something... Something to keep your people busy with your church so they don't run off to his..."

And so an idea is born and a story that will make you laugh out loud and wonder, "what next!" Ken Wheaton is a great writer. The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival is light-hearted, fun and an adventure in reading. His characters have a certain charm and resilience that just make you love them. You can tell Ken Wheaton writes with a genuine affection for his characters as they deal honestly with the situations handed to them and no one is ostracized for being "different". Gently touching on racism and sexual preference, these issues are part of the big picture of the book, but does not overwhelm the story. Hilarious one moment, tender the next, I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent in Grand Prairie. I could practically taste all that great food at the bake sales, Turkey fry, and the "February Surprise", where "a meal so stupendous, so amazing, so colossal, so mouthwateringly delicious, you'll want to SLAP YA MAMA!" If that weren't enough I felt a real attachment to the community and vested in the characters. The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival is great writing, a great story and rich, well developed characters. My reading group just read this and loved it. There is a reading group guide in the back of the book with discussion questions, along with Ken's Cajun Cooking Primer- Gumbo for Dummies (along with a Gumbo recipe) and a recipe for Ken's Crawfish Etouffee, a rich buttery crawfish dish served over rice. Enjoy reading the First Chapter of The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival from Kensington Publishing.

*P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!

The Sunday Salon... Books with Buzz, a Bit about Birding, and author happenings in Connecticut

Spring has finally sprung and broken some records here in Connecticut! When average temps are usually in the 50's this time of year, this week we broke 90 degrees!

It was a great week to peak at the garden and see how things look (not too bad), but need to start weeding already (ugh), and maybe check out some new gardening books. My gardening is for the birds... literally. I dug up a small patch of lawn in my backyard and started planting a bird & butterfly garden. It's a long term project, changing as I see what works and what doesn't. A great basic book for learning about bird gardens, with lots of ideas and information, is Attracting Birds to Your Backyard by Sally Roth. And I would love to hear about your gardening ideas too!

For my bookish endeavors this week I've had my head in Ken Wheaton's The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival and the smell of Cajun food practically waifs off the pages! I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed this book. Light, funny and original. Check back this week for my review of Ken Wheaton's book! Also coming this week... a review for Bernice McFadden newest book, Glorious. It's filled with Bernice's signature great characters. And a review and giveaway for a copy of Forget Me Not by Vicki Hinze. Forget Me Not is suspense with romance and plot twists that will have you turning those pages! And I've held off a bit so no one would get over iPadded, but I'll post my review this week about the iPad. (just a hint though... I really love it!)

If you are anywhere in Connecticut, there are a few author events... Books on the Common is hosting Pete Nelson whose new book, I Thought You Were Dead, is coming out this week. In a nutshell it's about a down-on-his-luck guy and his faithful dog Stella, who just happens to be able to talk him through his problems. The Date & Time is April 16th @ 7:30pm, and Books on the Common is located in Ridgefield, Ct. The New Canaan Library will be hosting Lisa See, who wrote one of my all time favorite books, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. She'll be talking about Shanghai Girls. The Date & Time is April 14th @ 7:30pm. Reservations are necessary, but you can call the library to make them.

I did manage to pick my head up off the page and check out some interesting books this week... here are some other Books with Buzz...

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli... On a stifling day in 1975, the North Vietnamese army is poised to roll into Saigon. As the fall of the city begins, two lovers make their way through the streets to escape to a new life. Helen Adams, an American photojournalist, must take leave of a war she is addicted to and a devastated country she has come to love. Linh, the Vietnamese man who loves her, must grapple with his own conflicted loyalties of heart and homeland. As they race to leave, they play out a drama of devotion and betrayal that spins them back through twelve war-torn years, beginning in the splendor of Angkor Wat, with their mentor, larger-than-life war correspondent Sam Darrow, once Helen's infuriating love and fiercest competitor, and Linh's secret keeper, boss and truest friend. This has gotten so much great press. I downloaded this book (My first iPad Book) and began reading a bit and all I can say is Tatjana Soli's writing is poetic and the story wrapped itself around me from page one. The images are vivid & haunting. She paints a beautiful picture of war-torn Vietnam and at the same time creates this love story. This is going to be big once more people discover it... *P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready! And priced at $11.99

The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw... A heartbreaking affair, an unsolved murder, an explosive romance: welcome to summer on the Cape in this powerful debut... Seven summers ago, Marcella Atkinson fell in love with Cecil McClatchey, a married father of two. But on the same night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil's wife was found murdered—and their lives changed forever. The case was never solved, and Cecil died soon after, an uncharged suspect. Now divorced and estranged from her only daughter, Marcella lives alone, mired in grief and guilt. Meanwhile, Cecil's grown son, Jed, returns to the Cape with his sister for the first time in years. One day he finds a woman's bathing suit buried in a closet—a relic, unbeknownst to him, of his father's affair—and, on a hunch, confronts Marcella. When they fall into an affair of their own, their passion temporarily masks the pain of the past, but also leads to crises and revelations they never could have imagined. This book is sure to be a summer break-out book. Lots of great buzz. Holly writes with such a wonderful easy style, but this is not your typical beach read. This book has got a gripping plot with plenty of suspense. Just published by Doubleday, I have a copy sitting on my nightstand waiting to dive into! And I can't wait! *P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!

Something Missing by Matthew Dicks... From Publishers Weekly, An expert thief unexpectedly finds himself aiding his victims in Dicks's charming if rambling debut. During his hours off, barista Martin Railsback burgles the houses of folks he calls his clients, taking only what they won't notice is missing: for instance, three boxes of long grain rice... two rolls of toilet paper (in Martin's estimation, the Gallos had excellent taste in toilet paper), three cups of olive oil and, on occasion, something really valuable. The system works beautifully until the day Martin drops a client's toothbrush into the toilet and feels compelled to replace it. This act of simple decency sets him on an entirely different course, and pretty soon he's breaking into houses to improve the lives of their occupants. A fun light-hearted read, it's gotten great reviews so far. I have a friend (Steve) who is really enjoying it! (He offered, but I let him take the last copy at the bookstore). I think the premise is great, and I look forward to cracking the spine on this one. *P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready! At a "bargain" price of $9.99.

What are you reading this week!? Share some of your books and let us all know! Have you tried out the iPad? And what do you think about eBook pricing? In the meantime, have a great week!

Happy reading... Suzanne