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 Sunday Salon and World Book Night Books with Buzz

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! This is the day during the week where we get together and talk books! So grab a cup of joe, find a comfy chair and relax! What bookish things have you been doing this week?

It's been a very bookish week here at Chick with Books. With the World Book Night books announcement, there were plenty of books to add to the need to read list! I thought this week we'd take a peek at a few of those World Book Night picks that I think stand out...

First of all, are you familiar with World Book Night? On April 23rd, World Book Night is celebrated. This is the third year that the United States have celebrated. Why April 23rd?

 "April 23 is the UNESCO International Day of the Book, as well as Shakespeare’s birthday. It was also chosen in honor of Miguel de Cervantes, who died on April 23, 1616 (the same day as Shakespeare). In the Catalan region of Spain, the day is celebrated by giving a book and a flower to a loved one."


It's also a wonderful way to spread literacy world wide, and with the help of sponsors, authors, publishers, readers and givers, World Book Night spread's the love of reading by giving away great books for free! Authors give up their royalties for the books chosen, publishers publish special editions for free, and readers like you and me, apply to give books away. When you apply to be a giver, you pick out a book from the list of books chosen for World Book Night. If you are chosen to be a giver, you get 20 books of the title you chose, or your second choice, to be given out in a public place on the night of April 23rd. It is so much fun! My reading group has done it for the past 2 years with lots of success. Last year we had 80 books to give away!

Here are a few of my top choices of the WBN Books this year...

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford... from the publisher: In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept... Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko.

I loved this book! My whole reading group loved this book! It is such a wonderful love story, set in a time that is so interesting historically. The writing is wonderful, and if you haven't read it yet, YOU SHOULD! It's available is Paperback , Kindle , and Nook.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed... At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State “and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise. But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

I have been meaning to read this for some time. Wild has gotten so much great buzz, I think it's a perfect choice to introduce readers and nonreaders to memoirs. I recently downloaded this for my Kindle and was immediately hooked on the writing and the adventure. It's available in Paperback , on Kindle and Nook.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein... from Goodreads: I have two weeks. You’ll shoot me at the end no matter what I do. That’s what you do to enemy agents. It’s what we do to enemy agents. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and cooperation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine — and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmführer von Linden interrogating me again. He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I’m going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France — an Allied Invasion of Two. We are a sensational team.

Lots of great buzz about this book! It's YA, it's WWII, it's a spy novel, it's about friendship, it's got great heroines and it's got adventure. What more can you ask for? This is definitely on my TBR list! Especially since it has great female characters, which is always refreshing in an adventure story. It's available in Paperback , on Kindle and Nook.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller...  A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss—and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life—something like his old life—exists beyond the airport. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return—not enough fuel to get him home—following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face—in the people he meets, and in himself—is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.

This book sounds wonderful and fun! And how can you resist an adventure with a guy and his dog?! Dystopian, sci-fi, adventure. Lots of great buzz on this book too! With over 15,000 ratings at Goodreads, it came in at almost 4 stars! A great novel to add to World Book Night! It's available in Paperback , on Kindle and Nook.

The Week in Review...

Tuesday we looked at New Releases! There were some great ones included the long awaited Allegiant by Veronica Roth! Click on my LINK to read the post if you missed it! More great books coming this tuesday too!

Thursday we talked a little about World Book Night and listed all the books that are going to be distributed world wide that night! Click on my LINK to read the post and see what great choices there are! You can apply to be a giver at WorldBookNight.org.

Friday I reviewed The Last First Day by Carrie Brown. What a fabulous book! It was slow paced, but it set the tone perfectly for the story to unfurl wonderfully. Click to read my REVIEW.

Happy reading... Suzanne

Memoir Monday... Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

I really had to look twice to make sure that this was indeed a true story even though its description reads like an fictional adventure. But that is what caught my attention with this one... Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff is a story that sounds so amazing that it's hard to believe it's true... but it is...

In 1945, twenty-four American servicemen and women boarded a plane to see “Shangri-La,” a beautiful valley deep within Dutch New Guinea. But when the plane crashed, only three pulled through to battle for survival.

Emotionally devastated and badly injured, the trio faced certain death. Caught between spear-carrying tribesmen and enemy Japanese, they trekked down the jungle-covered mountainside and straight into superstitious natives rumored to be cannibals.

Drawn from interviews, Army documents, photos, diaries, and original film footage, Lost in Shangri-La recounts this true-life adventure for the first time. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals how the trio traversed the jungle; how brave Filipino-American paratroopers risked their lives to save the survivors; how a native leader protected the Americans; and how a cowboy colonel attempted an untried rescue mission to get them out.

From the excerpt of Lost in Shangri-La that I read, Mitchell Zuckoff does a great job holding your attention. His style of writing wasn't sensationalizing, but factual with the added creative style a good writer has. And what a story! Lost in a jungle with cannibals?! A rescue mission equally as dangerous?! This is definitely one on my TBR list! It has gotten quite a lot of praise since its release late in April and for people who think WW II stories are all dried up... think again!

First Lines...

"Once upon a time there were twelve Princesses...

My voice surprises me. It's perfectly steady, the voice of a normal mother on a normal day-- as though everything is just the same as it always was...."

The Soldiers Wife by Margaret Leroy, coming June 28th, 2011

When I opened up this book and started reading it to get a feel for it, I could hardly pull myself away. The story completely drew me in, and Margaret Leroy's writing was beautiful. I can't wait to devote my full attention to it and give you my full review!