Did You Love The Time Travelers Wife?... Here's The Long Awaited Sequel!

I loved The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger when I read it way back in 2009. The story was so unique and so touching. I still love that story...

In October, we get to read the continuing story of the Time Travelers Wife, following the daughter of Henry and Clare, Alba, who is also a "time traveler".

Here is the blurb from the publisher... 

Alba DeTamble has never lived a life in order. Born with the same rare Chrono-Displacement Disorder as her father, Henry DeTamble, Alba is an involuntary time traveler: she slips unpredictably through decades, carrying the weight of a future she can witness but cannot change. Yet she strives to maintain a normal life: as a gifted violinist, Alba finds refuge in her music, as well as her tight-knit community of artists and activists who fight to take care of each other in an increasingly unstable world. 

As she dips in and out of time, Alba is haunted by secrets she must keep from those she loves most, including Zach, her safe, supportive anchor in the chaos. Her journey takes her from the riot-torn Chicago streets, to the eerie, timeless “Yellow House” – where she meets Oliver, a handsome fellow time traveler – to the digital corridors of the Museum of Lost Souls, a virtual sanctuary of forgotten memories and lost artifacts. Curating the museum is Isadora, Alba’s mysterious stepsister and an increasingly unsettling presence in their family – whose fate may be intertwined with Alba’s in more dangerous ways than she knows.

At once intimate and sweeping, Life Out of Order is a kaleidoscopic tale of love, resilience, and hope amid our fractured world where time itself is the greatest adversary. With every leap through the years, Alba is forced to reckon with the choices that define her, the people she cannot bear to lose, and the question that haunts every time traveler: can you ever truly belong to the present?

AND, publishers also added that you don't have to read The Time Travelers Wife to enjoy this- it's a standalone.

Will we fall in love with Life Out of Order? 

I sure hope so! Looking forward to reading this!

Are YOU looking forward to it too?

Easy & Fun Summer reading...

I've always considered summer reading light and airy. Guilty pleasure reading... books you don't normally sink your teeth into but go perfect with a glass of sweet tea on the back porch. I've added quite a few books to my 'summer reading" pile over the last few weeks. Books I don't normally turn to, such as Fantasy, have sucked me in with great writing. I'll get to the fantasy books this weekend, but for now, let me share what I opened the cover on this morning...  I don't even know how I came to find this book. Somewhere between must read books of the summer and Kirkus starred book reviews. But here it is and so far so good... really good. In a fun, light, bit of romance in the air kind of way. 

Here's the publishers blurb... 

"An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics."

I've just met Clementine. She's told me about her larger than life Aunt Analea and invited me to the Upper East Side into the quirky "magical" apartment she just inherited from her Aunt. (Well, not just, because it's been 3 years since she passed.) In a wonderful old building Clementine now calls home, we also meet a few other... characters, one of which just nudges her awake the morning after her first night sleeping there. Oh and he's cute too... but why is he there?! Oh, the fun has just started...

What grabbed my attention about The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston, (published by Penguin Random House this past June), was the "time travel" hook. I love time travel romances. Yup, my guilty pleasure from all my "serious" reading. This isn't exactly what I'd call a time travel book, but it's sprinkled with a bit of that magic. Of course there was also bookish people in the story, that was a plus. But what really hooked me was the writing. It invited me in and I felt like I was right there with Clementine walking beside her. Stay tuned for a review when I'm done, but if you'd like to read an excerpt, here's a link. And in the meantime, let me know what you're reading! Is your summer reading different from your normal reading?

Happy reading... Suzanne

The Sunday Salon and Books with Buzz

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's the time of the week we talk about all things bookish. So, grab a cup of Java, pull up a chair and relax!

It's been a crazy week as I try to plan for our vacation- a road trip down South that will end up in Savannah, Ga! I have always wanted to visit Savannah ever since reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, who described it as a "hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks", and whose book was absolutely wonderful. Because of our "road trip', I was thinking of making this Sunday Salon all about "road trip" books - friends hopping in a car and heading out to parts unknown, or books about travel. But then as I started to try and figure out what books I'm going to bring with me ( and we always bring something to read, don't we?!) I thought "let's just talk about some great books that have poked their spines up for me to find in my week of travels." So no themes this week, just books that sound great and are going in my wish list...

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer...

“They say there are many worlds,” she explains. “All around our own, packed tight as the cells of your heart. Each with its own logic, its own physics, moons, and stars. … And in those other worlds, the places you love are there, the people you love are there. . . . So what if you found the door? And what if you had the key? Because everyone knows this: That the impossible happens once to each of us.”   

From the publisher... 1985. After the death of her beloved twin brother, Felix, and the break up with her long-time lover, Nathan, Greta Wells embarks on a radical psychiatric treatment to alleviate her suffocating depression. But the treatment has unexpected effects, and Greta finds herself transported to the lives she might have had if she'd been born in a different era.

Have you ever thought to yourself, "what if I was born 100 years ago, what would my life be?"What if I could go back just a little bit and meet my true love in a different era?" I LOVE time travel novels! I loved The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It's always fascinating to see the "what if's". The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells has gotten a lot of great reviews, "Magically atmospheric, achingly romantic", and it looks to have the potential to sweep you off your feet in that romantic time travel kind of way. In the book, Greta is transported back in time, but with her same family and surrounding people. She's aware of the shift, but can she really enjoy herself? Just published this week by Ecco, an imprint of Harper Collins, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells is available right now from your local bookstore (and it's on my wish list!)!

The Thinking Woman's Guide to Readl Magic by Emily Croy Barker... Nora Fischer’s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman.  During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she’s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty.  Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It’s almost too good to be true.

Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora’s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school.

This book sounds like a fun romp! I like the elements of magic and the fairy tale gone wrong scenario. I also would like to see how the author merges the modern day with the fantasy world. This is coming to your local bookstore August 1st and is published by Penguin.

 We are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler... Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and our narrator, Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “I spent the first eighteen years of my life defined by this one fact: that I was raised with a chimpanzee,” she tells us. “It’s never going to be the first thing I share with someone. I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren’t thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern’s expulsion, I’d scarcely known a moment alone. She was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half, and I loved her as a sister.”

Just reading the description tugged at my heart. Don't you just want to know what happened to Fern?! Reading just a small sample of this book, the story slowly draws you in and I enjoyed the writing. Of course Karen Joy Fowler is the author of the wildly popular The Jane Austen Book Club, which swept through book clubs and put Jane Austen on the map with new readers.

What do you think of the title? I passed this by the first time I saw the title, because I thought it was a bit wordy and it didn't really compel me to open the book. I think that would be a great post one of these days - good books, not so good titles. Of course, I'm sure the title has to do with the loss of Fern, but on first sight... Anyway, We are Completely Besides Ourselves is available from your local bookstore and is published by Marian Wood Books/Putnam a division of Penguin.

So, now I'm going to stop looking at the books I am putting on my wish list and am going to start packing away the books I'm taking. I'm also packing away my Nook HD, which has a lot of books already loaded in my TBR pile. We'll have to talk about eReaders again too. It's been a while and there are even more choices including the advent of Tablets, which were not part of the discussion last time we talked digital reading. For Christmas, my hubby gave me a Nook HD, which I was pining for. I debated a long time on the Kindle Fire and the Nook HD. Finally deciding on the Nook HD because of it's size (it's definitely lighter and way thinner) and resolution. Although with Barnes & Noble hooking up with Google, there is an App that allows me to read my zillions of Kindle books now too! Best of both worlds... BUT if you are thinking of getting the Kindle Fire HD, it is on SALE on Amazon for $169 with adds for "a limited time'!

Now that I've shared what new books I found, what are you reading? What are you waiting for to be released?! I'd love to hear all about it! You can share it right here in your comment!!!

Have a great week... Suzanne

Be With You by Takuji Ichikawa... A Review

Be With You

A Haunting Love Story....

"Soon I won't be with you any longer," 29-year-old Mio says to her husband Takumi, "But when the rainy season returns, I will come back to see how the two of you are getting along."

These simple words spoken a week before Mio leaves this world for the world beyond, somehow comforts Takumi, as he struggles to take care of himself and their 5 year old son Yuki... But one year later when the rainy season returns, so does Mio! In a walk thru the woods Takumi & Yuki are stunned to see a confused Mio standing before them. As Takumi calls out to her in disbelief, "Mio?" She asks "Is that my name?" She has no memory.... and Takumi decides then and there that he will lie to her and act as if she's been ill and has lost her memory due to her illness. And of course he's not going to tell her that she is a ghost. Takumi takes Yuki aside in secret and explains to him that they must not let on that she died - so they form a pact to act as normal as possible...

Mio is a bit apprehensive, things just don't seem right somehow... But she wants to know what she's forgotten, so Takumi begins to tell her their story, and in simple prose Takumi weaves a most unusual love story that slowly pulls the reader in and slowly makes Mio fall in love all over again with Takumi. At a steady pace, between the story of the present day, we learn the everyday mundane to the poignant moments that make up this love story. From the time they met at age 15 to the time just before Mio died. But what may appear to be a romantic ghost story is really much more than that. There is a twist to this story ...the present is the future and has a link to the past... On the surface it appears to be a simple story, but looks are deceiving... Just as we are taking the story for granted, we are suddenly found stirred by that surprising twist! And then the story takes on a whole different meaning!

There are also other concepts that Takuji Ichikawa deals with- such as the afterlife. In a beautifully written opening paragraph, our main character Takumi is describing Mio's death to their 5 year old son...

"When Mio died, this was how I thought.

Whoever made our planet must have made

another planet at the same time,

somewhere in the universe.

That would be the planet where people go when they die.

The name of that planet is Archive."

We are never far from the truth of the story because Ichikawa never hides the fact that Mio dies, but with the reappearance of Mio comes renewed hope for a happy ending and the question of what makes us love another person? A simple yet beautiful story....