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

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!

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...

First Lines... Trader of Secrets by Steve Martini

"Most of the blood left on the concrete floor of the garage in Washington belonged to the big black investigator working for Madriani, the man named Herman Diggs, but not all of it..."

Trader of Secrets by Steve Martini, coming 5/31!

Steve Martini fans rejoice! Defense attorney Paul Madriani is back and is embroiled in a case as perilous as any he has ever faced: one that involves an angry killer who will stop at nothing short of vengeance, and two missing NASA scientists who are holding secrets that a hostile government desperately wants to purchase—in blood if they must.

When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg... A TLC Tour & Review!

When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg... Have you ever been surprised by a book?! Thought it would be about something and it turned out to be something totally different? Something that burst with a story that faintly resembled what it started as? That's what happened as I turned the pages of When We Danced on Water. What I thought initially was that this was going to be a love story; a May/December romance between two people. One of which was recovering from a war she served in and a love affair that ended badly. What I read though was a story so rich and encompassing that I still feel the story even after I've turned that last page.

In a small cafe in Tel Aviv, Vivi, a waitress in her 40's reignites the passion of 85 year old Teo as they see each other every day. Their conversations become more intense until Vivi, a supposed artist who can't stay with one project too long, is inspired by Teo's passion for the beauty & discipline of dance; of ballet. Teo was once a gifted ballet dancer, well respected and applauded. As a gift, Vivi decides to celebrate his life and accomplishments. But what becomes an amazing gift has the consequences of almost crushing Teo as he is brought back to long-buried secrets and painful memories of his life spent surviving WWII and the extermination of the Jews by the Third Reich.

What I thought was a simple love story, swept me off my feet into a time and place where the carefree life of a young Jewish boy could change with the slightest bit of circumstance. With lush prose, we are transported back in time to both Teo's life during WWII and Vivi's life as a young girl madly in love during a time of war. Though both wars were different, both had a devastating effect on their lives. And it is their shared pain, and their opening up to one another that finally frees them from their pasts.

I was totally absorbed in the stories of Vivi and Teo. Heartbreaking and believable, When We Dance on Water is the kind of book that will stay with you... The characters, their stories, the consequences of their actions. The setting of this story is Poland, Berlin and Tel Aviv, which seems fresh and unique.

Beautifully written, but there are parts of Teo's life surviving the Holocaust that may disturb you, as there was sexual abuse at the hands of Teo's torturer. I would definitely recommend this book to reading groups, and readers who enjoy stories taking place during WWII.

About the Author... Evan Fallenberg is the author of Light Fell, winner of the American Library Association’s Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Award for Literature and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. His translation of Meir Shalev’s A Pigeon and a Boy won the Jewish Book Council Award for Fiction and was short-listed for the PEN Translation Prize. He lives and teaches in Tel Aviv.

Today's post is part of Evan Fallenberg's TLC Book Tour! I want to thank TLC Book Tours for sending along a copy for review! I thoroughly enjoyed it! And Readers can enjoy When We Danced on Water this coming June, when it will be released by Harper Perennial!

First Lines... Best Kept Secret by Amy Hatvany

Being drunk in front of your child is right up there on the Big Bad No-no List of Motherhood. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew it with every glass, every swallow, every empty bottle thrown into the recycle bin. I hated drinking. I hated it,,, and I couldn't stop...

Best Kept Secret by Amy Hatvany, release date: June 7th!

The Man Booker International Prize... And the Winner Is?

Philip Roth wins The Man Booker International Prize! What is The Man Booker International Prize? It's the literary award presented once every two years to a living author for a body of work published "originally in English or widely available in translation in the English language." The prize is worth £60,000 (or about $97,000) to the winner.

Philip Roth's first book, Goodbye, Columbus (actually a novella and 5 short stories) won the National Book Award in 1960 and Roth has continued writing to critical acclaim ever since, in fact a career that has spanned 50 years!

You can read all about The Man Booker International Prize and who the other finalists were at TheManBookerPrize.com. And you can find a list of all Philip Roth books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books.

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!

The Sunday Salon... What's New Pussycat? or Books with Buzz!

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Grab a cup of joe, sit back and relax! It's the day of the week where we get together to chat about all the bookish things we've read, seen and done! This week was Read Like a Mother Week at Chick with Books, where we reviewed and highlighted books books that showcase women in the rolls of mothers, sisters or just simply friends, and,in the case of The Guardian by Margaret Mallory, lovers! Fiction (and nonfiction) that showcases women. Today I thought we'd finish up the week with some other great reading that isn't necessarily all about us girls...

Check out these great reads that I found in my travels this week... Of course those travels weren't to a bookstore this week. Alas my local bookstore has finally shut its doors. Yes, my local bookstore was a Borders. Now I'll be traveling a bit farther to get the feel of a real book in my hands when it comes to bookstores, but there is an independent bookstore I just love that I don't get to visit as often as I like and I look forward to driving off to visit it more often now. So, here are some great Books with Buzz...

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks... from the author's website: "Geraldine Brooks takes a remarkable shard of history and brings it to vivid life. In 1665, a young man from Martha’s Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual scaffold, Brooks has created a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure. The narrator of Caleb’s Crossing is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As often as she can, she slips away to explore the island’s glistening beaches and observe its native Wampanoag inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a tentative, secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia’s minister father tries to convert the Wampanoag, awakening the wrath of the island’s strongest pawaaw, against whose ritual magic he must test his own beliefs. One of his projects becomes the education of Caleb, and a year later, Caleb is in Cambridge, studying Latin and Greek among the colonial elite. Bethia, also in Cambridge at the behest of her imperious elder brother, finds herself enmeshed in Caleb’s fate as he crosses between cultures."

What really caught my attention with Caleb's Crossing was the thought of being immersed in a story that would take me to a time and place virtually untouched by civilization, a landscape that was pure and in which we could enjoy the discovery of it's secrets as Bethia, our heroine, explores it's riches, which include a culture unfamiliar to her and how her friend Caleb finds his place in her world. Geraldine Brooks is a master at creating wonderful stories from pieces of history, and I can't wait to dive into this one!

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon... It is 1968. Lynnie, a young white woman with a developmental disability, and Homan, an African American deaf man, are locked away in an institution, the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, and have been left to languish, forgotten. Deeply in love, they escape, and find refuge in the farmhouse

of Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow. But the couple is not alone-Lynnie has just given birth to a baby girl. When the authorities catch up to them that same night, Homan escapes into the darkness, and Lynnie is caught. But before she is forced back into the institution, she whispers two words to Martha: "Hide her." And so begins the 40-year epic journey of Lynnie, Homan, Martha, and baby Julia-lives divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet drawn together by a secret pact and extraordinary love.

This sounds like an amazing story. What further convinced me to put this in the TBR pile was part of a Publisher's Weekly review that said...

"Although their stories diverge and unfold independently of one another, memories of their short time together sustain them for more than 40 years..."

I love stories where we hear the story from two characters separate from each other. And my heart tugged at the notion that their "memories of their time together sustained them for 40 years." A love story, a story that shows that love isn't restricted to people with disabilities, and an adventure all wrapped up in one make this a must read for me!

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto... From Publisher's Weekly: Yoshimoto delves into an elusive romance between an artist and a

student, each of whom bears scars from unusual upbringings, in this clever, off-beat novel. The 30-year-old narrator earns a modest living as a mural painter in Tokyo, supported by her businessman father whom she sees only occasionally since the death of her mother; her parents never married, as her mother was a Mama-san of a nightclub, her father the devoted customer, and his family dead-set against the match, seeding a deep sense of shame and inadequacy in the girl. Presently, she has befriended a curious young man, Nakajima, who begins to sleep over at her place, though chastely. A student in an advanced program of genetics, he hints at terrible secrets in his childhood, which are gradually revealed after the two visit Nakajima's very strange friends in the countryside, and it's revealed that Nakajima had been kidnapped as a boy by a cult and brainwashed. Unsettling as Nakajima's story is, the narrator has grown to cherish him and must decide if their uncommon connection—not passionate, but comforting and near-maternal—will bring lasting happiness.

Banana Yoshimoto is a wildly popular Japanese author, who I discovered while reading for the Japanese Literature Challenge. Her books are often short, amazingly wonderful stories with quirky characters. As a fan of Japanese literature, it's a treat when an author is translated for us, and this should be welcomed by fans of the author as well as anyone who enjoys a good story. This has gotten a lot of great buzz since it publication at the beginning of this month! It's coming my way, so keep a look out for a review soon. BTW, A portion of the sale of this book will go to Japanese Disaster Relief.

Weekly Recap... We started this weeks theme of "Read Like a Mother" Monday with Two Kisses for Maddy by Matt Logelin, the heartfelt memoir of Matt Logelin, who lost his wife, Liz, 27 hours after the birth of their daughter Maddy, from a pulmonary embolism. Matt's story is one of learning how to be a single dad at the same time as becoming a widow. Originally he poured out his heart on a blog he created after Liz's death. Wednesday, I highlighted Ann Brasheres, a favorite author of mine who gave us the wonderful story of 4 young girls, their friendship, their coming-of-age story, and their shared pair of magical jeans. The story of course is The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which became 4 books, and now 10 years later those friends have grown up and we can revisit them in Ann's new book Sisterhood Everlasting! Thursday this week brought the sexier side of women, with a review AND GIVEAWAY of The Guardian by Margaret Mallory! Men in kilts, history, adventure and ROMANCE await ye in this wonderful book by Margaret Mallory! Don't miss your chance to win a copy! Follow the link above to enter! Friday's First Lines gave us a sneak peek at Wallflower by Holly-Jane Rahlens. The novel is set during the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's "Wallflower is four hours in the life of Molly Lenzfeld, sixteen-year-old New Yorker in Berlin." After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Molly decides to visit her mother's birth house in East Berlin, that's when she meets Mick & the Berlin no one really knows..." This is on my reading table right now. Holly-Jane Rahlens writing is fresh & the story is entertaining. I'll be righting my review for it soon...

That's how my reading week was, how was yours?? What great books have you discovered this week?! Share them so the rest of us can enjoy them too! I hope you found something to pique your reading curiosity here today! And I hope you enjoyed Read Like a Mother Week! Take care and Happy Reading... Suzanne