Betsy Reads Books

Jimmy Carter Teaches Sunday School

2012-02-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

Back in the fall I traveled back to Plains, Georgia, for my second visit to this teeny tiny town (population 683). On my first visit I'd heard that I should come back some weekend when Jimmy Carter would be teaching Sunday School at his home church, Maranatha Baptist (check out the website for Carter's teaching schedule). As Plains is tiny, Carter's church is small too, yet the sanctuary was at capacity that day (it seemed that the majority were visitors). While I was in town I toured a few other places in town and at the museum in the old Plains High School building I purchased a copy of Carter's 1992 book on his first political campaign in 1962 for a seat in the state senate. It's called Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age. As this is an election year and things are heating up, I figured it would be a good time to move this book to the top of my reading pile.

That Sunday Carter spent a few minutes of his Sunday School hour talking about the good work that's happening out of The Carter Center in Atlanta. He talked about his travels around the world (his travel schedule would wear out someone half his age) for the purposes of making health care accessible in hard to reach places and encouraging fair elections around the world. Then he turned his Sunday School lesson to one right out of the Bible. He used parts of 1 Corinthians 4 and talked about being a good steward of the mysteries of God.

It would have been a good lesson for anyone in the public eye representing the masses to hear. Now that I've read the book I picked up that weekend I realize how much Carter wanted to properly represent the people in those rural southwestern Georgia counties, and how advocating for his friends and neighbors became a calling that he wanted to do the right way. I also wondered if his experience with his own first election in 1962 influenced his work for fair elections in other parts of the world since he left presidential office. In the book, he and his team uncover unfair and illegal election practices going on at one of the polling places in a county he's hoping to represent. The book outlines the legal battle that ensued, and ends with his swearing in at the state senate.

No matter how you vote or what you believe in politically, it's always good to hear a story about a politician striving to do the right thing. It was an interesting read. As I've only been a Georgia citizen for about five years, it was particularly nice to get this back story on our former president.

Here are a few photos from the weekend:

Happy 200th birthday to Charles Dickens

2012-02-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

A week ago marked the 200th birthday of British author Charles Dickens. I was reminded of my visit to London's Charles Dickens Museum, which is at 48 Doughty Street in a home Dickens lived in with his family after he had had some success with his earlier novels. On February 7 to mark the occasion, Price Charles and his wife made a visit, which you can read about here.

More on War Horse

2012-02-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to a USA Today article on War Horse. The movie is out right now 29 years after the book was first published. The young adult novel is now on USA Today's Best-Selling Books list. This is one of the rare cases that I liked the play better than the book. I liked the movie but the production was much, much better!

Parnassus Books

2012-02-11T11:02:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I read Ann Patchett's wonderful novel, Bel Canto, and discovered about that time that this author was due to open an independent bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee called Parnassus Books. I blogged about it then but thought it would be worth bringing up again. Garden and Gun, one of the South's best magazines, featured it in the December 2011/January 2012 (I'm a little behind in my magazine reading). I'm just dying to get to Nashville and browse the shelves at Parnassus.

Top 100 Books of 2011

2012-02-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

A list of the top 100 best-selling books of 2011 according to USA Today. I've only read 17 from the list, but quite a few more are ones I hope to read this year.

Happy Friday!

Two Georgia Writers Mentioned in Magazine

2012-02-09T17:39:00.000-08:00

Two Georgia authors, Flannery O'Connor and Margaret Mitchell (so, two of my favorites as well) were both mentioned in an article in America Magazine about homes of Catholic authors. Take a look.

A History of Blogging

2012-02-08T07:09:00.000-08:00

NC State University is hosting History Weekend on campus February 17 and 18. One of the events is a lecture on the history of blogging given by Dr. Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library. According to NC State's College of Humanities and Social Sciences blog, Darnton will "share how the bits and pieces of written material from years past were our ancestors’ ways of blogging. Darnton will take audience members back to 18^th century blogging in France and lead them through blogging history up to our present time." For more information on this event, visit CHASS' blog.

Recent Read: The Mystery of Lewis Carroll

2012-02-06T18:42:00.000-08:00

My alma mater, Meredith College, has many wonderful traditions, and one of my favorite of those that happens every four years was recently. Eighty-eight years ago the campus was quarantined and to keep the students entertained, the professors got together to put on the play, Alice in Wonderland. The idea since has been for the professors to perform the play again once in each college generation. I saw it my junior year, missed it in 2008 and was determined to make the 2012 performance. I was able to make it happen, sit with friends and former coworkers and bring my five year-old niece with me, who loved it.

I've always loved the Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, both by Lewis Carroll, and listened to them both on my iPod last year for the first time in a while. To celebrate I read a book I bought used from Better World Books several months ago: The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Alice in Wonderland by Jenny Woolf. Reading it to coincide with seeing the play seemed ideal. The book came out last year.

On my trip to London in 2010 I saw Carroll's manuscript that later became Alice in Wonderland called Alice's Adventures Underground. It was illustrated and one of my favorite things I saw in that gallery filled with wonderful manuscripts. My friend from the trip and I commented then about Carroll's questionable reputation when it came to his relationship with young girls. This idea has been rumor for years, and according to Woolf's book, it's due to the fact that we no longer consider Victorian ideals to be part of our lives. Yes, things change. So, I'm glad to have read The Mystery of Lewis Carroll so I can get a clearer picture of this interesting author and find out more about what has been skewed over the years.

For starters, Woolf maintains that we can't, as citizens of the 21st century, judge Carroll according to the rules that govern our society; we must judge him according to the rules of the time in which he lived. I realized as I read the book that I don't think I've really done much reading before on Carroll's life, so I'm glad my first read about him appears to be balanced and well-researched. Woolf's book is different from other accounts of Carroll's life out there in that she was able to explore Carroll's financial records, something that's never been analyzed before. She also considered a letter that lives at the University of Colorado-Boulder that sheds light on one of his personal relationships.

I enjoyed this book, and for a fresh take on Carroll's life, I'd recommend the book to anyone who loves Alice in Wonderland too.

Recent Read: The Book of William

2012-01-30T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'm borrowing The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World by Paul Collins from a friend who loans me many of the books I blog about. She's the same friend who was in London with me in 2010 and one of the things we did while we were there was visit the British Library to see all the manuscripts they have on display. It was really wonderful yet overwhelming to see so many original manuscripts of so many important British novels, religious texts and even handwritten lyrics that later became hit songs by the Beatles. I had some paper in my bag which was great because taking notes helped me remember later all the amazing things I had seen.

I was excited to read about one of the manuscripts I'd seen in person at the British Library, Shakespeare's First Folio. I was disappointed in Collins' book though. He jumped back and forth between the publishing history of Shakespeare's works and present-day rare book auctions, which made the narrative choppy. I kept hoping Collins would establish his own credibility in the rare book world. I know he must have some clout to have written the book but I wanted to know more about why he wrote the book, why he loves Shakespeare, why he's interested in the first publications of his work, etc. I'd hoped to hear about the journey of the First Folio I saw in the British Library. I'd hoped for more overall.

Have you read this book? Did I miss something big?

Better World Books Book Club

2012-01-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

My favorite non-brick and mortar place to buy books is Better World Books. Their staff does a great job of making an online company feel more like the close-knit community with the personal attention you might get at an independent bookstore. Through their online presence on their website and blog, and on Facebook and Twitter they create a conversation for book lovers.

Each month, BWB hosts a book club discussion on their blog. Each quarter, BWB, headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, hosts an in-person book club discussion for anyone able to attend. Last week, 45 of us who had read Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moor with Lynn Vincent, met at City of Refuge, a shelter for women and children in the Vine City neighborhood of Atlanta. Some of us served dinner to the women and children who are part of the residential program. Some headed out to two areas in the neighborhood to serve a hot meal to anyone in need. Afterward we gathered back at City of Refuge to talk about this book that has homelessness at its center.

I read it over New Year's weekend and enjoyed the true tale of two men who couldn't be more different but became best friends. Ron is a fine art dealer whose wife convinced him to volunteer with him in a Fort Worth homeless shelter. Denver is the former sharecropper turned homeless man who becomes his best friend. The friendship doesn't happen overnight, though it is helped along with encouragement from Ron's wife Debbie.

In a couple of hours of service followed by a good discussion about the book and about homelessness, our group certainly didn't solve the world's problems. It was an eye-opening experience though and I'm glad BWB is the kind of company that puts events like these together that spark the discussions we all should be having.

After the event, BWB posted a guest blog post from Ron Hall.

Author Reading: Joshilyn Jackson

2012-01-26T16:25:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the book release party for Joshilyn Jackson's latest novel, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, published yesterday. The event was hosted by the Georgia Center for the Book and held at the Decatur Public Library. Jackson read passages from each of her three narrators in the novel, talked about how the book came about and gave a summary since most in the audience had a just-purchased hardcover copy in their hands. One of my favorite things about when authors speak is hearing about how their books come about. Jackson said (and I love this) that characters appear to her and float around in her head, usually for years, before she ever starts writing to see what happens to them. She said she gets some of her ideas for plots and characters since she's a good eavesdropper (I love this too). More books are to come from her and I can't wait to read whatever she puts out next.

Book Review: A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson

2012-01-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

Published by: Grand Central Publishing
Published on: January 25, 2012
Page Count: 288
Genre: Adult Fiction
My Reading Format: Advanced Reading Copy in PDF from NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover, Amazon Kindle

My Review:

Joshilyn Jackson's fifth novel, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, like her other books, has a Southern setting. This time it's South Mississippi and more of the complicated small-town social structure and the kinds of hushed-up family secrets we've come to expect from Jackson. Challenges come around every 15 years for Ginny "Big" Slocumb, her daughter Liza and Liza's daughter Mosey. This time Liza has had a stroke and is unable to communicate to her family and investigators why the bones of a baby are buried in their backyard. The digging up of the skeleton means a exposing all kinds of things from the Slocumb women's pasts. They have to face what has been hidden for years and sort it out in a way that makes sense as they establish a new normal for their lives.

Jackson is excellent at twisting the plot around so her readers keep guessing. Her quirky characters are modern but reminiscent of Faulkner or O'Connor with their complexity, and the way their lives are intertwined with those in their families and in the communities around them. The story is told through each of the three Slocumbs' voices: a grandmother trying to hold the family together and keep her own sanity, a stroke victim whose mind is clear but whose speech is garbled, and a teenager who does much of her communicating through texts from her cell phone or with her best friend, but has lots going on inside her head. Having the voice of each of these characters is integral to giving readers perspective from three different angles to paint the whole picture.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good characterization, Southern fiction and Southern sayings (the novel is full of them). One of my favorite Faulkner quotes certainly relates well to A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty: "The past is never dead. It not even past."

War Horse

2012-01-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

Though I don't go to the movies very often, I have been waiting for the release of Steven Spielberg's War Horse, a movie about a British young man and his horse who both become soldiers in France during World War I. During 2010's trip to London I saw the play, and it was the most incredible production I've ever seen. The entire audience was mesmerized by the storyline, the actors and the action, and we were on the edge of our seats to get resolution. What was the most powerful part of the play for me was the lack of scenery. Battles, market days in town, life in the country and other scenes were set with minimal props and backdrops. The audience was forced to use imagination and it worked very well.

A few months later I picked up the book by Michael Morpurgo that the play was based on. It's a young adult novel and only 165 pages. I liked it, but it made me appreciate the story I saw in a simple setting on stage even more.

Last weekend I saw the movie. It was very true to the bookand play, though a few things are always eliminated or shortened up to make a movie the right length. Though the parts set on the farm in the English countryside were beautiful and made me want to visit, I still think I much preferred the way I saw it on stage. I do realize, though, that a movie without scenery wouldn't necessarily go over well.

Whether you read the bookor see the movie or the play, it's a wonderful story that I'd recommend for all.

Recent Read: The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy

2012-01-04T13:03:00.000-08:00

I was back from Christmas break with all of New Year's weekend to relax, so I started a book I borrowed from a friend and have been excited about reading: The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy. This book continues on with the theme of World War II, but this time the book's setting is all Guernsey, the same island I first read about in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This, too, was fiction, but I liked that Leroy listed some of the sources she used to help her recreate life on this island in the forties.

The narrator and main character is Vivienne de la Mare, your average wife, mother, homemaker and friend. She became so real to me. I liked her so much because she was complex, as are many of us. She did the things that so many of us do: struggle with making decisions when neither choice is very appealing, how to parent and parent at the same time to children in different life stages, and in the face of strict authority, how much protest should one make, and how much should one go along with the rules even if the rules are wrong.

The contradictions that made Vivienne who she was are the things about her I liked the most. Not letting her daughter socialize with the occupying Germans but befriending the soldiers who took over the house next door both seemed like the right thing to do. Then later, lying to the Germans seemed like the right thing too.

I can't say too much about all of Vivienne's internal conflicts without giving away things about the book that you'll want to be surprised about if you're planning to read it for yourself. Just know that she, like so many people in wartime and at peacetime, manage just the best they can, and decisions made during wartime might not be the same decisions made during a peaceful time, and the other way around.

Book Club

2012-01-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

Fellow reader, book club member, freelance writer and blogger Lori summed up the year in our Atlanta book club so well that I don't need to reinvent the wheel. You can read her blog post here.

Thinking of starting a book club in 2012? Read this first to guarantee success.

8 for '11

2011-12-31T14:41:00.000-08:00

Provided I finish the book I'm reading before I head to a New Year's Eve party this evening, I will have read and listened to 107 books in 2011. Last year I posted my 10 favorites. This year I read many fantastic books and eight of them stand out from the rest. In no particular order, they are:

The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? by Leslie Bennetts
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project by Dave Isay
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

What are your favorite books from 2011, and what do you plan to read in 2012?

Happy New Year!

2011-12-25T07:13:00.000-08:00

What was the best book you ever got as a Christmas present?

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and Happy New Year!

More WWII Historical Fiction

2011-12-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

Since my trip to London last year I've done a lot of reading (fiction and nonfiction) about what it was like to be British during World War II. I've read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Winston Churchill: Statesman of the Century, The King's Speech, The Very Thought of You, The Postmistress,

Kisses on a Postcard, Churchill Goes to War: Winston's Wartime Journeys and From Churchill's War Rooms: Letters of a Secretary, 1943-45. I've got several more on the "to read" shelf in this same subject area.

Since I'm liking this stuff so much, The Report by Jessica Francis Kane was recommended to me and I borrowed it from a friend. It's based on an actual civilian tragedy in 1943 in the East End. One hundred and seventy-three people were killed while entering the tube station at Bethnal Green during an air raid when one woman tripped and members of the crowd were crushed against each other. The Report centers around the report written by a government official concerning the event, and the government's refusal to release that report for fear of what it would do to Londoners' morale. The book takes place both during March 1943 and 30 years later when a child affected by the tragedy is working on a documentary exposing the truth of the accident.

Though Kane's work is historical fiction, she drew heavily upon real primary sources to write the story. The characters are complicated and memorable, and show true, honest pictures of humanity. The story is a real one which makes it both wonderful and terrible to read.

Side note: I've read the book and seen the movie of Ian McEwan's Atonement. I kept thinking back to the movie scenes in the tube station during the Blitz when I needed a visual.

Holiday Book Club 2011

2011-12-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

Last night my book club met for our last meeting for 2011. The book up for discussion was rated by all who attended as a fantastic read. I have not been able to put down Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. Now that I've finished it, I'm sorry I don't have more to read about this American missionary family with four daughters in 1960s Congo.

I'm still turning the book over in my head. It's a dense one, filled with literary references (I made some of my own comparisons as well), clever plays on words and invented words, politics, cultural misunderstandings and a family with the kinds of complication relationships that just seem to me to be so difficult to navigate, yet throughout everything the family presses on. We know it's not going to be a pretty story from the get-go. Each awful thing that happens to the family was a blow to me as the reader but kept me hanging on for more.

Well, that is, until the last 75 pages or so. I was all set to give this book one of the few five star ratings on Goodreads that I've had all year. If only the book had ended before I'd had to read too much about the sisters' adult lives! A couple of book club friends agreed with me that if we each read this book again, we'd stop reading at the exact place we felt the book should end and skip the rest so we get out of it exactly what we want next time. Have you read this book? What was your reaction?

As a side note, last night was the second Christmas book club party where we celebrated by making mandarin lanterns (a bit blurry, but still festive). Here's mine:

Happy holidays!

O'Connor Movie in the Works

2011-12-08T11:13:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite Flannery O'Connor short stories, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," is going to be made into a movie! Here's the scoop.

100 Books Read So Far in 2011

2011-12-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

I, along with several of my reader friends, set ambitious reading goals for 2011 in Goodreads' 2011 Reading Challenge. Last year I read about 90 books, so I decided to make this year's goal an even 100 books. At an average of two books a week, I wasn't sure I could get there but knew I could get close. It turns out that I got there quicker than I thought, having finished the 100th book on December 5. It's a satisfying milestone, reached easier than I thought due to a multitude of audiobooks listened to in the car and counting the books I build in time in my work schedule to read for professional development.

When I knew I was getting close, I really wanted to make that 100th book a memorable one (i.e. not one for work or one I felt I wouldn't have anything to say/blog about once I'd finished). I chose well. About a month ago I was meeting with a client in their conference room where three out of four walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves for employees to borrow. The client offered to let me borrow any book that looked interesting, so I left with one that I'll return to them later. It seemed particularly appropriate. I read Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life, a delightful (and short) book about the thing Quindlen loves best, which is also the thing I love best.

Quindlen's comments about how some fictional characters felt more real to her than people she knew, how as a child she'd rather have read all afternoon than played outside, how some banned books really are the best books and how the face of reading might change in the future. Once I got to this part, I noted that the book was published in 1998, several years before I'd even heard of e-readers, but Quindlen knew then that reading would be changing.

It's always reassuring to know that there are others out there who read and enjoy it as much as I do. I'm happy to have read 100 books, and I look forward to fitting in a few more before 2012 begins.

What have you read this year?

The Changing Face of Libraries

2011-12-06T13:18:00.000-08:00

There is just no way I could read everything I read without public libraries. I am lucky to live where I have good access to the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System. I frequent libraries all across the metro area (Fulton and DeKalb Counties) when I'm between meetings for work and tired of having to buy a cup of tea to have access to Wifi and a good place to work for a couple of hours. It's unfortunate that in an economic downturn, library funding is among the first to be cut. (Attention government officials: During hard times, people need libraries to search for jobs. Keep this in mind!) It's an interesting time for libraries in light of changes being made due to the economy, e-readers and other technology. C.M. Rubin and Molly Raphael sum it pretty well here. Take a look.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Interview

2011-11-29T12:29:00.000-08:00

I saw this on Twitter a while back, shared by The Guardian. It's a transcript of an interview that appeared in the New York Post in 1936. In it F. Scott Fitzgerald describes his childhood, family history and his writing. It's an interesting read.

New Orleans Reading

2011-11-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

I've been on a New Orleans reading streak. It began with Robert Hicks' A Separate Country, then moved to Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, and finished with Dan Baum's Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans.

Earlier this year I talked about Hicks' first book, The Widow of the South, and his second novel, A Separate Country, is a nice follow up to his first, and like his first, it is historical fiction based on truth. In it, a soldier named Eli Griffin who appeared in Widow returns as a trusted friend to Confederate General John Bell Hood. Both men are living in New Orleans. Hood settled there after the war, met and married his wife, and raised 11 children with her. Hood and his wife, Anna Marie, have both contracted the same disease and are near death when Hood sends for Eli. Hood instructs him to find a man named Sebastian Lemerle and to publish his memoirs which he has handwritten. Eli agrees and returns to the house after he hears of Hood's passing a few days later. At the house he finds another memoir of sorts written by Anna Marie for Lydia, the couple's oldest daughter. Eli narrates us through his reading of both of these works and we realize the complications of the Hoods' marriage. In the book, readers meet colorful characters and learn a little about honor from several of the characters including Eli, who is determined to carry out Hood's last wishes.

New Orleans is a wonderful, intriguing, mysterious place unlike any other. It is that today as it was while the Hoods were living there. In her journal in A Separate Country, Anna Marie writes to Lydia, "I hope that you never leave this city. I hope you will love it as I have, imperfectly, inconstantly, but passionately....There has been little for me but this city. I wonder if I could breathe the air outside New Orleans, whether I would drown....I am glad of this place only because I could not survive anywhere else."

Zeitoun is a much more modern book written about the days before, after and during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is the central character. He, too, struggles with his adopted city and country during the days after Hurricane Katrina's devastation along the Gulf Coast. As a business owner, he is hesitant to evacuate and leave his property for the storm. His wife and four children leave without him first for Baton Rouge and then for Arizona.

Zeitoun's need to remain with New Orleans, though, is rooted more deeply than just out of concern for his business. On his first day paddling around his neighborhood in his canoe, he begins rescuing people who are trapped in their homes and dropping them on higher ground where they can get help. At the end of that first day Zeitoun knows "...there would be more to do tomorrow. How would he explain to Kathy, to his brother Ahmad, that he was so thankful he had stayed in the city? He was certain he had been called to stay, that God knew he would be of service if he remained. His choice to stay in the city had been God's will."

A few months ago when I blogged about my disappointment that Julia Reed's The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story wasn't the post-Katrina/resilience/rebuilding story I'd hoped for. While I realize that for an area to bounce back after a natural disaster, all sorts of things come into play, and that New Orleans is a city focused heavily on the tourism industry and a partying atmosphere, I really wanted to read about the "regular" people who faced adversity in getting back on their feet after the storm, whether the end result was 100% triumphant or not. Luckily, a reader suggested Zeitoun as a read more like what I was looking for. It was. Though I wasn't bowled over by fantastic writing, it was a compelling story, especially after some of the background information on Zeitoun and his family were out of the way and the storm hit.

Just as I remember watching CNN in August and September of 2005 in disappointment that such chaos and disorder was even possible in the United States, I read this book with disappointment that even though we live in a great nation, we still don't live in a place where people who are perceived by some as being "different" can be left to live their lives in peace. It was an eye-opening story that needed to be written. I'm glad Eggers brought attention to this family's story.

Just as Zeitoun was an eye-opening book, so was Baum's Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans. The author recreates the lives of nine New Orleans residents from Hurricane Betsy in 1965 through Katrina in 2005. It covered the ins and outs of Mardi Gras for the different neighborhoods in the city and showed the variety of life experiences had by these residents of varied genders, races, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds. Parts of this book, like Zeitoun, were particularly heartbreaking. I remember hearing in the media during Katrina's aftermath that corpses could not be collected promptly, and police officers reached the breaking point, and in some cases simply walked away from their jobs. All the things I was horrified to hear about in 2005 were spelled out in this book by characters who experienced them first hand.

From this New Orleans reading trifecta, I'm still convinced that New Orleans is one of the weirdest and most wonderful places on earth. Reading about it helps me understand better how so many things went wrong after Katrina and why New Orleanians are so resilient. I highly recommend Zeitoun and Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans for Katrina stories, and if you're into history, you'll probably like A Separate Country. Three fantastic reads.

Books All Georgians Should Read

2011-11-22T17:56:00.000-08:00

Besides their list of 25 Books All Young Georgians Should Read, the Georgia Center for the Book also has Books All Georgians Should Read, a list published in 2010. How many have you read?

Snakeskin Road by James Braziel
A Cry of Angels by Jeff Fields
The Confederate General Rides North: A Novel by Amanda Gable
Bombingham by Anthony Grooms
Luminous Mysteries: A Novel by John Holman
How Far She Went (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction) by Mary Hood
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
Hue and Cry: Stories by James Alan McPherson
When the Finch Rises by Jack Riggs
Nothing with Strings: NPR's Beloved Holiday Stories by Bailey White
The Heart of a Distant Forest by Philip Lee Williams
Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2008 by Coleman Barks
New and Selected Poems of Thomas Lux: 1975-1995 by Thomas Lux
The Watchers by Memye Curtis Tucker
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South by Roy Blount, Jr.
At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 by Taylor Branch
Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed and Karl Rove by Max Cleland
Invisible Sisters by Jessica Handler
The Cracker Queen: A Memoir of a Jagged, Joyful Life by Lauretta Hannon
Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams by Paul Hemphill
Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy by Frances Mayes
The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist by Deirdre O'Connell
Altar in the World, An: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor
Bon Appetit, Y'all: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking by Virginia Willis

Free Books!

2011-11-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

I could never afford to read all that I do without borrowing books from friends and public libraries, and other good resources that are out there. One of my favorite ways to get a free audiobook is through LibriVox. I've listened to countless classic novels (many of which I'm revisiting for the first time since high school) on my iPod while exercising or cleaning the house. I've particularly enjoyed blogger Annie Coleman's versions of Pride and Prejudice and Anne of Green Gables, two of my favorite novels. LibriVox seeks volunteers to read and record stories like these.

Project Gutenberg is also a volunteer organization that provides free ebooks for download to computer, Kindle or Android phone. I don't often read books on my computer (preferring the handheld, old fashioned method or reading, or listening to a book best), but if I wanted to, this is where I'd go.

Free books! It just doesn't get any better.

What will you be reading over Thanksgiving break this week?

New Independent Bookstore

2011-11-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

I love independent bookstores, and I was so happy to read that there will be a new one in Nashville, Tennessee, soon called Parnassus Books. Author Ann Patchett (I just recently read her wonderful novel, Bel Canto, and I can't wait to read more of her work) is behind it and has the support of Nashville's readers. Next time I'm in Nashville visiting family I'll be checking out.

Book Review: One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown

2011-11-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown
Published by: University of Mississippi Press
Published on: September 1, 2011
Page Count: 304
Genre: Biography
My Reading Format: PDF downloaded from NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover

My Review:

In the preface, authors Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown mention that Henry Mitchell at the Washington Post called Welty a "rose gardener, realist, storyteller of the South." I'm familiar with many of Welty's stories, and since my visit earlier this year to her home in Jackson, Mississippi, I've seen the garden in person, and it's beautiful. I come from a family of folks with green thumbs and nice yards, and I hope that I'll have a yard myself one day. So far I've only managed to live in neighborhoods where the homeowners' association maintains everything, and right now that is fine with me. However, I have an appreciation for pretty yards that can be admired from porches and enjoyed all year long. Haltom and Brown maintain that as Welty worked she was inspired by what she was seeing outside her windows.

Haltom and Brown spend some of the book talking about places in Welty's work where she writes about landscapes and gardens, and if what she was writing about was taken specifically from what she was seeing in her own yard as she wrote that particular story. I found this particularly interesting. The book also focused on Welty's biographical information, some of which was new to me (particularly her romantic relationships). And, this book would be a great read for the gardener who wants to incorporate plants from the first half of the 20th century into their yard or know more about the history of garden clubs in the United States. The authors included detailed information about what Welty and her mother planted and when, which could be extremely helpful to some readers.

My recommendation is to read this book if you're interested in any of the areas I've listed above. The book covers a lot of ground and does it well. The beautiful photographs included are expected for a garden book, but they are still wonderful.

I Love to Write Day

2011-11-15T13:49:00.000-08:00

Here's what I wrote or will write today on I Love to Write Day:

eight emails
two text messages
one blog post (this one)
one blog post (added to a draft I'm saving for later)
tomorrow's to do list
part of an email campaign for a client
my signature on the back of a birthday check
two tweets

What have you written today?

Tips for Freelancers on Showcasing Their Work

2011-11-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

Last month I attended Atlanta's Freelance Forum's annual Portfolio Show. There I was able to see how freelancing friends and colleagues showcase their work. Here's an article from Underworld Magazines with hints on what to include and what to leave out.

Taking Control of Office Clutter

2011-11-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

When my husband and I bought our house a few years ago we had no idea I'd later be freelancing out of the house. If we had, we might have thought about our space needs a little differently. My office now works but ONLY IF I keep it meticulously organized. It's a small space and for it to be functional, things need to be filed, delegated, shredded almost immediately to keep the paper volume manageable. When things get busy the state of my office can get out of hand quickly.

I've just found a good way to combat the mountains of paper and create an organizational system for the space I have to work with. I've just read Organize Your Office In No Time by Monica Ricci, a professional organizer in the Atlanta area. I've heard her speak before, so I know how great she is, but this book is what I needed. The tips make sense and are easy to follow. If I ever get off track all I'll have to do is refer back to the book.

Ideas from the book that I'm planning to incorporate include establishing filing categories that work for me and
for my business, building time into my schedule to keep on top of the organization, filing only what I'm sure I
need to keep instead of what I THINK I might need later, labeling my files more effectively and keeping an "In Progress" file current.

Whether you work at home or in an office building, how do you combat clutter? I'm still open to new ideas!

Baltimore's Poe House in Danger of Closing

2011-10-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

Edgar Allan Poe creeps me out. I have one of his books in my library and just looking at the cover is spooky. He's really the perfect writing to be reading for Halloween.

What's scary (because it's real) is that Poe's residence in Baltimore is in grave danger of closing due to lack of funding. He lived in the house from 1835 to 1837 and faces funding cuts from the city, an awkward location and not enough visitors to keep the place running.

The New York Times spelled out the problems in this article from August, as well as mentioned how other historical sites honoring Poe are fairing.

One thing I learned from this article that I'd never put together before: Baltimore's NFL team, the Ravens, are a nod to the author.

25 Books All Young Georgians Should Read

2011-10-28T15:23:00.000-07:00

The Georgia Center for the Book has on its website a list of 25 Books All Young Georgians Should Read. How many have you read?

Young Adults (grades 7+)

Peaches
Jodi Lynn Anderson

I Am Rembrandt's Daughter
Lynn Cullen

The Maze Runner (Maze Runner Trilogy, Book 1)
James Dashner

Blood Brothers
S.A. Harazin

Pure
Terra Elan McVoy

First Shot
Walter Sorrells

Middle Readers (Grades 4-8)

Freedom Train
Evelyn Coleman

A Yellow Watermelon
Ted Dunagan

The Tree That Owns Itself: And Other Adventure Tales from Out of the Past
Gail Karwoski and Loretta Johnson Hammer

Joseph
Shelia Moses

Yankee Girl
Mary Ann Rodman

Alexander the Great Rocks the World (Darby Creek Publishing)
Vicky Alvear Schecter

Honey Bea
Kim L. Siegelson

A Taste of Blackberries
Doris Buchanan Smith

Any Which Wall
Laurel Snyder

Each Little Bird That Sings
Deborah Wiles

Graphic Novel (Grades 4+)

Owly, Vol. 1: The Way Home & The Bittersweet Summer
Andy Runton

Early Readers (Grades K-3)

Mittens (My First I Can Read)
Lola Schaefer

Picture Books (Pre-K+)

Little Duck (My Sparkling Springtime Friends)
Liz Conrad

14 Cows for America
Carmen Deedy (author) and Thomas Gonzalez (illustrator)

Soap, Soap, Soap / Jabon, Jabon, Jabon
Elizabeth O. Dulemba

The Origami Master
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes
Eric Litwin (author), James Dean (illustrator)

The Monster Who Did My Math
Danny Schnitzlein (author), Bill Mayer (illustrator)

This Is the Dream
Diane A. Shore and Jessica Alexander

The Phantom Tollbooth

2011-10-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my post on the Decatur Book Festival that I'd be participating in Decatur's On the Same Page program by reading The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster this fall. I have recently finished it and quite enjoyed it. I was amazed at how much of it I remembered from having my third grade teacher read it aloud. It's a wonderful, imaginative, funny book and if you haven't read it, consider doing so.

The On the Same Page program is in full swing. In fact, tonight is the showing of the 1970 movie version of The Phantom Tollbooth at Decatur High School at 7 pm. Little Shop of Stories' adult book club will gather for discussion of the book on Monday, November 7 at 7 pm. Little Shop of Stories will hold a discussion, debate and spelling bee on Thursday, November 17 at 7 pm. To culminate the whole event, author Norton Juster himself will visit in a reading and signing event held at Agnes Scott College's Presser Hall. This will be Friday, December 9 at 7 pm. I'm really hoping to go to that.

I won't make it to the movie tonight but I went looking for it on Netflix. They don't carry it but the Fulton County Library System does, so I've requested it and I'm waiting.

First Chapter - First Paragraph

2011-10-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday, Bibliophile by the Sea participates in First Chapter - First Paragraph: Tuesday Intros, and today I am too.

I choose my current read, A Separate Country: A Story of Redemption in the Aftermath of the Civil Warby Robert Hicks:

"I woke sick to the sound of an envelope slid under my door. Outside the cotton presses clunked and smoked, the roustabouts shouted oaths at the screwmen, the river slipped past silent and heavy with mud and men and their craft. I listened for the footsteps of the messenger but heard none. They'd begun to burn the sugar down by the molasses sheds, where the Creoles I'd bested at faro the night before would now be standing overseeing the sugar niggers, nursing their own illnesses of indulgence, and finding themselves unable to do anything but mutter oui, oui and call for more coffee. San Domingue rum is a hell of a thing, I should say, Oh Lord, my head. I wondered if M., lying next to me, could hear the bones in my head creaking when I breathed. The sound in my head was loud, like the sound of two ships scraping by each other at the quay. It must have made the sound. Or maybe that squeaking was me. Quite possible."

To participate in First Chapter ~ First Paragraph, visit Diane's blog at Bibliophile By the Sea.

I Love to Write Day

2011-10-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

I Love to Write Day, in its 10th year, is coming up soon on Tuesday, November 15. Founded in 2002 by author John Riddle, the event is centered around the fact that anyone can, and should, write. Riddle's website outlines writing events around the country held that day in 2010 and suggested writing activities for November 15. For Riddle, the important thing is not what you write but just that one is writing.

I'm encouraging everyone to participate as well. I'll likely be writing something for work that day, but I'll probably also put up a blog post and maybe send out a note to a friend. Why not consider sending a card to an old friend? Journaling about your childhood? Starting to write the book you've got in your head? Picking up where you left off with a writing project?

Pretty much anything you write on November 15 counts for I Love to Write Day. If you do plan to participate, Riddle likes to keep count, so email him and let him know you're writing.

If you're planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month, also in November, then you should definitely sign up for I Love to Write Day because you'll be writing anyway! The rules for this are also simple. If you participate, on November 1 you'll start writing your 50,000-word novel. You have to finish by November 30 and upload it to the website to get your certificate of completion. The thought with this program is that it's not quite so scary if other people are doing the same, and the NaNoWriMo website acts as a forum for bringing this community of writers together. I just did the math. If you write five pages a day, you'll have your 50,000 words by the end of the month.

Now start writing!

Self-Publishing

2011-10-22T06:24:00.000-07:00

Mostly because of my line of work but partly because the publishing world is changing, I keep hearing a lot about authors who decide to self-publish. The Decatur Book Festival was full of these folks and I'm reading more and more books that have been published this way. For those who have expertise or a good story to share and who don't want to go through the traditional channels to get their book published, it can be a great option. A recent article in USA Today caught my attention about an author who first went the self-publishing route and then got her book picked up my Amazon in their new program called AmazonEncore, which publishes new and little-known authors via paperbacks, audio and e-books. So, if you've thought of writing a book, you should. There are plenty of resources out there for those wanting to go the self-publishing route. Forget about facing rejection from major publishers just to get your work out there.

Author Readings by Faulkner and O'Connor

2011-10-20T06:23:00.000-07:00

I love going to hear authors read from their books. I've recently found audio online of two of my favorite (deceased) authors reading from their works. Hear Flannery O'Connor read from "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (my favorite!) at Vanderbilt University in 1959. William Faulkner was writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia in 1957-58 and a website has a host of audio files from his classes, talks, speeches and readings. I particularly like hearing him read from The Sound and the Fury.

Booktoberfest

2011-10-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

Last night my book club had the event we've been looking forward to for months: Booktoberfest. We ate bratwurst, German potato salad, schnitzel and German chocolate cake, all washed down with root beer. We discussed a book that all of us quite enjoyed: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. If you haven't yet read this book, consider doing so. If you're particularly into World War II-era stories, you'll probably like this. After really enjoying The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Postmistress earlier this year, I was already in the mood, though The Book Thief is, I think, considerably darker.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed reading a story about what was going on with regular families on a regular street in a regular neighborhood in Germany during World War II. I've done so much reading of similar stories with characters (fictional and nonfictional) from Allied countries that it was a nice change to read about what was happening on German soil. The only other book I've read about Germany from that time period that I can remember is The Good German and it took place just after the war in Potsdam with plenty of Allied soldiers present.
I was struck by Hans Hubermann, foster father to the main character, Liesel Meminger. Hans has a heart of gold and hasn't become hardened to the harsh world around him as everyone else has. His ability to see past all the things that divide us as people and see people as what they truly are is a gift, especially considering the time in which he lived. Thanks to Hans, I will probably think of him for the rest of my life each time I see or hear an accordion.
In places, The Book Thief is extremely difficult to read because of all the injustices the characters are subjected to. Though I've done lots of World War II reading, this really gave me a new perspective of the awfulness and inhumanity of that time.

Have you read this book? What did you think about it?

Book Review: Oh Mexico! Love and Adventure in Mexico City

2011-10-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

Oh Mexico!: Love and Adventure in Mexico City by Lucy Neville

Published by: Nicholas Brealey Publishing

Published on: August 16, 2011

Page Count: 328

Genre: Travel Memoir, Autobiography

My Reading Format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from Netgalley

Available Formats: Kindle and paperback

My Review:

Lucy Neville’s travel memoir, Oh Mexico!: Love and Adventure in Mexico City, starts out in a predictable way. This recent college graduate isn’t ready for the corporate world, so she decides to embark upon a journey far away from her home in Australia. In Mexico City, she decides, she can better her Spanish language skills, embrace and immerse herself in a different culture, and have a host of new experiences. For one year she decides to live in crime-ridden but culturally rich Mexico City, and she is determined to succeed there. Along the way she encounters quirky characters who are both escaping their lives in other countries and are Mexican natives. She learns how difficult it is to survive and thrive in a place where corruption is rampant and rules and laws are merely suggestions. She finds herself part of a culture where women tend to be hard workers while their men often do as little work as possible. She learns what is important to Mexican life: food, family and celebrations (even if many of them seem to make light of death).

For me this book was a nice break from travel memoirs that take place in Europe. Yes, I enjoy those books immensely, but it was nice to read a first-hand experience of a country I’ve never visited, not even in the areas that cater to North American tourists, and a country that only makes American news when there is something to report on border patrol issues or drug cartels. I’m not sure it made me immediately want to book a trip to check out Mexico City for myself, but it did give me a great admiration for the author and others who embark upon similar adventures.

I liked this Lucy, the narrator. I sometimes forgot that I was reading a book instead of hearing a friend recount her adventures abroad. For the first time in quite a while, I feel like I know Lucy and that she’s my friend. She’s relatable, spunky, and willing to keep trying until she finds a way that works. She’ll listen to your advice and she might follow it. Or she might find out for herself.

What I didn’t like about the book and fairly small compared to what I did. As Lucy struggles to decide between two men, her hot roommate Octavio and her kind-hearted boyfriend Ricardo, the decision in the book, whether it was in real life, was rushed. Lucy let us into her head, building up all the tension between her and Octavio right before he vanished from her life. Was it really like that? I suspect not since many people can’t just switch their emotions off that quickly and neatly. Then, as Mexico’s economy becomes greatly affected by the American one, Lucy and Ricardo decide to move back to Australia. Though the focus of the book was, obviously, life in Mexico City, I am so curious to know more about how things turned out once they got settled in Australia.

Lucy Neville, if Ricardo is a writer, please talk him into writing a companion book outlining his first year living with you in Australia. If he is not a writer, please consider how you could turn this new chapter in your life into a second book.

My Take on Oxford, Mississippi

2011-10-15T18:46:00.000-07:00

I recently had the pleasure of writing a feature on Oxford, Mississippi, for Julep Magazine. Oxford is one of the most charming places I've visited in the last couple of years, and I hope that one day I'll be able to go back and see it again. The reasons I like this place probably come as no surprise: good food, a focus on the arts and artists, lots of Southern history and literature, and just nice folks.

Read the story. You'll have to create a login to see it, or view it on Julep's blog here.

Enjoy!

Reading and Reflections on 9/11

2011-10-14T18:46:00.000-07:00

I was lucky that on September 11, 2001, I did not personally know anyone who was aboard a plane that crashed, inside the Pentagon or one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. So though the story of where I was and what I was doing when I heard the terrible news is personally important to me and the people I was with that day, but probably not to many others. Many people are like I am, and though we can all be thankful, we were still all affected nonetheless.

The tenth anniversary of that awful day that changed the world has come and gone and I've been thinking a lot about what that anniversary has meant, both to me and those directly impacted, and I've done some reading, of course, to aid me in that.

On September 11, 2011, I spent a couple pf continuous hours alone in my car and tuned in to my local NPR station to see how they were marking the day. I wasn't disappointed. In the time after 9/11/01, NPR dedicated a voice mail line to those who felt compelled to call and leave a message describing their reactions to and reflections upon that day. They were deeply personal even though many of these messages were no longer than a voice mail any of us might leave for someone or receive. I was moved and fascinated by how those with direct connections to these disasters could sum up their relationship to that day and how they were moving forward in such a concise yet eloquent way.

After listening to those voice mails being played back I soon read a book I'd been intending to read for quite some time: Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, edited and introduced by Dave Isay. StoryCorps is an NPR effort where regular Americans can record their life's recollections, usually by answering questions from a friend or family member. At the end of the interview, they receive a CD recording of it and the other CD is sent to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. There are permanent or semi-permanent StoryCorp booths in New York City, Atlanta and San Francisco. A traveling recording studio in an Airstream trailer is currently taking reservations for stops in Denver and Los Angeles.

In Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, Isay has compiled edited transcriptions of stories recorded in these booths. Some stories are funny and some are sad, but all are incredibly touching. The stories are grouped in the book according to theme, but the last section of the book, "Fire and Water," is comprised of recordings specifically on the topic of September 11, 2001, and they were captured in a permanent recording booth established at the World Trade Center site in 2005. These recordings are some of what has been placed at the Memorial Museum that has recently opened.

Also part of this section are stories from survivors of Hurricane Katrina. If the stories in this book don't draw all kinds of emotions out of you, you just simply aren't human. It is those personal stories from everyday people that has impacted me the most it turns out. I think those are the most important voices to be heard.

***

Another set of important voices I've just heard are in The Whole Fiasco, the book written by writing students at Atlanta's KIPP Strive Academy partnered with The Wren's Nest and numerous writing volunteers. I thoroughly enjoyed my second year working with a student to properly capture the voice of a family member and do it justice by writing it down. A few students from the program got the opportunity to record their family interviews through StoryCorps and have these interviews archived. This collection is full of stories from very talented fifth and sixth graders, and I'm convinced that these students are on their way to accomplishing great things.

***

A friend and fellow Atlanta-area freelancer, Photographer David Batley just had a show of his work to commemorate the tenth anniversary of September 11. Batley happened to be visiting the World Trade Center to photograph it just one week before that day in 2001. He told me he spent 10 years trying to decide what to do with those photos. Then, 10 years later he revisited the spot and shot photos again. He compiled the two series in an exhibit called "Towering Views: Images Remembering the World Trade Center Ten Years After 9/11." It's at the Art Station at Big Shanty in Kennesaw through October 28 before it moves elsewhere. To find out more about Batley and his work, visit http://dlbatley.zenfolio.com/.

Speech and Language: Themed Reading

2011-09-29T06:51:00.000-07:00

I love how an idea from one book can lead me down a path exploring a certain theme, author, time period, etc. What I sometimes love even more is how I can accidentally pick books with common themes that I discover somewhere in the middle of the second such book. In the past couple of weeks, I've read three books where speech and language are at the forefront: Bel Canto (P.S.) by Ann Patchett, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi.

The first one, Bel Canto (P.S.), turns out to be one of the best books I've read so far in 2011, and it was a book I had not heard of other than its mention on NPR's list of Best Beach Books Ever, so I put it on my to-read list. In it, party guests are held hostage at the home of a vice president of a South American country. Most of the women are soon released, except for Roxanne Coss, an American opera singer known throughout the world. Those who remain are held so long that they have the chance to form meaningful relationships and bridge the gap between gender, ethnic, social and cultural differences. The most important part of what the hostages and their captors learn from each other, in my opinion, was to speak each others' languages. This book was so powerful that I cannot imagine how I have gone this far in my life before reading any of Patchett's work. Now all the rest of her novels are on my to-read list too. This summer Patchett visited Oxford, Mississippi's independent bookstore, Square Books. A podcast of her visit is featured on the store's blog.

My book club chose to read The Sparrow for our September meeting, which was last night. This is one of those books I probably never would have chosen to read on my own. One of the things I love about book club is branching out and reading things like this. It's a science fiction, futuristic book about a group of Jesuit anthropologists who find life on an asteroid and visit to learn about its people. The book is full of memorable, fantastic characters, and I became attached to most of them as I read. One of the main characters is Emilio, a Jesuit priest and linguist. When his group of earthlings encounters those living on Rakhat for the first time, he is the one who steps forward to speak to them for the first time and begins to understand their language. Russell wrote a sequel to this book called Children of God (Ballantine Reader's Circle). I hope to be reading that one soon while all the details from The Sparrow are still fresh in my head.

The third book is related to the Oscar-winning movie, which I saw in the theaters and absolutely loved (I almost never go to the movies. I wait and watch everything on Netflix. Based on what's going on there, that may soon change!). I usually read the book before I see the corresponding movie, and 95% of the time the book is better. I have to say I was disappointed in this book. As it turns out, the book was written by King George VI's speech therapist's grandson, who began researching their relationship out of curiosity after the movie was already in production. I didn't think the book was particularly well-written, as this is a topic that I'm all over and frankly, I was bored in places. I did like that it expanded upon the relationship between the king and his coach in places where the movie couldn't. The movie built up to King George's speech to the British people when Great Britain entered World War II. As the book explains, the king's relationship with Logue lasted for years, and Logue was called upon to help the king with many, many speeches. If you're particularly interested in this, read the book; otherwise, just watch the movie again.

The next couple of books I'm planning to read will also deal with language but in a slightly different way. A post on that will be coming soon.

Decatur Book Festival

2011-09-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend I spent two days at the Write Choice Services booth during the Decatur Book Festival having lots of fun. On Saturday, WCS owner Tim Morrison broadcast his Internet radio show, Write Here Write Now, all day interviewing authors in 15-minute slots. The rest of us talked with the new authors, seasoned authors, book business professionals and avid readers that stopped by the booth over the two days.

Besides chatting about the books our visitors had written or plan to write one day, we sold several of Tim's fourth and latest book, Writing Secrets: Essential Steps to Discover How to Start. I've recently read the book for myself and I like that it assumes one knows s/he has a book to write but doesn't yet know what to write about. It suggests ways to narrow in on that topic and begin writing.

Things were so busy at our table that I didn't attend any author events, but I did manage to pick up some new reading material.

First, I attended the book launch party for The Whole Fiasco, the compilation of tall tales written by fifth and sixth graders at KIPP Strive Academy in Atlanta (the program is in partnership with The Wren's Nest, the home of Joel Chandler Harris, in West End). Two students did a reading and all of the students autographed books. Such fun! Though I'm familiar with many of the stories I'm still looking forward to reading them all again.

The Wren's Nest was selling its other book as well. Midnight Consumption is the literary journal produced this year by high schoolers.

From the Emerging Writers tent at the Festival, I picked up The Crackers: Early Days of Atlanta Baseball by Tim Darnell. Maybe I'll read it during the playoffs.

And, finally, I'll pretend to be a Decatur resident as I participate in Decatur's 2011 On the Same Page program by reading The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. I haven't read this book since elementary school and I'm so excited to read it again. Several events are part of this program.

I'm glad that this year instead of hearing about the largest independent book festival in the nation second-hand, I experienced it for myself. I'm already looking forward to next year's.

Georgia Connector Magazine

2011-09-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

The fall issue of Georgia Connector Magazine is out, and my story on alpaca farms in Northeast Georgia is included. I had such fun talking to the farmers and meeting all their animals.

Better World Books Book Club

2011-09-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

I missed the Atlanta Better World Books Book Club meeting Thursday night because I underestimated the time I'd need on a project for a client. I hated to miss. The next morning I looked at BWB's Facebook pictures where everyone looks to be having so much fun. Then I read their blog post about the event and then I knew for sure they'd had fun without me. Oh, well. I'm hoping to participate in next month's online book club for one of my top five books from 2010, The Help.

I read this month's book club selection, The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novograntz, and it was interesting and made me think a lot. However, there was a lot more I wanted to know about Novograntz's childhood and adolescence. What steered her toward philanthropy and microeconomics? We got glimpses of this but nothing concrete enough for me. Also, I have to admit I grew frustrated each time I read that Novograntz went out jogging again and again alone. When that's something I'm very careful about in the American suburbs, it was hard for me to grasp why she kept going out alone. I felt so sorry for her, though, when she did relate her experience being mugged in broad daylight while others were close by. Also, I liked that that didn't break her spirit and wasn't enough to send her packing back to the safety of the United States.

Much of the book focused on Novograntz's early experiences with philanthropy in African and Asian countries and the challenges she faced as a young, white American only beginning to understand the cultures of these other places. Then there was a big jump to her present life as the founder and CEO of her nonprofit organization, Acumen Fund. I imagine there were some experiences in the middle part of her career that steered and molded her. What were they? I hope she'll write another book and tell us all about it.

Decatur Book Festival

2011-08-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

If you're going to be in Atlanta for Labor Day Weekend and you're not planning to come to the Decatur Book Festival, change your plans. It's going to be the place to be Saturday and Sunday. From 10-6 on Saturday and noon to 6 on Sunday, you can attend performances, cooking demonstrations, poetry readings, author talks and book signings. Plus, there will be a street fair and that's where I'll be most of the time. I'll be sitting with Write Choice Services. Mainly we'll be there because we love writing and love writers, and one of the things we do best is help writers write (and a host of other things). If you're there stop by and see me.

I'm also planning to see a couple of my favorite authors speak. In addition, I'm really excited to attend the book launch party for The Whole Fiasco, the book produced through the writing program at KIPP Strive Academy and The Wren's Nest that I've been lucky to be a part of for the past two years. I can only speak for the fabulousness of my own student's story, but if that's any indication, the entire book should be a very impressive story collection, especially considering the age group of the authors (fifth and sixth graders).

Overall, the Decatur Book Festival is sure to be a good time.

Gone With the Wind Turns 75

2011-08-23T22:35:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, at long last, I finished reading Gone With the Wind, nearly 20 years after reading it for the first time (and if I remember correctly, I had not yet seen the movie at that point). I bought a new copy for the occasion, the 75th Anniversary Edition, which includes a preface written by Pat Conroy. Much of Conroy's take on this novel was also included in My Reading Life, which I recently read and blogged about.

What I didn't remember from reading it during the summer between the eighth and ninth grades was how detailed Mitchell is in her descriptions of Civil War battles and an Atlanta in her infancy. Most particularly, we get a much clearer picture of Scarlett's inner dialogue than in the movie, so I feel like I now know her better.

I visited the Margaret Mitchell House in Midtown Atlanta again during my reading of this book. I've been before but not since it was renovated, and I'd recommend a visit by anyone who has read this book or enjoyed the movie (or, hopefully, both).

I felt properly prepared to embark on this reading journey thanks to Pat Conroy's assessment of the novel in the preface, a novel, he says, "shaped the South I grew up in more than any other book" and which "still glows and quivers with life."

It's been a couple of years since I watched the movie (probably this viewing), so this seems like a good time to watch it again.

Atlanta area book club meeting with Better World Books

2011-08-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

This Thursday, August 25, Better World Books is hosting its first-ever book club meeting for The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz. The event is to be held at Park Tavern in Piedmont Park from 6-8:30 pm. I'm going, and if you've read this book, you should too!

Book Review: The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments From Lives on the Road

2011-08-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published on: May 26, 2011
Page count: 304
Genre: Nonfiction
My reading format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from NetGalley
Available formats: Hardcover

Paul Theroux, a travel writer for more than four decades, recently published this book, a compilation of his own thoughts on how travel is best accomplished and the writings of other travel writers. Each chapter covers a theme of traveling such as using trains, traveling alone, items a traveler must have and strange foods travelers have encountered around the world. Those writers quoted in the book include many I've heard of and many I haven't. And truthfully, I hadn't yet come across Theroux in my reading, so I like that by reading this I was exposed to people I'd never heard of before. A couple of them will make it on my "to read" list.

I love to travel and I love to read, so when I love when I can combine the two either by reading while I'm traveling or reading about traveling while I'm at home waiting for my next trip. That's why this book caught my eye.

I am surprised fairly often with what I read. A book turns out to be not quite what I expected, and many times that works out in my favor. I learn something I wouldn't have known otherwise, or enjoy the book than I thought I might. Sadly, that's not the case with The Tao of Travel. I wanted to know about Theroux's travels. That's why I picked up the book. I wasn't so much interested in hundreds of pages of quotes from other writers, which is what I got. The variety of experiences included in this book are vast, but reading quote after quote after quote was nearly enough to make me abandon this book before I'd even finished the first chapter. I pressed ahead because I thought surely the rest of the book wouldn't be the same way. Well, it was. There are 27 chapters in the book and finally, finally, finally in Chapter 26 I got to what I'd been hoping for all along. Theroux had five short episodes of interesting events/people/places he'd encountered over the years during his travels. Each of the five gave him cause to reflect and it changed his perspective on that trip as a whole. It was great stuff. Then, in the final chapter, he gives readers a list of 10 pieces of advice on traveling. I also liked that very much. Unfortunately, the two chapters at the end, though I liked them, weren't enough to make me like the whole book.

However, I am curious enough about Theroux now to read some of this other books where he relates only his own experiences. And, I like writers who are willing to share advice with other aspiring writers, like he did in the last chapter. On that note, I found a YouTube video of the author that I really like where he does just that. So while I don't necessary recommend The Tao of Travel, I am interested to read more of what this writer has written. Are you familiar with him? What are his other books like?

My Take on E-Readers

2011-08-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

I get asked on a fairly regular basis if I have an e-reader and how I feel about them. I don't have one, and as of right now I don't have any plans to get one. I remember thinking last year on the plane to London how nice an e-reader would be for a trip like that when space is limited but a lot of reading can get done. I also would like to be able to easily borrow books from libraries with an e-reader whether I end up with a Kindle, a Sony, an iPad, a Nook or anything else. I'm sure a software person could tell me why if I really wanted to know, but I still just think these things should all just be universal. I hope one day that will be possible.

I've heard some proponents of e-readers talk of the products' environmental friendliness. Recently, in a weekly email newsletter from Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, the store's owner said, "But--if I heard one more time, 'Well, e-books are more environmentally sound than paper books because they save trees,' I'll....I'll....well, I won't scream, because you can't hear me. So I'll quote an article about this instead." And she linked to this article.

Besides, how cute are my library shelves at home going to look if they no longer have books on them? I like the feel and smell a book provides much more than I'd like to have the convenience of multiple books on one electronic device. If I get one, I'll let you know, but in the meantime and probably even after I'm the owner of an e-reader, I'll still prefer to do my reading from physical books.

The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide

2011-08-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

I really didn't intend to be absent from my blog for nearly a month. I've been doing a lot of reading but I haven't been talking about it because the books have been long ones. I'm reading Gone With the Wind and am about three-quarters of the way through. The other long one that I've just finished is The Ultimate Web Marketing Guide by Michael Miller. It's over 600 pages and I've been reading a chapter or two a day when time allowed for the past several weeks.

Fifteen years in high school ago I was a media assistant and the library was the only place on campus students could access the Internet. I remember checking out a few websites and wondering what good it would ever do me. I just had my 10 year college reunion earlier this summer. Nearly everything that's in this book didn't exist when I was taking classes in professional communications to prepare for life after college. As I was doing research online for papers for the first time there wasn't yet a standard way to cite those resources. So things have changed a lot and this will continue. I imagine that everything I've just read about in the Guide may be obselete in just a few years.

The book was recommended to me by a graphic designer colleague several months ago. Reading it all the way through has been immensely helpful for me in thinking about how clients could utilize these tools to leverage their online presence. Some of the tools are things I deal with often (effective websites, search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging, Facebook and Twitter) and some are things I don't do directly but need to know about (podcasts, mobile applications, mobile websites, pay-per-click and display advertising, and others).

To me learning new things for business and personal growth is part of life. All the time it took me to read this book was well worth it. If you're in the business or in charge of marketing where you work but not sure where to start, get this book.

Book Review: The Band That Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the Eight Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic by Steve Turner

2011-07-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

Published by: Thomas Nelson
Published on: March 22, 2011
Page count: 256
Genre: Nonfiction
My reading format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from NetGalley
Available formats: Hardcover

Prior to reading this book, all that I knew about the musicians aboard the Titanic was what I saw in the blockbuster movie version featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Watching them play together on the ship's deck as passengers loaded up in the lifeboats for me was the saddest part, probably because I knew the rest of the story but was learning about these eight men for the first time. I first heard about this book from another friend's reading blog (check it out) and was interested to learn something about these heroes.

The book neatly outlined a review of the Titanic disaster, the men who hired the musicians for the voyage, each of the eight men, what their days on the ship would have been like pre-shipwreck, eyewitness accounts of the men playing while the ship sank, how each of the men's families began to survive without them and investigations into the disaster. In the chapters for each musician, I learned surprising and interesting details about each of the men. Some of the details spooked me out a bit, such as the fact that one of the violinists' prized violin, given to him by his fiancee, went missing for years. The author spent quite a bit of time it seems trying to track it down, and the family of the musician and his fiancee were so tight-lipped about its whereabouts that even Turner was left still guessing. Another interesting fact was that the media was obsessed with covering the Titanic disaster and the focus really didn't shift away from the shipwreck until the start of World War I two years later. Turner also says that had these eight men not died at sea, many of them would have likely been drafted to fight in the war, and may or may not have survived. I thought the two brothers, Frederick and Charlie Black, who acted as placement agents for the musicians and hired them to play aboard the Titanic, seemed pretty slimy and did very little to redeem themselves in my mind after the shipwreck.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I learned a lot of interesting facts and enjoyed the first-hand accounts. It was obvious to me Turner did an exhaustive amount of research to create this book, and I do love to read a book where it seems not stone has been left unturned.

Pat Conroy's My Reading Life

2011-07-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

For my recent four year wedding anniversary, my husband bought me a copy of Pat Conroy's My Reading Life, a book I've been looking forward to reading since I heard it was coming out some months ago. If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know he's one of my favorites. I haven't yet read everything he's written, but I'm working on it. So far all I've read have been novels and I was anxious to read Conroy's memoir, which you probably also know is one of my favorite kinds of books to read. I'm so glad I wasn't disappointed. I savored every word of this beautiful book, and spent much longer reading it than I normally spend on a 300-page book. And, when it ended I was sorry.

Conroy devoted once chapter to each book, experience and person that shaped him first as a reader, and then, as a result, shaped him as a writer. Teachers and professors made the list, a bookshop, Paris, a librarian, a book salesperson, an author (Thomas Wolfe) and a book (Gone With the Wind). Each chapter became a thank you letter to each, as he specifically showed the evidence of how he was shaped by each person, place or thing. It made me think about what has influenced my reading and writing, and that list is long.

What books and experiences have made up your reading life?

PS One of my reading buddies just informed me that Conroy will be headlining the Savannah Book Festival in February. As if I didn't want to go enough already!

Author Reading: Ann Napolitano

2011-07-13T03:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a reading by Ann Napolitano, author of the brand-new book, A Good Hard Look, which has Flannery O'Connor as its central character. The event was sponsored by the Georgia Center for the Book and hosted by First Baptist Church in Decatur. Napolitano talked about her process while writing the book, which is something I'm always interested to hear more about. She discovered O'Connor while in college and read some of her work. Then, she put O'Connor's work away for about a decade before realizing that she needed to write a book about her. Until that point, she'd been working on a book that had Melvin Whiteson as a main character. The story took place in New York City and she said the plot wandered and wandered. She couldn't seem to make it work. She had an epiphany and knew she should stop working on that book and start writing one about O'Connor. The interesting thing she did, though, was bring Melvin over as a character in the new book to interact with O'Connor. Their relationship in A Good Hard Look is what the rest of the novel is built around. It took her seven years to write this book, and it sounds like she wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages that ultimately didn't make it into the final published version.

My favorite thing Napolitano said last night summed up O'Connor's fiction so well, and made me think of my fellow book clubber who was jarred by her short stories. The author said, "Flannery's fiction is abrasive. It knocks you around....You don't curl up with Flannery O'Connor." Indeed.

Write Here Write Now

2011-07-11T05:05:00.000-07:00

For my jobs, I've interviewed countless people over the years about one thing or another. Talking to people about what they do and love has always been a lot of fun for me. One of the things I like best is when I learn something unexpected about someone, usually during small talk at the beginning or end of an interview. Aside from job interviews and the occasional meeting with a client where they're deciding who to hire for a certain project, I've never really been on the side of the table where I ask few or no questions, but give all the answers.

I was thrilled and honored to be invited to be on Write Here Write Now, an Internet radio show hosted by Tim Morrison, my boss at Write Choice Services. Each Tuesday morning he speaks to people who have written a book (or more than one), are currently writing a book or are planning to write one someday. I appeared on the show last Tuesday, July 5, with Russ Chapman, a fiction writer (he is absolutely hilarious and writes wonderful, humorous stuff. He's definitely worth a read). Together we talked about the creative process and the differences between writing fiction and creative nonfiction, the genre of my thesis. It's been several years since I worked on and finished that project, and it was fun to remember what that process was all about.

Though there's always the option to listen live to Write Here Write Now on Tuesdays at 10 am, the show ends up on the website after about a day and a half. In case you're interested, here's the interview I did.

O'Connor Short Stories

2011-07-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

I recently mentioned that my book club chose for June the Flannery O'Connor short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find, which led to a spirited discussion. Short stories seemed just the right thing to read here at the beginning of summer when our next selection is Gone With the Wind (scheduled for August, and we also gave ourselves July off in preparation). Partly because of our June book selection, I have a particular interest in O'Connor at the moment. The other reason is because a fictional book about O'Connor's life in Milledgeville, Georgia, has just been published. It's called A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano. I read it last week. It fits in somewhat well with other fictional accounts of authors' lives I've been reading lately (see examples here and here). I quickly ordered the book online and read it to prepare for Napolitano's visit to the Atlanta area on her book tour next week. I'm anxious to hear what she has to say on her book and see if she talks about what is complete fiction in the book and what is made up with good, educated guesses on what O'Connor and Milledgeville were like in the 1960s. No matter how she speaks to these issues, it was a great read. I love a good book where characters are intertwined in surprising ways, and this book fits that bill for sure.

Book Review: Look Away, Dixieland: A Carpetbagger's Great-Grandson Travels Highway 84 in Search of the Shack-Up-On-Cinder-Blocks, Confederate-Flag-Waving, Squirrel-Hunting, Boiled-Peanuts, Deep-Drawl, Don't-Stop-the-Car-Here South by James B. Twitchell

2011-07-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Published by: LSU Press
Published on: March 18, 2011
Page Count: 192
Genre: Nonfiction
My reading format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from NetGalley
Available Formats: Print (Hardcover) and Digital (Adobe Reader and Mobipocket Reader)

I love a good road trip, especially if it means at least some of the journey can be made off the interstate highway system and on roads and in towns that show you what things are really like. And if you can learn something about yourself or a family member on the journey, then all the better.

James Twitchell must have had a similar idea when he and his wife, Florida residents but native Yankees, decided to explore Highway 84 from its beginning in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia to Coushatta, Louisiana. The final destination was the town Twitchell's great-grandfather, a carpetbagger, inhabited for about a decade after the Civil War. Along the way, the author hoped to gain a deeper understanding of the Deep South, a journey he describes in Look Away, Dixieland: A Carpetbagger's Great-Grandson Travels Highway 84 in Search of the Shack-Up-On-Cinder-Blocks, Confederate-Flag-Waving, Squirrel-Hunting, Boiled-Peanuts, Deep-Drawl, Don't-Stop-the-Car-Here South.

In the book, Twitchell sets up his planned journey, spends one chapter on each state he visited and summed up the trip and his findings, putting a trip that left him with more questions than answers tied up in a neat package. He started with the question, "Can I find a path across the South that will duplicate enough of the world my great-grandfather and his family experienced so that I can have an understanding of what happened to them?" He finished with the answer, "...quests tend to be better in prospect than in result." However, as he hoped, he learned a lot about the Deep South on his journey. More importantly, he learned more about his ancestor and his life as a transplanted Vermonter in northern Louisiana during a complicated time in our nation's history politically, economically, socially, racially and otherwise: Reconstruction.

It sounds like this trip plus three decades of living in north Florida may not have answered every question he has about Southerners and their preferred ways of life. The answer to the question of Southernness is as clear as Mississippi mud to many of us, even Southerners themselves. This book is an interesting and entertaining read, and might be best read on a road trip.

Book Review: Head Over Heel: Seduced by Southern Italy by Chris Harrison

2011-06-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

Published by: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Published on: October 18, 2010
Page Count: 321
Genre: Nonfiction
My reading format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from NetGalley
Available Formats: Paperback

Italy is one of the few places I've been outside the United States, and anything having to do with it always catches my eye. Also, when I went the trip covered nothing south of Rome, so until I can visit Southern Italy myself, I'll just have to read about it.

Thanks to this book, any pipe dreams that may have ever crossed my mind about possibly living abroad now do not include Italy. Head Over Heel was a wonderful read, but if anything, it made me realize how frustrating it can be to live as a foreigner in another country. Customs, food and all ways of doing things can be vastly different from what one is used to in her native land. A Type-A rule-follower myself, I know I'd have a hard time with all the bureaucracy involved in getting anything done at all. Most of us just aren't accustomed to spotty postal service and not bothering to report a crime because the police force will never bother to assist you anyway.

In the first chapter, Harrison, an Australian used to an ordered life, remarks that Italians would rather complain about something than take steps to fix it. However, somewhere in the second half of the book, as Harrison is both frustrated and sucked in by the Italian way of life, he realizes that to survive and thrive in his adopted country, he will need to suck it up, bending and breaking a few laws where necessary to accomplish things like obtaining a drivers license, marriage license, functional plumbing and any other number of basics. Things get so overwhelming at one point that he decides he must go back to England to regroup for a bit but the trip is short-lived. He comes to realize during the 24-hour stay in England, that his life there is too ordered and he enjoys more freedom and a laid-back lifestyle in the home country of his lover, Daniela. Then he has another important realization: England isn't what has changed, he is. It is at this point that he comes to terms with his love-hate relationship with Italy and returns to it just as fast as he can.

Harrison is an excellent writer, very talented with putting something down on paper just right. He is very witty, which makes viewing Italy through his eyes wonderfully entertaining.

Gone With the Wind Turns 75

2011-06-17T07:05:00.000-07:00

2011 marks the 75th birthday of the award-winning novel, Gone With the Wind (see what USA Today said about the celebration). To celebrate, Atlanta's Margaret Mitchell House has events planned this summer (see the schedule here). My book club has chosen to read it (or for most of us, reread) for our August meeting (we're even taking July off from meeting so we can all get finished with the 1,000 pages in time). In honor of both occasions, I've ordered a new copy of GWTW that I can dig deep into and mark the pages up (I'm afraid to do that with the copy I have from my grandmother's house). The version I now have is the 1996 edition, written with a preface by another one of my favorites, Pat Conroy. I'm hoping to make a visit to the Margaret Mitchell House this summer as it's been renovated since I last visited several years ago. And I'm most excited about rereading this novel. I've only read it once before and that was the summer after eighth grade. Since then I've just seen the movie about a million times. Happy birthday, GWTW!

O'Connor's Hill House Restoration

2011-06-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

A few months ago after a visit to Flannery O'Connor's farm, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Ga., I wrote a post on the proposed restoration of the Hill House. This structure is on the farm behind the main home where O'Connor and her mother lived, and housed Jack and Louise Hill, caretakers of the farm, and a boarder. The home has been in sad disrepair, and in February Andalusia received grant funds to begin restoring it. It's the largest grant ever to be awarded to the farm. The project has begun (read about it here). I can't wait to go back for a visit and see the Hill House once it's back to its original self.

Speaking of O'Connor, my book club has chosen one of her short story collections, A Good Man is Hard to Find, for our June meeting. I'll be happily rereading these stories once my turn comes up for the book at my library.

Food Reading and Writing

2011-06-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

Meals can be memorable. Years later, one can remember what was eaten at a special meal. For me, I love that my family eats North Carolina barbecue, slaw, potato salad and hush puppies for Christmas Eve dinner. I'll always remember my paternal grandfather's obsession with dessert (so I come by it naturally) and how he once ate three HUGE pieces of my maternal grandmother's strawberry cake after a very large meal. I can't look at a red velvet cake without remembering that that's the flavor my husband wanted for our wedding cake. I remember that when my grandmother died, all the neighbors brought over muffins. When my great-grandmother died, it was fried chicken. Life happens around a dining room table.

Jason Epstein recalls what he's eaten and cooked over the years in his memoir, Eating. In each chapter he recalls a meal shared with someone, the conversation that happened, what they ate and then gives recipes to recreate that meal. Though not all of the recipes he included appeal to my taste, I can very much relate to the fact that we associate certain dishes with the people who have shared them with us.

Food and drink are meant to be shared with friends and family. Two recent articles I've written center on this theme. Recipe developer Alison Lewis has a sandwich cookbook just out called 400 Best Sandwich Recipes: From Classics and Burgers to Wraps and Condiments, and her story appears in Julep, a new online Southern magazine. For Georgia Connector, I wrote an article about the home brewing scene in Athens, Georgia, where it's a pretty big deal to brew your own beer and have your friends over to try it.

All this talk about food, friends and family makes me want to throw a dinner party to try out new recipes!

The Widow of the South

2011-06-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've gotten really interested in the Civil War since this year marks the 150th anniversary of its beginning. I've done some reading on it, and recently read a book one of my husband's relatives sent me about a battle that took place near where she lives. The book is The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks. It's a historical fiction novel about a woman whose plantation home was commandeered to be a hospital for Confederate soldiers wounded in the Battle of Franklin in Middle Tennessee. It was a fascinating story, and I enjoyed it even more knowing there is truth behind it. I'm now hoping I can sometime make a visit to Carnton Plantation in Franklin, TN, to see the home and the massive cemetery on the grounds there. To find out more, visit the website for the plantation and/or the book.

Nashville, Tennesee

2011-06-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

I love all kinds of music, but I have a particular affinity for country music. I listen to it often, love its TV specials (check out a great one here) and love to visit Nashville to experience country music first hand. Recently, I walked the Country Music Half Marathon with some friends and stayed a few extra days. Once I was back home, I had two books to read about country music. The first, Will The Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America, is filled with short articles and lots of pictures, telling country music's story from its earliest days to the present. It would make a good coffee table book; it was so full of information it was a bit overwhelming. I enjoyed the second book much more: Composed by Roseanne Cash. This memoir was just beautifully written. I really liked Cash's style, and since I knew more about her famous father Johnny and her stepmother June, it was nice to learn about her and her life as a musician and mom in the country music business. I really hope she writes another book.

Here are a few photos from the trip to Nashville:

Ryman Auditorium

A statue of Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff at the Ryman

Elvis' star on the Music City Walk of Fame

RCA Studio B

Part of the set from the TV show Hee Haw

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2011-06-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

Even though I always gravitated toward language arts in school, two of my best high school classes were biology and anatomy, both taught by the same fantastic teacher. She made the science of life and the human body fascinating and accessible in a way I hadn't thought possible before. In college I took biology again, hoping for an experience similar to the ones I'd already had in high school. Sadly, I barely made it out of that class alive and most of my classmates had the same experience. Our professor, bless his heart, was not much older than most of us and looked absolutely terrified to be lecturing 60 women.

However, the college class notwithstanding, I'm still curious about the human body and the miracles that are possible within it. For my first graduate school class I was fortunate enough to get into an elective course just days before the semester began called Gender and Medicine. All semester long we explored women's access to and experience with receiving health care with regard to race, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, geography, medical insurance status, mental capacity and many other factors. With a few weeks left in the semester, each student had to choose a disease or medical experience present for women and explore the topic for our final paper. I chose to cover forced and coerced hysterectomies, and never before had I been sucked into a research topic like this. I started to read everything I could get my hands on, and as the due date of the paper loomed closer and closer, I had to stop researching and start writing. The result was a paper that more than doubled the size of any I'd written for a rigorous undergraduate English program.

I imagine Rebecca Skloot must have been inundated with and overwhelmed by the information she uncovered when she began researching Henrietta Lacks, a young mother who suffered from an extremely aggressive case of cervical cancer in Baltimore in the 1950s. Without her knowledge or consent (or that of her family), her surgeon extracted cancer cells for research purposes, grew them in his lab and sold them to scientists all over the world before Lacks' children and husband found out just over a decade ago.

Skloot has written a fantastic book, certainly in top five of all I've read this year so far called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I think my favorite thing about this book, besides trying to understand the gall of some members of the medical community and patients' rights, was how Skloot inserted herself into the book. This made it a much more real story. There was no way after Skloot described the personality traits of Lacks and her family members, that this book would have worked if it had a clinical feel to it. And, Skloot's relationship with many members of Lacks' family are such a huge part of the story that it just seems a no-brainer that that stuff should be included.

Read this book.

Becoming Jane Eyre

2011-06-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

I've recently finished reading another fictional book about the life of an author: Becoming Jane Eyre by Sheila Kohler. It was an interesting book because it made me think about how an author may take his or her own personal experiences and shape them into a plot and characters in a novel. Though to the author there is correlation, it may be hard for others to see this connection. Another reason I enjoyed this book as much as I did is that I've recently reread Jane Eyre and saw the latest movie version twice in the theater. Plus, I'm not nearly as up on the Brontes' biographies as I am other authors, so it was nice to do a close read of the father of the Bronte sisters, as well as their ne'er-do-well brother. Here's what the New York Times had to say (I liked the book and this review of it!).

New Orleans' Literary Scene

2011-05-31T11:54:00.000-07:00

Recently my husband and I celebrated our anniversary with a long weekend in New Orleans, and I'm not sure whether I was more excited about the food I was planning to eat or seeing the city where many great writers have penned their famous works. We spent three and a half days mostly in the French Quarter and I tracked down all the places I could find with literary significance. Here they are:

Hotel Monteleone has been visited by many important writers (see photo above for list). It's a beautiful hotel, and if you sit in the Carousel Bar near the window overlooking Royal Street, the people watching is top-notch.

Here I am on the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar. I was so excited thinking about Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire that I could barely contain myself.

William Faulkner lived in this townhouse just off Jackson Square in his early years as a writer. He wrote Mosquitoes and Soldier's Pay while he stayed here. As bookstores go, this one is pretty small, but so filled with great stuff you hardly even notice. I bought three books here that I'll likely be writing about after I've read them later.

This home on Bourbon Street was occupied at different times by both Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams. Now it's owned by Cokie Roberts' mother, Lindy Boggs, a politician and activist.

This home on St. Peter Street is where Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire.

And finally, this is Galatoire's, a French restaurant on Bourbon Street frequented by Tennessee Williams. Also, Stella took Blanche here in A Streetcar Named Desire. We ate here and the food was good, but many of the places we ate were much better than good.

My self-guided tour of New Orleans was satisfactory, but it was merely a substitute for a real one I'd tried to line up. There is just one literary tour in town and though the woman who gives them is supposed to be fantastic, she doesn't return phone calls and even hangs up on people calling at an inconvenient time for her (she has, apparently, never heard of voicemail). My suggestion to New Orleans is that someone else needs to give her some competition. New Orleans is far too important to American literature to only have one person telling all the good stuff. OK, the gripe session is over now.

London/World War II Reading

2011-05-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

One of the books I read over last weekend was one I brought back with me from London, The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison. It's a fictional story centered around a little girl, Anna, who moves from London to Yorkshire during World War II to escape the bombing. Her mother remains behind in London working, while her father is a British soldier in Africa. Though she misses her parents terribly, Anna has a wonderful experience in a home-turned-school for London schoolchildren and becomes particularly close to her teachers.

From reading the back of the book I was hooked (see similar blog post on Kisses on a Postcard, and note that my recent read, The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society, contained the same situation of children separating from families during World War II). However, about a third of the way through, the book began exploring deep and complicated adult issues and moved away from Anna for a bit.

Overall, I just couldn't put this book down. As sad as it was (and perhaps it wasn't the best choice for a weekend spent celebrating my wedding anniversary with my husband due to all the broken marriages in the book), I enjoyed it thoroughly. Another good book from across the pond!

Book Review: Jane Austen: A Life Revealed by Catherine Reef

2011-05-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

Published by: Clarion Books, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published on: April 18, 2011
Page Count: 208
Genre: Juvenile Biography
My reading format: Advanced reading copy in Adobe Digital Editions from NetGalley
Available Formats: Hardcover

Jane Austen: A Life Revealed is a readable, easy to understand report on Jane Austen's life during the late 18th century and early 19th century in England. It's geared toward younger readers who may or may not have had prior experience with Austen. The book provides context on the social norms, politics, customs and ways of life of those living in England during Austen's time, which is helpful both for one who has never read Austen and is unfamiliar with Georgian England, and also a good review for those of us who haven't considered these things in a while.

Of course this title caught my eye immediately, having recently visited the Jane Austen Center in Bath and listened to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, so I had to know what Reef's take is on things. Her biographical information is fairly familiar to me, so I was looking for something a little bit different. What I liked the most about Reef's version of Austen's life is that a sense of mystery can be found within the pages. Reef's book is not much different than other accounts of Austen's life in that no new information is ever really turned up. A limited number of the several thousand letters Austen wrote during her lifetime have survived (most were destroyed by her family members), so our view into her world and her personality is limited. We do know enough, Reef maintains, to have reason to believe that Austen had a certain amount of sass in her personality.

Reef's biography is full of good information on Austen for those who haven't read her novels before (generous summaries of each major work are included, which should help young readers decide which one to start with), and which should inspire a whole new generation of Janeites.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

2011-05-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I finished reading a delightful book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It's an epistolary book (written solely in letters), and I didn't feel, not even one time, that this kept me from getting in on the action or getting to know the characters as well as I wanted to. The book takes place first in London where author and journalist Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger living on Guernsey (an island in the English Channel) asking for assistance in finding a certain book in London. Juliet obliges and her correspondence with the reader leads her to write letters back and forth with several of his friends, all part of the organization in the title of the book. Later, Juliet, convinced she may be able to write a story about these charming people on this island, visits Guernsey to see them for herself. Guernsey had been occupied by the Germans during World War II and its English residents had been cut off from the rest of the world. The book takes place in the first few years after the war when everyone in Europe is getting back on their feet.

This book fits in so well with my current World War II obsession, and since I'm doing a lot of reading on this topic at the moment, I was glad to have some perspective. Some parts of the book wouldn't have meant quite so much otherwise. For example, the grandson of one of the letter writers from the island has recently returned to Guernsey after spending the War years on a farm in Yorkshire to escape German occupation and potential danger. Not all the children in Guernsey were sent to the mainland. The grandparent reports, "It was a terrible thing to decide - send your kiddies away to live among strangers, or let them stay with you? Maybe the Germans wouldn't come, but if they did - how would they behave to us? But, come to that, what if they invaded England, too - how would the children manage without their own families beside them?" (p. 122).

I've heard members of the Greatest Generation talk about gathering around a household's only radio each evening to hear news of the War. Anne Frank and her fellow housemates knew what was going on during the War because they listened to forbidden stations on the office radio. This brings me to one of my favorite parts of the book when Juliet tells her publisher of the stories she's hearing about life during the War for Guernsey residents: "A reporter asked a Guernsey Islander, 'What was the most difficult experience you had during the Germans' rule?'....The Islander told him, 'You know they took away all of our wireless sets? If you were caught having a hidden radio, you'd get sent off to prison on the continent. Well, those of us who had secret radios, we heard about the Allies landing in Normandy. Trouble was, we weren't supposed to know it had happened! Hardest thing I ever did was walk around St. Peter Port on June 7, not grinning, not smiling, not doing anything to let those Germans know that I KNEW their end was coming. If they'd caught on, someone would be in for it - so we had to pretend. It was very hard to pretend not to know D-Day had happened'" (p. 135).

And, two more of my favorite lines include: "Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true" (p. 10) and "That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason that sheer enjoyment" (pp. 11-12).

Sheer enjoyment is what I got out of this book. If Juliet were a real person, I'd want her to be my friend. My book club is discussing this book next week, and I can't wait to see what smartness we can come up with during discussion.

The Book Versus the Movie

2011-05-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

Have you ever liked a movie more than the book that preceded it? That almost never happens to me, except for recently with Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. I listened to the audiobook about three years ago, and recently saw the movie. I thought the movie was very well done. I didn't think of Twilight each time Robert Pattinson was on screen. I like Reese Witherspoon in the role of Marlena, and I thought her husband, August (played by Christopher Waltz), made my skin crawl in just the right way.The elephant in the movie was just beautiful.

I remember when I finished listening to the audiobook that I felt like I had somehow missed something big, because otherwise, I would have liked the book a lot more. Then, as the movie release approached and I heard that more and more people had read and liked the book I figured I'd better go see it. I'm glad I did. I liked the movie so much that I'm on the waiting list at the library to borrow the book to read this time instead of listen to.

Have you seen this movie or read this book? What did you think? Are there any books you've read where you liked the movie version better?

P.S. I bought May's issue of Vogue because Reese Witherspoon is on the cover. I really enjoyed the story. She seems like such a nice person. Self-assured. Normal. Unlike other celebrities out there.

What Women Want

2011-05-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

When I’d show up for class in college on the day we’d start talking about a new work, one of my favorite things was hearing my professor lecture for a bit on the author of the work, giving context and insight into their life, their work and how the two were intertwined. Now I really enjoy works of fiction and movies that depict authors’ lives, drawing conclusions, filling in blank spaces and speculating on what might have been going on in an author’s life. In this genre I have read The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James and watched Becoming Jane, among other works about both Austen and other authors. It’s fun to think about what lives authors were leading before, during and after the writing of their notable works. What has been left out of their biographies? Lost or unrequited loves? Dissatisfaction with home and family life? A secret desire to have a certain type of career? In many cases we’ll never know for sure, which for me is part of the fun.

Last week I read The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees just after finishing reading Little Women for the first time since high school or maybe even middle school. A friend of mine had also just finished The Lost Summer and asked me what about the work was fiction and what was written based on truth. Of the top of my head, I knew Alcott’s father, Bronson, was a free-spirited Transcendentalist philosopher who never earned quite enough money to support his wife and four daughters comfortably. I knew Alcott was the second of four sisters and is often thought to have written her character Jo to reflect herself.

These things were reflected in The Lost Summer, and the author notes at the end of the novel that she had been on a quest to find out about the real Alcott, as her biographies portray her in different ways (now I’m interested in reading some of those biographies for myself). Once McNees discovered in one of the biographies that Alcott often burned letters she received after reading them, she latched on to that and began to form a story around a supposed love affair (Alcott’s love interest in the novel is a fictional character). She set the story during a summer when the Alcott family lived temporarily in Walpole, New Hampshire, where not much is known about how Alcott spent her time while she was there.

The book was well-researched and seemed very real to me, contributing more to the enjoyment I got out of reading it. Also, I was happy to have just read Little Women again, which is a story I just adore. I’m still hanging on to my VHS tape of the 1994 movie version starring Susan Sarandon, Wynona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Samantha Mathis, Gabriel Byrne, Claire Danes and Christian Bale. I think it’s about time to watch it again.

It was interesting to be reading The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott while listening to Leslie Bennetts’ The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? in the car. Since I don’t have children, I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but it’s an interesting subject considering that I have friends that are moms. Some have chosen to keep working and some have put careers on hold to make parenting at home their full-time job. (**Note: I’m not taking a position on the mommy wars, just simply reporting that I’ve read an interesting, thought-provoking book!)

Bennetts’ stance is that women who fool themselves into assuming they’ll always be financially taken care of by their husbands are assuming too much. With a high divorce rate, an unstable economy and risks of disability, medical issues and death, stay at home moms are taking a huge risk by giving up their own income to rely solely on their husbands’.

In The Lost Summer, Alcott struggles with the fact that she’s different from every other unmarried young woman in Walpole and Boston in that she has absolutely no desire to change her marital status. That makes her different and it’s a hard concept for some, like her landlady in Boston, to understand. She says things like, “The dainty ones [women] look pretty in a sitting room, ma’am, but when a woman is making her way in the world on her own, she must resolve to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.” She thinks to herself, “Was it too much to ask to simply be left alone? It seemed her very existence as a single woman invited speculation and offers of help, as if it were simply impossible that she truly might not want to be married.”

Bennetts cites woman after woman who is left in the lurch after her husband runs off with a younger woman from the office, is diagnosed with terminal cancer or just decides marriage isn’t for him, and she has to earn a living to provide for herself and her children. Bennetts give a lot of evidence on why and how it’s so hard to jump back into the labor force once you’ve been out, even if just for a little while. (This book was published in March 2008. I would LOVE to get Bennetts’ take on this topic now that the economy has tanked and some families have been forced to get really creative to keep their households going.)

I guess women have been struggling with some of the same things for centuries, trying to decide what’s best for them. I expect going forward that will stay the same.

Gatsby

2011-05-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of fun in the past couple of years rereading the classics that were on my required reading lists in high school. As it turns out, as much as I enjoyed them before and as much as they influenced me to keep the literary analysis going by majoring in English in college, I've enjoyed them even more by rereading them 10 to 15 years later. Jane Eyre, The Scarlett Letter, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Little Women and several others all fall into this category, and so does F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic masterpiece: The Great Gatsby.

I read this novel for the first time as a junior in high school and for the second about two summers ago while at the beach. I loved it so much more the second time, and I'm now so, so hoping that rumors of a movie version turn out to be true (I can see Leonardo DiCaprio as Nick Carraway; what about you?). Three more Gatsby-related things have recently popped up on my radar: 1) The house said to inspire Fitzgerald during the writing of the novel was recently torn down (read about it); 2) I recently listened to Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise on my iPod while training for the latest half marathon (the book that first brought Fitzgerald notoriety as a writer); and 3) I listened to The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek recently in the car.

I'm always sad when historic buildings have to be torn down, and this one is no different. It just seems a shame that a place with a grand past but some wear and tear can't be restored by someone. It's especially sad when a house has such literary significance.

The Summer We Read Gatsby was a fun read, and I was glad to have already read and enjoyed the original novel, though this new one was just a fun story, such that could be enjoyed as a summer beach read due to its length, quirky and funny characters, mystery and setting.

Speaking of summer reading, I just can't wait to get my hands on a few things I've been dying to read. To me, a vacation anywhere is the perfect way to enjoy a story. I'll be reading lots and lots this summer and of course, reporting it here.

Disappointing Post-Katrina Read

2011-05-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

In light of an upcoming trip to New Orleans, I'd really been looking forward to reading a book I'd heard about by Julia Reed called The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story. Reed is a writer who had never put solid roots down anywhere for about 20 years when she decided to marry and buy a fixer upper in the Garden District. The house had once been very grand and needed a lot of work, which the couple started with the hire of a general contractor and a host of laborers only four weeks before Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast. All of that sounds interesting, right? Here's where I began to grow frustrated. While I enjoyed the funny anecdotes at the beginning of the book, and Reed's writing style throughout, at some point my opinion turned and I started to not like her New Orleans story so much.

I remember very well watching all the coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath back in 2005. The weekend after the storm when the levees had broken in New Orleans and the chaos was just heartbreaking and unbelievable, a friend was visiting me for the weekend. We absolutely could not turn away from the reports on CNN. I won't ever forget the images of people and animals being lifted from rooftops by helicopter, those unfortunate people waiting for help along the bridge and the terrible reports that were coming out of the Superdome. Each image of a demolished house with spray painting indicating that it had been checked for bodies was haunting.

Reed only touches on these things likely because she didn't have these experiences. First, she and her husband were luckier than many New Orleans residents in that they owned a car and had the money to buy gas and had a place to stay elsewhere. Second, she and her husband have connections all over Louisiana and Mississippi, and I will say that they used those connections for good. However, I realized at some point that Reed was more focused on dropping the names of all the notable people she associates with in New Orleans and all those people to whom she gave money. Couldn't she have left these things out? When it started to be a focus of the book, and no longer a focus on her beautiful home or the city of New Orleans itself, I lost interest quickly. For example, she starts dropping money like crazy after the storm, helping people who'd worked on her house, been servers at parties she'd thrown over the years, etc. Then, she ordered barbecue enough for 700 National Guard troops who were watching her neighborhood, and she didn't even ask the price. Not to mention all the expense incurred to do over a historic home twice. There's no doubt that she was trying to help those who needed it, but my goodness, did she have to tell us over and over and over again that she gave/sent so-and-so money?

Reed must be friends with nearly every notable person in New Orleans, and she mentioned each one of them by name in the book. A few weeks after the hurricane, Reed tells about all the restaurant reopenings she attended each night as the city was coming back to life. Fun, yes, and I know that's what New Orleans is all about most of the time. But what about all those folks who were still eating meals fixed by church mission teams because that's all they could get?

Don't take this the wrong way. I finished this book just as excited to see New Orleans as I had been before. And I know that everyone is entitled to share his or her story the way he or she experienced it, and Reed has certainly exercised that right in her book. Though I haven't been there before, the media portrays the city as a place of the very poor and the very rich. Reed clearly hangs with the very rich (or at least the very connected), and I think the resilience of the regular folks with less options was more what I wanted to read about. This leaves me with the desire to read something about the regular folks in New Orleans and how they've risen above the destruction. Does anyone have a suggestion for me?

Three Cups of Tea Allegations

2011-04-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

Recently it's come to the forefront that Greg Mortenson and his organization, Central Asia Institute, which has built schools for girls throughout Afghanistan, may be stretching the truth. I thought Mortenson's two books, Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools were fascinating, and Three Cups of Tea made my own top 10 for 2009. In fact, I was so moved by that book I felt called to take some action, but never ended up writing that check and sending it to the Central Asia Institute headquartered in Montana. It's a good thing I didn't, because Mortenson, whether guilty or innocent, sure is acting squirrely. 60 Minutes recently featured a segment on the investigations into the schools Mortenson has supposedly built, as well as the accounting practices of his organization. My guess is that if he had nothing to hide and if he knew that he and his Institute were 100% in the clear, he would have accepted 60 Minutes' invitation to appear and clear his own name. Instead, he refused to be interviewed with the program, and at the end of their segment, when he was approached, he looks like a deer in the headlights. Isn't it disappointing to think that someone who professes to do so much good may not have done all the good he says he has?

New Novel: Grayton Beach Affair by James Harvey

2011-04-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

I recently read Atlanta area author James Harvey's debut novel, Grayton Beach Affair, for a local magazine (that post is here). I've just heard from Harvey that he has a book signing this Saturday, April 29 at Peerless Book Store from 1-3 pm. Peerless is new at it's in Rivermont Station shopping center at 8465 Holcomb Bridge Rd, exit 7 on the east side of GA-400. Go check it out!

World War II Reading

2011-04-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

I’m on a bit of a World War II kick at the moment. I’ve got more reading up to do on the subject, but after having just finished two related books last week, I think I can rest for a moment and type out what I’m thinking. I’ve long since been fascinated by this time in our history, and I think it’s mostly thanks to reading The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time at age 11 and being the same age as the writer, and also because my four grandparents were young adults during the War, and I know all sorts of snippets from them about what life was like for them then.

My grandmothers were both in college during the war. One grandfather was in Officer Training School stateside and the War ended before he finished and was deployed. There are a bunch of pictures of the other grandfather walking around the French countryside in the snow with either a cigarette in his hand or what was likely a M1 Garand rifle, the standard issued weapon for most Army infantrymen during WWII. The first three grandparents talked about life during the War, and the other one, the one who saw all the action, never did. I have no idea what he experienced and he’s not here anymore to tell me if I asked.

My interest in the War hasn’t changed over the years, and it was something I paid close attention to when in London. I picked up several books on the subject, and I have already talked about three of them here, here and here.

Last week I read Churchill Goes to War: Winston’s Wartime Journeys by Brian Lavery and listened to The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. To be quite honest, the first was a bit of a bore for me. The book outlined all the logistics involved in transporting Churchill from place to place during the War on the down-low. It just wasn’t the right book for me when what I wanted to know was how he operated during the War, but when in London. I had hoped to see more mention and detail on Olive Christopher, one of Churchill’s secretaries who did some traveling with his entourage. She was only briefly mentioned in a few places, getting no more than a paragraph each time. I really liked the book I read about her at the end of 2010, and hoped I’d get a hefty portion of third person interpretation on Christopher, and that would be an interesting perspective to supplement what I already know about her. A well-research book though. I did learn a few things.

On the other hand, I thought The Postmistress was possibly the best book I’ve read so far in 2011 (it will probably make the top 10 list for the year). In it was an American broadcaster in London, the Blitz, life on the American home front and plenty of dramatic irony to keep me happy. There was so much going on and end the end, characters start coming together in a way that really wowed me. This was truly an excellent book. Read it if you haven’t. You won’t be sorry.

So what I have so far: accounts Churchill’s travels, of a London child sent to the country during the Blitz, of the Blitz from an American adult perspective, a German soldier dropped off on the American Gulf Coast to carry out a top-secret mission and of a civilian secretary working closely with Churchill. More reading is to come. On the horizon I have a fictional account of London children in the country, The Guernsey Potato Peel and Literary Society, two more biographies on Churchill and the story of a German civilian in Berlin in 1940.

More to come.

Animal Dreams and Erin Brockovich

2011-04-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'd been wanting to read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle for a couple of years before I finally did recently. And I've known I should read some of her other stuff too, as I've been told she's a fantastic writer and storyteller. I think the first time I knew of her was when Oprah chose her book The Poisonwood Bible for her book club in 2000. During my book club's December meeting we exchanged used books Dirty Santa-style and I ended up with Kingsolver's Animal Dreams and I finished reading it a couple of weeks ago.

I really enjoyed it. It turned out to be one of my favorite kinds of stories, the kind when a female character, in need of a life change, takes a chance and good things come about. While all that was going on, the main character, Codi Noline, who graduated from medical school but never became a doctor, discovered while wading around in a creek with her high school biology students, that the living microorganisms that should have been flourishing there aren't. She sounds the alarm and gets the women from the local Stitch and Bitch Club riled up and they all start doing something about it.

It reminded me so much (in a good way) of the movie Erin Brockovich that I ordered it off Netflix and watched it the other night. The same kind of thing is going on. A mom, desperate for a job, begs for one at a small law firm, and is both pushy and likable enough that she both convinces her boss to keep her and convinces the residents of Hinkley, California, to trust her to help hold the nearby corporation that was ruining the environment and their health. She even earns the respect she deserves from this evil corporation, its attorneys and anyone else who doubted her from the get-go.

Donna Leon

2011-04-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading my third Donna Leon mystery, Death and Judgment, and have two more sitting on my bookshelf to read. Although I'm typically not much of a mystery reader, I am thoroughly enjoying Leon's descriptions of one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, Venice, and her main character, Commissario Guido Brunetti. I still have a long way to go, as Leon has just released her 20th book in the series, Drawing Conclusions. To coincide with this publication, USA Today ran a Q&A with Leon this week, which you can read here.

Eudora Welty Exhibit

2011-04-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to the Atlanta History Center to check out the Eudora Welty exhibit that's moving on May 8. Eudora Welty: Exposures and Reflections was a room full of her beautiful, telling photography taken all across Mississippi during the Great Depression while Welty was employed by the Works Progress Administration. I remembered many of the photographs from seeing them during a memoir class in graduate school when I read Welty's wonderful One Writer's Beginnings. The timing of this exhibit was great for me since only a month ago or so I was touring her Jackson, Mississippi, home and driving all over her hometown. It's a great exhibit and I'm glad I got the chance to see it. If you're in the Atlanta area and can make it before it moves on in three weeks, go.

Typewriters

2011-04-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

I love old typewriters. One of my earliest memories is of my dad hunched over the typewriter in the room that would later be my younger sister's, typing out purchase orders and business letters (to this day he still uses the hunt-and-peck typing method). The typewriter had been my mom's in college, and we also had my grandfather's college typewriter around the house. Both were manual, of course, and you had to mash the keys down pretty hard to get the letters to appear at the right darkness to be legible and consistent.

Also when I was little, my grandmother had in her home office an electric typewriter, which I thought was one of the best toys ever. After pounding the keys of the two manual typewriters at my house, I found the keys of her typewriter to be almost too sensitive. (It was the color of Grey Poupon and was still in the same spot when she died two years ago.) I made lots of mistakes, and I don't remember her machine having correction tape.

I think I was in the sixth grade when I asked for a typewriter for either Christmas or my birthday. It, too, was electric (fancy!) and I could backspace and white out over mistakes I'd made, retyping right over it as if I'd never made a mistake! A few years later my family broke down and bought a word processor, the step between a typewriter and a computer, and finally, my parents bought their first computer after I had gone to college.

Now that I'm on my laptop the better part of most days writing, researching, editing what someone else has written and a host of other work- and fun-related things, I can't even imagine what it would take for me to write something just straight out. The way I write things is usually not start to finish. I can't even think of what it would be like for me if I had to retype a page each time I thought to insert a new paragraph somewhere in the middle. But I guess I would if I had to.

So with all that said, I just loved a series of photos I found via Twitter (be sure to follow me @betsyrhame) yesterday of writers with their typewriters (also note how many of these authors have a burning cigarette in their hands. I love that too. Not something you see too much anymore). Check it out.

Class Reunions

2011-04-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

Two books I've just finished, coincidentally, both have to do with reunions. I listened to The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg and read The Group by Mary McCarthy. Berg's novel was written from the perspective of several modern-day characters, all convening at their 40th high school reunion. By the time each alumnus arrives at the event, I knew all about each character's background and their various regrets and heartbreaks (there were many).

The Group is structured much the same way, except we meet the seven 1933 Vassar College graduates first at one character's wedding following graduation. Then the rest of the book, until almost the end, tells about each woman's life over the next seven years (most characters interact with at least another friend of two throughout). Then at the end of the book the characters all come back together to attend the funeral of the classmate who married at the beginning. Much like with Berg's characters, McCarthy's women face a variety of issues: marital disharmony, mental illness, aging parents, declining physical health, modern motherhood and careers. I enjoyed both of these books very much, even though they were both, overall, very sad.

I think these books both gave me pause mostly because I've only had two reunions so far (one high school and one college), and another is on the horizon this spring, and I've yet to experience the death of a close classmate (thank goodness). Both the reunions I've attended so far have been overwhelmingly positive and fun, but then, so were my high school and college years. I hope each time I go to a reunion it's the same way. I'm holding out high hopes for my 10th college reunion coming up next month. I had so much fun with my classmates at our five year gathering that it ranks right up there with the best weekends I've ever had, the only better one being when I got married. Here's hoping that my 2001 college classmates are just as great, if not better, than we were when we graduated.

Frances Mayes and The Georgia Center for the Book

2011-03-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

I mentioned last week that I'd be going to hear Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun and other books. It's been quite a while since I've been to hear an author speak and I quite enjoyed it. She's got a soft yet wonderful Southern accent, and she read to the audience for about 40 minutes before taking questions. It seems quite a few people are interested in visiting her in Italy. She was very good at deflecting their directness. I imagine she deals with her readers' boldness all the time.

Mayes is on a tour promoting her latest book about life in Italy called Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life, and it's just out in paperback. I don't yet have a copy of it, but I imagine I will soon. I'm really hoping her next book will be something along the lines of the one I enjoyed so much on the plane back from London, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller, which wasn't about Italy much at all.

One interesting thing Mayes mentioned is that her publisher has talked her into writing a blog, and you can find it here.

This event and many others, including the To Kill a Mockingbird lecture and dramatic reading I attended last year, is all thanks to the Georgia Center for the Book, which keeps bringing those of us in the Atlanta area program after program of book-related fabulousness. You can view their upcoming schedule of events here.

Making Connections

2011-03-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

The other night while watching Jane Eyre, the thought occurred to me that young Jane Eyre, while in boarding school, reminds me very much of another heroine I've just read about. Last week I finished reading Lee Smith's On Agate Hill, a book that begins on a worn-down plantation home in North Carolina during Reconstruction, and is the diary of a spunky young girl named Molly. Molly, like Jane is an orphan and is sent to a boarding school to be educated and get out from under foot. While in school each girl makes one very good friend, and each friend comes down with an illness and passes. Particularly sad, I think, for these two girls who have already lost so much in life. The good new is, however, both heroines find love, happiness and purpose later in life.

Jane Eyre Movie

2011-03-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty excited about the Jane Eyre movie coming out. I've been looking forward to it for months and I've done several things to get prepared. First, one of my book clubs chose it as the March book, so I reread it a couple of weeks ago. Second, Goodreads has been promoting the movie as well by holding a contest where you read the book, take a quiz and register to win free movie tickets. Well, guess what? I won two tickets to the premiere which was last night, and took a friend with me.

As I reread the novel, I enjoyed it so much more than when I read it for school (both in high school and graduate school I think) - very much like my reread of Age of Innocence, The Great Gatsby and other classics I've reread in the past couple of years. I had a hard time putting it down, which worked out well since the second half of the book was read while I was on vacation and I had some extra time to devote to reading.

Finally, I went to see the movie last night and was very satisfied with the way it was done. I like the creative license taken with the arrangement of the movie - the movie opens near the middle of the book. And, a long book was condensed into a two-hour movie. Though some things, like Jane's relationship with the Rivers family, was glazed over, nothing was left out so much that I felt the book wasn't being done justice. And, even with being shortened everything still made sense. The ending was done a bit differently from the book but worked I'd say. And even though I've just reread the book, it took seeing the movie to remind me what a creepy story it is (old creaky house, storms, crazy lady in the attic, etc.).

I'll be seeing it again with my book club Monday night, followed by a discussion of book versus movie. Good thing I liked it as much as I did!

New Stories from the South 2010

2011-03-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

Novels have always been my thing. I've never been crazy about all the poetry I studied over the years, and I tend to like short stories only a little bit more than I like poems. I think it all has to do with character development and my attachment to characters as a I read a book. Many times I've felt like I just didn't have enough time to get to know someone I suspect I'll really like before the story ends. It's kind of like making friends with a neighbor who has lived near you a long time, but you don't start to get to know each other until one of you is just about to move. I've recently read two short story collections that are about to make me change my mind about short stories and their characters.

I've been working my way through a book I won on Facebook, New Stories from the South 2010, published by Algonquin Books in Chapel Hill, NC. The 25 stories in this book feature memorable, hilarious, haunting, dramatic, crazy characters doing great things, dumb things and every kind of thing in between. They are in situations familiar to many of us, and those we should hope to never be in. Overall, the collection is a heavy one, so if you're planning to pick this up to read, pace yourself. Read one story at a time and take a break. Let the characters and their words, situations and actions sink in before you move on to the next one.

I also won the other short story collection through a Goodreads giveaway. It's called Quiet Americans by Erika Dreifus (bonus: she personalized and autographed my book!). It's a short read - just seven stories - but the stories also deal with big issues and require reflection on the reader's part. But my very favorite thing about this collection is that the seven stories are related to each other because the characters in each story are related to one another. I won't give it all away but once I figured out what was going on, it was fun to discover the connection each story had to the rest in the collection. All are beautiful tales of Jewish life: Berlin under Nazi power, an American Jew supervising German prisoners at a POW camp and the descendants of concentration camp survivors in New York City are just a few.

Like I said, these two short story collections have shed new light for me and I'm looking to find more good short stories to dive into. Any recommendations?

Ian McEwan Novels

2011-03-15T07:49:00.000-07:00

Years ago my grandmother asked me if I'd ever read any of Ian McEwan's novels. When I told her no, she came back with something along the lines of, "Well, you'd better." Jump ahead a few years to the release of the movie Atonement. I read the novel in preparation and then saw it with two friends. I enjoyed both immensely, and this one is right up there in the plot-twists-I-never-saw-coming category.

This year I nominated another McEwan novel, Saturday, as a book club pick for one of the groups I'm in, and the book didn't get chosen. It's still on my own list to read though. Then, at a recent used book sale at the Decatur Library, I found Amsterdam for 50 cents (winner of the Booker Prize in 1998). It's less than 200 pages and I breezed right through it in a couple of sittings. The plot in this one's twisty too, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then again, I seem to love any story that involved ethics decisions in journalism (Almost Famous, All the President's Men, etc.). Read and enjoy!

Where One Writer Began

2011-03-14T10:02:00.000-07:00

Eudora Welty once wrote, "Location is the ground conductor of all the currents of emotion and belief and moral conviction that charge out from the story in its course." Last week I spent four days in Mississippi with my parents and one of the highlights for me was seeing Welty's home in Jackson. I mentioned recently that I loved One Writer's Beginnings when I read it in graduate school. Even though it's been several years since reading her memoir, much of it came back to me upon visiting her hometown.

Here is the home she lived in from age 16 until she dies in 2001 at age 92. Much like Carl Sandburg's home in Flat Rock, NC, Welty's home has been left just as she had it in the 1980s when she was doing lots of writing and traveling. It's sunny with large, comfortable, functional rooms and ordinary, every day furniture. It looks like the kind of house anyone could live in. What I enjoyed most about the house were the books she had everywhere and her typewriter upstairs in her bedroom. I also loved that she spread her manuscripts out on the dining room table so she could view the piece as a whole, and often physically cut and pasted parts of pages together to rearrange the order of her stories.

As we were wrapping up with our tour guide, we had the pleasure of meeting the former director of the home and Welty's niece, who favors her aunt for sure.

This was the first time I have visited Jackson, and I particularly liked two downtown landmarks that are associated with Welty. First, the Lamar Life building (below with the clock tower) was her father's insurance company. After reading One Writer's Beginnings, I know Welty associated clocks and time with her father, so it was wonderful to see that his building boasted a clock.

As a child, Welty often roller skated to the library from her childhood home near downtown Jackson. In her path was the Capitol Building, and she usually skated right through the lobby.

Just before leaving town, we drove to her childhood home (it looks like it's a private residence today). I tried to snap a good picture but this is all I could get. The house is just down the street from an elementary school that was letting out. There were parents' cars and buses everywhere, and a police officer told us to move on.

All of this helped put Welty in perspective for me. I think it's time to do some rereading!

2011-03-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

I recently received a press release from an organization working hard to curtail childhood obesity. I promised I'd help spread the word, so here goes. It's for a great cause and involves writing.

NFL’s Buffalo Bills #99 Marcus Stroud and Team Tiger Foundation Announce “Sacking Obesity” Children’s Essay Contest

More than 200 Kids’ Winning Essays Will Be Selected to Attend ‘Sacking Obesity’ Sports & Wellness Camp for Kids Saturday, April 16, 2011 at the Georgia Dome

Atlanta, GA – Childhood obesity continues to plague our nation as the number of adolescents and children designated as overweight or obese rises to epidemic proportions. According to Georgia Children’s Health Alliance, a 2005 study showed more than 43 percent of Georgia’s third-graders are overweight or obese. To help combat this epidemic, NFL’s Buffalo Bills #99 starting defensive tackle Marcus Stroud and Team Tiger, a non-profit organization founded by 12-year-old Alpharetta resident Tiger Greene, have teamed up to present ‘Sacking Obesity: Sports and Wellness Camp” – an exciting sports and wellness camp for kids on Saturday, April 16, 2011 at the Georgia Dome.

Contest rules and essay entry forms can be downloaded at www.marcusstroudcharitablefoundation.com or www.teamtiger2010.com. Students, ages 7 to 15, that fall into the national criteria for childhood obesity are eligible to enter the essay contest. Entrants will be asked to complete the official entry form along with an original essay of 75 words or more explaining why they want to attend the Sacking Obesity Wellness Camp. Winning entries will be judged by the board of Team Tiger organization. Deadline for entries is March 10, 2011. Winning entries will be notified on March 15, 2011.

On Friday, April 15, 2011, Marcus Stroud and Team Tiger will host the Marcus Stroud Charitable Foundation’s 2^nd annual Ball: “Casino Royale: Sacking Obesity” at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Atlanta. All proceeds from the Gala, including ticket sales, corporate sponsorships and silent auction donations, will help provide camp scholarships for more than 200 kids selected with winning essays to participate in the Sacking Obesity camp to be held the following day at the Georgia Dome.

For more information, visit www.marcusstroudcharitablefoundation.com and www.teamtiger2010.com.

Author Reading: Frances Mayes

2011-03-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've attended an author event, so I'm particularly excited that I can go to one this week and see an author I'm crazy about. Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany and A Year in the World, will speak at First Baptist Church in Decatur on Tuesday, March 15 at 7 (doors open at 6 and it's free). She has a new book out that I haven't purchased or read yet called Every Day in Tuscany, but I can't wait to get my hands on it. Under the Tuscan Sun is on The Georgia Center for the Book's list of Books all Georgians Should Read 2010.

Mmmmmm...Barbeque

2011-03-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, food ranks right up there for most of us. I consider barbecue from my home state, North Carolina, to be just about the best thing there is. We had it at the rehearsal dinner before my wedding, and I can't even start to count how many weddings, rehearsal dinners, graduation parties and birthday parties I've been to over the years where we took the pork for our sandwiches right off the hog. I was awfully excited when I got the opportunity to explore Georgia barbecue in a 12-county area east of Atlanta for Georgia Connector Magazine. I tried some fantastic barbecue and found it to be much like the Eastern North Carolina pulled pork I'm used to. Don't worry; I like Western North Carolina barbecue just as much, and while I've been watching the ACC Tournament this weekend in Greensboro, I keep thinking about one of the best places there is for that kind: Stamey's which is right across the street from the Greensboro Coliseum where all the hoops are happening.

Here are a few of my other favorite places:
Clyde Cooper's, Raleigh, NC
Ole Time Barbecue, Raleigh, NC
Red Hot and Blue, Raleigh, NC (Memphis style)
Jackson's Big Oak Barbecue, Wilmington, NC
Stamey's Barbecue, Greensboro, NC
Fox Brothers BBQ, Atlanta
Daddy Dz BBQ Joynt, Atlanta
Rendezvous, Memphis

World War II Books

2011-03-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the pleasure of reading a new book from a first-time author called Grayton Beach Affair, and then interviewed the author, James Harvey, an Atlanta area resident, for a story in Simply Buckhead Magazine. It's a love story set during World War II in the Florida Panhandle, Atlanta, Germany and France. I enjoyed reading the book, interviewing the author and now, seeing the story in print. It had quite a few of the things I like to read: a strong central female character, both internal and external conflicts, a sense of place and something I don't want to put down.

It was the perfect transition into the additional reading I've been doing. I've always been interested in reading about that time period, likely thanks to Anne Frank, and I've only grown more interested after visiting Churchill's War Rooms in London. I promise there will be no more Jane Austen posts for now; I'm going to move on to the theme of war and will be reading some fiction and nonfiction books from the World War II and Civil War eras over the next little while. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook

2011-02-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

For Southerners, food is a pretty big deal. Let's hope there's never a birthday party in my family without my grandmother's caramel cake, no Thanksgiving without a turkey smoked on the grill by my dad or sweet potato casserole with pecans on top, or Easter dinner without a ham. I love to cook, and when I get a new cookbook I just can't wait to go through it and flag all the recipes I'd like to cook one day. I ordered The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook with a Christmas gift card, and it's just arrived. I can't wait to read it from cover to cover and dream about all the things I want to make!

The King's Speech

2011-02-02T14:50:00.000-08:00

I recently rewarded myself after completing several big projects in January by going to see The King's Speech on a weekday afternoon by myself, which was quite a treat. I like any movie with Colin Firth, and this one was no exception. The film has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards, so I can't wait to see how it does at the Oscars on February 27. It was a wonderful story and what made it even more enjoyable for me was that it is a true story. As my obsession with British royalty continues, I'm now looking for suggestions on any reading having to do with King George VI. You can hear one of his famous wartime speeches on YouTube.

Better World Books

2011-02-02T14:38:00.000-08:00

I frequent my libraries and I'm pretty frugal when it comes to buying books. I try to buy used and never purchase a brand new hardcover. Since moving to Atlanta, I've yet to find a bookstore that I love as much as Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books (my favorite!), so I've taken to ordering books online rather than purchasing them at a big retailer. Amazon is great, but my very, very favorite is a lesser-known but similar company called Better World Books. They have eco-friendly shipping, fund literacy programs worldwide and are just all-around do-gooders. I love them.

Can you imagine how excited I was to get an email from one of their employees asking me if I'd be willing to participate in market research and usability testing for their website? Until then I didn't even realize they had an office in the Atlanta area. Last week I sat with one of their product usability specialists and we went through their website, talking about the pros and cons, and the ease of finding and ordering books from their site.

I love when someone asks for my opinion on something, because I almost always have one! Then, to sweeten it just that much more, the books I searched for as part of the usability test are in the process of being shipped to my home. And even better, they stayed true to their dedication to literacy by donating to the cause of my choosing, which was my spring 2010 pet project, KIPP Scribes (which has just started for 2011 - more on that in a later post).

A great company is Better World Books. You should order from them. I'll make it easy for you. If you comment on any of my 2011 blog posts before the end of February, I'll send you a discount code to use on your first order.

Happy book shopping!

Eudora Welty Exhibit

2011-01-31T17:29:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite classes in graduate school was the memoir. In it, for the first time I read One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty, which I loved. I was also exposed to Welty's photography. As a government employee, she traveled the South during the Depression photographing country folks in Mississippi, her home state. They are beautiful, if sometimes haunting, photographs. I'm so excited that an exhibit of her photography work is opening at the Atlanta History Center this weekend, running through May 8. I can't wait to check it out.

Buckhead Book Club

2011-01-31T06:49:00.000-08:00

I have mentioned from time to time the book clubs I'm in. I love reading a book at the same time as someone else, and being able to dig in and discuss it when we've finished. There is a great deal of community to be found amongst readers, and since reading is a pretty solitary activity, I think that's great. Recently, I had the good fortune of gaining a freelancing gig with the new Simply Buckhead magazine. It comes out six times per year, and in each issue I'll be writing a story that is both Buckhead- and book-focused. The January/February issue was published last week and my first story ran about a book club in Buckhead that was formed about 45 years ago. It was fun to talk to the club's coordinator who has been around since the beginning.

Snowed In: What I Read

2011-01-20T19:23:00.000-08:00

Last week Atlanta had the biggest winter weather event since, I hear from those who have lived here for a while, 1993. At my house we were covered in six inches of snow with ice on top. I didn't leave the house from Sunday to Thursday. I had some editing to do of an academic journal, but was also able to get in a lot of relaxation, hot chocolate, watching Lost episodes on Netflix and, of course, reading. I caught up some on my stack of magazines, read The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a book I picked up in London called The Lady’s Book of Manners (no author, Copper Beech Publishing). All in all, a good week.

If you were snowed in, what did you read?