celebrating books & the literary lifestyle

Category: New! (Page 7 of 12)

These are the newest books I’ve recommended.

‘CLOCK DANCE’ & ‘THIS IS US’ ON COMMUNITY

As I was finishing up Clock Dance: A Novel by Anne Tyler this week, I found complementary ideas about “community” while watching my favorite show, NBC’s This is Us. 

This book starts by narrating the most defining moments in Willa’s life: As a young girl, her mother disappears; in college, she ponders a marriage proposal; and later she is a young widow. Fast forward some years, and she feels a bit lost while living in Phoenix with her new husband.

“Willa loved saguaros. She loved their dignity, their endurance. They were the only things in Arizona she felt a deep attachment to. The first time she saw one – a whole assemblage of them, actually, looming outside the airport last summer when she and Peter came to house hunt – it was like meeting some mythical race.”

I, too, loved the saguaros I saw in Phoenix area. I had never seen anything like them and couldn’t stop looking at them.  Where the arm meets the base – this part looks so fragile and strong at the same time.

But as amazing as saguaros are, they don’t make up for personal connections. When she’s called across the country to a stranger’s aid, Willa begins to find a purpose as she becomes part of a slightly eccentric community.

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OHIO – A NOVEL

I was oddly fascinated with Ohio by Stephen Markley, but I wouldn’t recommend it to all. It is heavy, disturbing, and obsessed with phantoms of “high school.” But I stayed up really late last night because I just had to finish it!

So I will tell you a bit about it, and you can decide for yourself whether it may be for you…

I did appreciate the narrative format, which I will also discuss in this post.

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THE RED SPARROW TRILOGY!!!

I previously posted on how much I loved reading Red Sparrow.

Read my post on Red Sparrow here. 

And after reading the next two books in this trilogy by Jason Matthews, I have to tell you more about this series; it has been one of my favorite reading experiences ever!! The final installment, The Kremlin’s Candidate: A Novel (The Red Sparrow Trilogy)was published earlier this year.

These Sparrow books are not my usual genre, and I hadn’t even planned to read them this summer, but they honestly have been my favorite books so far this year considering pure entertainment value.
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MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE SUMMER

As the summer winds down – and I consider it summer all the way through September!! – I am contemplating my favorite books from my summer reading list.

I am still finishing up a couple of these, but I am confident in which books I can whole heartedly recommend. I wrote a blog post on all of these (no spoilers!!), so if you want to know more about any of the books, click on the link that says “Read my post here.”

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‘THE DEATH OF MRS. WESTAWAY’

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware is an entertaining and suspenseful family mystery. Ware is of course known for her thriller The Woman in Cabin 10.

Harriet Westaway is 21 and is trying to make ends meet after losing her mom in a car accident. She is hard up for money and hiding from a loan shark. In her mail one day (in addition to a bunch of overdue bills) is a formal letter saying she has been named in the will of a “Mrs. Westaway” who had a significant estate. Harriet feels there must be some mistake as her grandma (who she didn’t even know) has been dead 20 years, but due to her desperate situation Harriet decides to go for it anyway!

What follows are twists and turns of a family drama as Harriet uses what she has learned as a tarot reader (how to read people and show them what they want) to attempt to collect this money. As emotions and history come into play, this task becomes both more difficult and easier than she expected.

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‘OUR HOUSE’ – a bizarre & addictive read

I just finished an addictive book from my summer reading list:

Our House by Louise Candlish

Fiona Lawson and her husband Bram have recently separated and  have agreed to a “bird’s nest custody agreement” where their kids stay in the house full time and the parents take turns living there (in their $2+ million property in a fashionable area of London.)

Everything seems to be working out fine with this arrangement until one day when Fiona finds strangers moving into her home, and this nice couple fully believes they just legally purchased the home. It must be a mistake…

What follows (and leads up to) this confusing scene is a web of mistakes and lies that spins WAY out of control.
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‘THE LOST VINTAGE’ – WINE & WWII

This summer I have been pleasantly surprised by the books on my summer reading list, and I have been reading more than ever because these books are keeping my attention, one after another.

Today I’m recommending The Lost Vintage: A Novel. 

I admit this book initially caught my attention because it’s about wine!!

Kate is trying to earn her Masters of Wine (M.W) which is awarded after an extremely strenuous and comprehensive exam; only around 300 people in the world hold a M.W. She will have to identify wine blindly naming the exact region it is from and its vintage. Ironically, she is doing well in identifying all varieties except for wine from the region of her family’s vineyard (Burgundy). It’s almost like she has something against Burgundy…

Alas, Kate will need to visit her family’s property in Burgundy to study this wine. And conveniently her first love runs the neighboring winery. This part of the story did not disappoint. But there was a whole other aspect of this story I was not even expecting:

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‘THE SUN DOES SHINE’ – A recommendation & giveaway

I interrupted my summer reading list to cry my way through (very quickly) The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah’s Book Club Summer 2018 Selection).

I read and recommend all types of books and sometimes I very strongly recommend books…a recent example is CIRCE...however there are some rare times when I so strongly want to recommend a book that I decide to GIVE ONE AWAY.

So today I have decided to set up a contest to give away a copy of this book by Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 30 years on Death Row as an innocent man. You may have seen it advertised as Oprah’s Summer selection. I glad it is her book club selection because I hope as many people as possible read this book.

(I will ship a book to the winner anywhere in the continental U.S. – see contest at the bottom of this post.)

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‘THE SUBWAY GIRLS’ – A PERFECT SUMMER READ

Continuing through my summer reading list, I truly enjoyed The Subway Girls: A Novel.

This charming book is partly historical fiction about two ambitious women in New York City. It is a perfect summer (or anytime) read.

The 1949 character is Charlotte who longs to work in advertising but is constrained by society’s and her family’s expectations for a women’s place in society. When the glamourous opportunity of the Miss Subways beauty contest (a real historical advertising campaign) presents itself, she has tough decisions to make.

The present day character is Olivia who has achieved success in advertising but still faces some misogyny and discrimination in the workforce. While pitching a new strategy to the NYC subway account, she uncovers the Miss Subways campaign and finds that she has a personal connection to a former Miss Subways.
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