What Are You Reading?

Sheila over at Book Journey hosts this meme that gives you the opportunity to share the books that you have been losing yourself in lately and also the ones that you are looking forward to picking up next.

Here is what I recently finished listening to:

I really enjoyed spending the month of August listening to Silver Girl by Elin Hilderbrand.  How I would love to spend a summer in Nantucket!  You will have to watch for my review of this audiobook.

What I'm reading now:

I decided to get a start on Everything We Ever Wanted by Sara Shepard for a TLC Blog Tour that I am a part of in October.  This one I decided to read on my Kindle.

And next is:

When I meet with my book club in October we will be discussing Angel Sister by Ann Gabhart so I'm thinking this should be the next book I read.  I really like the cover of this one!

I hope you all have a great Monday!  I'm having a Pampered Chef party tonight so I had better start getting things ready for that.

On another note, I know the BBAW is starting and I must have missed signing up for it this year!  How on earth could I let that happen!  Oh well, I will have fun stopping by all of your blogs and helping you celebrate anyway.

Blog Tour and Review: The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard

I'm very thankful once again to Trish from TLC Book Tours for inviting me to be a part of this tour for the newest novel by Joyce Maynard.  Maynard has proven once again to me that she is an exceptional author.  Here is a summary of The Good Daughters from the Harper Collins website:

They were born on the same day, in the same small New Hampshire hospital, into families that could hardly have been less alike. 

Ruth Plank is an artist and a romantic with a rich, passionate, imaginative life. The last of five girls born to a gentle, caring farmer and his stolid wife, she yearns to soar beyond the confines of the land that has been her family's birthright for generations. 

Dana Dickerson is a scientist and realist whose faith is firmly planted in the natural world. Raised by a pair of capricious drifters who waste their lives on failed dreams, she longs for stability and rootedness. 

Different in nearly every way, Ruth and Dana share a need to make sense of who they are and to find their places in a world in which neither has ever truly felt she belonged. They also share a love for Dana's wild and beautiful older brother, Ray, who will leave an indelible mark on both their hearts. 

Told in the alternating voices of Ruth and Dana, The Good Daughters follows these "birthday sisters" as they make their way from the 1950s to the present. Master storyteller Joyce Maynard chronicles the unlikely ways the two women's lives parallel and intersect—from childhood and adolescence to first loves, first sex, marriage, and parenthood; from the deaths of parents to divorce, the loss of home, and the loss of a beloved partner—until past secrets and forgotten memories unexpectedly come to light, forcing them to reevaluate themselves and each other. 

Moving from rural New Hampshire to a remote island in British Columbia to the '70s Boston art-school scene, The Good Daughters is an unforgettable story about the ties of home and family, the devastating force of love, the healing power of forgiveness, and the desire to know who we are.

My Review:
When I first read the summary of The Good Daughters I figured it would end up being a 'switched at birth' plot, but really it turned out to be a story that  focuses on two girls lives as they struggle trying to find their places in the world.  The chapters alternate between Ruth and Dana, through love, secrets, and loss, as we follow them through their adult lives.

Ruth Plank was born into a family that owned a lucrative farm.  With just her and her sisters, her parents no longer had any hope of passing the farm down to a son as was the custom with previous Plank generations.  Her father accepted this outcome and loved all of his girls equally and was not shy in showing his pride for his lovely family of daughters.  Ruth just cannot understand why her relationship with her mother is such a struggle through her whole life.

Dana Dickerson is born to a family that cannot seem to put roots down in any one area.  She finds herself longing for stability and a place to call home.  The Plank family seems to show up at their doorstep for a visit at least once a year and although the Dickerson's don't look forward to these visits, Dana does enjoy spending time with Edwin, Ruth's father, as he is always generous in sharing agricultural information with her.

As much as Dana enjoys agriculture, Ruth finds an artistic side of her just waiting to burst out of her skin.  She has no desire at all to join her sisters in the farmwork, except for managing the small roadside vegetable stand.  Through the work that she does in the stand she finds a special place in her heart for the farm that helps her develop a closer relationship with her father.

As truths and secrets are revealed in the book I found myself getting angry with Ruth's parents, Edwin and Connie Plank.  Before I knew it, I was all upset with the story as I couldn't imagine the path that Edwin and Connie decided to take.  Connie especially frustrated me as she appeared to be such a God-fearing and strong-willed woman, but then I came to understand why her character reacted the way that she did.  Everything did come full circle for me in this novel that let me find the appreciation that this book deserves.

I think this book would make a great book club selection with themes of love, family, secrets, and loss.  As I was reading it I could only imagine the different comments that would be made from various members of my group.  I did enjoy this novel and I'm confident that many of you would also!

My Rating:  4/5

Disclosure:  This book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Club Read Anyone?

Oh, I am soooo excited to share with you all that I have officially registered and purchased my airline ticket for Club Read that will be held in Virginia next month!  I know that many of you have been to BEA or other book events, but this is the first major book event for me! 

Not only do I get a chance to meet some bloggers out there that I have been wanting to meet since Day One, but these are the authors that are planning to attend:

Adriana Trigiani
Joyce Maynard
Sena Jeter Naslund
Gretchen Rubin
Jessica Anya Blau
Amy Stolls
Matthew Norman
Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Heather Newton
Greg Olear
Caroline Todd (of Charles Todd)
Susan Henderson

Have I mentioned that I am excited for this event?  I can't wait for the opportunity to sit down and chat with a couple of my favorite authors!  So I am curious, are any of you planning on attending Club Read?  Please let me know if you are because I would LOVE the opportunity to meet up with you also!

Another Year of Sweet Connections!

I know that most of you are aware of how much I love my book club!  As we are about to start our eight year together I can't help but get a little excited about the books that we have selected for our upcoming meetings.  Over the few years we have lost a couple of ladies, but then we have also gained a couple of new members.  All of the ladies that have been a part of our group including past, recent, and even new members are such an important part of my life and I'm so glad that they are a part of it!

Our schedule actually follows the school year so our first meeting after our summer break is tonight and I can't wait to sit down and talk about The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  I know that most of the ladies loved this book as much as I did.  I just wanted to share with you our list of book club selections for the next year:

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Angel Sister by Ann Gabhart
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
House Rules by Jodi Piccoult
Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin
The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Night Road by Kristin Hannah

We usually read a Holiday themed book during the month of December and I think this year we will be reading A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg, but I don't know if that's official yet.  I haven't read anything by Flagg yet, so I sure hope we do.  I think we have a pretty good selection ahead of us so I can't really say that there is one in particular that I am looking forward to.  Whether we like the book or not we always have a good time together anyway!

If you are interested you can see a complete list of all of our past book club selections here.  So is there anything that you are looking forward to reading with your book club soon?

Theme Thursday

I was very excited to see this meme that was started by Reading Between Pages that allows us to post about a different theme from the book that we are reading all week long.  Here is how it works:

• theme will be posted each Thursday
• Select a snippet with this weeks theme from the current book you are reading
• Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post

This week the theme is about school so here is the snippet that I found while reading The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy:
"We'll be all right, sweetheart," I say.  "It doesn't matter that much.  We can manage without the china dogs, and the silver eggcups were such a nuisance to clean.  At least they haven't taken our books..." 
pg. 28

Mailbox Monday-Sep. 5

Mailbox Monday is a great meme that has us list the books that we receive.  Different bloggers now have the opportunity to host this meme for a month at a time. This month the host is Amused By Books so head on over there to see what everyone else received or to play along!

Only one book in my mailbox last week:

 The Winters in Bloom by Lisa Tucker

This one was quite a surprise last week as I had kind of given up hope on receiving it!  I'm very excited to read this one.  How about you...anything new and exciting in your mailbox?

Review: Lamb Bright Saviors by Robert Vivian

Here is a summary of the book from the publisher's website:

Lamb Bright Saviors begins as an apocalyptically inclined itinerant preacher staggers across the Nebraska prairie. With his young assistant, Mady, in tow hauling a wagon stacked with bibles, it’s not long before the preacher finds he’s come to the final fulfillment of his self-proclaimed life’s work: to die in front of a group of strangers. Odd as his own end-of-days might be, the lives and struggles of the strangers attending this deathbed scene are even odder. As the dying preacher unleashes a barrage of hallucinatory ramblings and rantings in the hope of imparting wisdom, each ragtag member of this unlikely congregation must reckon with his or her own dark past. And, through it all, the irrepressible Mady lends the preacher’s strange performance a surprising and unforgettable dignity and humor.

My Review:
If you are looking for a book that is full of beautiful writing that you really need to think about as you are reading every word, then this fictional story is for you.  We are introduced to several characters within this novel that committed a crime against a helpless woman years ago, and now their lives have come full circle as they are all gathered in her home for a very unlikely event.

As a travelling preacher suddenly finds himself on death's doorstep, the young girl that travels with him seeks the help of some local residents in rural Nebraska in hopes that the preacher's passing will be swift and painless.  The men that she runs into are men that haven't seen each other since many years ago, but have been harboring a deep, dark secret since then.

These men have felt guilty for the crimes they have committed and seem to be able to move on with their lives as the crime has been unpunished up til this day.  One man has been released from prison for another crime, another has just returned from Iraq, and another has just been living an unfulfilled life in Point Blank, Nebraska.

As I mentioned this is a beautifully written story that is full of symbolism and hidden meanings, like the name of the town being Point Blank, and even the deficiency of the helpless woman.  There is so much to contemplate within this small novel that it would make for a great literary analysis for a college course or any English major.  For a person like me that just enjoys a great story that is written well, this book just didn't appeal to me.  There was very limited dialogue within the book and what there was you really had to search for as it wasn't obvious.  There was also a substantial amount of harsh language in this novel that I really thought was unnecessary.  I may have enjoyed the story more without some of the profanity.

So with that said I think you can tell that this novel was not appreciated by me, but that's not to say that you will not enjoy it.  This book is laced with themes, including but not limited to war, forgiveness, and death.  If you are looking for a story that you need to continually concentrate on while reading then this one is for you!

My Rating:  2/5

Disclosure:  This book was provided to me by the publicist in exchange for an honest review.