Booking Through Thursday: Travel

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On Thursday, October 7th, Booking through Thursday asked:

When you travel, how many books do you bring with you?
Has this changed since the arrival of ebooks?

There are three things that determine how many books I bring with me on a trip: why am I going, where I am going, and how long I will be gone. If I know I’m going to be spending ten days on one of those Royal Caribbean cruises, for example, I know that having books to read is essential so I’ll bring as many as I can. On the other hand, when I was in San Francisco for a novel-writing workshop I only brought a couple of books, because I knew I’d need to be either writing or sleeping in my down time. When I visit my mother in Mexico, I bring a mix of books I haven’t read, which I’ll read in the evenings or while sunning on the deck, and then leave, and books I’ve already read, because she lives in a town where finding English-language books is difficult and Amazon deliveries aren’t possible.

I’ve only had my Kindle for a month, but I’m already in love with it, so chances are I’ll choose it over real books in the future, unless there’s something that a) I want to bring to my mother or b) isn’t available. I will say that it’s the lighted leather cover that really MAKES the kindle for me. Without the cover, it’s nice; with the cover, it’s phenomenal.

Review: The Wedding Gift, by Kathleen McKenna

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The Wedding Gift
The Wedding Gift
Kathleen McKenna
Get it from Amazon.com >>

Summary (from Amazon.com):
17 year old Leeann Worthier is the perfect girl in town – or so she says. George Willets is the heir to a booming petroleum business. When they announce their engagement, George’s controlling mother is unimpressed, and Leeann absolutely refuses to live with her mother-in-law. So George gives his new wife a house as a wedding gift. Thirty years before, the same house hosted a grisly scene: George’s uncle and cousins were all slaughtered and his aunt Robina accused of both murder and suicide. The house is a gorgeous, well-maintained mansion, but has stood empty since the tragedy. It’s intimidating, but who is Leeann to turn down a free house? When the ghost of Robina begins to haunt Leeann, she realizes she’s made a huge mistake.

When people ask me to try their product, whether it’s a book or something else, I always have a moment of pause. After all my first instinct when someone says, “You should try out wholesaleinsurance.net… you will like them :),” is to run in the other direction. It’s the same with books – I love to read, and I review a lot of books because publicists ask me, but when authors contact me directly I always worry that I won’t like the book, and then their feelings will be hurt.

Fortunately, I did NOT have this problem with The Wedding Gift, when the author asked me if I’d review it. In this novel Kathleen spins a story that is equal parts silly, sappy, and spooky, and she does it well. From observations about what really goes on behind the Piggly Wiggly (it’s a southern grocery store chain, I swear!) to when Leeann snubs a rude waitress in the funniest, most horrible way, to the interactions between Leeann and George, and Leeann and her parents, this book is wonderful. I read it in the bathtub (as I often do) and at one point I had to get up and confirm that the window behind me was secure, while at another I realized the water had gone cold and my feet were completely pruney.

The Amazon.com page for The Wedding Gift mentions that this novel is the first in a trilogy. I look forward to parts two and three, and many more of Ms. McKenna’s books.

Goes well with chicken fried steak and sweet tea.

Review: The Naked Gardener, by L B Gschwandtner

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The Naked Gardener
The Naked Gardener
L B Gschwandtner
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Summary (from Amazon.com):
In a remote forest of northern Vermont, Katelyn Cross takes five women on a wilderness canoe trip where they hope to come up with ideas for saving their dying town. Although the river is not always what it seems and the women have not left their problems behind, a painting ritual creates a new way to look at the world – and themselves. Artist Katelyn Cross loves Greg Mazur and he loves her. He wants to be married but a previous relationship that went sour has made Katelyn overly cautious about any permanent commitment. And what about Greg’s first wife? He lost her to cancer and Katelyn worries that he’s only looking for a replacement. What’s a girl to do? Canoe down a river with five gal pals, camp out, catch fish, talk about life and men. The problem is, a river can be as unpredictable as any relationship and just as hard to manage. On their last day, when the river turns wild, the women face the challenge of a lifetime and find that staying alive means saving themselves first while being open to help from a most unlikely source. As Katelyn navigates the raging water, she learns how to overcome her fear of change in a world where nothing stays the same. When Katelyn returns to her garden, she’ll face one more obstacle and the naked gardener will meet the real Greg Mazur. What readers are saying about The Naked Gardener: Lyrical … Scandalous … Empowering … Exhilarating … Honest … Sensual … Fun … Gentle … Pleasurable … Transporting … Timeless In her first novel, award winning writer L B Gschwandtner explores the push and pull of love, a woman’s need to maintain her individuality within marriage, and the bonds that can make women stronger even when the world feels as if it’s breaking apart.

I’ve known L B Gschwandtner through her wonderful website The Novelette for several years now, but only in the very cursory way that people who occupy overlapping circles do. I’ve participated in her contests, she’s visited my blog, etc. Even so, when she announced the publication of her first novel, I had to read it. Lucky for me, it’s available for the kindle for less than a dollar, though it’s totally worth the print-edition price of $10.99.

I actually started reading The Naked Gardener the day I downloaded it, a couple of weeks ago, but I had a stack of review books with deadlines that had to come first. I revisited it over the weekend, and ended up staying up to the wee hours because the story caught me, and held me so tightly that I had to finish it immediately. I really loved the idea of Katelyn naked in her garden – it struck me as something my mother would do, and I liked the women Katelyn befriends. I think Maze could be interesting but we heard about him more than we heard from him, and while that’s fairly normal in a story that focuses on women, I hope he’s a bit more present in the next novel.

If you’ve ever wanted to run away to a rural farm, have a canoe adventure, or just share stories with a bunch of new friends, or even if you’ve already done all those things, this novel is one you’ll enjoy, both for the obvious story, and the deeper one, about finding yourself, facing your fears, and learning to accept and love yourself as you are, not as you wish you were. I can’t begin to speculate about the best diet pill for women, but I am fairly certain that Katelyn, Erica, and the rest of the women in this novel would never touch them, but would instead take off down the river, or start a project, or have another candid conversation, and never care that dieting might be in order.

I don’t think you have to garden naked to appreciate The Naked Gardener, but I’m certain that it will inspire many of us to try it at least once. I don’t have a garden, but I do have a very private back yard with just the right amount of sun (at least at this time of year)…this book reminded me of why I love that privacy so much.

Goes well with freshly-baked artisan bread and local honey.

Review: Body Work, by Sara Paretsky

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Body Work
Body Work
Sara Paretsky
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Summary (from Publishers Weekly):
Paretsky’s superb 14th novel featuring PI V.I. Warshawski (after Hardball) delves into Chicago’s avant-garde art scene. At the trendy Club Gouge, where Warshawski is keeping an eye on Petra, a young cousin who caused trouble in the previous book, performance artist Karen Buckley (aka the Body Artist) invites members of the audience to step on stage to paint her nude body. The intricate design that one woman paints on Karen’s back provokes a violent outburst from Chad Vishneski, a troubled Iraqi war veteran. When two nights later, someone shoots the woman who upset Chad outside the club, Chad is the logical murder suspect. Hired by Chad’s estranged parents to clear his name, Warshawski straddles a minefield that reaches from the Windy City’s neighborhoods to the Gulf War battlefields. Scenes with her aging neighbor and a new love interest give a much needed balance to the serious plot. This strong outing shows why the tough, fiercely independent, dog-loving private detective continues to survive.

I’ve been a fan of private investigator V. I. “Vic” Warshawski ever since my mother and I discovered her at the San Jose Public Library on one of the ritual Saturday trips we used to make. Books, coffee, a “little something” in honor of my grandmother, and then back home. Perfect mother-daughter weekends. In any case, I’ve now read more of Vic’s adventures than my mother has, simply because she lives in a place where English-language fiction is difficult to obtain.

Body Work, the most recent of author Sara Paretsky’s novels about the fictional female detectiv,e is one of the most satisfying novels I’ve read in a long while. It had everything from Vic using her picklocks to enter a crime scene (evidently they weren’t Kwikset locks) to Vic babysitting her pesty younger cousin Petra, to Vic sharing meals with her downstairs neighbor/adopted family member Mr. Contreras, to Vic getting brutally beaten while on the job.

Even better, Body Work also has an interesting plot that involves edgy performance art, the blogosphere, the Gulf war, corporate politics, unrequited love, illegal drug running, and international money laundering, and it shows that Ms. Warshawski is comfortable working with 21st century technology even though she has a special affection for old-world pleasures like a proper cappuccino, a soaring Italian aria, and a steaming hot bubble bath at the end of a hard day’s detecting.

And yet, Paretsky gave us even more: she gave us Jake, the classical bass player who is not only Vic’s neighbor, but also her current lover, and one who – we hope – will stick around for another book, even if he is squeamish about the sight of blood – something to be concerned about when you’re close to Victoria Warshawski.

Review: Driftwood Lane, by Denise Hunter

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Driftwood Lane
Driftwood Lane
Denise Hunter
Get it from Amazon >>

Summary (from Amazon):
Meridith can handle anything: guardianship of three distant siblings, a dilapidated Bed-and-Breakfast, even an ever-present handyman who’s dismantling more than her fireplace–or can she?

When the death of Meridith’s estranged father leaves her with custody of three siblings she’s never met, she reluctantly goes to Nantucket to care for them–but only until their uncle returns from his trip. Little does she know, the uncle is already there under the guise of her friendly handyman, with plans of his own.

Will the love that grows between them be strong enough to overcome the secrets that brought them both to Driftwood Lane?

After a summer spent devouring everything Elin Hilderbrand had ever written, you might think I’d had enough of novels set on Nantucket Island, but as a 3rd generation beach baby, I can never get enough of seaside settings. For me, reading about the beach is like a wannabe modern nomad comparing rates on rv loans: I can never get enough of them.

Denise Hunter’s Driftwood Lane is, in many ways, the perfect seaside romance. 25-year-old Meridith shows great strength and great love in giving up her life in St. Louis to act as caretaker for the three half-siblings she’s never met – or even heard of – until the day she’s informed that her father and his second wife have died in a tragic accident. The bed-and-breakfast where the kids live, Summer Place, while desperate for some TLC, is on the beach, and perfectly represents those too-cute beachfront homes I’ve always wanted to rent, and never have.

Then there’s Jake, the dashing handyman/love interest. He’s fiery and passionate, a bit mysterious (at least to Meridith), and kind of a rogue, but also tender, and his scenes with Meridith are full of hilarious bickering, misunderstandings, and a requisite number of warm, friendly, almost tingly moments.

The children, Noelle, Max and Ben, are well-written, also, with the right blend of brattiness covering their fear, but a sweetness to them as well.

I enjoyed the quick pace of Driftwood Lane. I’m generally a fast reader, anyway, but this book moved along at a really nice clip, and though I had moments where I found certain plot points a bit implausible, I merely reminded myself that this is a romance novel, and some level of willful suspension of disbelief was therefore required.

It should be noted that though this book is categorized as Christian fiction, and references God in the back-cover blurb, there was nothing in it that felt overwhelmingly religious, and nothing at ALL preachy. A few characters mentioned church, or leaving things up to God, but, speaking as someone who isn’t particularly Christian, I didn’t find any of it off-putting, though non-religious readers will want to avoid the Reading Group Guide at the end.

All in all, I thought Driftwood Lane was an entertaining, escapist read, and while I have not read any of Denise Hunter’s previous three Nantucket novels, I wouldn’t object to doing so in the future.

Goes well with strong tea and oatmeal-raisin cookies

Review: Divorced, Desperate and Dating, by Christie Craig

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Divorced, Desperate, and Dating
Divorced, Desperate, and Dating
Christie Craig
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Just as people with healthcare jobs probably like to read about characters who work in their profession, I like to read novels and watch movies with writers as main characters. It makes sense then, that when I read about Christie Craig’s fun, flirty novel Divorced, Desperate and Dating over on KindleIQ.com, where it was being offered for FREE, I had to have it. After all the protagonist of this novel, Sue Finley, is a mystery writer.

Despite the fact that I don’t read traditional romance novels all that often, I found myself completely engaged by this book. Maybe it was the element of mystery, or maybe it was the fact that the author made a point of having her characters bring up birth control, or maybe it’s just that Ms. Craig is that talented, but I found the story – Sue is being stalked by someone using incidents from her as-yet-unpublished book, and developing feelings for a cop who happens to also be a friend of a friend, as well.

While I haven’t read any of Craig’s other work, this one feels like a sequel, and, once I have a slightly smaller to-be-read stack, I’ll most likely snag the others.

Until then? If you want fun, escapist reading that is still smart and sexy, I recommend this book.

Goes well with strawberries dipped in chocolate.

Second Attempt: Touchstone, by Laurie R. King

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Touchstone
Touchstone
Laurie R. King
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I’m struggling with the reading of Touchstone, by Laurie R. King, and I’m not certain why, because I love her writing. I mean, the woman can make asset based lenders seem like interesting fodders for novels, and her contemporary detective series set in San Francisco is as much a favorite of mine as her wonderful Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell series.

But this is my second attempt at reading Touchstone and while the premise is right up my alley, I just can’t get into the book. If this were an author whose work was unfamiliar to me, I’d discard the novel, but since it’s someone whose writing I always enjoy, I feel like the fault is mine, like I’m missing something important that is preventing me from getting lost in the story.

In any case, here’s the Publishers Weekly description of the novel (via Amazon.com):

Set shortly before Britain’s disastrous General Strike of 1926, this stand-alone thriller from bestseller King (Keeping Watch) offers impeccable scholarship and the author’s usual intelligent prose, but a surfeit of period detail and some weighty themes—the gulf between rich and poor, the insidious nature of both terrorism and the efforts to curb it—overpower the thin plot and stock characters. When Harris Stuyvesant, an investigator for the U.S. Justice Department, arrives in London to look for the mastermind behind a series of terrorist bombings on American soil, he tells Aldous Carstairs, a sinister government official, that his prime suspect is Labour Party leader Richard Bunsen. Carstairs suggests Stuyvesant should talk to Bennett Grey, whose brush with death during WWI has heightened his sense of perception to the point that he’s a kind of human lie detector (he’s the touchstone of the title), and to Lady Laura Hurleigh, Bunsen’s lover and a passionate advocate of his brand of socialism. The threat of violence at a secret summit meeting held at the Hurleigh family’s country house about preventing the strike provides some mild suspense.

Booking Through Thursday: Current

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On Thursday, September 23rd, Booking through Thursday asked:

What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? (And, by all means, discuss everything, if you’re reading more than one thing!)

I have a stack of books I have to review that is growing exponentially this week, but I’m reading three of them at once. I’m almost done with When Life Throws You Lemons, Make Cranberry Juice, by Shari Bookstaff, midway through The Wedding Gift, by Kathleen McKenna (I’m really enjoying it, but I’m savoring it because I love the tone she uses.), and I’m about three chapters into Key Lime Pie, by Josi Kilpack (and with a title like that it should have come with an actual key lime pie.)

I have more to review after that, but once I get a break, I’m planning to rediscover Dick Francis, because even though his mysteries involve violence, I’m in the mood for slightly befuddled Englishmen who smell of leather and horse tack and drink tea and stout between races, and fumble their love affairs, and, oh yes, solve crime. I tend to read a lot more mysteries in autumn. It might be the weather, or it might just be that’s what’s available.

And speaking of mysteries, I have Sara Paretsky’s latest V.I. Warshawski novel on the Kindle, and I’m trying hard to resist the urge to start THAT because I have to, Have To, HAVE TO, finish the review stack, first.

Review: Roast Mortem, by Cleo Coyle

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Roast Mortem
Roast Mortem
Cleo Coyle
Get it from Amazon.com >>

I cannot begin to tell you what the best colon cleansing pill might be because as a woman who was literally weaned on espresso, I’ve never needed one. Speaking of espresso, I’ve just finished reading Cleo Coyle’s latest coffee house mystery, Roast Mortem, which was also the first Kindle book I actually paid for.

As with all of Coyle’s coffee house novels, Roast Mortem is the perfect blend of coffeehouse coziness, romance, and mystery. This far into the series, we’ve met all the main characters – Claire Cosi, manager of the Village Blend, her ex-husband and business partner Matt Allegro, and his incredibly wealthy mother, the various baristas and their friends, and of course NYPD detective Mike Quinn, whose relationship with Claire has a new sense of stability, even (dare I hope?) permanence.

But it’s another Quinn, Michael Quinn, a NYFD chief, who is one of the stars of this novel. We first met him a couple of books ago, when he fished Ms. Cosi out of some frigid water, and his animosity-laden relationship with Detective Quinn, is first cousin, came to light, but in this book, which involves a serious of explosive-started fires at various coffee houses, we learn more about him, and we also – finally – find out why the cousins don’t get along.

Of course Claire is in jeopardy more than once, and ends up leading the NYPD to the murderer (and the NYFD to the arsonist), and of course there are all sorts of coffeehouse recipes scattered through the book (and listed at the end for those of us who love to cook at home), but even though these novels are fairly formulaic, they’re also so well written that the predictability doesn’t matter, and the stories remain compelling because Coyle is so good at setting scene and creating characters.

While the coffee house mysteries can be read as stand-alone novels, they’re much richer if you read the series in order, so you can watch relationships develop from book to book. Either way, however, I recommend Roast Mortem to anyone who loves a good mystery, and a great cup of coffee.

Goes well with a doppio espresso and any kind of chocolate baked good.

Buzz: Author Interview with M.J. Rose

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Author M. J. Rose

M.J. Rose | Click to embiggen

A couple of weeks ago, I posted my review of M. J. Rose’s latest novel, The Hypnotist. I was also privileged enough to do an emailed interview with her, which was posted over at All Things Girl. It’s posted in the blog, as part of our ongoing Author Insight series. We mainly do women authors, but we also have a Men on Monday series, which includes male authors.

If I’ve reviewed your work, and you’d like to be part of our interview series over at ATG, please let me know. (Actually, let me know, even if I haven’t reviewed your work. If interviews aren’t your thing, we also welcome guest posts.

Also? Go read The Hypnotist if you haven’t already, because it’s really good.