Wren
Title: Wren
Author: Regina O’Connell
Genre: Young Adult/ Fantasy
Format: Kindle/ Ebook
One of the perks of being an indie author is that I encounter a lot of other indie authors. In doing so, I discover a lot of reading material that most people might not. With all this non-mainstream discovery, I get passed a lot of duds and a lot of gems.
Wren was neither for me. It was a good book among a lot of good books. It didn’t blow me away, but I didn’t feel like I wasted my time either. It was enjoyable and if the right person came along, I’d pass along a recommendation – not in a sing its praises from the rooftop sort of way, but in a there is an audience for everything sort of way.
Wren is a book for someone with an hour to kill who is in the mood for a fast-paced action/ dystopian fantasy. You are quickly dropped into the story and it’s easy to devour it. I read it in one sitting – so clearly it’s a fun way to pass time.
I’m not sure it will make a lasting impression, though. It’s not a story that will stay with me. It is a story that will compel me to read whatever O’Connell puts out next, when I have the time, just to see. She’s piqued my curiosity and I’m glad I had the opportunity to take a peek into her imaginary world and keep her writing career on my radar.
It’s a Keeper
Title: Keeper
Author: S. Smith
Genre: Middle Grade/ Young Adult Dystopian Fiction
Length: 200 pages
Many moons ago, it seems like forever now, S. Smith sent me a copy of Seed Savers, the first of her young adult series set in an America where growing your own food has become illegal. Children were being taught about seeds and produce gardens in whispers; collecting, saving, and planting seeds a prison-worthy offense.
The story couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It was the summer of 2012, I had a small daughter at home, my husband was out of work, and I had just started spending more time and care actively growing more of our groceries. On top of that, I was beginning to learn how to forage and was focusing my daughter’s future education on as much regarding sustainability and self-sufficiency as possible. I wanted taking care of ourselves to come as naturally as literature does for me. I wanted finding edible grapes in the forest to be as simple as knowing that 2+2 = 4. Then Seed Savers happened and it felt like the stars had begun to align.
Several books later (Seed Savers, Heirloom, and Lily), we finally have the fourth installment of S. Smith’s world. The girls, Lily and Clare, have done a lot of growing up. Siblings Dante and Clare have received a lot more education during their stay in Canada. Rose is being indoctrinated… bad guys are getting closer and closer to turning everything upside down as rebels have begun starting riots in the street. Soon, all four kids find themselves in Portland, Oregon, where Seed Savers headquarters has been stationed under a forested park in the city for years.
More and more, the series is resembling the fast paced action political drama of the Divergent series – without the killing, and with the added fun of things like Dandelion syrup being discussed.
Although I was sent an advanced reader’s copy of Keeper, I still made a point to pre-order a final copy for my kindle. The book is a keeper in every format, and it’s just worth it to be as supportive as possible of this story, help it get told. I’m looking forward to the day Smith gets a movie or mini-series deal. Better yet, the homeschool mom in me votes for it to be a Netflix original.
The Havana Treatment
Title: The Havana Treatment
Author: Peter Devine
My first Peter Devine book was True to the Code, a series of short stories that were as much historically educational as philosophically motivating. As much as I enjoyed my first taste of Devine’s prose, Havana Treatment was infinitely more riveting.
Peter Devine has an uncanny ability to put you in the middle of a character’s big moment only to take you right back out again. Each short story in Havana Treatment introduces you to a whole person in a just a few moments or hours, leaving you with a solid understanding of who they are, but wanting more of the story. Described as an exploration of the shelf life of a romance, Havana Treatment doesn’t disappoint, and each story is as compelling and oxymoronically uniquely typical as the next.
The human race is completely infatuated with the idea of love, and after spending time with Devine’s characters, it is easy to see why. A moment with someone can become a lifetime of dedication. A person’s soul can be boiled down to one momentous story that could have seemed so unimportant at the time, but because the encounter was so genuine it shapes someone forever.
Devine has such a strong grasp on these realities. His experience and all the people he has met in his life shape the wisdom in his tales; but in all his travels and worldliness, Devine still captures Americana and our ideas of romance like no other.
Peace Like a River
Title: Peace Like a River
Author: Leif Enger
Genre: Fiction/ Literature
One of the few tragedies of working in a bookstore is seeing the popularity aftermath of a book. When there are fifty copies of something for $1 we clerks get in the mindset (if we haven’t read the book yet) that the title was a fad. Not just a fad, but it was clearly a book not worth keeping or re-reading.
Note to shoppers: just because a lot of people don’t keep their books and just because a book isn’t something people jump to re-read, does not mean it’s not worth reading in the first place.
For this very reason, it has taken me years to getting around to reading Peace Like a River. Not just that, but I was tentative and checked the book out – I didn’t even purchase it!
Next time I see a beautiful hardback, I will.
Peace Like a River is all soul filled and gorgeous with running themes concerning miracles, family, God, and consequence. It’s not what I would call a happy book, but it’s not a sad one either. I think it is one of the few in this world written truthfully about human experience, religious families, and the nature of people who function within the knowledge of an ever present God. People without the faith of Jeremiah Lands just don’t live lives like Jeremiah Lands. Some might think that would be a blessing – to go through life without such scruples. I mean, look where it got him. The fictional character finds himself in the precarious position of being a good and godly father to a fugitive, his other son – though revived from death at birth by a miracle – is a severe asthmatic. His daughter is an insanely intelligent poet, but becomes a target in their war with existence.
How exhausting.
But Jeremiah Lands, even in pneumonia and illness, never seems exhausted. The guy is a far cry from energetic, but he is steady. He is solid. He is the kind of father I think many hope for, despite his oldest son’s resistance to him. That sort of resistance is natural, I think, when it comes to family and God. It happens. And it happens very much just like that. Davy is a good person with scruples of his own, he was raised right and chooses I think what many of us would choose in certain situations. But the consequences of his choices make faith hard, and the lack of faith makes each choice harder than the next.
I needed this book this year. And if you see a copy in a bookstore for a dollar, snatch it up quick.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Review by Guest Blogger Elis
abeth K. Simmons
There’s no right way to love a book. For me, there are books I am in love with because of their story and there are books I am in love with because of the figurative and literal places in my life I ended up reading them. The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is brain-fluff wrapped up in too many truths about growing up. Because of that paradox, and the fact that I’m currently ignoring that I am technically an adult, I fell in love with it immediately.
The week I found it was one of the longest weeks of my new adult life. I worked 30 hours in closing shifts at work in six consecutive nights on top of going to school four days in a row and all the homework that comes with it. I was in no way looking for something to occupy my time. There was none to spare.
In between class and work, I walked into Book People in Austin just a couple blocks down from my campus. This two-story bookstore has become my new happy place in between responsibilities since it is large enough to wander and contains hundreds of books to leaf through. Usually I pick a book at random, read a couple chapters and put it back on the shelf when I leave. I haven’t wasted my time and a book gets to feel loved.
On my second day of work, I wanted something easy. I didn’t want to wander, I just wanted to hide. In this particular bookstore, Neil Gaiman’s works have their own shelf and almost every book, its own personal review by the booksellers. Without pausing to even read the synopsis of The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, I grabbed it and rushed to hide in the chair resting up against the classics section with a cup of coffee.
And I disappeared.
Gaiman has this magical simplicity to his writing where a 19-year-old college student can cancel out the constant foot traffic of a busy bookstore and be emotionally invested in the life of a 7-year-old boy who grew up suddenly and quickly after he met the strange Lettie Hempstock at the end of the lane with her ocean. The story is told in a flashback of a middle-aged man who you can tell never quite felt young. Innocent maybe, but he didn’t know that until he no longer was.
When I came back to reality an hour later, I decided this book was what I needed that week. I couldn’t have even told you why, but there wasn’t any way I could’ve left without it.
I didn’t pick it up again for several days. Work and school got the better of me and I might have gone insane a few times over the course of the weekend. Sunday night was night 6 of 6 of closing and after serving angry people their coffee, I had an insane craving for diner food. I wanted coffee and waffles and the kind of food coma that comes shortly after. And I wanted a place to read my magically simple book and not worry about having to leave.
So Magnolia’s it was. A 24 hour diner in the middle of Austin with omelets and giant pancakes sounded wonderful at 9 pm on a Sunday. Little did I know that the last day of the Austin City Limits music festival was just letting out.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I looked behind me and saw the multitudes waiting to cross the street and wait for hours for the same pancakes and omelets. My mission then changed from finding diner food to racing the masses for a table. They had won Magnolia’s, but there was the 24 Diner off of 6th Street that they wouldn’t have time to walk to. I raced to the heart of downtown Austin and beat the majority of the masses.
After saying it was just me, the hostess smiled at me and said there were several spots open on the bar if I wanted to eat immediately. I had beaten the swarm people. I had my spot. And I was not moving. Busy people behind the bar gave me menus and I told the waitress I just wanted a cup of black coffee and a waffle. 10 minutes later, I had a giant waffle in front of my face and the ACL crowd had begun to take over, yelling drink orders over my shoulder and squeezing in the 6 inches of air available at the bar. I did not care. I had my spot. I was not moving.
I opened my book and disappeared again. I met the villainous Ursula Monkton and her twisted desires and methods of making everyone happy. She was a Dolores Umbridge-like character that you hated simply because there are too many controlling, manipulative, and oppressive people like her in real life. I got to know the Hempstocks better and found out they were the family everyone wishes they had as friends growing up. The kind that just took care of things and knew enough to make you think they knew everything.
I was vaguely aware people being replaced with more people on my left and on my right, but I couldn’t tell you how many. The bartenders ignored me entirely, leaving my sticky plate as a marker that I deserved to sit there, only interrupting me to ask if I wanted more coffee. I looked up and it was 11:15. Neil Gaiman had done the impossible and canceled out a swarm of ACL attenders.
The next day, I had no brain function. I went to class and stumbled through the day just waiting for when I could disappear again. I made it to Mozart’s on Lake Austin and fought my way through the line of fellow Austinites to buy a bottomless cup of coffee and made my plan to disappear.
I discovered that oceans can be put in buckets, if you ask nicely enough, and that there are some people whose hearts just need more time to grow back. Different people remember events in different ways and some things are best forgotten.
And then it ended.
I felt like I had gotten pulled out of a dream by having a bucket of ice water dumped on my head. I had not planned on it ending and now that it had I was a little lost. The only thing I could think to do was write a thank you note to Neil Gaiman and share it with everyone. Whether he will ever see it is anyone’s guess, but anyone who can make a week like mine slightly less defeating deserves some recognition.
Paper Towns
Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Genre: Young Adult/ Teen Fiction
I loved it. It seems silly to enjoy teen fiction so much, right now, in my thirties. It feels like I should be chalking it up to a pre-mid life crisis of sorts – but I have an old soul, I already had my mid-life crisis, I think. If I didn’t, I’m screwed when the real one comes around. I’m not sure my brain can handle all that drama.
But it’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s just that despite the fact that people will roll their eyes at John Green because he seems like he’s probably that typical sappy teen coming of age crap that everyone is writing – there’s a reason he’s so popular and everyone else just isn’t.
John Green is an excellent writer.
He doesn’t just write snark – he embodies snark. He has the snark on lock-down. And though people think he only writes super confident teens that we all wish we had been, he doesn’t do that either. The main character of Paper Towns is not confident. He’s nerdy and very un-self assured. He’s in love with the self assured one, and you discover that no one is as self assured as they’d like to pretend to be.
I loved how Green pulled in Walt Whitman’s themes from Leaves of Grass. So much so, that I long to make a pile of Leaves of Grass paperbacks to display next to our piles of Paper Towns at the bookstore. But I haven’t. It’s not my job to do that anymore and I’m trying desperately to only do *my* job and not be the over achiever type A that I naturally am and work my ass off outside my pay grade. I’m not used to be a “regular” employee anymore. Between my previous management experience and writing a character who owns her own bookstore, my brain wants to run things and instead I’m just running the books. Which is definitely relaxing, until I have to keep my perfectionism in check – and then it’s stressful.
Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar makes a sneak appearance as well. I’m always down for a good book that recommends other good books. Margo, though I disagree with half her sentiments, appeals to me. I understand her. I’ve been her. I’m just not her anymore. Though, often, I feel pieces of her tugging at my personality from time to time. Ultimately, I chose to be more like Q. People probably see me more like Q. Although, at that age, I don’t think people really saw me at all.
So now I’m re-reading Leaves of Grass. I couldn’t leave it lingering in my brain that way without tackling it again. I haven’t perused it since high school and it’s long overdue.
Have you read John Green? Do you find him oddly relatable?
And finally, do you plan to or have you seen the movie? I have not, yet.
Good Books That Were Simply Too Easy to Put Down
Some books are great, the kind of books that you can’t live without and can’t understand how you ever lived without them. We’ve all read them, the books that leave you forgetting to eat and avoiding the restroom – or bathing – for as long as it takes to finish the book. You simply can’t tear away. And when a moment arrives that you have to set it down, you moan, weep, you begin to go through withdrawals and ache until the moment you can pick it up again.
And then, there are books that are really good, but you don’t feel that way about them. At all. Like that dude in college you friend zoned. Like that pie you ate, because after all it IS pie, but it doesn’t taste like your Grandma’s. Like that pretty song you’ll hum, but you won’t go out of your way to learn the lyrics or play on repeat…
So here’s to the good books I’ve read recently that I genuinely thought were good, but still found far too easy to put down.
Storm Front by Jim Butcher
Fun paranormal fantasy noir fiction – however, Dresden finds every female he encounters attractive. Either this guy is the most appreciative wizard ever, or he just doesn’t get out much. Felt like I was reading a sixteen year old living in his mama’s basement dream hero, which is all well and good and entertaining, but in between readings, I wasn’t exactly itching to get back to the story. Still read the book in a few days, but it’s the genre and length of something I’d usually devour in one sitting and… I just didn’t.
A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell
I checked this out from the library. Absolutely adored the first few chapters, but set it down for some reason or another and never felt compelled to get back to it. Due date came and I turned it in. One day I’ll finish, but it doesn’t seem like a pressing matter.
Which brings me to my next review…
Title: The Pharaoh’s Cat
Author: Maria Luisa Lang
Genre: Fiction
Length: 178 pages
I got this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. It’s cute. I was actually pretty excited about it. It seemed like a fun cozy for an ancient Egypt nerd like myself. But, I discovered as I read that being narrated by the Cat isn’t as cute as I thought. Instead, it’s highly distracting and I find it hard to get caught up in the story because the cat brain is awkward.
Lang’s writing is good. The setting is fun, I always enjoy a good bit of ancient Egypt; and I love that the author considers herself an amateur Egyptologist, it shows in her writing. I’d even go so far as to say that I might read The Pharaoh’s Cat again some day – with my daughter, perhaps. But I wasn’t riveted and the character of the cat didn’t move me, like it moved the Pharaoh, I did not feel the bond that was formed throughout the novel. I didn’t really laugh…
Read a more glowing review of Lang’s novel here: http://ebookreviewgal.com/review-of-the-pharaohs-cat-by-maria-luisa-lang/
Drugs, Hallucinations, and Time-Travel
Most people dive into their drug induced literature in the high school and college years. I didn’t have time for all that – I was in school, a lot of school, back then. So now, in my early thirties – I’ve stumbled into a curiosity I didn’t really have before. I’m not curious enough to DO the drugs – just enough to read about people doing them. Sure, I read James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces 
back in the day. Requiem for a Dream… Fight Club… I’ve read the usual suspects. But sparingly, and not in the same year.This year, however, I noticed a trend. And it wasn’t purposeful. First, Philip K. Dick and then some. Then, this week, City of Dark Magic
by Magnus Flyte and Screw-jack by Hunter S. Thompson.
What is real? What is not real? These are the hard questions for a fiction writer from a long line of dementia patients. But for all my solid grounding in cold hard facts and realism, I’ve always steered pretty clear of drugs and enjoyed the fantastic staying between the pages of a book and not parading around my living room.City of Dark Magic is weird. Really weird. The storyline travels and veers and rants, and I love that about it. No strictly linear annoyingly plot pointed story here. So much so, I refused to shelve it in Fantasy at work, instead I placed it in the literature section, hoping someone would pick it up for the same reason I did – historical dives into Beethoven. Time-travel? Is it? You’ll have to read and find out. I can’t say without spoiling it, but I will warn you, it involves ingesting the genius musician’s toe nails.
Screw-jack was a nice little taste of Hunter S. Thompson. I’d never read anything by him, and obviously I know who he is and what he stands for – because I don’t live *entirely* under a rock – but I’ve managed to never finish any of the stellar movies made about him or his work either. A fan over heard this at work, and handed me Screw-jack to devour over lunch. What a trip! It’s about a 45 minute read (it’s only three short stories), and let’s just say, I hope that last one was really about his cat or I might have some trouble digesting his bio later.
The Curse of Cozies
The curse 
of cozies is that they completely suck you into worlds of absolute silliness, and mid-read, you’re totally ok with that. Why? Because, inevitably, there’s coffee, fuzzy pets, books and knitting, and a few dead bodies that require you to summon your inner Nancy Drew for.
My latest cozy mystery read was Victoria Abbott’s The Christie Curse, the first in a book collector series – that I now, of course, have to collect. It can share shelf space with my Laura Childs and Cleo Coyles, with my Alice Kimberly series, and D.R. Meredith books… as they all tilt ther hats to their parents: Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie – who have inadvertently become the founders of the genre though they weren’t known for knitting or cooking themes.
The Christie Curse has proven itself to be one of the better books of the genre, especially if you count the other book themed cozies I have already read. Homicide in Hardcover by Carlisle is another bibliophile cozy 
mystery, and I enjoyed it, but the story didn’t hold a candle to Abbott’s book. Researching Agatha Christie, chasing top secret book industry scoops, browsing personal library collections filled with first editions… The Christie Curse is simply full of all my favorite things, including the Irish uncles who aren’t exactly on the up and up. Add some bipolar cats and an adorable pug – of course I thought this was a great book. Abbott didn’t pull any punches either, there’s a fabulous Italian lady who constantly shouts “Eat! Eat!” at our protagonist, and recipes in the back so that we, too, may partake in the deliciousness.
Currently, I’m reading CATastrophic Connections by Joyce Ann Brown and look forward to having an official review posted for you soon.
What cozies have you read lately?
A Cranberry Cove Summer
Title: Casey of Cranberry CoveAuthor: Susan Kotch
Genre: Teen Fiction
Publisher: Hibernian Publishing
Length: 207 pages
Ice Cream Parlours, boogie boarding, kayaking, sail boat racing, pizza, high school parties, and hunky life guards… mix some teen angsty romance in and you’ve got a cute beach read that is perfect for summer. Susan Kotch delivers the perfect one with surfer girl Casey Whitman playing the role of Gidget.
Casey of
Cranberry Cove is a fun read and my only regret while reading is that I wasn’t doing it in the sand, baking on the beach. I love reading on the beach and Casey is a girl after my own heart – a sun-baking reader and go-getter who isn’t afraid to get dirty.
I’m looking forward to future adventures of Casey’s, but I’m hoping she keeps her head on straight and doesn’t turn into a ninny. I’m also hoping she doesn’t leave her beach life behind in all the excitement of growing up. Casey reminds me a bit of the Robin Jones Gunn Christy Miller series my older sister had on her shelf growing up, I think girls that like one series would enjoy the other.
Anakalian Whims 