Enchanted Ivy
Title:Enchanted Ivy
Author: Sarah Beth Durst
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Length: 310 pages
It was the matte finish that got me. So many young adult fantasy novels have the glossy cover that screams: I’m complete brain candy and will rot your mind! READ ME! But not Enchanted Ivy, maybe you can’t tell from the picture, but if your fingers touch the cover, you’ll know.
Ivy here is a play on words. The main character, Lily Carter, is trying to get into Princeton (her back-up school is another Ivy League option: Harvard). No biggie, right? She just has to pass a top secret admissions test provided by the Old Boys her grandfather went to college with and she’s in…
Insert Tolkien and Harry Potter style creatures of myth… shape shifters, a gate to a magic world, gargoyle professors, unicorns, dryads, and ivy (and trees and flowers) that obey commands, and you’ve got the fixings for a fantastical adventure that occurs in a day or two and can be read faster than that.
Cassandra Clare meets C.S. Lewis and Sarah Beth Durst brought us a fun filled fantasy with a few romantic moments or two to satisfy our girly hearts.
When I read these books, I’m mentally cataloging them… will I recommend this to kids at the store? Will I recommend this to my niece? Will I recommend this to my daughter? For Enchanted Ivy, yes on all fronts, as long as their school work is done. The book is both exciting and innocent enough for tweens and teens, I enjoyed it, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time or killed brain cells in doing so. The author, after all, is a Princeton gal herself.
As for a few cheesy soulmate lines, I both loathe them and am a sucker for them. I met my husband when I was 14, all the first meetings and teenage hormones is sheer nostalgia for me. Although Durst does a great job at keeping these on the very far back burner.
The Mother of all Bryson Books
Title: The Mother Tongue
Author: Bill Bryson
Genre: Linguistics
Length: 245 pages
How many times am I going to spend entire reviews singing the praises of Bill Bryson, bowing down to his mage-like powers as a wordsmith? Not often enough.
The Half Price Books Humble Book Club read Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman for our September discussion. GREAT book, but I had already read it. That being the case, I plucked another linguistics title by an author I adore: Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue.
As with any typical Bryson piece, the book was well researched, enjoyable to read, and all the information was cleverly shared. Bryson is witty, almost snarky even – but far less snarky in this book than, let’s say, A Walk in the Woods. I take great delight in clever snark. And yes, I just chose to use snarky as a noun…
Although by describing Bryson’s work as snarky makes him sound much more irritable than he truly is. On the contrary, Bryson always seems a bit jovial to me. Sarcastic wit written with a broad smile, and possibly rosy cheeks.
If you love languages, English, history, factoids, dictionaries, evolution of words, or all of the above – The Mother Tongue will keep you fascinated. If you enjoy witticisms, sarcastic commentary, clever jokes, good conversations, intelligent thought, and possibly your college English professor – Bill Bryson is the guy you want telling you all there is to know about “English and How It Got That Way.”
He’ll talk about Latin and Gaelic, the French and German. He will discuss Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Oxford English Dictionary. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to swearing and the origins of some of our favorite – and not so favorite – expletives. He’ll recite palindromes and tell you all about London Times Crossword Puzzles (which I desperately would like to get my hands on)… Also, if you ever felt bad about your spelling, this book will give you a full history on how it’s not you, it’s English.
I turned the last page and as it always is on the last page of a Bryson book, I’m already scouring the shelves for another Bryson title. Can the others live up to the awesomeness I just read? I’m not so sure.
Books, books, books, more books, and oh! – some books.
I went back to work full time, temporarily, but I’m working 40 hours a week again. I’m still freelance writing. I’m still acting as a marketing consultant. I’m still homeschooling my daughter. I’m still working on my novels.
I’m also still reading.
I’m a busy sort of gal – I’ll never stop reading.
So on the docket this last week was Stolen by Kelley Armstrong, Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon (gee, you’d think I was a romance reader, which is funny, I never thought I’d join that crowd), and Lies That Make You Pay (a title I reviewed for Money-fax.com).
To be fair, I was pleased that book two in the Otherworld series was far more action oriented than it’s first book Bitten. The romance and sex scenes took a back burner to the story which made for a much better book. Having read Stolen, however, I began to be a little irritated Alone from the Girl in the Box series. Stolen was published first (June 2010) and Alone (December 2013) seems like a bit of a rip off of Kelley Armstrong’s work. This may be a complete coincidence, but I’ll have to read more of each series to find out.
I’m still enjoying Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue and I just started reading Edward Rutherford’s Sarum. I’ll be sure to post reviews when I’m finished, but sneak peek review for Bryson: he’s marvelous and I adore this book. I’m taking my time and savoring every glorious word.
I’ve currently completed reading 75 books this year. I know that not everyone reads that much. I also know plenty of people who read a lot more than that. So I nearly choked on a laugh when a lady told me today that she had read too many books to keep track, like 75 books too many. Ever. Not this year, not in the last two or three years, but ever. If you’ve made it to your mid-forties and have only read 75 books ever, I want to know what school you went to and how this travesty happened. To be honest, however, I think she has read quite a bit more than that, I think people who don’t work in bookstores don’t really have realistic views on book quantities and what that looks like. 75 sounds like a lot to people, until you look at 50,000 – 100,000 every day.
What have you been reading?
Guns and Roses (and E-readers)
This post has nothing to do with Guns and Roses the band. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease you that way. Actually I did. This is about my new book-gal-crush Rose Gardner, brain child of author Denise Grover Swank.
Title: Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes
Author: Denise Grover Swank
Genre: Mystery (Romantic Suspense)
Format: Kindle
I downloaded Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes solely because it was free and on kindle. I just recently got a kindle for the first time, because my home library is primarily in storage for the moment, and as a reviewer I couldn’t stomach adding more physical copies to a collection I couldn’t even access. So e-reader it is for now, aside from the stash of books I toted to my temporary digs with me, and if I’m going to be reviewing ebooks, I need to know how to read them.
So Denise Grover Swank’s free ebook was my guinea pig, my learning curve, my book to help me decipher buttons and technology, my reminder that I really am 105 at heart.
The first twenty “pages” (I don’t know how to quantify without page numbers) or so I HATED IT. “This is so lame!” I kept shouting at the screen. I was mostly talking to the kindle, but I took it out on the heroine Rose Gardner. Not that she needed anything else being taken out on her… her mother thinks she’s demonic and ends up dead, naturally the whole (small) town wants to pin Rose for the murder while Rose finds herself in a world where her mother is no longer telling her how to live. Insert sexy next door neighbor who might be a potential boyfriend, or… of course… the actual murderer!
I loved it. It’s gloriously cozy with less cheese than the average cozy mystery, placing it more in the romantic suspense category than the cozy realm.
By the time Rose is burying a gun under a rose bush in her backyard I was completely hooked and had mastered the art of turning the kindle page. That is a bigger feat than it might seem, as I don’t always maintain feeling in my fingertips and I kept inadvertently hitting the next button too many times. Without page numbers is was pretty difficult to find my way back. So it took DAYS for me to get to Rose burying that gun, but less than an hour to wrap up the book.
So thank you Rose (and Swank) for teaching me to read (on an e-reader). I’m looking forward to reading the next installment in the Rose Gardner Mystery series.
Afternoon Tea Part One
Title: Gunpowder Green
Author:Laura Childs
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Length: 244 pages
With autumn in the air, it’s back to hot afternoon tea (as opposed to iced sweet tea) and my dive into cozy mysteries. Even though in Texas, fall tends to be more of a state of mind than an actual weather change. Post Labor Day it’s still in the nineties, but there’s rain and I made a trip to the grocery store just for tea bags.
Many of my afternoon teas happen on the back deck. My backyard table is actually newer and nicer than my kitchen table and it’s where I prefer to take my meals and spend time journaling and reading, if the weather allows. It’s nice to spend time, even if it’s in a book, with people who feel the same way:
“I think it’s time we thought about lunch. Margaret Rose baked cranberry bread yesterday, and I threw together some chicken salad earlier. Why not fix trays and eat out here where we can enjoy the view? It’ll be ever so much nicer.” – pg. 149
Laura Childs, The Indigo Tea Shop, and Theodosia Browning aren’t just about tea though. There are gardening elements, I am finding, in each of her tea shop mysteries. (Apparently, the gardeners in town tend to be a murderous bunch, and the tea shop sorts the sleuthing kind.) I love hanging out in small towns with historic districts, antique dealers, garden extraordinaire, and party goers.
“Timothy Neville adored giving parties. Holiday parties, charity galas, music recitals. And his enormous Georgian mansion, a glittering showpiece perched on Archdale Street, war, for many guests, a peek into the kind of gilded luxury that hadn’t been witnessed in Charleston since earlier times.” – pg. 212
Reading this inspired me. I am an event coordinator and I adore bookish parties, cozy festivals, people gathering in gardens, and atmospheres that allow for coffee, wine, or cups of tea, and quiet conversation or a people reading books. Fall is a good time for these sort of events, and though my Fall is already planned, not everyone’s is.
A lovely lady at Fuller’s Country Store has agreed to guest blog for me soon about tea parties she’s hosts. I don’t know the details, but I’m pretty excited to find out and scroll through photographs of the upcoming event. Stay tuned for “Afternoon Tea Part Two” for the details, the pictures, and a review of Laura Childs’ third Tea Shop Mystery: Shades of Earl Grey.
Singing Kiddo
A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books
I remember singing a lot as a kid. I was a choir girl. I loved the oldies, I loved the nursery rhymes, I loved hearing my voice, I loved making noise, I loved it all. I also loved books.
Kiddo is very much the same. Instead of oldies, though, she listens to a lot of Michael Jackson. I’m terrible about remembering old nursery rhymes, but we sing a lot of Disney music. She adores a good book.
So when I found Sing With Me, I grabbed it on the spot. I didn’t want kiddo to miss out on the childish songs. The “Ants Go Marching” is fun! “Down by the Bay” = Awesome! “Skinamarinky Dinky Dink” is also a fantastic favorite. But when I was faced with singing them with my kid, I couldn’t really remember them. And apparently I’ve been singing all the wrong words to “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Kiddo loves this book. It came with a cd and we play it in our radio in the library of our house. Sometimes we take it on car rides. She likes flipping through the pages and following along with the lyrics. The audio and visual word recognition at the same time (that I don’t have to do) is a nice break from reading all day. We love it and I highly recommend it to other moms and teachers for their preschoolers.
Colors of the Wind
A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books
Title: Colors of the Wind
Author: J.L. Powers
Publisher: Purple House Press
Genre: Picture Book/ Children’s
“J.L. Powers! I love that guy!” Kiddo shouts when she hears me telling my husband that we got a new picture book to review in the mail today. Never mind that J.L. Powers is a woman and that we’ve never read her work before. Kiddo just loves getting new books in the mail, loves discovering new authors as much as I do.
Colors of the Wind is the story of George Mendoza, two time blind Olympian runner who sees the world like a kaleidoscope and has become a painter. The picture book is visually stimulating and intentionally motivational to do your best and pursue your dreams, no matter what trials you may face.
“That book is beautiful, like Grandmother’s Cabin,” she says when we’re done. Artistically speaking, Grandmother’s Cabin is the picture book by which all others are now measured in my three year old’s eyes. Colors of the Wind gets her art stamp of approval and she was particularly intrigued by the tribute to other paintings at the back that were not included in the story. She’s officially asking when we can meet George and we can’t wait to share this story with the cousins, our friends, and the homeschooling groups we are a part of.
“An illumination of the persistent power of art. Colors of the Wind reminds us all that our biggest burdens are often our greatest gifts,” Kathi Appelt is quoted on the marketing packet. I couldn’t say it better.
Revisiting Of Blood and Brothers
Title: Of Blood and Brothers: Book Two
Author: E. Michael Helms
Publisher: KoehlerBooks
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 265 pages
“I swallowed the last of my coffee, reached for the pot and poured another cup.”
Cup after coffee cup, I drank and read the second installment of E. Michael Helms Civil War series.
When life is hard, it’s nice to escape into another century’s problems. I suppose that’s the root of the issue when it comes to historical and science fiction lovers. We like to flee into other eras when humans are the same, but the world is so different.
My favorite tidbit about Helms series is that he was inspired by two elderly brothers he once knew as a boy, who had a Confederate veteran father. On his acknowledgements page he tells them, though they are long gone, that “It was your voices that gave rise to the voices of Daniel and Elijah Malburn.” As a fiction writer myself, those tiny details make my heart swoon, because so often we writers are asked where our ideas come from, and so often we are unable to precisely pinpoint it. Ideas sort of sprout and grow from nothing more than a vibe or a passing fancy, very rarely rooted in much of substance other than things our subconscious has gathered and created from nearly thin air. That Helms remembers these gentleman who told him stories as a boy is marvelous to my scattered mind.
This is a great piece of fiction to add to a high schooler’s American Civil War studies. The mind wraps itself around facts and truths of an era so much better when the facts are rooted in a riveting story. My favorite thing to do when I study any time in history is to read a biography or political piece side by side with a bit of fiction.
Well done, Helms! Looking forward to reading Deadly Catch
A Fancy Dinner Party
Title:A Fancy Dinner Party
Editor: Hilary Comfort
Publisher: Grey Gecko Press
Genre: Thriller/ Horror
Length: 184 pages
For nearly two years now, I have had the joy of being acquainted with a small, local publishing company called Grey Gecko Press. As a whole, they are fun and spunky, and I enjoy both hosting events for them and attending ones where they are present.
At one of the more recent signings, Jason Kristopher handed me a copy of A Fancy Dinner Party. I was warned not to read it too late at night – or when I was alone.
I took my time with it, limiting myself to only one or two stories per sitting. The anthology features ten different authors, a fantastic forward by Jonathan Maberry, all neatly packaged and edited by Hilary Comfort and the folks at Grey Gecko Press.
I did read it at night. But I did not read it alone!
These stories are a lot like 
the group who wrote them, spunky and fun – even when they’re scaring the crap out of you. I enjoyed the anthology, I love that I have a copy signed by all the contributors and would highly recommend it to short story lovers…
and science fiction lovers… and readers of fantasy, and horror, and thrillers…
As the back jacket says, there’s even a bit of Americana and Japanese folklore. The book has so much to offer and is a prime example of Grey Gecko Press, yet again, putting their best foot forward. I especially liked the dedication at the front: “For all the new and still-struggling authors whose stories have yet to be told.”
With the chapters arranged like a menu and a forward urging us to “Sit back, tuck 
in your napkin […] and dig into this bizarre feat,” the book keeps the menu theme alive from start to finish. Well done.
As a reviewer of an anthology, I can’t just stop there and fail to mention one crucial point – my favorite course, of course!
Drum roll…
GGP managed to save the best for last: George Wright Padgett
I loved his story The Arrangement and it was truly the cherry on top of a very disturbing dessert!
The ebook of A Fancy Dinner Party is $2.99, well worth the download. Good luck reading alone.
Anakalian Whims 
Adventures of an Independent Bookseller
August 25, 2014 at 11:52 pm (Reviews) (Betsy Burton, book industry, books, books about books, books on books, bookshops, bookstores, business, history, publishing, reviews, social commentary, The King's English)
Author: Betsy Burton
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Genre: Books on Books
Length: 302 pages
In 1977, Betsy Burton opened a little independent bookstore in Salt Lake City, Utah. The rest is history, captured elegantly and passionately within the pages of The King’s English, a book named after the store it chronicles.
I love books about books and bookstores. Burton’s passions speak of my own as she details the pleasures of getting the right book into the right hands at the right time. She breaks up chapters with lists upon lists of must haves for people searching specific genres or moods. She tells the tale of a store’s life blood, its employees, customers, and ultimately all the people who have made it the world renown establishment it has become.
The store has been molded by dreams, authors, legal battles, and the patrons who have kept walking through the doors. The book industry, American history, and religious nuances of Utah have shaped what TKE has – through time – chosen to stand and fight for. It’s been a beautiful life, and to this day it continues through politics, economics, and the ever changing publishing practices.
I loved every minute of it, every word, and I’m a little ashamed to say that a few other titles were put on the back burner for this reading whim when they deserved my full attention. The experience has been fulfilling and the store has now been added to my places to visit before I die. Even more fulfilling would be to see one of my own books perched on their shelves, knowing what great care they go into selecting their inventory.
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