"Waiting On" Wednesday: Last Night in Twisted River

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Last Night in Twisted River

By John Irving
Publication Date: October 27

From Amazon:

"In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, a twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, pursued by the constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them. In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River — John Irving’s twelfth novel — depicts the recent half-century in the United States as a world “where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence — “The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long.” — to its elegiac final chapter, what distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice, the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller."

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

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Summer Reading Lists

USA Today has posted their summer 2009 books calendar here. I love how comprehensive their lists always are...a great way to preview upcoming releases to add to your TBR.

Likewise, Real Simple has posted their picks for summer reading here.

Have you come across any other summer reading recommendations?

"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Summer Kitchen

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Summer Kitchen

Karen Weinreb

Publication Date: July 7

From Amazon:

"When Nora Banks goes to answer the doorbell very early one November 1st, she thinks it must be a group of teen pranksters still out trick-or-treating. But it’s no prank—it’s the Feds, who have come to arrest her husband Evan for a white collar crime. Nora’s enviable, privileged life in the eighteenth-century house she’d quit her job to renovate to museum-quality perfection, is upended in an instant. The Bedford wives close ranks against Nora and her children. Nora’s only support comes from her children’s nanny Beatriz. The two women bond to raise the boys as smoothly as possible while Nora goes back to work. Baking has always been her biggest passion, so she launches a business of her own, the Summer Kitchen. Tempted by the offer of an affair with one of the local husbands and thwarted by an alpha wife who actively tries to shut down her business, Nora has to reach into reserves she didn’t know she had to support her family and change her way of thinking about life, family, money, and romance."

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave a link in the comments section!

Review: Best Intentions

"The trajectory of any life, laid out across a table, reduced to jottings in a pad, would no doubt seem both damning and inane, our imperfections difficult to justify despite our best intentions."

For Lisa Barkley, life is in a state of transition. Everything she's known for sure is out of sorts...all that had run smoothly on its tracks is now bumpy and uncertain.

Her position as vice president of a Manhattan PR firm is threatened when the company is sold. Her marriage to Dan, a business journalist, has grown distant, and a few unsettling discoveries lead her to believe he is having an affair...even as he assures her that his preoccupation is finding the next "big" story for his career.

Her longtime best friend, Deidre, is considering giving up her penchant for bad-boy relationships after an encounter with her college boyfriend, with Lisa as the go-between as they test the waters with each other again.

Lisa even feels out of place at her preteen daughters' private school, as the only working mother on the annual fundraiser committee among perfectly put together "career moms."

When Lisa meets businessman David Forrester as a potential client, the two form a friendship, with e-mails that border on flirtations and lunches where they reveal more and more about themselves. He becomes her advisor, in both her precarious job situation and in her doubts about her marriage. It is the one bright spot in the murkiness that Lisa's life has become...but is she playing with fire?

While Part I of this novel is an examination of marriage, motherhood, and friendships, Part II is a murder mystery. It's somewhat of an abrupt shift, but Listfield keeps the "whodunit" interesting and the reader guessing.

There's so much going wrong in Lisa's life that it's easy to get bogged down with it at times, and I was eager for something good to happen to her. That said, this was an interesting read with a great setting and some riveting suspense at the end.

Library Loot: 5-14

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by A Striped Armchair and Out of the Blue that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

Here's what came into my house this week:

The Walking People by Mary Beth Keane

The Wildwater Walking Club by Claire Cook

Follow Me by Joanna Scott

The Family Man by Elinor Lipman

Hello Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth

Best Intentions by Emily Listfield

I've been looking forward to all of these...and they all hit at once. I almost don't know where to start!

"Waiting On" Wednesday: After You

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

After You

By Julie Buxbuam

Publication Date: August 25

From author's Web site:

"On a cobblestone street in Notting Hill, Ellie Lerner’s life-long best friend, Lucy, is stabbed to death in front of her eight-year-old daughter. Ellie, of course, drops everything - her job, her marriage, her life in the Boston suburbs – and travels to London to pick up the pieces of the life Lucy has left behind. While Lucy’s husband, Greg copes with his grief by retreating to the pub, eight-year-old Sophie has simply stopped speaking.

Desperate to help Sophie, Ellie turns to a book that gave her comfort as a child, The Secret Garden. As the two spend hours exploring the novel, its story of hurt, magic and healing blooms around them. But so, too, do the secrets Lucy kept hidden, even from her best friend. As Ellie peels back the layers of her friend's life, she's forced to confront her own as well - the marriage she left behind, the loss she'd hoped to escape, and the elusiveness of the place we choose to call home. "

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave a link in the comments section!

"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Best of Times

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted here, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Best of Times
By Penny Vincenzi
Publication Date: July 14, 2009

From Amazon:

"On an ordinary Friday afternoon, on a major motorway outside of London, a trailer truck suddenly and violently swerves across fives lanes of traffic—careening cars into one another like dominoes and leaving a trail of chaos and confusion. Within the space of a minute, an astounding miles-long pileup has amassed, and, as the survivors await help, their stories unfold.

Vincenzi expertly maneuvers the plot between the panic-stricken husband trapped in his car with his young mistress, his adultery sure to be discovered; the bridegroom trying frantically to get to the church on time (he won’t); the widow on her way to reunite with the love of her life after sixty years, now forced to ponder whether she’ll ever see him again; the junior doctor waiting to receive the crash victims in the ER … And at the epicenter of this field of destruction lies the truck driver, suffering from memory loss, while the mysterious hitchhiker, the only person who knows what really happened, has fled the scene.

Spellbound by these intimate and evocative tales, we watch as fate takes its powerful course and the far-reaching effects of the crash ripple through the lives of hundreds of people."

What's your "waiting on" pick this week?

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave a link in the comments section!

Southern Reading Challenge 2009

It's that time of year again!!

"The time when you pour a glass of lemonade or sweet tea and take your official summer spot on the porch. Lean back in that chase lounge surrounded by geraniums and ferns, and begin the summer long journey into Southern culture."

Maggie hosts this annual event, and while I'm not usually a participant in reading challenges, I look forward to this one!

Here are the rules:

"You may choose to read any style of Southern book such as Appalachian tales, Civil War sagas, Gothic myths, Grit lit, and heart-wrenching biographies. Just as long as you read three (fiction or nonfiction) between May 15th and August 15th."

I could, I suppose, read some classics, but in keeping with the general theme/mission of my blog, I'm going with new hardcover releases. Three of my favorite Southern authors have new novels coming out this summer, so it made my picks pretty easy:

Return to Sullivan's Island by Dorothea Benton Frank

Last Light Over Carolina by Mary Alice Monroe

The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews

If you're a Southern book junkie like I am, head on over and sign up!

Review: Home Safe

"...it had put them on the fast track for being comfortable with each other. As they were, ever after. Always comfortable in a way that Dan described as home safe."

After Helen Ames' husband dies unexpectedly, she's at a loss, in more ways than one. She's not only lost her partner, she's left without the knowledge to navigate alone, having relied on her husband to handle all of the details of their life together. As a successful novelist, she's also hit with a case of severe writer's block, unable to form ideas and thoughts...or even go near her office.

She starts to become more and more dependent on her 27-year-old daughter, Tessa, who herself is trying to make a life of her own and find her way as a young woman.

Nearly a year after Dan's death, everyone thinks it's time for Helen to move on, pick up the pieces, and begin living her life, albeit a new one. But, Helen is stuck in her grief and paralyzed by the very thought of going forward.

When asked to teach a writing workshop, she reluctantly accepts...and it becomes an empowering catalyst for her, bringing her joy she didn't think possible again. It awakens her spirit and fuels her creative mind. And, a gift from Dan, carefully planned before his untimely death and revealed to her when she least expected it, reminds her what she had in him, as a husband...and teaches her what she has in herself.

Author Elizabeth Berg always knows how to turn a phrase just right, conveying so much about a character with just a few choice words, such as:

"She was a girl who would take the chair closest to the door, and then sit there every time."

Berg's novels always produce something for my quote book, and this one was no exception. After reading this, I went right for a fresh page, loving the analogy:

"It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful, and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead."

I have to admit that this wasn't my favorite of her books, as the writing seemed a little rushed and abrupt at times, but Berg is a master storyteller and fans won't want to miss her latest.