"Waiting On" Wednesday: This Is Where We Live

"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:

This Is Where We Live
By Janelle Brown
Publication Date: June 15

From Random House:

A novel about hopes, dreams, ambition, art, love, real estate, reality, disillusionment, compromise, and reinvention. From the author of the national bestseller All We Ever Wanted Was Everything comes another page-turner that catches the Zeitgeist: a story about subprime mortgages, ruthless Hollywood economics, and the unravelling of a young marriage.

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!

Weekend Cooking: Junior League Favorites

It's pretty well-documented that I'm a big fan of Junior League cookbooks, and I have quite a collection. I've shared a few recipes from various editions in the past, but I thought I'd share my "top five" favorites, the ones I most frequently use.

Some Like It South
Pensacola, Florida

Food for Thought
Birmingham, Alabama

True Grits
Atlanta, Georgia

Stop and Smell the Rosemary
Houston, Texas

Come On In!
Jackson, Mississippi

Finally, here's my go-to pasta salad recipe, from Food for Thought. It's sooo delicious...it's the dill that makes it so special. I've never gotten anything less than rave reviews when I serve it.

Tri-Color Rotini with Chicken and Broccoli

2 pounds cooked chicken, chopped
6 cups tri-color rotini pasta, cooked and drained
2-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup chopped celery
2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
2 cups fresh broccoli florets

Dressing:
1 cup olive oil (I use a little less)
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons dried dillweed

Put all salad ingredients in a large bowl. Make dressing and toss all to combine. Chill and marinate at least 6 hours before serving.

Note: I put the broccoli into the colander before draining the pasta, and the hot water steams it.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking, which is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Cars from a Marriage

"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:

Cars from a Marriage

By Debra Galant

Publication Date: April 27

From Amazon:

From a ’74 Mustang to a Chevy Suburban, Debra Galant’s Cars from A Marriage charts the important events—big and small—in one couple’s relationship by way of the automobiles that drive them throughout the course of their lives. Ivy is a transplanted Southern belle—the daughter of a car salesman— who continually wonders how she has ended up a New Jersey stay-at-home mom with a not-so-secret fear of driving. Her husband Ellis was a stand up comedian when they met, and the owner of that ’74 Mustang, but his ambitions were overshadowed by the responsibilities of a family. In the blink of an eye, he became a PR executive with a mortgage, two kids, and a Buick LeSabre. With insights that alternate between hilarious and profound, Galant provides a unique, unforgettable portrait of a marriage.

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!

MY First New York

Today marks the release of My First New York, which features "candid accounts of coming to New York by more than 50 of the most remarkable people who have called the city home" from New York Magazine.

I can't WAIT to read this...and it inspired me to share my own "early adventures in the big city."

I moved to New York from Alabama three months after graduating from college. Talk about a fish out of water! I had only ever been to NYC twice before...and one of those visits was for my job interview.

I arrived on the Saturday before Thanksgiving 1997, so, naturally, I didn't return home for the holiday. My then-boyfriend and I headed down to see the Macy's parade in person, but the weather was really cold and windy that day, so we didn't stay very long. In fact, that was the year the Cat in the Hat float caused that horrible accident.

We had "Thanksgiving" lunch in Chinatown, and the waiter recommended the house specialty, salt and pepper prawns...with the shells on. I remember balking at eating the shrimp without peeling them, and the waiter insisted, coaxing that it was "good for the nails, and good for the teeth." As everyone else I knew was eating turkey that day, I remember feeling very cosmopolitan.

As overwhelmed as I often felt those first few weeks, I always felt the sensation that I was where everything in the world was going on, a 22-year-old's perception of being in the epicenter of the universe. And, in the two years of my residence, while I became adept at living there, I never lost that initial feeling of awe for the city.

Here's My First New York in pictures:

My apartment building

I lived on the Upper East Side, on 77th Street
between 1st and 2nd Avenue

I worked for Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
Our office backed up to Rockefeller Plaza.

I was the editorial assistant to the editorial director of Pocket.

Here is where all said assisting was done.

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Father of the Rain

"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:

Father of the Rain

By Lily King

Publication Date: July 1

From Amazon:

When 11-year-old Daley’s parents separate, she is thrust into a chaotic adult world of competition, indulgence, and manipulation. Unable to place her allegiance, she gently toes the thickening line between her parents’ worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother, and the conservative, liquor-soaked life of her father. But without her mother there to keep him in line, Daley’s father’s basest impulses are unleashed, and Daley has to choose her own survival over the father she still loves. As she grows into adulthood, Daley retreats from the New England country-club culture that nourished her father’s fears and addictions, attempting to live outside his influence. Until he hits rock bottom. Faced with the chance to free her father from 60 years of dependency, Daley must decide whether repairing their broken relationship is worth losing not only her professional dreams, but the love of her life.

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!

Author Acknowledgments

When I was in book publishing, I was graciously included in several authors' acknowledgments for my part in the editorial process. It's been years since I've been in the industry, but I still look at the Acknowledgments page of every book I read, even though I recognize that the list of names means something only to those listed.

Now I read them because I love coming across ones that are particularly interesting, witty, clever, or, as in the case below, honest.

I'm halfway through So Much for That by Lionel Shriver, and, no surprise, I've already flipped to the back and read her "thank-yous." And, I loved this:

"Novelists thanking spouses for their amazing patience during the agony of artistic creation gets pretty tired. Besides, I don't consider writing an agony, and my husband Jeff is not remotely patient. Yet he did furnish me one gift for which any author's gratitude is bottomless: a good title."

I'd like to know...do you read an author's Acknowledgments page?

Beach Book Preview

We're heading into Spring Break week here in Alabama, and I'm going to spend a few days on the Gulf Coast (at the lovely place above) with my family. Even though we're still having some chilly weather here, the first beach trip of the year always gets me in the mood for summer...and beach books!

Some of my favorite authors have beach-centered books coming out this summer, and even though I have to wait for them, they're definitely already on my TBR list. I love just looking at the covers alone...











Beachcombers by Nancy Thayer
Beautifully written, powerfully felt, full of both abundant joy and heart-wrenching sorrow, Beachcombers is an extraordinary novel that centers on the bittersweet reunion of three captivating, very different sisters on Nantucket over one gorgeous, exhilarating summer. (Amazon)













The Island by Elin Hilderbrand
Four women head to Tuckernuck for a retreat, hoping to escape their troubles. Intead, they find only drama, secrets, and life-changing revelations. (Borders)

Lowcountry Summer by Dorothea Benton Frank

The South Carolina coast forms a lush backdrop for Dorothea Benton Frank's tales of cheatin' husbands, nosy neighbors, and nutty families. But don't let the sand and palm trees fool you: Frank's very funny novels are smarter than the average beach read. (Barnes & Noble)

Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

From the #1 "New York Times "bestselling author, a novel about a family of women who seek refuge in an old beach house. (Borders)


I'm curious...who's your favorite "summer/beach read" author?

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Perfect Reader

"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:

Perfect Reader

By Maggie Pouncey

Publication Date: June 15

From Amazon:

Flora Dempsey is the only child of Lewis Dempsey, beloved former college president and a famous academic in the league of Harold Bloom. On hearing the news of her father’s death, Flora hastily quits her big-city magazine job and returns to her hometown to in­habit his house. But even weightier is her appoint­ment as her father’s literary executor; it seems he was secretly writing poems at the end of his life—love poems, to a girlfriend Flora didn’t even know he had. Suddenly besieged by well-wishers and literary blog­gers alike, Flora has no choice but to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, her relation­ship with the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, her memories of her parents’ divorce, and her own uncertain future.

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!

Library Loot: 3/5

Library Loot is hosted this week by A Striped Armchair.

Another great week of new releases that came up from my reserve list!

The Gin Closet by Leslie Jamison
Another Life Altogether by Elaine Beale
The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley
Dear Strangers by Meg Mullins

What did you get this week?

Quotables with Lori Lansens

When I'm reading, I love coming across "just-right" passages that have me reaching for my quote book. Quotables is an event in which I present authors with a meaningful (to me) passage from their novels and ask them to speak to it in whatever way they wish.

I just finished The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens, an emotional and empowering story of a woman who finds herself in the journey to find the husband who's left her.

One part of the book that really stuck with me was a conversation between the main character and her father:

Shortly before he'd passed, Mary'd confided to Orin her sense of feeling stuck and unbound all at once, her failed attempts at optimism, her sense that she could only see the glass half empty, to which he'd responded impatiently, "Forget about the glass, Murray. Get a drink from the hose and push on."

From the author:

This passage really speaks to the notion of "happiness" -- a motif in the book. As Mary ponders her own lack of fulfillment and what she thinks of as her "abstract malaise," her father, a pragmatist, urges her to just "get on with it."

I'm with Orin. I think we North Americans spend too much time thinking about ourselves in general -- our weight, our needs, our wealth or lack of wealth, etc. Mary decides, as she becomes enlightened, that happiness may simply be the absence of fear. Her sense of fullfillment is strongest when she's thinking about other people and life on a grander scale.

When she stops wondering how to find "happiness," Mary grows to understand that it's there, woven into her rich tapestry of emotion and experience.

You can visit Lori Lansens online here.

"Waiting On" Wednesday: This Must Be the Place

"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:

This Must Be the Place

By Kate Racculia

Publication Date: July 6

From Amazon:

The Darby-Jones boardinghouse in Ruby Falls, New York, is home to Mona Jones and her daughter, Oneida, two loners and self-declared outcasts who have formed a perfectly insular family unit: the two of them and the four eclectic boarders living in their house. But their small, quiet life is upended when Arthur Rook shows up in the middle of a nervous breakdown, devastated by the death of his wife, carrying a pink shoe box containing all his wife's mementos and keepsakes, and holding a postcard from sixteen years ago, addressed to Mona but never sent. Slowly the contents of the box begin to fit together to tell a story—one of a powerful friendship, a lost love, and a secret that, if revealed, could change everything that Mona, Oneida, and Arthur know to be true. Or maybe the stories the box tells and the truths it brings to life will teach everyone about love—how deeply it runs, how strong it makes us, and how even when all seems lost, how tightly it brings us together.

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!