"Waiting On" Wednesday: Aftertaste

"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:

Aftertaste: A Novel in Five Courses
By Meredith Mileti
Publication Date: August 30

From Amazon:

Mira Rinaldi lives life at a rolling boil. Co-owner of Grappa, a chic New York City trattoria, she has an enviable apartment, a brand-new baby, and a frenzied schedule befitting her success. Everything changes the night she catches her husband, Jake, "wielding his whisk" with Grappa's new waitress. Mira's fiery response earns her a court-ordered stint in anger management and the beginning of legal and personal predicaments as she battles to save her restaurant and pick up the pieces of her life. Mira falls back on family and friends in Pittsburgh as she struggles to find a recipe for happiness. But the heat is really on when some surprising developments in New York present her with a high stakes opportunity to win back what she thought she had lost forever. For Mira, cooking isn't just about delicious flavors and textures, but about the pleasure found in filling others' needs. And the time has come to decide where her own fulfillment lies - even if the answers are unexpected.

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

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Weekly Roundup 6/10

I spent the majority of the week on vacation, reading in front of beautiful water. I took Still Alice by Lisa Genova with me. I know...I think I'm one of the last people to read this. It just escaped me when it was first published, but after reading Left Neglected earlier this year (and loving it!), I went back and picked this up. Genova has an amazing ability, with both of these books, for you to really internalize the medical issues of her main characters.

I also read Seven-Year Bitch by Jennifer Belle. It was an ideal vacation read...easy, fun, light, humorous.

For my weekend reading, I picked up Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews (one of my favorite Southern authors) and To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal.

Finally, I did way more eating out than in this week, but I did make my favorite topping for spaghetti, Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, the night I got home. Clean and simple (three ingredients!).

"Waiting On" Wednesday: There But For The

"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:


There But For The

By Ali Smith
Publication Date: September 13

From Amazon:

At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table and locks himself in an upstairs room, communicating only through notes slipped under the door to his involuntary hosts, the Lee family. In an act of desperation, Genevieve Lee summons Anna, a woman Miles knew briefly as a teenager, in the hope that she might be able to lure him out. Anna quickly finds herself thrust into the chaotic and surreal world of the Lees: their precocious nine-year-old neighbor, Brooke; their dinner guest Mark; and May, an elderly woman living nearby. Though each of these characters knows Miles only slightly, his self-imposed isolation will serve as the central event linking them to one another and to their own pasts.


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

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Weekly Roundup 6/3

My favorite read this week was The Arrivals, which centers around three grown children who return home one summer as a result of various upheavals in their respective lives. I think this is such an easy situation to relate to, whether you're the parent or the child. I personally have moved back in with my parents briefly as an adult three times...most memorably, with my then-husband while we were between houses. THAT was an interesting experience.

I'm heading to the Gulf Coast on Sunday, and as of right now, my book beach bag pretty much looks like this:

That's right...EMPTY. How is that possible? The next two weeks are full of great summer releases, but, alas, my TBR pile doesn't exist right now.

I think I'm going to go back to my library list and re-check out books that I didn't get around to reading the first time...in particular, The Sweet Relief of Missing Children and You Know When the Men Are Gone.

I've already got WoW scheduled for next week, so be sure to come by and leave your link, even in my absence. As always, I'll be reading each and every participant's pick when I get back!

Finally, here's the best thing I cooked this week: Maple Sausage and Waffle Breakfast Casserole. It's my new go-to for brunch!

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Wife-In-Law

"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:

Wife-In-Law

By Haywood Smith
Publication Date: September 13

From Amazon:

Neighbors Betsy Callison and Kat Ellis were oil and water when they met 35 years ago. Betsy was a prim, neat freak, Republican wife, and Kat was a wild, irreverent, hippie Democrat. But they soon discover common ground that creates a bond that lasts for decades. Until Betsy's husband leaves her for his secretary, then comes sniffing back around two years later and convinces newly widowed Kat to marry him! Not that Betsy wants him back, but it’s hard to move on when the newlyweds are flaunting their love right across the street. But there’s trouble brewing in Paradise, and no one knows philandering Greg better than his ex-wife Betsy. Can Betsy get involved in her best friend's marriage--even if it means helping her wife-in-law figure out the same man she shared a bed with for 30 years?

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

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave your link below!

Weekly Roundup 5/27

This week, I finished The First Husband by Laura Dave. It was a fun, easy read...but it also gave me enough food for thought to imagine a "what if" scenario in my own life. And, I came away with another entry for my quote book. Love this:

"You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life."
--Jane Hirshfield

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but I love the blog Carrots 'N' Cake, so I was thrilled to get my hands on her new book. It's full of great tips about making good food decisions without depriving yourself...achieving that ideal balance. Plus, it got me back on board with Body Pump, a fantastic class that works every muscle group. I've just been spinning five days a week lately, but I know I need strength training as much as cardio.

For the long weekend, I'm looking forward to finishing The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore and getting started on Summer in the South by Cathy Holton. I also picked up a new cookbook from Southern Living magazine: The Half-Hour Hostess.

Finally, speaking of food, I made these Mini Lasagna Cups for dinner this week...now such a fan of working with wontons, I keep looking for other ways to use them. They were DELICIOUS!

"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Sisters

"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 Sisters

By Nancy Jensen
Publication Date: November 8

From Amazon:

Growing up in hardscrabble Kentucky in the 1920s, with their mother dead and their stepfather an ever-present threat, Bertie Fisher and her older sister Mabel have no one but each other—with perhaps a sweetheart for Bertie waiting in the wings. But on the day that Bertie receives her eighth-grade diploma, good intentions go terribly wrong, setting off a chain of misunderstandings that will send the sisters on separate paths and reverberate through their daughters’ and granddaughters’ lives. From the Depression through World War II and Vietnam, and smaller events both tragic and joyful, Bertie and Mabel forge unexpected identities and raise daughters—and sisters—of their own, learning that love and betrayal are even more complicated than they seem.


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

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave your link below!

"Waiting On" Wednesday: The Family Fang

"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 Family Fang
By Kevin Wilson
Publication Date: August 9

From the author's website:


Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as along as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world.

When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance—their magnum opus—whether the kids agree to participate or not. 


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

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave your link below!

"Waiting On" Wednesday: This Beautiful Life

"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 Beautiful Life
By Helen Schulman
Publication Date: August 2

From HarperCollins website:

When the Bergamots move from a comfortable upstate college town to New York City, they’re not quite sure how they’ll adapt—or what to make of the strange new world of well-to-do Manhattan. Soon, though, Richard is consumed by his executive role at a large New York university, and Liz, who has traded in her academic career to oversee the lives of their children, is hectically ferrying young Coco around town. Fifteen-year-old Jake is gratefully taken into the fold by a group of friends at Wildwood, an elite private school. 

But the upper-class cocoon in which they have enveloped themselves is ripped apart when Jake wakes up one morning after an unchaperoned party and finds an email in his in-box from an eighth-grade admirer. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. Shocked, stunned, maybe a little proud, and scared—a jumble of adolescent emotion—he forwards the video to a friend, who then for-wards it to a friend. Within hours, it’s gone viral, all over the school, the city, the world.

The ensuing scandal threatens to shatter the Bergamots’ sense of security and identity, and, ultimately, their happiness. They are a good family faced with bad choices, and how they choose to react, individually and at one another’s behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy. 


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

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"Waiting On" Wednesday: Light from a Distant Star

"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:

Light from a Distant Star

By Mary McGarry Morris
Publication Date: September 13

From Library Journal:

With her father’s business in trouble and her mother now working, 13-year-old Nellie is the determined caretaker of her little brother. The adults she does encounter, like the thuggish guy who works at her grandfather’s junkyard and the stripper who rents an apartment at the back of the house, upend her life further. Then, a moment of violence lands Nellie in court as witness, where no one believes the awful truth she’s trying to relay. As evidenced by her many novels, from National Book Award nominee Vanished to Oprah pick Songs in Ordinary Time, Morris excels at family dramas with dark and tingly psychological twists.


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

Want to participate? Grab the logo, post your own WoW entry on your blog, and leave your link below!