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Book Review: SO MUCH PRETTY by Cara Hoffman
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published March 15, 2011 by Simon and Schuster
When Wendy White goes missing and is later found dead, the people of Haeden, New York insist that she must have been taken by an outsider, someone just passing through. No one from Haeden would ever—could ever—kidnap and rape such a nice, pretty, local girl. People from places like Haeden don’t do things like that.
But journalist Stacy Flynn—an outsider from the big city—isn’t sold. In town to research a story on the environmental impact of the dairy owned by the town’s most prominent family, Flynn suspects that there is something going on in Haeden, something going on with the men, in particular, and she won’t be intimidated into keeping it to herself. She has been hoping to hit on a “big-picture story from a backwater nowhere,” and Wendy White’s disappearance and murder set her spidey senses a-tingling. They go into overdrive when Alice Piper, the precocious daughter of idealists Claire and Gene, who quit their careers in medicine and left Manhattan for the opportunity to take a stab at living off the grid, does Something Big, something that Flynn knows her writing provoked. Read more
Win It Before You Can Buy It: THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS in Paperback!
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Michele Young-Stone’s debut novel The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors was one of my favorite books of 2010, and that was the case well before she and I figured out that we live minutes from each other and became friends. The Handbook has been widely praised (Publishers Weekly called it one of the top ten debuts of 2010) and was just selected as a Target Emerging Author selection for this summer.
And? Michele just signed a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster, so there is more goodness to come.
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors will be out in paperback April 5th, and this is your one and only chance to win it before you can buy it.
Three lucky winners will win:
- A signed paperback edition of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors
- A Skype or phone-in visit with you or your book club
How to enter:
- Leave a comment on this post.
- Tweet “I entered the @bookladysblog HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTING STRIKE SURVIVORS giveaway! http://su.pr/AFrHui”
Do one, get one entry. Do both, get two. It’s that easy. The giveaway closes at midnight this Friday, March 25th, and winners will have the book in their hot little hands before it is available in stores.
Say Goodbye to the Next Hour of Your Life
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
I’m currently reading the very beautiful but also very sad Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman (and no, I haven’t shaken the Destiny’s Child earworm yet), and last night I needed a break. A breather. A moment of levity. So I scrolled through my e-galleys, opened up David Thorne’s The Internet is a Playground (coming April 28 from Tarcher), and proceeded to laugh so hard I almost peed in my pants.
As I learned in the opening pages, David Thorne is the evil genius behind wildly popular website 27b/6 and the originator of some of the most frequently forwarded viral emails on the interweb. The cover refers to the opening email exchange, Next time, I’ll spend the money on drugs, in which Thorne attempts to pay a remote chiropractor (i.e. a “doctor” who says he can heal aches and pains remotely) with a drawing of a seven-legged spider. Read more
Sleep, Sun, and Sarah Vowell
2011 at 8am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Or what we like to call Sunday in my house.
Spring came in full force this week and brought it with long walks through the park, lazy afternoons enjoying coffee and cocktails al fresco, and the precipitous decline in motivation that can only be Spring Fever. So I’ll be spending the day following the hound’s lead, moving from one sunny spot to the next, dozing when I feel like it, and soaking up the all-around delightfulness of a near-perfect weekend.
And it’s a near-perfect weekend following up a really fantastic week. I spent Thursday and Friday in Charlottesville, VA (about an hour from Richmond) at the Virginia Festival of the Book, where I had a chance to see wonderful panel discussions, spend time with a few of my favorite partners in crime (Michele Young-Stone and Susan Gregg Gilmore), and meet authors and publishing industry folks I’ve only known on Twitter. It was two days of celebrating (Michele just found out that her debut novel The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors was selected for Target’s Emerging Author feature!) great food, great people, and thought-provoking conversations, and I came away with a lot to think about.
The Bare Necessities—Claudia Sternbach (READING LIPS)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Claudia Sternbach is the author Reading Lips: A Memoir in Kisses, part of Unbridled Books’ facemeltingly fantastic spring 2011 list. It hits stores on April 5. I’m thrilled to welcome Claudia today with a discussion of the books she would never kiss goodbye.
We used to have a book store in our small coastal village which sold used books. Some were highly valued for their age and condition. Some were the kind of thing one might find left in an umbrella shaded beach chair to be discovered by the next person looking for a place to get out of the sun. Once in a while I would try to become one of those organized, disciplined people who are able to look at their overstuffed shelves and begin to cull. To pull down books which may be parted with and after dusting them off, drive down the hill to the little shop and hand them over. It always sounded easy. The reality of the task was much more difficult.
I simply love my books. Even the ones I found to be rather disappointing. There is one shelf, however, where the books perched are safe. A place for books I would never think of letting go.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt is one of those “keep your hands off” books. One of the best examples of memoir ever written. How McCourt was able to recreate a world of wet and dreary poverty while showing us the humanity and humor of a life in Ireland most of us could never imagine is one of those mysteries of writing. Actually, I can’t imagine parting with any of his books, but if a fire were to break out and and I was forced to save just one of his “children” Angela’s Ashes would be tucked under my arm as I ran out the door.
Friendly Fire by Kathryn Chetkovich would be included in that dash for safety. This slim book of sharp as a knife short stories won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award and was published by the University of Iowa Press in 1998. How Chetkovich packed so much in such a seemingly small package I don’t know. But once a year I take it off my shelf and reread it. I always find something new to amaze me. I will confess that Kathy is an old friend. But that does not mean I am biased. I have many friends who write books. Many are really, really good. But Friendly Fire gets reread more than any other book on my shelf. Read more
