Waiting on Wednesday: The Divorce Papers

 

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature of the Breaking the Spine blog.  It's a great way to share information about forthcoming books with other readers.
 

 This week's anticipated book:

  

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group 

Publication date: March 18, 2014

Preorder from online and bricks and mortar bookstores

 

 

From barnesandnoble.com:  Witty and wonderful, sparkling and sophisticated, this debut romantic comedy brilliantly tells the story of one very messy, very high-profile divorce, and the endearingly cynical young lawyer dragooned into handling it.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old line New England firm where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one weekend, with all the big partners away, Sophie must handle the intake interview for the daughter of the firm’s most important client. After eighteen years of marriage, Mayflower descendant Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim has just been served divorce papers in a humiliating scene at the popular local restaurant, Golightly’s. She is locked and loaded to fight her eminent and ambitious husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim, Chief of the Department of Pediatric Oncology, for custody of their ten-year-old daughter Jane—and she also burns to take him down a peg. Sophie warns Mia that she’s never handled a divorce case before, but Mia can’t be put off. As she so disarmingly puts it: It’s her first divorce, too.

Debut novelist Susan Rieger doesn’t leave a word out of place in this hilarious and expertly crafted debut that shines with the power and pleasure of storytelling. Told through personal correspondence, office memos, emails, articles, and legal papers, this playful reinvention of the epistolary form races along with humor and heartache, exploring the complicated family dynamic that results when marriage fails. For Sophie, the whole affair sparks a hard look at her own relationships—not only with her parents, but with colleagues, friends, lovers, and most importantly, herself. Much like Where’d You Go, Bernadette, The Divorce Papers will have you laughing aloud and thanking the literature gods for this incredible, fresh new voice in fiction.

Which book are you waiting for?

Enjoy life with books . . .

Catherine

Waiting on Wednesday: The Divorce Papers was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.  

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #51

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. It's an opportunity to share the first paragraph(s) of a book I am currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

Today I'm featuring the opening paragraph from The Wife, The Maid, and The Mistress by Ariel Lawhon, which I borrowed from the library.

   

We begin in a bar.  We will end here as well, but that is more than you need to know at the moment.  For now, a woman sits in a corner booth waiting to give her confession.  But her party is late, and without an audience, she looks small and alone, like an invalid in an oversize church pew.  It's not so easy for her, this truth telling, and she strains against it.  A single strand of pearls, brittle and yellowed with age, rests against the flat plane of her chest.  She rolls them between her fingers as though counting the beads on a rosary.  Stella Crater has avoided this confession for thirty-nine years.  The same number of years she has been coming to this bar. 

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

The art deco cover of the book and the opening paragraph have me completely spellbound.  I can hardly wait for Stella Crater's confession to unfold.

What are you reading now or planning to read soon?

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #51 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.

Weekly Book Recap #55

Have you ever had one of those weeks when multiple library hold requests come in at once?  That happened to me this week, with 5 books.  Add to that two book club meetings, which made for a busy week.

Here are the books I've finished reading, am currently reading, and bought or picked up from the library, along with what I plan to read next.  I'm sharing my reading updates on the following blogs:

        

 Sunday Post hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer  

Showcase Sunday hosted by Vicky at  Books, Biscuits, and Tea
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? hosted by Sheila at Book Journey

  

Finished reading . . .

  The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern.  It's the first book I've read by this author.  It has an interesting premise and kept my attention.  I see more books by this author in my future.
 

Reading now . . .

                       

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor; Home of the Braised by Julie Hyzy
 

Borrowed from the library . . .

           

                       

The Mangle Street Murders by M.R.C. Kasasian, The Wife, The Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon, Always Time To Die by Elizabeth Lowell, Wallbanger by Alice Clayton, and While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell

Purchased . . .

       Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

Reading next . . .  
      The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

 

Which books did you get this week and what are you reading?
   

Catherine

Weekly Book Recap #55 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #33

It's Friday . . . time to share excerpts from one of my current reads with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

This week's selection:

   

Beginning:  Part One   November 1803--February 1805

Hetty Handful Grimke

 

There was a time in Africa the people could fly.  Mauma told me this one night when I was ten years old.

 

My thoughts:  Hetty Handful Grimke is such an interesting name.  I want to know how she came to be called Handful, and learn more about the tale being told by Mauma.

--------------------

Page 55-56:   "Such occupations are what girls do together, but it was the first occasion for either of us, and we carried them out as covertly as possible to avoid Mother putting an end to them.  We were crossing a dangerous line, Hetty and I."

 

From barnesandnoble.com:  From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women.

 

Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world.

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid.We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.

Enjoy life with books . . .

Catherine

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #33 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.    
 

 

 

Waiting on Wednesday: New Maeve Binchy Novel!!

 

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature of the Breaking the Spine blog.  It's a great way to share information about forthcoming books with other readers.
 

 This week's anticipated book:

    

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Publication date: April 22, 2014

Preorder from online and books and mortar bookstores

 

From barnesandnoble.com:  While she was writing columns for The Irish Times and her best-selling novels, Maeve Binchy also had in mind to write a book that revolved around one street with many characters coming and going. Every once in a while, she would write about one these people. She would then put it in a drawer. "For the future," she would say. The future is now.

Just around the corner from St. Jarlath's Crescent (which readers will recognize from Minding Frankie) is Chestnut Street, where neighbors come and go. Behind their closed doors we encounter very different people with different life circumstances, occupations, and sensibilities. Written with the humor and understanding that are earmarks of Maeve Binchy's work, it is a pleasure to be part of this world with all of its joys and sorrows, to get to know the good and the bad, and ultimately to have our hearts warmed by her storytelling.

My thoughts:  Like other Maeve Binchy fans, I am excited that there is another novel from the beloved author that will be published posthumously.  Last year's publication of  A Week in Winter left me feeling bittersweet because I thought it would be the very last novel from the popular author who passed away in July 2012.  Thus I eagerly await another chance to visit Ireland by way of Binchy's prose.

Which book are you waiting for?
 

Enjoy life with books . . .
 

Catherine
 

Waiting on Wednesday: New Maeve Binchy Novel!! was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  

 

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #50

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. It's an opportunity to share the first paragraph(s) of a book I am currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

Today I'm featuring the opening paragraphs from Orfeo by Richard Powers, which a friend gave me last month. 

   

Orfeo

"An overture, then:

Lights blaze from an American Craftsman home in a demure neighborhood, late on a spring evening, in the tenth year of the altered world.  Shadows dance against the curtains: a man working late, as he has every night that winter, in front of shelves filled with glassware.  He's clad in mufti, protective goggles, and latex hospital gloves, and his Giacometti body hunches forward as if in prayer.  A gray but still-thick Beatles mop hangs in his eyes.

He studies a book on the gear-cluttered workbench.  In one hand--a single-channel pipette, raked like a dagger.  From a tiny refrigerated vial, he sucks up no more colorless liquid than a hoverfly might take from a spring of bee balm.  This pellet goes into a tube no bigger than a mouse's muzzle, a dollop so small he can't be sure it's really there.  His gloved hands shake as he shoots the used pipette tip into the trash."

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

This is one of the most intriguing introductions I've read in a while.  Beyond the pop culture references, I want to know:  Who is this man? What is he so intent on creating?  Is he up to no good?

What are you reading now or planning to read soon?

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #50 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.
 

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #54

Another snowy, slow book week.  I added two new books to the pile, which is an improvement from last week.  Actually, I don't mind the lull in the action, because I know there will be many more books coming my way at the end of the month.  In the meantime, here are the books I've finished reading, am still reading, and plan to read next, which I am sharing on the following blogs:

 

 Sunday Post hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer  

Showcase Sunday hosted by Vicky at  Books, Biscuits, and Tea
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? hosted  by Sheila at Book Journey

  

Finished reading . . .

                      

Deep Winter by Samuel W. Gailey; Dark Witch by Nora Roberts

Reading  now . . .

                    

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor; The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern

Borrowed from the library . . .

                        

 Home of the Braised by Julie Hyzy; Do or Die by Suzanne Brockmann

Purchased . . .

                              Golden State by Michelle Richmond 

Reading next . . .

                             Home of the Braised by Julie Hyzy

 

Which books did you get this week and what are you reading?
   

Catherine

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #54 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #32

It's Friday . . . time to share excerpts from one of my current reads with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

This week's selection:

   

Beginning:  Chapter 1

I'm of the belief that there are precious few moments of absolute clarity in our lives and that, when we're granted one of these deliciously pure bursts of comprehension, we'd best act on it.  Quickly, decisively, boldly.

My thoughts:  This is good advice from the lovable Ollie Paras, heroine of the White House Chef Mystery Series, who has just made one of the biggest decisions of her life.  This is book #7 in a favorite cozy series that gets better with each new installment.

--------------------

56% of ebook edition:   "Arching a brow, he sucked in his cheeks.  He was either annoyed by my challenge, or rising to meet it."  

From barnesandnoble.com: With the pressure of an upcoming state dinner that could make or break the president’s foreign policy, White House executive chef Olivia Paras has precious little time to focus on her wedding plans—or to catch a murderer….

Tensions are running high as the White House staff adjusts to a new chief usher and prepares for a high-stakes state dinner, where everything must be perfect. But as the date for the event approaches, things go disastrously wrong when the secretary of defense is found dead in his home, seemingly killed during a break-in.

At the same time Olivia’s fiancé, Gav, is looking into the mysterious murder of an old friend. Is there a connection? Despite an increase in security following the secretary’s death, Ollie learns the president is in imminent danger at the dinner and must do everything in her power to get to him—before it’s too late….

Enjoy life with books . . .

Catherine

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #32 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.    

 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Moon Sisters

 

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature of the Breaking the Spine blog.  It's a great way to share information about forthcoming books with other readers.
 

 This week's anticipated book:

   

 Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Publication date: March 4, 2014

  Preorder from online and books and mortar bookstores

 

From barnesandnoble.com:  This mesmerizing coming-of-age novel, with its sheen of near-magical realism, is a moving tale of family and the power of stories. 

 

After their mother's probable suicide, sisters Olivia and Jazz take steps to move on with their lives. Jazz, logical and forward-thinking, decides to get a new job, but spirited, strong-willed Olivia—who can see sounds, taste words, and smell sights—is determined to travel to the remote setting of their mother's unfinished novel to lay her spirit properly to rest.

 

Already resentful of Olivia’s foolish quest and her family’s insistence upon her involvement, Jazz is further aggravated when they run into trouble along the way and Olivia latches on to a worldly train-hopper who warns he shouldn’t be trusted. As they near their destination, the tension builds between the two sisters, each hiding something from the other, until they are finally forced to face everything between them and decide what is really important. 

 

 

Which book are you waiting for?
 

Enjoy life with books . . .
 

Catherine
 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Moon Sisters was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.  

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #49

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea. It's an opportunity to share the first paragraph(s) of a book I am currently reading or planning to read sometime soon.

Today I'm featuring the opening paragraph from Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, which a friend just gave me.  A film based on the novel is opening on Valentine's Day.

  

Winter's Tale 

Prologue

A great city is nothing more than a portrait of itself, and yet when all is said and done, its arsenals of scenes and images are part of a deeply moving plan.  As a book in which to read this plan, New York is unsurpassed.  For the whole world has poured its heart into the city by the Palisades, and made it far better than it ever had any right to be.

What do you think?  Would you continue reading?

Reading the opening lines makes me feel nostalgic . . .  

As a native New Yorker, I love stories set in New York City.  The cover of the book is a depiction of light streaming into Grand Central Terminal, a favorite landmark of mine.  I've also seen the movie trailer for the film, which I find very intriguing.  

While I admit being a bit daunted by its 748 pages, I can see myself curling up with this novel over a long weekend or during one of our seemingly never-ending winter snowstorms.

What are you reading now or planning to read soon?

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph #49 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com.  This post cannot be republished without attribution.
 

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #53

February is off to a rather slow start, with no new books this past week.  Here are the books I've finished reading, am still reading, and plan to read next, which I am sharing on the following blogs:

 

 Sunday Post hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer  

Showcase Sunday hosted by Vicky at  Books, Biscuits, and Tea
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? hosted  by Sheila at Book Journey

  

Finished reading . . .

  Always Watching by Chevy Stevens 

 

Currently reading . . .

                   

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor; Dark Witch by Nora Roberts

 

Reading next . . .

    Deep Winter by Samuel W. Gailey

Which books did you get this week and what are you reading?
   

Catherine

Sunday's Weekly Book Recap #53 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.

 

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #31

It's Friday . . . time to share excerpts from one of my current reads with:

• Book Beginnings on Fridays hosted by Rose City Reader, where bloggers share the first sentence or more of a current read, as well as initial thoughts about the sentence(s), impressions of the book, or anything else that the opening inspires.  
• The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice, where you grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an ebook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

This week's selection:

 

 

Beginning:  Chapter One

 

Dear Lucy Silchester,

 

You have an appointment for Monday, May 30.

 

I didn't read the rest.  I didn't need to, I knew who it was from.

 

My thoughts:  Who is Lucy Silchester?  What kind of appointment is she headed to and with whom?

 

--------------------

Page 56*:   "He said it rudely.  Very rudely, in fact.  I was taken by surprise.  I didn't know what to say.  This wasn't how people spoke to each other."

 

*Large print edition

 

From barnesandnoble.com:  Lucy Silchester keeps receiving this appointment card and sweeping the envelope under the rug. Literally. Instead, she has busied herself with work (a job she doesn't love), helping out friends, fixing her car, feeding her cat, seeing her family, and devoting her time to their life dramas. But she's stuck in a rut and deluding everyone. Only Lucy knows the real truth.

Then one day life shows up at her door, in the form of a rather run-down man in an old suit, who is determined to bring about change. Life follows Lucy everywhere—the office, bars—meets her flabbergasted friends, and won't let Lucy off the hook. What she learns in the process is that some of the choices she's made, and stories she's told, aren't what they seem either. Now her stubborn half-truths are going to be revealed in all their glory . . . unless Lucy learns to tell the truth about what really matters to her.

Enjoy life with books . . .

 

Catherine

 

Friday Focus: The Friday 56 & Book Beginnings #31 was originally published by Catherine for bookclublibrarian.com. This post cannot be republished without attribution.