Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

The Ready, Set, Readathon begins now!  It's hosted by Danie at Booktacular and Faye at A Daydreamer's Thoughts and runs from now (midnight on Friday) until the end of Sunday.  The goal?  Read as many books as you can for three day straight.  You can also keep up with it on Twitter through the hashtag #RSReadathon. My plans for the readathon?  Well first of all, Friday and Saturday are going to have to be my big reading days as I have plans for Sunday.  I'm hoping to finish these two books for sure:   After that I have a large pile of Canadian books I took out of the library in anticipation of the Giller Prize longlist announcement on Tuesday.   I'm not sure which one I'll start with but I hope to also finish one book from the pile. Day 1 Progress: Pages Read: 254 Books Read: 1 A Nation Worth Ranting About  by Rick Mercer was delivered to me today and I had to start it!  Rick Mercer is to Canada what Jon Stewart is...

Harold Fry lives in a small English village with his wife Maureen and is recently retired from his job at the local brewery.  Very little distinguishes one day from the next and as each day passes his wife grows more and more annoyed at every thing he does.  They sleep in separate rooms and something remains hanging in the air between them. One morning Harold receives a letter from Queenie Hennessey, a woman he hasn't seen or heard from in twenty years.  Queenie is writing to let Harold know that she is in a hospice and she wants to say goodbye.  Harold writes her a quick reply and sets off to the mailbox on the corner, but when he arrives, he can't bring himself to post it.  So he walks to the next mailbox and then next until he convinces himself that he must deliver his message to Queenie in person.  There are six hundred miles between Harold and Queenie but he knows that as long as he is walking, she will stay alive. With nothing but the clothes on...

 It's Monday, What Are You Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey .  It's a great place to organize your week, get ready for reading and of course, find tons of new books to add to your to read pile.  This is the last week of summer before school starts for us.  We're doing that whole wake up early test run thing this week to get ready for catching the bus at 7:45 am (the horror!) and I seem to be doing a lot worse than the kids.  Anyways, due to the busyness of this week, I'm going light on the reading. What I Read Last Week: The Money Smart Family System by Steve and Annette Economides (click title for review) The Blondes by Emily Schultz The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp by Poppy Dolan What I Am Currently Reading:   One Way Or Another by Rhonda Bowen Atlanta reporter Toni Shields will do whatever it takes to get a good story. So when she's arrested for sneaking around the mayor's house, she's prepared. What she's not...

The small town of Port Dundas, Ontario is shocked when beloved hardware store owner Henry Weist is found dead in the parking lot of a First Nation reserve cigarette shop.  All signs point to Henry dying of a bee sting but Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef isn't so sure.  When more deaths follow, Hazel and the police force find themselves embroiled in a mystery that involves illegal gambling, modern day slavery and a suspect bent on getting revenge. A Door in the River is the third offering in the Hazel Micallef series by Inger Ash Wolfe.  I haven't read the first two books but it is not necessary to have done so.  This book stands on its own and any references to the previous books are explained well enough that you don't need background information.  This is a wonderfully written, deep thriller that pulls you in right away and keeps you hooked until the very last page.  The secondary stories of personnel changes at the police station and Micallef's...

The Back to School Readathon ran from Thursday 16 August to Monday 20 August and was hosted by Katie at Katie's Book Blog .  After coming home from vacation to my large TBR pile, I knew I needed a readathon to get me started.  Goal: Read a total of 1000 pages and start/finish four books. Results: Read 1007 pages, finished 3 books and started a fourth.  So I consider this readathon a huge success! The books I finished were: All three books were wonderful reads and highly recommended.  Thank you to Katie for hosting the readathon.  And I look forward to participating in another one at the end of the month.  Check out my side bar for more information on the Ready Set Readathon.

Tia Jiles has a dangerous secret.  It is so troubling that she stops herself from getting close to anyone, preferring to dive into her work and keeping her private life extremely private.  But when she meets handsome and successful magazine publisher Lance Kingston, who is head over heels for her, she goes against her better judgment and lets him into her world. Lance thinks he has won the jackpot when he meets successful lawyer Tia.  He hasn't known her for long but he knows that she is the one and very soon they are married and expecting a child.  But the Tia he loves quickly becomes another person.  The "new" Tia is a raging, violent woman who is a danger to herself and the baby she carries. When Lance's grandmother tells him "crazy leaves clues," he digs deeper and finds out the secret Tia has been carrying, that since the age of seventeen she has been battling schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  Lance knows he's in over his head and when he almos...

It's been a few weeks since I've linked up to It's Monday, What Are You Reading?, a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey . The last couple of weeks I've been on vacation.  I managed to get some reading done while away, which is pretty good considering I've got two young children and they don't exactly want to hang out by the pool with a book.  So to help myself catch up I participated in the Back to School readathon hosted by Katie of Katie's Book Blog .  It's helped me get three books out of my to read pile in one weekend so it's been a complete success and I hope to carry that momentum into this week. What I Read On Vacation (click on title for review): The Company by Chuck Graham Be The Mom by Tracey Lanter Eyster The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner The Secret She Kept by ReShonda Tate Billingsley ( review coming soon ) What I Read Last Week (reviews coming this week): Running For My Life by Lopez Lomong A Door in th...

Mary has spent much of her life waiting for the time that she can let go of her MIA husband and find closure, not just for her but her daughter Teresa who was very young when her father went off to war.  Over the years Mary and Teresa have learned that grief has its own course and that closure isn't something you can just make happen.  When Mary discovers a dead dog while on a walk, she contacts the owner and quickly finds that her time for closure is upon her. One More Winter by Rebecca K. O'Connor is a short story that was originally written to help O'Connor through her own experience of loss.  She was the owner contacted by someone else and through the story, O'Connor imagines the life of the person she met only briefly on the phone.  I thought this was a beautiful, heart-tugging story.  I had trouble understanding the characters of Mary and Teresa only because I didn't connect to them as the age they were portrayed (Mary read to me as being the age Teresa...

It's been a few weeks since I've participated in the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Jennifer at Crazy For Books .  It's been a busy summer, but it's winding down now and I'm starting to get a little more time at the computer. For those who don't know, the Book Blogger Hop is a weekly get together where we visit and get to know our fellow book bloggers.  This weeks question is: What is one genre you will NEVER read? My answer is Erotica.  When I first started blogging, I would have given you a whole list of genres - young adult, speculative fiction, suspense, romance to name a few - but the beauty of being a book blogger is you open yourself up to so many new books, authors and genres and you discover so many things you thought you wouldn't have liked.  So now I never say NEVER except to erotica, it's just not something that I would touch. How about you? What genre would you never read?

At the age of twenty-three, Ruth Saunders packed up her life and moved across the country, heading to Hollywood in the hopes of becoming a television writer.  Along for the move is her seventy year old grandmother, who raised Ruth after a tragic accident took her parents lives when she was young.  Things don't immediately go smoothly for Ruth but after four years she hits the big time when her sitcom, The Next Best Thing, gets picked up.  Based on her own life, the show is Ruth's dream come true.  But the dream is short lived as Ruth comes up against Hollywood executives and demanding actors.  Add to this pressure her grandmothers impending nuptials and a secret crush on her boss and Ruth begins to realize that Hollywood is not all it's made out to be. The Next Best Thing is Jennifer Weiner's newest novel and a continuation of her short story Swim , first published in The Guy Not Taken .  Weiner's own experience in Hollywood as writer and producer of the...

 I had such great success with the Olympic Readathon (1200 pages read while on vacation with my kids!) that I needed to sign up for another readathon now that I'm home.  And the Back To School Readathon, hosted by Katie at Katie's Book Blog is the perfect one for me! This readathon runs from August 15-20.  There is no minimum to read, just the challenge to make a dent in your TBR list.  I plan on reading the following books: Running For My Life by Lopez Lomong A Door in the River by Inger Ash Wolfe The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce The Blondes by Emily Schultz I will consider this readathon a success if I can get 1000 pages read in five days.  That will definitely get me motivated to get back into reading after a lovely two week holiday. Day 1: We took the family to Canada's Wonderland yesterday so it wasn't exactly a reading day for me.  I managed to get a few chapters in on the way there but not much else. Total...

There are currently over 400,000 children in the foster care system in the United States, and over 76,000 children in the system in Canada.  These are children who are waiting for homes due to circumstances of loss, abuse, neglect and abandonment.   Wait No More  chronicles Kelly and John Rosati's journey as they build their family by adopting four children from the American foster care system.  The Rosati's strongly believe that adoption through the foster care system by Christians is not only a solution for the children, but for the adoptive family to live an authentic, pro-life commitment to God.  They are open and honest in this book as they share both the joys and struggles of adoption and this book will inspire every reader to find ways that they can become involved in such a journey. This is such a beautiful story.  As someone who genuinely hopes to adopt out of the foster care system one day, the book further solidified this hope.  ...

I first reviewed Half Blood Blues  in November of 2011 after it was nominated for and won the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize.  It also won the 2012 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.  It was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.  It was also a finalist for the 2011 Governor General's Award for Fiction and the 2011 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, in addition to many other honours. In 1940, war had spread throughout Europe. In Paris, a brilliant young jazz musician named Hiero was arrested by the Nazis. He was a German citizen and Black. Hiero was never heard from again. Fifty years later his friend and fellow musician Sid, who was there the night he was arrested, is at the premiere of a documentary chronicling Hiero's life. The film spurs Sid to relive their time together, a time of brilliant music and culture but also of trouble, rac...

I first reviewed The Year of the Flood  in April of 2010.  Margaret Atwood is a Canadian institution, beloved by all for her incredible writing and her activism.  I highly recommend following her on Twitter, @MargaretAtwood In the near future, the world is run by corporations with names like HelthWyzer, ReJoove and SeksMart. Order is kept by the corrupt police force known as CorpSeCorps. Many of the animals we know now are extinct and the world is inhabited by new genetically engineered species such as Rakunks, Liobams and Mo'Hair sheep. Social and environmental stability are nearing an end. Inhabiting this world, apart from mainstream society, is an eco-cult named God's Gardeners. Their beliefs combine religion and science, dedicating themselves to the preservation of plant and animal life. Their leader, Adam One, has long been predicting a natural disaster that will forever change life on earth. And now, it has occurred. The Waterless Flood has wiped out most o...

I first reviewed More  in April of 2010.  It was the winner of the 2009 Toronto Book Award.  Clarke won the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel, The Polished Hoe. Idora Morrison, an immigrant from Barbados, has lived in Toronto for 25 years.   After her deadbeat husband left for America, she struggled to make ends meet for herself and her son BJ.   But now, Idora has discovered that BJ has disappeared into a life of gangs and crime. For four days and nights, Idora remains hidden away in her rented basement apartment, trying to figure out how all of her best intentions have brought her to this tragic place.   She recounts her most memorable moments, good and bad, as a black woman living in Canada.   At the end of her self-imposed exile, she emerges with a newfound courage and perspective of her circumstances. More is a wonderfully written book that does not hold back on its criticism of the state of race and poverty in Canada.   ...