Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

Happy Monday! Word is we're getting a big snowstorm (20-30 cm) starting tomorrow, so you know what that means - tons of time to read! What I read last week After Tehran - Marina Nemat How Not to Shop - Carmen Reid What I'm reading now Old School Ties - Kate Harrison What I plan to read next War Child - Emmanuel Jal Hatteras Girl - Alice J. Wisler How does your week look?

TGIF! I'm looking forward to a restful weekend full of reading! How about you? The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly meme hosted by Jennifer at Crazy For Books . It is a great way to meet other book bloggers and find new books to read. The last hop had over 300 participants! This hop is growing like crazy and is so much fun. This weeks question is: What book are you most looking forward to seeing published in 2011? Why are you anticipating that book? At the beginning of the year I posted a list of books I am looking forward to in 2011. It's hard for me to choose just one from that list! So I'm going to mention two from the list. The first is The Kid by Sapphire and will be released in April. This is the sequel to Push , which was made into the movie Precious. This book will take place in the present and follows the story of Precious' son. I loved Push and am really interested to find out how her story continued. The second book is If You Ask Me (And Of Course Y...

At the age of sixteen Marina Nemat was imprisoned in Iran's notorious Evin prison. She shared the story of her arrest, imprisonment and torture in the bestselling book Prisoner of Tehran . But her story did not end there. In After Tehran: A Life Reclaimed Marina shares what life was like for her after she was released from Evin. She married, escaped Iran, immigrated to Canada, started a family and began to live what she had hoped would be a normal life. But despite living what seemed like a typical Canadian life, she struggled with the memories of Evin and her past life began to haunt her. At this point she decided to put her feelings down on paper. After Tehran chronicles Marina's arrival in Canada, how her book came to be published, and the frenzy that was ignited following the release of her book. She soon found herself travelling the world to share her story and reaching out to others who had been prisoners in Iran. Through it all, she continued to struggle wi...

Mary Beth Chapman was living a life she had never planned for. Instead of the peaceful and stable life she had always dreamed of, she was living a pretty hectic one. With her husband, an award-winning singer/songwriter, she had a full house with three biological children and three children adopted from China, as well as a nonprofit organization to run. But on May 21, 2008 their world was changed forever. One of their young daughters was hit by a car, driven by their 17-year-old son, in the driveway of their home. In the months that followed, Mary Beth struggled with understanding God's plan for her life and why their beautiful, full of life girl was taken from them. In Choosing to SEE: A Journey of Struggle and Hope Mary Beth Chapman shares the story of her life and her struggle to find a new normal following the death of her daughter. This is an open and honest book that is full of laughter, sadness, faithfulness and the promises of God. Mary Beth's story is an i...

Happy Monday! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey . It is a great way to find out what others are reading and find books to add to your to read list! Books I finished last week Rhythms of Grace by Marilynn Griffith Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman What I'm reading now After Tehran by Marina Nemat What I plan to read next How Not to Shop by Carmen Reid War Child: A Child Soldier's Story by Emmanuel Jal What are you reading this week?

As a teenager, Grace Okoye was a promising dancer. But a brutal assault ended her career and changed her life forever. Twenty years later she returns to the small town of Testimony, Ohio to teach at a school for at-risk kids and hopefully come to terms with the incident that shaped her life in the hopes of eventually being set free. But Grace isn't the only one in Testimony who needs to be set free. Her childhood friends Zeely, Ron, Brian and Jeremiah are all keeping secrets that are threatening to blow their lives apart. As they all work at the same school, teaching kids who are in the same situations they once were, the five of them find that they won't be able to hold their secrets much longer, and only through the grace of God will they truly be set free. Rhythms of Grace is an emotional and soulful novel about redemption and forgiveness. As the lives of the five characters intersect, we learn along with them that we aren't the only ones who are hurting and th...

An American novelist who for twenty-five years has held on to the furniture and memory of young Chilean poet who has disappeared at the hands of Pinochet's secret police. An elderly Israeli man who has just lost his wife and has reconnected with his estranged son. A professor in London who has just lost his wife and discovered a secret that she hid for fifty years. An antiques dealer who is slowly putting back together his father's study which was plundered by the Nazis. All of these people are connected by one solitary item - an enormous wooden desk with nineteen drawers. But for those whose lives it has passed through it is more than just a piece of furniture, it is a symbol of the memories and loss that has permeated their lives. Great House by Nicole Krauss explores the ways in which we attempt to hold on to the past and how it affects our present. Each characters story is written in the form of a short story with the desk tying them all together. The reviews ...