HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: WAITING FOR “SWEET SALT AIR” — APRIL 3

 

Welcome to Hump Day Potpourri, today’s venue for Waiting on Wednesday.  Check out Jill, at Breaking the Spine, to see all the other books we’re awaiting.

Today I’m waiting for a release from a favorite author, Barbara Delinsky, whose newest book, Sweet Salt Air, will be released on June 18.

On Quinnipeague, hearts open under the summer stars and secrets float in the Sweet Salt Air…

 

Charlotte and Nicole were once the best of friends, spending summers together in Nicole’s coastal island house off of Maine. But many years, and many secrets, have kept the women apart. A successful travel writer, single Charlotte lives on the road, while Nicole, a food blogger, keeps house in Philadelphia with her surgeon-husband, Julian. When Nicole is commissioned to write a book about island food, she invites her old friend Charlotte back to Quinnipeague, for a final summer, to help. Outgoing and passionate, Charlotte has a gift for talking to people and making friends, and Nicole could use her expertise for interviews with locals. Missing a genuine connection, Charlotte agrees.

 

But what both women don’t know is that they are each holding something back that may change their lives forever. For Nicole, what comes to light could destroy her marriage, but it could also save her husband. For Charlotte, the truth could cost her Nicole’s friendship, but could also free her to love again. And her chance may lie with a reclusive local man, with a heart to soothe and troubles of his own.

 

Bestselling author and master storyteller Barbara Delinsky invites you come away to Quinnipeague…

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What are you waiting for?  Come on by and let’s chat about our upcoming reads.

 

 

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: TAKING INVENTORY — MARCH 20

 

Okay…it’s Hump Day again.  And at this midweek point, I like to take inventory.  Sort of.

Like today, over at Story Corner, I’m celebrating another great book I’m waiting for.  And I created a new blog header there today, too.

The book I’m excited about?  Well, it’s He’s Gone, by Deb Caletti.

 

A woman named Dani wakes up with a headache and discovers that her husband is gone.  What happens next is a twisty-turny kind of journey that should keep me excited as I turn those pages.  I like this part of the description:

Dani searches frantically for a clue as to whether Ian is in fact dead or alive. And, slowly, she unpacks their relationship, holding each moment up to the light: from its intense, adulterous beginning, to the grandeur of their new love, to the difficulties of forever. She examines all the sins she can—and cannot—remember. As the days pass, Dani will plumb the depths of her conscience, turning over and revealing the darkest of her secrets in order to discover the hard truth—about herself, her husband, and their lives together.

The book is coming on 5/14 to Sparky, my new best friend.  Here’s a photo of Sparky:

 

It’s been a frustrating couple of days.  I’ve been trying to read, blog a bit, and distractions keep interfering.  Like poor Noah is sick with a fever and I’ve been playing nurse.  I don’t think it’s my best role.  But his temperature is down right now…and he ate lunch.  So that’s good.

The book I’m reading today is Messenger of Truth, a Maisie Dobbs book: my first one.  It took me a bit to get into it, but I think the problem was my distractions rather than the book itself.  I’m now starting to connect with the characters.

 

So how is your Hump Day going?  Making progress in your reading, etc.?

 

 

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: STUFF I’VE BEEN PUTTING OFF & STUFF I’M ENJOYING — MARCH 13

Welcome to another Hump Day Potpourri.  A place and time to ponder mid-week activities.

Some of my mid-week stuff is not so much fun.  Like getting up at the crack of dawn (I know, I usually do this!), but today had a different destination than my laptop.  Going to the lab for the routine blood work that I’ve been putting off!  As I told the nurse who drew my blood, I put blood work right up there on my “hate list,” along with root canals and visits to the tax accountant.

But after procrastinating for a month, I decided I’d do it.  The fasting, the early morning jaunt to the lab,and then…finally, sitting down to read for a bit.

Today’s read is one I’m absolutely loving!  Wendy Wax’s “While We Were Watching Downton Abbey” has all the wonderful ingredients I adore in a book.

The story introduces some of the women who watch the TV show together:  you might not expect them to end up friends.  But they do.  And then there’s the wonderful concierge.  Reminds me a little bit of the one in Pretty Woman.  But he also has that “Downton Abbey” persona going on.

I’m also eagerly awaiting a book from Kristin Hannah, coming in late April, which I wrote about on my Waiting on Wednesday post.  Fly Away picks up with some of the characters from Firefly Lane.

So…even though the day did not begin on a high note for me, it is coming along nicely.

What bookish (or other) delights are you enjoying today?

 

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: COLLECTIONS & BOOKISH ANTICIPATION — FEB.27

I haven’t done a Hump Day Potpourri for awhile….

Perhaps it’s the silly little phrase that gets me, sometimes; but I adore my logo, which I created by photographing one of the little fairytale goodies on my mantle.

Each of the objects above is from a fairytale or a nursery rhyme.  I started collecting them after I moved into this condo—from a neighborhood shop I loved that is now gone!—and luckily I got just enough of them before the store closed.

My knickknacks on the bookshelves are also from the same “line,” which was Jim Shore—now called something else.  Enesco?

But I digress….

I really wanted to write about the books I’m anticipating, either by review requests or preorders.  There are some lovely ones, so to help assuage some of the anticipatory anxiety, I’ll share them.

First…here are some Vine books I’m expecting this week:

The View from Penthouse B, by Elinor Lipman….

Two sisters recover from widowhood, divorce, and Bernie Madoff as unexpected roommates in a Manhattan apartment…

Sounds like fun, right?

And then there’s The Tin Horse, by Janice Steinberg.

Isn’t that a great cover?

In the stunning tradition of Lisa See, Maeve Binchy, and Alice Hoffman, The Tin Horse is a rich multigenerational story about the intense, often fraught bond sisters share and the dreams and sorrows that lay at the heart of the immigrant experience.

It sounds as wonderful as it looks!  And it should be coming this week…maybe today!

Now for a slightly longer wait for these next books:

From one of my favorite authors, newly discovered in the last couple of years, Chevy Stevens is bringing this one in June:

Always Watching, a story about a psychiatrist and her daily life….

In the lockdown ward of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. Nadine Lavoie is in her element. She has the tools to help people, and she has the desire—healing broken families is what she lives for. But Nadine doesn’t want to look too closely at her own past because there are whole chunks of her life that are black holes. It takes all her willpower to tamp down her recurrent claustrophobia, and her daughter, Lisa, is a runaway who has been on the streets for seven years.

When a distraught woman, Heather Simeon, is brought into the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after a suicide attempt, Nadine gently coaxes her story out of her—and learns of some troubling parallels with her own life. Digging deeper, Nadine is forced to confront her traumatic childhood, and the damage that began when she and her brother were brought by their mother to a remote commune on Vancouver Island.  What happened to Nadine?  Why was their family destroyed? And why does the name Aaron Quinn, the group’s leader, bring complex feelings of terror to Nadine even today?

And then, the unthinkable happens, and Nadine realizes that danger is closer to home than she ever imagined. She has no choice but to face what terrifies her the most…and fight back.

Sometimes you can leave the past, but you can never escape.

 

Finally, thanks to Patty, at Books, Thoughts, and a Few Adventures, I discovered another one from a favorite author, coming in July:

The Wednesday Daughters, by Meg Waite Clayton, the story continues (from The Wednesday Sisters):

I also ordered The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult…and that one should come next week.

Some stories live forever . . . Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future.

Oh…what happened to my vow not to add too many more books to my shelves?  Oh, that….Well, I guess it boils down to:  “what is too many?”  lol

What delicious books are you anticipating today?  If you’d like to see what a lot of other bloggers are adding, check in at Breaking the Spine for the Waiting on Wednesday event.

Now I’m off to finish watching Castle…it’s the second part of a suspenseful story about the kidnapping of Castle’s daughter Alexis….

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: A PLETHORA OF BOOKS — JAN. 30

Here we are, midweek again!  Time to reflect and ponder what lies ahead.

When it comes to books, I am full of eagerness, optimism, and hope.  As they keep flowing into my life and my home, I am grateful when I have a place for them on a shelf.  Or on Sparky, which is where my two latest books have landed.

Out of Circulation, by Miranda James, is what’s known as a cozy mystery.  And since I’m participating in a cozy challenge, I will be able to add this one to my list.  It’s part of a series, too, but I haven’t read the previous ones, so until I do, it won’t count for my Sequel Challenge.

Speaking of sequels, I borrowed two books from the library yesterday that will definitely suffice for that one.

Big Cherry Holler, by Adriana Trigiani, is from the Big Stone Gap series, and is the story of a marriage, revealing the deep secrets, the power struggle, the betrayal and the unmet expectations that exist between husband and wife. It is the story of a community that must reinvent itself as it comes to grips with the decline of the coal mining industry.

Now off to read more Stephanie Plum books, with Sizzling Sixteen:  the story picks up when Vinnie, of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, has run up a gambling debt of $786,000 with mobster Bobby Sunflower and is being held until the cash can be produced. Nobody else will pay to get Vinnie back, leaving it up to Stephanie, office manager Connie, and file clerk Lula to raise the money if they want to save their jobs.

Now that I’ve added these library books to my stacks, I’m going to be conflicted about what to read next.  With review books, library books, and books I’ve purchased…what a dilemma!

Then I got a free Kindle book yesterday, but the author says to take my time to read it.  No deadlines!  Sweet words, don’t you think?

Emancipating Alice, by Ada Winder, is a literary family saga set heavily in the domestic lives of its characters. The novel can also be considered ‘hen lit’ as it follows Alice Owens, a middle-aged homemaker, on her journey to self-rediscovery.

What do you do when presented with so many choices….so many books, so little time?

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: ENDINGS & NEW BEGINNINGS — JAN. 16

Welcome to another Hump Day Potpourri, when we share our midweek thoughts, some of them bookish, while others are just the stuff of life.

As I ponder my Wednesday, I am still thinking about Tuesday’s TV shows:  favorites of mine, like Private Practice and Parenthood.  Already we are at the point of finales, and while usually those are just SEASON finales, the word is that, for Private Practice, it’s a series finale.  I am sad, as I love those characters.

The good news, of course, is that loose ends will be tied up (hopefully).  And I know that, for awhile, I will save the finale on my DVR so I can watch it again.  And cross my fingers that the DVR doesn’t die—which it has done on at least three occasions over the years.

At the same time, as with the old adage about “one door closes, while another opens,” I started watching (on Monday) a new series based on a book I happen to be reading now:  The Carrie Diaries, by Candace Bushnell.  A prequel, if you will, to the Sex and the City shows and movies.

So far, I’m enjoying it, and I liked the pilot for the TV show.  I’ve programmed it to record every week.

What books and TV shows are you interested in—or obsessed with?  What are the ingredients in each that pull you in and keep you fascinated?

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: HOW TO MAKE CLEANING FUN — DEC. 12

Welcome to Hump Day Potpourri, and to the latest tidbits from my world.

I really dislike housework and will put it off for as long as possible.  And while my house looks “picked up” and somewhat orderly, it needs a deep cleaning from time to time.

So how do I make it fun?  By rearranging stuff and afterwards feeling as though I’ve created a “new” room.

Yesterday I tackled the bedroom.  I hadn’t done much in here for awhile.  Here’s what it looked like:

The boudoir…Before

It looks like a small “tweak,” but it took some pushing and shoving—after I’d taken all the stuff off the tops of things—and I had to take out the desk drawers, etc.  Then there was all the vacuuming and dusting…sigh.

Here’s another view:

 

And a table that was previously in this part of the room is now opposite, near the exercise bike.  And I swapped out the chairs.

Table with dolls is now in this part of the room

I ended up with an extra table that is now in the garage, waiting for a new home someday in another part of the condo.

And here’s one final close-up of the desk area.  The phone charger is on the desk now, and the cords are all behind and to the side of the desk:  invisible, mostly.

Desk – Close-up

The photographs on the walls throughout the room were taken by my eldest son when he lived in Ireland.  I like the Irish feeling of this space.  Note the Irish vignette atop the desk!

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: A DAY THAT WENT FROM BAD TO WORSE — DEC. 5

Okay, it’s kind of late in the day to do a Hump Day Potpourri post.

But it’s been one of those days.  Early this morning, I was shouting out about an upcoming release I’m excited about:  Jodi Picoult’s upcoming book called The Storyteller.

Coming on or about 2/26/13, it promises to deliver the best ingredients of a book by this author:

Sage Singer becomes friends with an old man who’s particularly beloved in her community after they strike up a conversation at the bakery where she works. Josef Weber is everyone’s favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. One day he asks Sage for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses…but then he tells her he deserves to die.What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who’s committed a truly heinous act ever redeem themselves with good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren’t the party who was wronged? And most of all—if Sage even considers his request—is it murder, or justice?

Then my day continued, with the kinds of chores that I detest:  scrubbing floors and general cleaning.

Next I finished reading Bonnie, by Iris Johansen:  click for review.

I went for a few drinks at the bar around the corner, where my daughter works.  And came home to start reading a book that wasn’t on my list for the week.

Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian.  An Oprah Book Club pick that I missed when it first came out.

And now I’m frustrated, because Word Press is not letting me put the images in the correct place in this post!

I’m quitting!

Hope your day is going better than mine….Usually, it’s Blogger that messes with my images!  Do you have days like this?

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: WAITING ON “SECRETS FROM THE PAST” — NOV. 14

Welcome to another Hump Day Potpourri.  Today’s event is Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by Jill, at Breaking the Spine.  Here is our special place for shouting out about upcoming releases we are excited about.

I have been a fan of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s books for several years, and even though a couple of her more recent books were not my favorites, I have high hopes for Secrets from the Past, due out in April 2013.

 

At thirty, American photojournalist Serena Stone has already made a name for herself with her unique and dramatic coverage of wars in the Middle East, following in her famous father’s footsteps.  But after his unexpected death in France, she has left her job at the renowned photo news agency that he founded, weary of years of dodging bullets and exploding landmines. Leaving the front lines behind, Serena returns to New York where she starts work on a biography of her celebrated father.  When Serena discovers that her former lover Zachary North is in trouble overseas, she’s forced to leave the safety of her new life, and head back to a place she was trying to escape…and her life will never be the same again.  She brings Zac back to health, first in the agency’s bolthole in Venice, and later at her family home in France. It is there that she discovers a shocking secret in the huge photographic archive of her late father’s work.  It is a secret that will propel her back to war-torn Libya, risking her life looking for clues that she hopes will piece together the mystery surrounding her parents’ marriage and the part of their life together she never knew about.

Well-kept secrets, passionate love, obsession, betrayal, redemption, and the power of the past to control the future propel this new novel from The New York Times bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford.

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What are you waiting for?  Come on by and share some tidbits!

HUMP DAY POTPOURRI: WAITING ON “VANITY FARE” — OCT. 17

Welcome to Hump Day Potpourri, where we celebrate the upcoming books we’re anticipating.  Hosted by Jill, at Breaking the Spine, hop on over to see what everyone else is drooling over.

Today I’m eagerly awaiting Vanity Fare, by Megan Caldwell, to be released on 12/26/12.

 

Goodreads Blurb:  A charming novel about a 40-year-old Brooklyn mother, recently divorced, who starts writing copy for a bakery, discovers a knack for food-related literary puns, and becomes entangled in a love triangle.

Molly Hagan is overwhelmed.

Her husband left her for a younger, blonder woman, her six year-old son is questioning her authority, and now, so is she. In order to pay her Brooklyn rent and keep her son supplied with Pokemon and Legos-not to mention food and clothing-she has to get a job. Fast.

So when an old friend offers Molly a copywriting position at a new bakery, finding romance is just about the last thing on her mind. But the sexy British pastry chef who’s heading up the bakery has other thoughts. And so does Molly when she meets the chef’s intimidating business partner-who also happens to have a secret that might prevent Molly from getting her own Happily Ever After.

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Now I’m off to see what other books are coming soon!