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BBAW Winners and More Winners

September 18, 2011 by

The winner of The Gendarme by Mark Mustian was Jill of Rhapsody in Books.

 

The winner of Operation Blue Light by Philip Chabot and Laurie Anne Blanchard during BBAW is Emily of Emrelove.

 

 

The winner of Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles during BBAW was Florinda of The 3 Rs Blog.

 

 

The winner of Women Know Everything! by Karen Weekes during BBAW was Aths of Reading on a Rainy Day.

 

The winner of The Snow Whale by John Minichillo during BBAW was Amy of The House of Seven Tails.

 

 

 

The winner of When She Woke by Hillary Jordan during BBAW was Lauren of Shooting Stars Mag.

 

Congrats to all of you and I hope you enjoy the books.

 

 

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BBAW Interview Swap: Gautami of Everything Distils Into Reading

September 13, 2011 by

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that one of my favorite activities is interviewing other bloggers. For this year’s interview swap as part of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gautami of Everything Distils Into Reading.

She and I share a love of writing and reading poetry, and I love to check out her poems from time to time, which she posts online for her readers.  She’s very prolific, and wouldn’t it be grand if another blogger were to publish a poetry book, like Sandra of Fresh Ink Books?

Without further ado, here’s my in-depth interview with Gautami:

1. Everything Distils into Reading is not your first book blog, but why did you decide to keep going and how did you come up with the name for the new incarnation?

I lost my blog, My Own Little Reading Room, to malware in April 2009. It was a very big loss. I kind of felt as if something was cut of from my body. I decided the only option was to keep going. My life revolves around books. I am a teacher, so my work too is reading related. That is how the name of my blog came up.

2. How do you determine which blogs to read on a regular basis and how often do you read them?

I have stuck to the old bloggers. I like to read Crime Fiction, Literary Fiction and poetry. So I kind of only read those blogs and a few others which are mix of all. I read via Google Reader!

3. I know you recently went through a reading slump (and may still be), but could you provide readers and bloggers alike with some tips on how to overcome that slump?

My reading slump persists. I am unable to read novels. But I am reading a lot. Scientific papers. Poetry. Global news. Non-fiction. Short pieces hold my interest. I say, do what works best for you!

4. As a writer of poetry, do you keep writing for yourself? Do you submit to magazines (online or print)? And what keeps you inspired?

I write poetry only for myself. I do have a blog, rooted. I write from writing prompts. Never submitted my poetry any where.

5. If you had to choose one book (of poetry or otherwise) from the 2011 publication year to nominate for the Indie Lit Awards in September, what would it be?

I can’t answer that. Mainly because I have not explored. Being an Indian, all those awards don’t have much meaning for me!

Thanks, Gautami, for sharing a bit of yourself and your blog with us.  Feel free to leave a question for Gautami or myself or leave a link to your BBAW interview swap.

Want to check out Gautami’s interview with me, head on over to her blog.

Today’s giveaway is for Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles. You must be a blogger to enter and you must leave your blog address. Open internationally; deadline ends Sept. 16, 2011, at 11:59PM EST.

Filed Under: giveaway, Interviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Appreciating Bloggers

September 11, 2011 by

Book Blogger Appreciation Week starts Sept. 12 and runs through Sept. 16 with a variety of giveaways and activities for the blogging community.  Each year, I take the opportunity to visit bloggers I don’t really know or have never seen before, and that’s how I find gems, like Unabridged Chick.

In appreciation of my fellow book bloggers, I’m going to offer up some books for giveaway throughout the week, starting tomorrow.  You must be a blogger to enter, which means you must leave me your blog address in the comments to be entered.

So you can plan ahead, these are the books I’ll be offering this week:

1.  Operation Blue Light by Philip Chabot and Laurie Anne Blanchard, which is a memoir and I didn’t feel interested in; I want to pass this along to someone who would enjoy it.  Here are the details from Amazon:

In Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life among Psychic Spies Philip Chabot reveals for the first time the powerful story of his growing psychic ability and the government s growing interest in him. Mr. Chabot details a type of psychic ability he calls spoken telepathy and tells how it came to steal away a summer of his young life. Philip Chabot recorded his memories of the experience three years after the story ended but kept those tapes private until after he retired. After forty years of keeping his and the government s secret he now tells what lead to that hot summer afternoon in Lebanon, Missouri. He reveals how his psychic abilities had grown to such a state that he was actually interrupting intelligence efforts around the world.

2.  Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles, which I recently read and reviewed for the U.S. Civil War Reading Challenge at War Through the Generations.  Here’s part of the description from Amazon:

For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation, despite the family’s avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee. The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women’s prison.

But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom.

3.  Women Know Everything! by Karen Weekes, which I received from Quirk Books and want to pass along to someone else to enjoy.

With more than 3,000 quotations on everything from fashion and feminism to men, marriage, friendship, history, technology, sports, and more, this massive compilation proves once and for all that women know everything! Each page offers wisdom, wit, and inspiration from a host of legendary women—from Jane Austen and Colette to Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Toni Morrison, Liz Phair, Ellen DeGeneres, and Naomi Klein.

4.  The Snow Whale by John Minichillo, which I reviewed earlier this year.

When John Jacobs, a mild-mannered suburban office worker, takes a DNA test and discovers that he is part-Inuit, he so embraces his new identity that he declares it his Inupiat tribal right to set forth on a whale hunt.

So begins this postmodern satire, a seriocomic, quirky adventure set in the oldest continuously settled town in North America, in the North Slope of Alaska, on the frozen Chukchi Sea, literally at the top of the world, where the inhabitants and their ancestors have depended on subsistence whaling for thousands of years.

5.  When She Woke by Hillary Jordan, which I received 2 copies of and have an extra copy to pass along to one of you.

Hannah Payne’s life has been devoted to church and family, but after her arrest, she awakens to a nightmare: she is lying on a table in a bare room, covered only by a paper gown, with cameras broadcasting her every move to millions at home, for whom observing new Chromes—criminals whose skin color has been genetically altered to match the class of their crime—is a new and sinister form of entertainment. Hannah is a Red; her crime is murder. The victim, according to the State of Texas, was her unborn child, and Hannah is determined to protect the identity of the father, a public figure with whom she’s shared a fierce and forbidden love.

I hope you’ll all be stopping by and entering the giveaways, but most of all checking out new blogs this week and most of all enjoying the community.  Don’t enter here, but on the posts throughout the week.  There are also 2 other giveaways in the sidebar for all readers.

Also, please take a moment today to remember the people who died on Sept. 11, 2001, and who died after helping people out of the rubble and more.

Filed Under: announcements, giveaway Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

August 26, 2011 by

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles is set during the U.S. Civil War in Missouri, which is torn apart by Union ties and Confederate rebel robberies and mischief.  Adair Colley’s father is taken by Union militia on suspicion of helping rebels, and the union soldiers have ripped through their home and taken many of their belongings.  Following the capture of her father, she and her sisters walk to inquire about their father’s imprisonment and to possibly barter for his freedom.  However, along the journey, Adair’s tactless mouth gets her in trouble and she is imprisoned in St. Louis and her sisters flee to relatives.  The novel is about the civil war peripherally and directly and how it impacts Adair and her life.

“There will be trouble in Missouri until the Secesh are subjugated and made to know that they are not only powerless, but that any attempts to make trouble here will bring upon them certain destruction and this . . . must not be confined to soldiers and fighting men, but must be extended to non-combatant men and women.” (Page 1 from beginning correspondence)

Jiles peppers the beginning of each chapter with “authentic” correspondence and dispatches from union and confederates alike, as well as from ordinary people.  On some occasions, these passages speak directly or indirectly to the action in the chapters they precede, but on others they do nothing more than offer additional background to the war and its terror.  They do provide a certain authenticity to a novel that is more fanciful in nature as Adair seems younger than her 18 years.  She sees the world as a young girl who believes that justice always prevails, and despite the challenges she faces, she seems unable to let go of her naivete.  She often is surprised by how people act and react, which she finds extremely disappointing.  Unfortunately, not much changes with Adair’s character throughout the book.  At times, she can be cunning and quick to make decisions that are beneficial, but at other times, she’s fumbling around and unable to be courageous.

“Do you not want out of here? He said.  He seized up the papers.  You think perhaps you care for me.  Would you care for me if you were not here? And dependent on my good will?” (page 126)

Jiles does have her moments where she demonstrates the changes in Missouri from farmland and traditional ways of life to a more industrialized and modern society.  Questions also are raised about whether Adair would have fallen in love with a union soldier had the war not taken place and they were not thrown together.  Readers may enjoy the plight of Adair, but they also may grow frustrated with her lack of growth and the plodding nature of the prose throughout the book.  War scenes only occur once or twice in the book, and while most of the book is about Adair and her journey, there are a couple of chapters thrown in that focus only on Major Neumann after he is sent to the war front from the St. Louis prison where Adair is held.

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles illustrates the transitions Missouri and its people endured as a result of the war and its aftermath, and the harsh conditions the war brought to union and confederate alike is well depicted.  However, dialects and uneducated speech are not done well, and there are no quotation marks at all.  Moreover, the characterizations falter in several points in the book, and there are some convenient plot devices used to get Adair where she needs to go and to save her from discovery.  The ending left a great number of unanswered questions given the cryptic prose used by Jiles in the final moments of Adair’s story.  While Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles didn’t work most of the time, readers interested in the social impact of the U.S. Civil War might enjoy the story.

Please do check out the discussion for the read-a-long on War Through the Generations if you’ve read the book.

 

This is my 47th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

 

 

This is my 2nd book for the U.S. Civil War Reading Challenge 2011.

 

 

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, Harper Collins, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, purchased, Read in 2011, reviews, U.S. Civil War Challenge 2011 Tagged With: ,

Enemy Women Read-a-Long at War Through the Generations

July 31, 2011 by

Anna and I hope you will join us for the August read-a-long of Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles as part of the U.S. Civil War Reading Challenge 2011.

We will read a handful of chapters every week throughout August, and every Friday, we will post discussion questions on War Through the Generations.

We welcome you to post your thoughts on your blog and provide a link or just type your thoughts in the comments section of the discussion post; whatever works best for you.  You can answer our questions or just discuss whatever you found most interesting in each section.

If you are interested in reading along with us, please let us know.  You don’t have to be participating in the U.S. Civil War Reading Challenge 2011 to join us!

Here’s a bit about the book from the publisher:

For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation, despite the family’s avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee.

The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women’s prison. But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom.

Now an escaped “enemy woman,” Adair must make her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise … seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.

Here’s the schedule for the read-a-long:

Week One: Prologue – Chapter 6; discussion on Fri., Aug. 5

Week Two: Chapters 7-15; discussion on Fri., Aug. 12

Week Three: Chapters 16-24; discussion on Fri., Aug. 19

Week Four: Chapters 25-31; discussion/final thoughts on Fri., Aug. 26

Filed Under: announcements, U.S. Civil War Challenge 2011 Tagged With: , , ,

Civil War Challenge Participants’ Giveaway

May 15, 2011 by

For those participating in the U.S. Civil War Reading Challenge, we’ve got a giveaway going on for those interested in participating in the August Read-a-Long of Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles.

There are 2 copies up for grabs and the giveaway is international. So what are you waiting for? Go on over and enter.

Filed Under: challenges, giveaway, U.S. Civil War Challenge 2011 Tagged With: ,