Jenn's Bookshelves

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: HCI; Original edition (February 1, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 075731368X
• Source: Publisher

In her debut, Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair, Laurie Perry gave people an inside look at her quirky life as a recently divorced woman.  Now in Home Is Where the Wine Is, it’s the beginning of a new year and Laurie is ready to move on with her life.  She comes up with a list of resolutions for the following year:

1. Explore New Paths to Enlightenment
2. Take an Adventurous Trip
3. Knit Something that Isn’t Square
4. Go On a Real, Live Date
5. Grow A Garden.
6. Deal with My Issues
7. Try Something New (and not just new foods)
8. Do some other form of exercise other than knitting.

Each chapter of the book is then broken down into each of her resolutions. Her lessons on life that she uncovers while completing her resolutions are laugh-out-loud funny!

One of Laurie’s resolutions is to exercise. Following is an excerpt of a scene in which Laurie “responds” to a body’s natural “reaction” to yoga:

I laughed the loud, spontaneous way you do without first wondering if it is appropriate to be laughing.  And as soon as I realized that no, it was really NOT ok to these people (who take yoga very seriously) that I was laughing at  a perfectly natural bodily function, I tried to stop laughing, but I couldn’t.  I was too far gone.  I had become that horrible girl who keeps on trying to be quiet in a serious situation but ends up laughing so hard she’s crying, tears streaming down her cheeks and sides hurting from laughing so hard.  I was that awful, disrespectful girl…I was asked to leave the fancy yoga studio.

Several times throughout the book, I actually forgot I was reading a book!  Laurie’s tone is very conversational, like she’s talking to you directly. You get to experience her true feelings, no some second-hand narrative of her life. And, yes, while the book is absolutely hilarious, it’s also good for the soul. Laurie shows us all how to live our lives at their fullest, and how to have a good time while doing so!

We wake up each day and make it as good as it can be by deciding to see our lives as a continuum, not as a goal or a resolution on a piece of paper. Meet a goal and it’s over, on to the next goal!But a life lived for harmony, for balance, for goofiness, for jokes…that is living. It’s the tiny spaces in between the big goals that let me live…It’s so simple.  It’s not the resolutions, the tidy endings.  It’s all the tangles that make up a life.

As a special bonus, the book is full  of recipes (fried zucchini!) and knitting patterns, including:

* Personal Massager Cozy

* Quick Knit Date-Night Bag

* Felted Wine Bottle Cozy

* Wine Glass Flip-Flop Coaster

* Knitted Swiffer Cover

And, in case you haven’t guessed it by now, I highly recommend this book!  I recommend this book for every woman: a young twenty-something just really entering the dating world as well as a forty-something woman having to face the dating world for the first time in over a decade.  Perry’s writing will speak to every woman.

About Laurie Perry

Laurie Perry knits and writes in Los Angeles, California, where she chronicles her daily life on her online diary, Crazy Aunt Purl. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, MSN.com, Vogue Knitting, the Boston Herald, and The Palm Beach Post. Perry has written for the Los Angeles Daily News and the Winter Haven News Chief in Winter Haven, Florida. She is the author of Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair.

Follow Laurie on Twitter and check out her blog Crazy Aunt Purl.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to participate in this tour!  Please be sure to check out the other tour stops this month:

Monday, February 1st:  She Just Walks Around With It

Tuesday, February 2nd:  Jenn’s Bookshelf

Wednesday, February 3rd:  One Person’s Journey Through a World of Books

Thursday, February 4th:  Diary of an Eccentric

Monday, February 8th:  Knit and Tonic

Tuesday, February 9th:  You’ve GOTTA Read This

Wednesday, February 10th:  A Novel Menagerie

Thursday, February 11th:  Wendy Knits

Tuesday, February 16th:  Luxury Reading

Wednesday, February 17th:  Rundpinne

Thursday, February 18th:  Knitting Knot

Friday, February 19th:  Knit Read Cats Hockey

Monday, February 22nd:  Bookfoolery and Babble

Tuesday, February 23rd:  Booking Mama

Wednesday, February 24th:  Gaysknits…

Thursday, February 25th:  Stumbling Over Chaos

Friday, February 26th:  Tripping Towards Lucidity

On to the giveaway! I have five copies of Home is Where the Wine Is to give away!

This giveaway is open to residents of the US & Canada only.  To be entered, you must complete the form below.  Winner will be announced Monday, February 15th.

 I’m officially resurrecting my dormant Virginia is for…book lovers feature. I have a ton of great authors lined up to feature, but unfortunately sometimes life takes you over!  I promise to make this a monthly feature and give these amazing authors their due!  This month’s featured author is Laurie Brodie, author of  The Widow’s Season.

Paperback: 303 pages
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA), June 2009
ISBN: 0425227650
Source: Author

Sarah McConnell is still grieving the death of her husband, David, after losing him nearly three months ago in a flash flood.  His body was never recovered and while Sarah knew there was no way he could have survived the flood, she still needs that physical evidence of his demise before she can truly accept he is gone.

But then one day, she sees him at the grocery store.  She catches his eye but as quickly as he appeared, he is gone.  Reluctantly, she tells her friend Margaret, also a widow. To her surprise, Margaret doesn’t seem appalled by this news. She, too, used to see her husband everwhere after he passed away, nearly five years ago.  But her visions were of men who resembled her husband and obviously not her husband himself.

Margaret recommends that Sarah join her at her next bereavement group meeting.  Talking with other women experiencing the same grief might aid in her healing.  Also aiding her in this recovery process is Nate, her brother-in-law. He drops by and checks in on Sarah on a regular basis.  His resemblance to David is uncanny, almost so similar he could almost be mistaken for his older brother.

Sarah soon discovers that she’s not truly grieving the loss of her husband:

She was morning the loss of an idea, a vision of how her life should have been. And that vision had not been swept down the river three months ago; it had been dying slowly over the past few years, with each small dream that she abandoned.

Sarah had given up bits of herself in the years she was married to David. She dropped everything and moved to Jackson when he was offered a position there. She soon found a part-time job at the local college.

Once they were settled, Sarah and David tried to start a family. Unfortunately, they were unable.  Sarah was in a constant battle with her body, for some reason she was unable to carry a child to term. Sarah was devastated and sunk into a bout of depression.  David was unable to deal with her emotions:

She felt that her miscarriages were tainting his perfect world, a barren wife being the most ancient blight of all, and she sometimes suspected that the acidity of her mind might be poisoning her womb; no life could grow within a body so bitter.  Some nights David would stay at work just to avoid her tone at the dinner table.

So Sarah wasn’t really grieving David, but grieving the life and the family they could have had together.

Sarah joins Margaret for her bereavement group meeting.  She reveals her glimpses of David to the group of widows. Many of the women admit that they too have seen their husbands. Margaret is still hesitant to believe Sarah is actually being haunted by her husband:

…if you are really seeing David, there must be a reason.  Either he is somehow trying to reach you, or you are trying to reach him. Most likely it is the latter.  There’s probably somthing unresolved in your mind.

On Halloween night, David makes another appearance.  This time he doesn’t disappear.  Thinking of Margaret’s statement, she opens the door and invites David inside.

David explains that he was a victim of the flood but he was able to save himself from the raging rapids.  But instead of contacting Sarah and returning to his life, he has an unmistakeable desire to run away. So he continues to hid in their cabin in the woods. Even though he saw Sarah and Margaret arrive at the cabin a week after the flood, he remained hidden.

He invites Sarah to (once again) leave everything behind and come with him to live in the cabin. Sarah is unable to commit to an answer, but begins to visit David at their cabin.

Meanwhile, Nate continues to pay visits to Sarah.  Sarah can’t help to feel alive in his presence. He shows a level of respect and care for her that David was unable to show.  She is torn between the feeling she has when she is with Nate, and the feelings of loyalty she has for David.

Sarah’s decision is made after attending a performance with Nate at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  The lyrics seemed to describe Sarah to a “T”:

I am eager for the pleasures of the flesh

More than for salvation,

My soul is dead,

So I shall look after the flesh…

…The girl without a lover

Misses out on all the pleasures

She keeps the dark night

Hidden

In the depth of her heart;

It is a most bitter fate.

Sarah realizes that she has to make a decision: is she going to live for her dead/undead husband or for once, live for herself?

The Widow’s Season a lot more than what it seems. Reading just the description on the back of the book, it seems to be a ghost story.  But it’s much more.  It is not only a story of a widow’s healing, but also one that details her transformation into a seemingly completely different individual. The years she was with David, it was as if she were a caterpillar and she wasn’t able to fully transform into a butterfly until her feelings about her marriage and David were resolved.

While reading, I didn’t know what to believe.  Was David truly alive or was Sarah just haunted by his ghost? I won’t reveal the answer, but Brodie did an outstanding job of keeping the answer ambiguous.

Brodie’s writing is very emotional and captivating, a very absorbing read.  It’s also a very addictive piece. I couldn’t put it down until I learned the truth behind David’s appearances.  In case you haven’t noticed yet, I highly recommend this one!  It would be the perfect book for a reading group. There are several aspects and issues that can be picked apart and discussed.

About the Author:

I was born in Columbus, Ohio, with the name Laura Ann Fairchild. My earliest memories come from Seattle, Washington, where my family lived in the Magnolia neighborhood near the Puget Sound. I loved the deep, rainy colors of Seattle; one of my dreams is to buy a summer house on the Olympic peninsula.

At age eight, my family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where I stayed through high school, spending most of my time writing poetry, playing tennis, and earning money as an amateur violinist. After graduating from Broughton High School in 1982, I went to college at Harvard, and lived in Cabot House with a group of eight talented and diverse women who inspire me to this day. Hello to all my roommates!

My favorite class was a poetry workshop with Seamus Heaney, and I graduated with a degree in English in 1986. While at Harvard, I played violin with the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, touring in Russia, Europe and Asia. On an orchestra tour I met my future husband, trumpeter John Brodie. We married after my graduation, and lived in Washington, DC, where I worked on campaign finance reform for Common Cause.

In 1988 we moved to Lexington, VA, so that John could take a job as band director at the Virginia Military Institute. I commuted to Charlottesville to work on a PhD at the University of Virginia, and with the help of a dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women and a Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Grant, I wrote a dissertation focused on widows in English literature. Since that time, all of my writing has been tied to women’s studies. My favorite chapter from that dissertation was on husbands who fake their deaths in order to spy on their wives, and that inspired my  novel, The Widow’s Season.

If you are a Virginia author and would like to be showcased in this feature, please contact me at jennsbookshelfATgmailDOTcom or fill out the form on my “Contact Me” page.

Heart Lake is a small, quiet lake-side town.  It seems to be experiencing a bit of growing-pains, however.  Citizens are no longer courteous to one another and it’s beginning to loose its Mayberry feeling.

The three main characters (Jaime, Sarah, and Emma) are local shop owners and close friends.  They decide to come up with a way to bring the “heart” back into Heart Lake.  Each of them decides to do one good deed a day in the hopes that their actions influence those of others, a sort of pay-it-forward campaign.

In the midst of this campaign, each of the main characters are experiencing their own personal drama. 

Jaime, Sarah’s niece, works at the town’s chocolate store.  She moved to Heart Lake to get away from an abusive marriage.  She’s in no rush to get into another relationship.  However, when she crosses the path of Jake Armstrong, a widower raising two young girls, her world is upended.  She’s proud of her independence and doesn’t want to get hurt again. But Jake is hard to resist. 

Sarah is experiencing serious grandchild withdrawl after her daughter’s family moves away.  She’s been a part of their lives since they were born and their absence is noticable.  Her good deed is to provide cooking classes to a handful of the young girls in town.  Her efforts seem to be in vain when one of her students takes advantage of her kindness.

Emma feels like a failure when her beloved quilt shop fails to take off.  She has a handful of customers, including one who always seems to forget her checkbook, and Emma has allowed her to create a pretty hefty tab. Will hard work ever pay off?

 Have you ever picked up a book, start reading it, instantly falling in love with the characters?  That’s what happened when I started reading Angel Lane.  I became wrapped up in the characters lives within the first few pages.  Roberts writes a very inspiring tale of how the actions of three individuals can influence an entire town.  My life has been very hectic for the past few weeks, but the citizens of Heart Lake provided me with a bit of peace.  And I’d be remiss not to mention the delicous recipes listed at the end of the book. I will definitely be trying out a number of them, specifically the one for pumpkin cookies!

I don’t like to compare one author’s writing to another’s, but I can’t help but notice a similarity between Roberts’ writing with that of Debbie Macomber.  Both women write inspiring tales revolving around a small-town community. Each have endearing characters that you can’t help but fall in love with.

If you are looking for a relaxing, easy read, then Angel Lane is the book for you. Now that I’ve finished reading it, I miss the characters. They really became part of my life. They’ve inspired me to pay-it-forward as well. I do hope the author has a sequel or a follow-up planned in the near future!

Thank you to Pump Up Your Book Promotion for giving me the opportunity to take part in this tour!

Thirty-something Lila Cole is a successful professor of English. She is happily married to Patrick.  Her life seems virtually perfect.  Until her twin brother, Billy, the man she puts before all others (including her husband), dies as a result of suicide-by-cop.  Lila learns that her “perfect” brother was actually estranged from his wife and accused of endangering the life of his young son. So, Billy took an unloaded rifle and pointed it at an elementary school.

In the weeks after her brother’s death, Lila falls into a very deep depression.  Billy literally meant everything to her.  Things she loved before, like reading, lacked the substance they once had:

“The characters aren’t real to me anymore.  It’s like they’ve fallen to the floor and shattered into nothing but thousands of meaningless words. It’s like they died, but worse.” p. 49.

Patrick is desperate to help his wife crawl out of this depression. He soon learns that the childhood she told him about was completely false. When questioned by a therapist, Lila is unable to recall key parts of he childhood. All she can remember is the childhood Billy told her about, a promised world that cushioned them from reality. Lila must face this knowledge and reach back into her memory and be prepared to face what really took place.

The Promised World is a fast-paced, thrilling and emotional family drama. It isn’t until near the end of the book that you realize whose story you can trust. Tucker tells a story that you can’t bear to put down, you will want to finish this one in one sitting. The pain Lila experiences after her brother’s death and in the realization that her life was a lie, is so vivid and realistic.

There are several mini-plots that pop up throughout the book. This had the potential to confuse the reader and cause them to stray away from the key storyline, but Tucker did a stellar job of wrapping them al up in a neat package at the end. Tucker’s writing is beautiful and mesmerizing, and the characters will haunt you long after you turn the last page.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity  to participate in this tour. Following are a few of the other blogs participating in this tour:

Thursday, September 17th:  2 Kids and Tired Book Reviews

Monday, September 21st:  Janel’s Jumble

Tuesday, September 22nd:  Caribousmom

Wednesday, September 23rd:  The Tome Traveller

Thursday, September 24th:  Books and Movies

Monday, September 28th:  A Sea of Books

Tuesday, September 29th:  GalleySmith

Wednesday, September 30th:  Shhh.. I’m Reading