Wrap Up Post - What's In A Name 2015

Here are the categories and my selection, when I read it and a link back to my review

1. A book with "ing" in the title: The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs 1/12/15

2. A color in the title:  The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls 1/6/15

3. A familial relation: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards 1/3/15

4. A body of water: Shem Creek by Dorothea Benton Frank 7/20/15

5. A city:  The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant   6/28/15

6. An Animal:  Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West   3/31/15


I am already looking forward to this challenge in 2016.  

Shem Creek - What's In a Name 2015 - I'm finished.

Shem Creek
Dorothea Benton Frank
Berkley Publishing/Penguin Group
2004


from Goodreads:

Linda Breland has no experience managing a restaurant, but then neither did Brad Jackson, and he owns the place.

Meet Linda Breland, single parent of two teenage daughters. The oldest, Lindsey, who always held her younger sister in check, is leaving for college. And Gracie, her Tasmanian devil, is giving her nightmares. Linda's personal life? Well, between the married men, the cold New Jersey winters, her pinched wallet and her ex-husband who marries a beautiful, successful woman ten years younger than she is-let's just say, Linda has seen enough to fill a thousand pages.

As the story opens, she is barreling down Interstate 95, bound for Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the land of her ancestors. Welcomed by the generous heart of her advice dispensing sister, Mimi, Linda and her daughters slowly begin to find their way and discover a sweeter rhythm of life.

And then there's Brad Jackson, a former investment banker of Atlanta, Georgia who hires her to run his restaurant on Shem Creek. Like everyone else, Brad's got a story of his own-namely an almost ex-wife, Loretta who is the kind of gal who gives women a bad name.

The real protagonist of this story is the Lowcountry itself. The magical waters of Shem Creek, the abundant wildlife and the astounding power of nature give this tiny corner of the planet its infallible reputation as a place for introspection, contemplation and healing. 

My thoughts:

I fell in love with South Carolina and the characters of this story. Linda Breland, mother of 2 teenage daughters has decided that life in New Jersey is for the birds. She needs to go back to her roots and so she packs her daughters and her car and leaves her house and her job to head to Charleston, to Mount Pleasant and the shores of Shem Creek. 

Linda is brash, bold, and a bit irreverent. She is also fiercely loyal, a loving mother, a devoted sister and a downright valuable employee. Just give her a chance and she will have you falling in love with her. 

This is one of the rare books that put a tear in my eye. That never happens to me anymore. This story was mostly believable, had the ending I expected, but it took a few twists and turned that were unexpected. The minor characters, Louise, Duane and Mimi were likable and believable too. I do believe I have found a new favorite author.

It gets 5 Happy Hands 


This is the final entry in the What's In a Name 2015  challenge that is hosted by Charlie at The Wormhole.

If you click on the link above ( not the picture), it will link you to the gateway post and there will be the links to the various categories of this challenge. This is the first challenge I ever participated in when I started blogging in 2011 and it is a favorite. 



Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

The Boston Girl - What's In a Name Challenge 2015

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Addie Baum begins to tell the story of her life to her 22 year old granddaughter, when Ava asks, "How did you get to be the woman you are today?"  Addie is 85 and begins her story in 1915, the year she joined the library group at a neighborhood settlement house for girls. It was there that she found her voice, and made friends with teachers and other young girls who would become lifelong friends.

I love how the story is told as a grandmother talking to her granddaughter. It feels private and personal and truthful. The chapters all have names, like What are friends for?, or How do you go on after that?, and It made me feel like a real Boston girl.

Ms Diamant tells an unforgettable story about family, remarkable friendships, and feminism from the POV of a young Jewish girl growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.


View all my reviews

What's In A Name 2015 - Animal : Blind Your Ponies.

Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West. 
Published 2011 
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill


Sam Pickett is hiding from the nightmares and violence that has invaded his life. He is an English teacher that ends up in the tiny, hopeless town of Willow Creek, Montana. In addition to his English classes, he is asked to coach the basketball team. They are a sorry sight, and their record speaks for itself . For the last 5 years he has coached and they are still 0-93. He wonders, why me?  There are a few supporters in the small town, Andrew Wainwright, Ray Collins, and Elizabeth Chapman. This year will be different, how?

Enter Peter Strong, Elizabeth's grandson from the Twin Cities, MN. His parents are divorcing and they have sent him to Grandma while they sort it all out. Also a foreign exchange student shows up to live with Mervin and Claire Painter. Two of their daughters had been exchange students, one to Spain one to Brazil, they felt the need to reciprocate. They are hosting Olaf from Norway, hopefully, a son to fill the void felt by Mervin.  When they meet him at the airport gate, they are surprised by his bright blue eye, his straw-colored hair, and boyish grin. Also, he had to duck as he walked through the gate. He is 6' 11''.  Mervin wonders if he plays basketball.

Thus begins the new season for the Willow Creek Broncos and Sam Pickett. And what a season it will turn out to be.

I really enjoyed this feel-good, but not sappy sweet story. The setting is not far from where we live, so it felt personal. I love the small town feel, the camaraderie. The characters where fun to get to know ( well most of them). I loved Grandma Chapman's spirit, and Diana Murphy's insight.

The only thing that spoiled this wonderful story was the editing of the e edition I was reading. Clumsy grammar, hyphenated words where they should not have been, capitalization of the A in afternoon (frequently). I hate that.  I intend to try to find a print edition of this book and compare. Also I will probably read other books by this author, because I like his writing. But I will be careful to only use print book editions.

Am I the only one this happens too? Do any of you find blatant errors in ebook editions?

I gave this story 5 stars because I loved it. And I think the editing was not the author's fault.

Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? #715

Join us at Book Journey and share what you are reading this week. I missed you all last week. We were traveling back from a funeral in Iowa and made it as far as my sister's house on Sunday. She prepared a marvelous dinner ( as always) and we talked and had a wonderful visit. The next morning, Monday, we started home. It is only 2.5 hours but we drove in cloudy dreary, sunshine, sleet showers, snow so thick you could not see over 3 car lengths ahead. YUCK!

Anyway, I did not have a Monday, What Are You Reading post. I finished 52 Cups of Coffee, you can check out my quick review on Goodreads, here.  Mr. Busy and I also listened to The Forgotten by David Baldacci while in the car for 20+ hours.

I also finished Beloved by Toni Morrison, but I have yet to do a review. It was a very difficult read for me. And I  finished Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman which I loved, by the way.

This week I am in the middle of :

"In this luminous prequel to her beloved Cobbled Court Quilts series, New York Times bestselling author Marie Bostwick takes readers into the heart of a small Texas town and the soul of a woman who discovers her destiny there. . .
Welcome to Too Much--where the women are strong-willed and the men are handsome yet shiftless. Ever since Mary Dell Templeton and her twin sister Lydia Dale were children, their Aunt Velvet has warned them away from local boys. But it's well known that the females in Mary Dell's family have two traits in common--superior sewing skills and a fatal weakness for men.
While Lydia Dale grows up petite and pretty, Mary Dell just keeps growing. Tall, smart, and sassy, she is determined to one day turn her love of sewing into a business. Meanwhile, she'll settle for raising babies with her new husband, Donny. But that dream proves elusive too, until finally, Mary Dell gets the son she always wanted--a child as different as he is wonderful. And as Mary Dell is forced to reconsider what truly matters in her family and her marriage, she begins to piece together a life that, like the colorful quilts she creates, will prove vibrant, rich, and absolutely unforgettable. . "

and I will start reading ,

This book will be one of the selections for Mega Mix II Challenge on Goodreads and I may use it for the Animal selection for What's In A Name 2015 Challenge, hosted by Charlie at The Worm Hole. If interested you can read about it here.

Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt, Beloved, Between Heaven and Texas, Dewey's Nine Lives, and the audio edition of The Forgotten by David Baldacci all will be listed on the Library Challenge section of the

 2015 Challenges tab at the top of my page.

Until next time,
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls

This book was the January read for my face to face book club. We all enjoyed the story even though we took exception to some of the characters.

Jean "Bean" Holladay is twelve, her sister Liz is fifteen and they are best friends. They need to be, because their mother Charlotte is a bit of a flake. Charlotte was and is a rebel. She is single mother now, but leaves the girls to find herself. Bean and Liz are used to being by themselves. They shop, eat chicken pot pies day after day and go to school. One day as they come home from school, the police are at their door. Although they ditch the cops, they decide it's time to go back to Virginia where there mother's brother, Tinsley lives.

They make their way across the country on a bus, and arrive unannounced at Uncle Tinsely's door. He takes them in, while they wait to hear from their mom. They learn a lot about their mother, her family, why she left home in the first place and they learn that though most people accept them and want what's best, not everyone in the town is their friend.

This story set in the 1970's is about love and family, relationships and triumph over tragedy.  It discusses social injustice, racial tensions soon after forced integration, and Walls treats the unstable, probably bi-polar, mother with just enough caring that we don't end up hating her. Bean is the narrator and at twelve almost 13 she is precocious and outspoken, while Liz is finding her way as a flamboyant, smart-as-a-whip beauty.

X 5

I enjoyed this book more that Half-Broke Horses also by Jeannette Walls, and I intend to  read Glass Castle very soon.  I gave this book 5 happy hands because it had me reading when I should have been sleeping.



I am linking this review to What's In A Name 2015, for the category" book with a color in the title.

What's In A Name 2015 Review: The Friday Night Knitting Club

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Georgia Walker is a single mom and a successful yarn shop owner in New York City. Her shop Walker and Daughter has a variety of customers. Some have become very good friends, some have been friends from the very beginning. As Georgia's shop continues to grow and her pre-teen daughter decides to become the next Food Network star, some of her more quirky customers gather to form an impromptu knitting club. Then the fun begins.

This is a story of female friendship of the awesome kind. Women of all walks of life, single, widowed, married and from various backgrounds, come together to share talk, snacks and even a bit of knitting.

Kate Jacobs develops characters so that you feel like you would know these women if they knocked on your front door. You really like them. Some you wish you could shake at times, but they are great friends and really support each other.

This is the first in a series of books and I am anxious to read the next ones.


View all my reviews

First Book of 2015 The Memory Keeper's Daughter

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

March 1964 changed the lives of David Henry and his wife of barely a year forever. Dr. Henry, an orthopedic surgeon delivered his own twins in a blizzard. Norah and David were hoping for a healthy baby, and Norah told him Paul if a boy and Phoebe if it's a girl.  In 1964, delivery procedures were different. With the help of the nurse from the clinic where David worked, he delivered a healthy son. A form of gas was used to keep the mother relaxed between contractions, and David soon realized that Norah was delivering another baby. A girl, this time. As he holds here in his hands, he and the nurse both recognize that this baby has Down's syndrome. Always wanting to protect and take care of others, Dr. Henry as his nurse to take the baby to an institution and never reaveal the secret. He rationalizes that his wife would never be able to handle the baby's added needs and expected early death.

Unable to leave the tiny infant at the institution, Carolyn Gill disappears and raises the baby herself. She had a blank birth certificate, that Dr David Henry had hastily signed knowing that the nurse would finalize the details. So begins a story that unfolds over 25 years and binds two families together by these fateful decisions.

I was immediately drawn in by this story. I raised my own children in this time period. My first child was born in 1964. But I could not relate to a father giving up his child. As the story developed I began to understand that Dr Henry was broken. By circumstances beyond his control. He need to be always in control. Norah was a women I never grew to like. She was spoiled, inconsiderate of others, unable to relate to her husband and smothered her son.

But this story is well written, with good character development. I wanted to slap Norah and David, hug Paul the son who never felt complete, and cheer on Caroline and Phoebe and try to get them to find each other and share the secret.


View all my reviews

My First Book of The Year: 2015

I have been waiting to start The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I committed to it being my first book of the new year on Sheila's blog, Book Journey. Go visit Sheila's blog and see the collage of picture of those of us who are joining in the fun. 

This book was passed on to me by a friend and it will also fit category #2, a familial relation,   of What's In A Name 2015 sponsored by Charlie of The Wormhole,  Her posts for this year's challenge should be up today, January 1st. 

When I have a review of this one, I will post it to the proper posting link at Charlie's blog.


So for now.....

Happy New Year &

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Challenges for 2015 - Book related and Quilt related

The end of the year is fast approaching  and I will attempt challenges again. One of my FAVORITES is the What's In A Name Challenge and Charlie at The Worm Hole is hosting it again this year.

Here is what the button looks like. Click on the link to Charlies' blog above, find the button on her sidebar and it will take you to the sign up post. Then on January 1st you can join us as we read at least 6 books with titles that fit the categories that Charlie has presented.


Also I have decided to try this challenge. I have been reading lots of Cozy Mysteries and I might as well challenge myself to read more. If you want to join me. then check out Yvonne's blog, Socrates Book Reviews for the sign up post and let go cruisin'.  I will sign up at:Level 2 - Investigator - Read 7-12 books

I think I will only do these two blog associated challenges. I probably will do a few monthly or quarterly challenges on Goodreads too. Plus I have my F2F bookclub that will have monthly reads in 2015.

Then, I shouldn't forget that my quilting group will have a 6 part Finish Up Your UFO's challenge next year. I will share this challenge with you when I sign up for that one. Yikes!! I may be in over my head.


Until the new year
Stay Happy and Stay Busy