Lilac & Ivy

This coffee table book about renovating and living in row houses and brownstones looks gorgeous. Best of all, it offers practical advice for that one day renovation. Sigh…

Jaimee Rose of The Arizona Republic wrote a beautiful ten part series about blogger Stephanie Nielsen aka NieNie. It takes readers from the day of her plane crash through her first year of recovery. It’s such an inspiring story that made me laugh and brought tears to my eyes. It reminds me of the strength of a family and of the compassion we are capable of.  I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Image: Justin Hackworth

This Pictorial Webster’s Visual Dictionary of Curiosities looks amazing! It features more than 1,500 restored engravings of things like bell jars, zebras and Velocipedes that originally were seen in Webster dictionaries from the 19th century. I’m thinking it would make a perfect coffee table book for anyone from art lovers to science buffs, children and visual learners.

I’m not sure where I first read about The Help. I think it was a monthly recommendation in Real Simple or Good Housekeeping. Either way, after reading the synopsis I knew it was right up my alley.

Synopsis:
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Review:
I absolutely loved this book. I read it in less than a week (granted I was on vacation and had long flights) but that’s a recent record. I’ve always been interested in Civil Rights history and even more so now that I live in the South. I loved reading each woman’s individual point of view and I found Kathryn Stockett’s writing very easy to read. I enjoyed how each chapter alternated between different narrators, yet demonstrated how they were clearly entwined. I didn’t find the book to be preachy (I was hoping it wouldn’t be) but it certainly opened my eyes to several things, including practices I never knew existed. If you’re searching for a heart warming book that also has a bit of history in it, I definitely 100% recommend The Help.
***** of 5 stars

P.S. If you’re waiting for the review of The Whole World Over, I’m still reading it. This one popped up at the library and having been on the wait list since August, I had to take it when I got it. After I finish The Island I’ll get back to it and hopefully finish it quickly.

It’s a coincidence that I read this article today, because I just took the jacket off a book this morning. It’s a borrowed book and I don’t want to damage the jacket which is in perfect condition.

Needless to say, I love the idea of creating book covers without jackets and instead stamping them with a graphic. I think it does a great job of both selling the book and creating a beautiful piece for your home. Really, it seems the question is, “for what purpose [is] the book designed: to be sold in a store, or to be a part of a reader’s life.”

After describing the type of book I enjoy reading to my friend Tonya, she recommend Three Junes.

Synopsis:
This strong and memorable debut novel draws the reader deeply into the lives of several central characters during three separate Junes spanning ten years. At the story’s onset, Scotsman Paul McLeod, the father of three grown sons, is newly widowed and on a group tour of the Greek islands as he reminisces about how he met and married his deceased wife and created their family. Next, in the book’s longest section, we see the world through the eyes of Paul’s eldest son, Fenno, a gay man transplanted to New York City and owner of a small bookstore, who learns lessons about love and loss that allow him to grow in unexpected ways. And finally there is Fern, an artist and book designer whom Paul met on his trip to Greece several years earlier. She is now a young widow, pregnant and also living in New York City, who must make sense of her own past and present to be able to move forward in her life. In this novel, expectations and revelations collide in startling ways. Alternately joyful and sad, this exploration of modern relationships and the families people both inherit or create for themselves is highly recommended for all fiction collections.

Review:
The premise of this book immediately interested me as I love books about families and all the tangled webs of emotions involved. Compromised of three distinct sections, the main character of each section is tied to the main character in the previous section. I found some characters lovable, some difficult to like and felt pity for others. Overall, I found each respective relationship to be extremely tender. I could feel the emotions between them in my own soul. The book felt long because so much of it is dialogue based, however, it never dragged and I didn’t find myself skipping anything. I enjoyed Julia Glass’ writing so much, my next selection is by her too.
**** of 5 stars

Several people recommended this book to me but before checking it out from the library I knew very little about it.

Synopsis:
Manhattan freelance writer Ward and his wife, Heather, faced a steep learning curve when they abandoned harried, technology-driven lives for a year not just in the country but in the country as it was a century ago. Their mantra was, If it didn’t exist in 1900, we will do without, and they did—no electricity, no telephone, no computer. This breezy account of their stubbornly quixotic odyssey begins in June 2000, with Logan exhausted pumping water from a well, ineptly milking cantankerous goats and confronting his fear of a 2,000-pound Percheron, while Heather coped with the cooking stove’s suffocating heat, her fear of snakes and hand-scrubbing two-year-old Luther’s cloth diapers. Their garden, planted late, was soon parched by drought and plagued by pests, the most severe of several crises, since it was their winter food. Ward writes candidly about how tempers flared and sexual intimacy vanished in the early months of their adventure, but the stress of a daunting new experience soon settled into the comfort of routine, as the couple canned dozens of quarts of produce once the rains returned and forged friendships with curious, ultimately supportive country neighbors. This lyrical account of keeping the 21st century at bay is more real, and more rewarding, than any survival TV show.

Review:
The premise for this project intrigued me. Although I know there are less fortunate people in this country who currently live without electricity or other modern conveniences, for me, this would be a pretty dramatic change. You see, I grew up in what people would categorize as typical suburban America and I now live in an urban neighborhood in Charlotte so the thought of letting it all go would be challenging. In as much that I found the concept interesting, what I found more interesting was the authors descriptions and challenges with growing his own food {a topic I’m extremely interested in} and building community {something I fear is somewhat lost today}. Another reason this memoir interested me is because it’s set in Swoope, Virginia, a town 20 miles away from my in-laws house so the imagery of the town and people seemed so familiar. Overall, it’s a light, simple read with some thought provoking points.
*** of 5 stars

Since I added the little feature On the Nightstand to the blog as a way of sharing what I’m reading, {and to keep me accountable for my New Years Resolution} I figured I’d start doing a short review when I finished each book. I realized I never did the review for Eat Pray Love, which I finished before See You in a Hundred Years so I’ll do the review for Eat Pray Love today and See You in a Hundred Years tomorrow. Deal? Deal.

Synopsis:
At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for “balancing.” These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert’s exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to speak directly to God, she says, “It was all I could do to stop myself from saying, ‘I’ve always been a big fan of your work.’”

Review:
Not as life changing for me as for some of my friends, this book definitely is a great story about a woman’s spiritual journey. It helped me rediscover the joy of reading novels after I spent nearly 8 months not reading any. I particularly enjoyed Eat because of the descriptions in Italy, a place I long to visit, and Love because of the sense of peace and acceptance this chapter showed was capable of achieving within oneself. Pray was a bit slow for me but mostly because I don’t find myself searching for spiritual answers. The book is very easy to read and I enjoyed the authors sense of humor immensely. I’d like to read another one of her books.
*** of 5 stars

Recently, while at the bookstore I saw the above cover of Country Living and picked it up. Man, am I impressed! This magazine has definitely gone through a revamp since the last time I saw it!

It definitely delivered on it’s cover line of fresh ideas. The home decor was just my style… not too country, not too shabby, not too modern. I loved the easy, healthy recipes and the fashion was affordable {finally!}!

I liked it so much I picked up the next months issue and love it even more! In fact, I recently used an Amazon gift card I had and subscribed. {They recently had a promotion and I got it for $5 bucks!}

Country Living is definitely an easy to read- pick up, put down. The articles are thoughtful and concise. Almost to the point where I want more. In fact, the magazine is awfully thin, and I hope that with the new Editor-in-Chief, and the changes she’s making, this might change.

Anyway, if you haven’t checked out Country Living recently {or ever} I definitely recommend you do!

If you’re anything like me, you use summer to catch up on reading. I’m always looking for recommendations and thought I’d share five of my favorite books. They’re books I could reread every few years, something I don’t do very often.

It was while reading The Bean Trees that I discovered Barbara Kingsolver’s gift for descriptions both physical and emotional. So as not to spoil the plot, the basics of it are that a woman, Taylor, finds herself caring for an orphan Indian child in Tucson, Arizona. There she discovers the wonders of motherhood, risk-taking, self-discovery and the crazy town of Tucson {a place 90 miles from where I grew up.} The book pulls at your heartstrings in a beautiful way and the scenery will make you think of the West in a completely different light.

This collection of columns, originally published in The Arizona Republic {where I also used to work as a writer!}, is downright hysterical. Following her daring exploits from teenager to adulthood, each story in The Idiot Girls’ Action Adventure Club will have you laughing and relating at the same time. Be warned: You’ll want to call your closest girlfriend and rehash your now comical teenage angst years in depth. Each story is short {3-4 pages} and it’s an easy read-perfect for taking on the road or to the beach.

The second I finished The Time Travelers Wife I wanted to begin rereading. This book follows Henry who has a disorder that makes him suddenly disappear without warning and finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. He marries his wife Clare and then minutes later finds himself transported and meeting her as a child, then again as an old woman after he’s passed. Don’t be worried, this book is only a small part science-fiction and large part wonderful, beautiful love story. It switches back and forth from Henry and Clare’s point of view as well as jumps in time, but, it’s actually really easy to read. It’s one of my top three books.

Part historical fact, part answers to a love mystery, Loving Frank, examines the life of famed archictect Frank Lloyd Wright and his longtime mistress Mamah Cheney. Their affair became the stuff of headlines when they left their families to live and travel together. But, this isn’t just a love story. Instead, it focuses extensively on Mamah and the restrictions she encounters due to being a woman in the early part of the 20th century. The author does a great job of recreating Frank’s overwhelming personality and the toll it had on everyone he loved.

Set during the Civil Rights era and all the racial tension it harbours, The Secret Life of Bees follows Lily and her African American nanny, Rosaleen, as they go on the run and end up in Tiburon, South Carolina. Searching for clues about Lily’s mother, this book is a beautiful coming of age story weaving a mystery with wonderful Southern charm.

So tell me, what are your recommendations?
Images: Amazon